Audiobus: Use your music apps together.

What is Audiobus?Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.

Download on the App Store

Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

Which iOS Drum Machines have a ‘fill’ feature?

I can think of three.
DrumComputer. Pure Acid. Future Drummer
Are there any others?

«1

Comments

  • Not exactly a fill - but Hammerhead can crack out a something like a fill if you mess with mutation, glitch...

    And the auto drummers in GarageBand of course.

  • Define? Do you mean the apps generate fills, or they have the ability to switch to a different pattern as a one-shot, then return to the original pattern.

    All Lumbeats drum apps generate fills.

  • Either or @wim. As long as it has fill capability in some regard. I’m looking to see what the options are.
    Hammerhead is a goody with great variations. but I’m looking for the fill functionality.

  • EG Pulse has a Fill button.

  • I think all the Lumbeat apps have them. They just seem to throw some randomness in though. It's rarely musical.

  • wimwim
    edited September 2021

    @robosardine said:
    Either or @wim. As long as it has fill capability in some regard. I’m looking to see what the options are.
    Hammerhead is a goody with great variations. but I’m looking for the fill functionality.

    Hammerhead could have something just as good if it had the pattern chaining options that Rozeta, etc. have. I usually set up the first pattern as repeating for X times with go-to next, then the next pattern with randomization kicked up for certain parts and go-to first after 1 bar. I was kind of bummed when I found that I couldn't do this with hammerhead.

    So, in my book, all the Brambos drum sequencers except hammerhead have fill capability.

  • edited September 2021

    Some ( extensive ) thoughts about drum fills.

    An automatic fill feature might appeal to the non drummer, but pls remember that fills are not a category unrelated to grooves. It means that for different grooves, specific fills will work or not. The fill must match the groove, the style, and many other factors. And this is valid not only for drums but for any instrument or music style.
    Even beyond music. When you fill a glass with a good wine, it has to match the fine meal it accompanies.

    To design a fill generator without taking in context the groove it is supposed to...fill, might not be very coherent. Also among the myriad of possible combinations, each "real life" drummer, trough experience, usually build his repertoire of favorites fills, which reflects his good taste, musicality, character, etc...

    Randomness and musicality are not equivalent. One is blind the other can be enlightened.

    I programmed many fills in different styles for DrumPerfect Pro packs. Some are plain simple others are highly complex.
    It involved long hours of listening to top drummers ( any style ), to understand the subtil relationship between the grooves and the fills they would play in context to the tune. The key here is listening. Good drummers listen to the band, and their playing support the music. I can hardly imagine how randomness can pretend replicate this.

    That said some probability combined with a judicious selection of fills related to the groove, could mimic this musical behavior, if done with a sensitive understanding of the tune.
    Some new plugins nowadays are attempting to emulate this musicianship.

    What professional drummers have to say? Anyone on this forum?

  • wimwim
    edited September 2021

    That be why I sticks to wines that have a screw top. If it don’t goo good with the grub just toss ‘er back in the fridge and try another one. Drum fills is like that too ain't they?

  • edited September 2021

    @Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr said:
    I think all the Lumbeat apps have them. They just seem to throw some randomness in though. It's rarely musical.

    I find Soft Drummer fills to be really good usually. The exception seems to be if at a low tempo, then they are often too busy. It's one of the apps that made me wanna get an iPad. It also has the ability to add a cymbal after the fill, with some variability, which adds a lot to realism, plus fill to start or fill to end song.

    I find Drum Computer's fill style seems pretty uninteresting by comparison. I can't seem to get good results with it but maybe that's stylistically related.

  • @Gilbert said:

    What professional drummers have to say?

    …but this is a music forum

  • edited September 2021

    The Drummers in GarageBand are the top-notch with a lot of AI at work (which may be why no other dev could attempt to replicate it in their apps). We can tweak the fills in many ways and increments to alter their patterns. You have to cut/split the region where you want the fills inserted. Each region can have a different Drummer and all other parameters even on the same track. Each parameter change will result in fill variations. Up to 2 Drummer tracks in a project. If that is not enough, you know already how to work around it (export project/drummer-track, import audio track). Yeah, Drummers beats have great velocities and ghost notes for humanization.

    Other apps may involve a lot of work to accomplish some rudimentary fills but GB is so easy - even a kid can do it. You get better results with GB Drummers than Drums.

  • Gadget still comes in handy for many things on iOS :)
    Have your pattern and jam on top of it with simple gesture to add fills or variations in different styles, with various intensity.

  • @Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr said:
    I think all the Lumbeat apps have them. They just seem to throw some randomness in though. It's rarely musical.

    I know it's subjective, but to me it seems it also depends on the app. In Future Drummer, I almost always get musically good sounding fills, in some of the others not so much.

  • Drum Perfect Pro has very very good drum fills.

  • Drum Perfect Pro is mostly all real/acoustic type drums, is that right? I was looking for more in the realms of the electronic groove.
    GarageBand sounds good - but no Ableton Link unfortunately.

  • @Pxlhg said:
    Drum Perfect Pro has very very good drum fills.

    +1

  • @robosardine said:
    Drum Perfect Pro is mostly all real/acoustic type drums, is that right? I was looking for more in the realms of the electronic groove.
    GarageBand sounds good - but no Ableton Link unfortunately.

    @robosardine
    Yes true, acoustic drum samples. The engine for creating fills is pretty deep and quite capable indeed. In your case you would need to export the generated midi to use with a different module or app of choice.

  • wimwim
    edited September 2021

    @robosardine said:
    Drum Perfect Pro is mostly all real/acoustic type drums, is that right? I was looking for more in the realms of the electronic groove.

    There are a couple of electronic kits.
    But you can also roll your own. DPP has extensive kit building capability.

  • I’d like to hear them, but that’s probably not on the cards. What is the nature of the kit builder? Is it tuning other drums, or mixing from other kits.
    It’s a pity it doesn’t have sample import by the sounds of things, but then maybe it would lose its charm if that were the case.

  • wimwim
    edited September 2021

    @robosardine said:
    I’d like to hear them, but that’s probably not on the cards. What is the nature of the kit builder? Is it tuning other drums, or mixing from other kits.
    It’s a pity it doesn’t have sample import by the sounds of things, but then maybe it would lose its charm if that were the case.

    It does have sample import. It has everything you could possibly need to build multi-layered kits. The capabilities are way too many to write up in a post. You could check out the manual if you're interested.

    Manual: https://www.drumperfect.nl/drumperfect_manual_v3_0.pdf (page 21-31 for kit building)
    Quick-Start: http://drumperfect.nl/DPP Quick Start v3.pdf
    Tutorial and demo videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0EbgPR6sVuneM76T5tJ34g

  • @wim said:
    That be why I sticks to wines that have a screw top. If it don’t goo good with the grub just toss ‘er back in the fridge and try another one. Drum fills is like that too ain't they?

    Hear, hear! raises glass of box wine

    Ok its actually just whiskey

  • @wim said:

    @robosardine said:
    I’d like to hear them, but that’s probably not on the cards. What is the nature of the kit builder? Is it tuning other drums, or mixing from other kits.
    It’s a pity it doesn’t have sample import by the sounds of things, but then maybe it would lose its charm if that were the case.

    It does have sample import. It has everything you could possibly need to build multi-layered kits. The capabilities are way too many to write up in a post. You could check out the manual if you're interested.

    Manual: https://www.drumperfect.nl/drumperfect_manual_v3_0.pdf (page 21-31 for kit building)
    Quick-Start: http://drumperfect.nl/DPP Quick Start v3.pdf
    Tutorial and demo videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0EbgPR6sVuneM76T5tJ34g

    Thanks very much for that @wim - that looks quite involved, I’m going to continue to read through them - for some reason at the moment it’s not calling me to grab it though, but I shall persevere. I was having a good go for a while there with Future Drummer, it seems to sound better the more I play with it. I do get a bit hung up with the non tweakability of the drums though......... waits and hopes for wim to say ‘you can tweak the drums!’ 😀. I’ve also been trying out @0tolerance4silence ‘s suggestion with Gadget and I have to say that it has been working very well. It had never occurred to me to use that function sparingly on an already written pattern - definitely worth a shot if you haven’t tried it already.
    Thanks everyone.

  • @SimonSomeone said:

    @Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr said:
    I think all the Lumbeat apps have them. They just seem to throw some randomness in though. It's rarely musical.

    I find Soft Drummer fills to be really good usually. The exception seems to be if at a low tempo, then they are often too busy. It's one of the apps that made me wanna get an iPad. It also has the ability to add a cymbal after the fill, with some variability, which adds a lot to realism, plus fill to start or fill to end song.

    I find Drum Computer's fill style seems pretty uninteresting by comparison. I can't seem to get good results with it but maybe that's stylistically related.

    Same here.

  • @oat_phipps said:

    @wim said:
    That be why I sticks to wines that have a screw top. If it don’t goo good with the grub just toss ‘er back in the fridge and try another one. Drum fills is like that too ain't they?

    Hear, hear! raises glass of box wine

    Ok its actually just whiskey

    An honest mistake.

  • @robosardine said:

    @wim said:

    @robosardine said:
    I’d like to hear them, but that’s probably not on the cards. What is the nature of the kit builder? Is it tuning other drums, or mixing from other kits.
    It’s a pity it doesn’t have sample import by the sounds of things, but then maybe it would lose its charm if that were the case.

    It does have sample import. It has everything you could possibly need to build multi-layered kits. The capabilities are way too many to write up in a post. You could check out the manual if you're interested.

    Manual: https://www.drumperfect.nl/drumperfect_manual_v3_0.pdf (page 21-31 for kit building)
    Quick-Start: http://drumperfect.nl/DPP Quick Start v3.pdf
    Tutorial and demo videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0EbgPR6sVuneM76T5tJ34g

    Thanks very much for that @wim - that looks quite involved, I’m going to continue to read through them - for some reason at the moment it’s not calling me to grab it though, but I shall persevere. I was having a good go for a while there with Future Drummer, it seems to sound better the more I play with it. I do get a bit hung up with the non tweakability of the drums though......... waits and hopes for wim to say ‘you can tweak the drums!’ 😀. I’ve also been trying out @0tolerance4silence ‘s suggestion with Gadget and I have to say that it has been working very well. It had never occurred to me to use that function sparingly on an already written pattern - definitely worth a shot if you haven’t tried it already.
    Thanks everyone.

    DrumPerfect is a super frustrating app for me. It’s the best sounding drum app on iOS, and also ridiculously opaque to use. Basic things like dragging patterns to rearrange them are lacking. You have to read the manual to accomplish most tasks; they’re next to impossible figure out on my own. But it sounds so good.

  • wimwim
    edited September 2021

    @robosardine said:
    ... waits and hopes for wim to say ‘you can tweak the drums!’ 😀.

    Not even "Drambo can do it." for that one. ;)
    But ... Future Drummer has MIDI Out, so tweakage is an option sort of. B)

  • Yes! that Gadget thing is fantastic. My drum headaches are well and truly over.
    Try this-
    Set up some drums in London. Copy the kit to about six tracks (doing it this way avoids accidental overlaps when recording). Get Rozetta xox to play in some mutating drum patterns to each of your tracks until you have something nice and groovy on each one. Now you copy everything to track 1. So the pattern in track 2 goes to pattern 2 in track1. The pattern in track 3 goes to pattern 3 in track 1 etc etc. Now tracks 2,3,4,5 and 6 are all in track 1. You can now delete tracks 2-5.
    Now you can play and switch your lovely Rozetta mutated patterns AND have some automation fun with it AND mute/unmute as you like AND experiment with the effects AND play around (sparingly as @0tolerance4silence was saying) with the fabulous beat creator thingy whilst you are at it. Magic 🤗

  • edited September 2021

    Hehe... so many toys... it’s too easy to overlook little things that can help us to achieve our goals. Also keep looking for something new is our default setting :)
    Additional tip: once something useful gets captured I usually keep a track with Taipei and copy over the pattern to send midi out to a AUv3 drum machine (may require some note remapping, depending on drum machine). But Gadgets own arsenal is more than capable to cover all drum needs too.

  • @MobileMusic said:
    The Drummers in GarageBand are the top-notch with a lot of AI at work (which may be why no other dev could attempt to replicate it in their apps). We can tweak the fills in many ways and increments to alter their patterns. You have to cut/split the region where you want the fills inserted. Each region can have a different Drummer and all other parameters even on the same track. Each parameter change will result in fill variations. Up to 2 Drummer tracks in a project. If that is not enough, you know already how to work around it (export project/drummer-track, import audio track). Yeah, Drummers beats have great velocities and ghost notes for humanization.

    Other apps may involve a lot of work to accomplish some rudimentary fills but GB is so easy - even a kid can do it. You get better results with GB Drummers than Drums.

    I agree that the quality of the GarageBand drummers and other options for drums (manual playing and drum machines) make GarageBand a top choice on iOS.

    One thing I’d love to see implemented would be an ability for a user to set ‘markers’ on the Drummer timeline which would indicate Start/Stop, Pause or Emphasis for a chosen drummer. Editing a pattern can quickly become an exercise in slicing and dicing to get the best results for a song with a lot of complex or nuanced dynamics.

  • @Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr said:

    DrumPerfect is a super frustrating app for me. It’s the best sounding drum app on iOS, and also ridiculously opaque to use. Basic things like dragging patterns to rearrange them are lacking. You have to read the manual to accomplish most tasks; they’re next to impossible figure out on my own. But it sounds so good.

    yes. 100%. it's a shame it hasnt had an update. the GUI especially really needs something to drag it out of 2010.

Sign In or Register to comment.