making music with an iPad

I played with Music Memos this afternoon for about 15 minutes and was really impressed. I recorded a simple arpeggio guitar track, I-IV-V progression, then clicked the bass and drum buttons and had a little demo. The drums matched up automatically with my rudimentary riff, but more impressive than that was the bass note selection and rhythm, which was more complex than I was expecting.

oops https://soundcloud.com/nd9/937-1a

i bought cubasis. pray4me

It is widely beloved, as far as iPad DAWs go I only see more love for Auria Pro. The burliest DAW I have on my iPad is the humbly named extremely powerful Multi Track Studio by geert bremmers. But I so seldom end up working on my iPad, it always ends up being my phone where I make music. There is something wrong with me.

The tenori-on app TNR-1 is lots of fun.

Auria Pro is half off (24.99 instead of 49.99) for Labor Day weekend (I guess today is the last day?). Since coming out at the end of last year it has been generally considered (with Cubasis) to be one of the two best DAWs for iPad. I got it, just getting my head around it but it seems tremendous. Aside from the audio recording capabilities it has two onboard VSTs designed by fabfilter and a new sample-based instrument which loads Logic Instruments, sfz instruments and soundfonts. Has a very deep midi piano roll where you can apply really cool things like midi rubato, change time signatures mid-song, and even conduct tempo fluctuations apparently? On the audio recording side there is a time stretch function which is supposedly the best in iOS and good enough to actually make undetectable timing fixes to recordings.

Note, get Auria Pro not regular Auria. Regular auria's price is also 24.99 so it would be easy to make that mistake.

Just got a new SW synth for iOS called Poison-202 which is pretty sweet. Five bucks.

Yeah people are loving that. Blew my app budget on the abovementioned but I'll def check it out later.

Is the MPC the best of a terrible set of beat-chopping options or is there a simpler sampler solution? I just want to take the audio output from other apps and carve it into samples that I can trigger or sequence.

I use my computer for that, so idk

Troublemaker is a pretty great-sounding 303-ish bass-line synth app by the developer of the Ruismaker and Phasemaker apps.

I usually record the other apps into Audioshare, chop them up in there, then export them to the sampler instrument in Gadget or NanoStudio.

Also check out how Blocs Wave works, it might suit.

FWIW, I have learned that the answer to the thread title is:

- download Figure
- unlock your ipad and hand it to a five year old whom you trust

Tom since you asked that question about sampler/slicers an interesting new app called Reslice came out -- you should look at it

that's exactly what I was looking for! Thank you! Dude you rule

I have refined my technique

1. download Figure
2. employ child labor as previously discussed
3. download AudioCopy, AudioShare and ReSlice (seriously why does iOS have the audio-alimentary canal of a ruminant, audio is not cellulose, APPLE (lol get it ruminants love apples))
4. C+P whatever the future came up with into ReSlice
5. oh word y'all I'm a genius

6. I'm back where I started because I still need a new non-work-issued computer to record this stuff into dammit

Can't you just perform into audioshare and export the WAV?

Figure looks hells cool. New social media challenger

Figure is a blast, I just wish it had a few global fx (which as it turns out, ReSlice does)

When I was researching figure a year or so back I just remember it seeming like it had a couple limitations that would nag at me so I've never gotten it

Add step 6 to the above: import into SECTOR: wheeee!

Kind of want to just blow the rest of day making less-busy Figure loops specifically for cutting up and flim-flamming in SECTOR now

I haven't read up on Sector yet
People are going crazy for KRFT right now which a really need kind of build-your-own MIDI clip-launching/parameters-morphing surface erector set. But way easier to get going with than that sounds.

I got fed up yet again with Gadget's 16 bar pattern length limitation (sound qua sound it's my favorite iOS pseudo-DAW for sure) and am back to my old steady Caustic again. Bought a high quality soundfont of Jupiter 8 patches from Digital Sound Factory which I'm deploying in there, such joy.

A recently debuted synth app I immediately fell in love with is TF8, which presents its keyboard as four rows of chiclet tiles a la guitar fretboard, with multiple extremely useful modes of pitchbend to apply to chiclet-wiggling and super gorgeous built-in FX options. And a neat arp.

Need in my first paragraph should have been 'neat'

I desperately need a better option for editing than the crappy thing that comes with AudioCopy. What's best?

Yeah no one likes Audiocopy. Audioshare, on the other hand, is totally essential for me as

--simple recorder of other apps
--hub for sending all manner of files to other apps
--simple editor for trimming and dynamics processing audio files (note that you can overlay a bpm grid over your waveform which really helps when trimming stuff for looping purposes)
--converter of mp3s to full res wavs as demanded by most of the sampling apps, and vice versa if I want to email someone a project from an app without having to go to the dreaded itunes file sharing interface

How complex is the editing you want to do?

I think I'm going to sell my iPad mini, I just wasn't able to integrate it into my workflow (although Fieldscaper did make it onto a record).

Yeah, I bought a bunch of apps and tried to hook the iPad into my synth setup, but I never really got into it. None of the sounds sounded that great compared to my actual keyboards and synths, and none of the iPad stuff was that fun to just play.

It sounds like I just need to learn to use AudioShare better

I don't have actual keyboards or synths (outside of a piano and an old microkorg I got recently), but I kinda have similar feelings re drum machines in terms of "integration" and being "fun to play" vs. an actual drum kit

When I get a real desktop machine again I can see how loops and stuff will end up in Ableton etc. but since I'm in music-cave limbo for a while yet I'm also workflow-agnostic

I can definitely see how instruments and tools designed with a touchscreen in mind are 4000% more appealing than emulators of classic machines, if you haven't been checking out stuff like sector, figure, or TC-11 then you may be missing out

Drum kit is obv more fun to play, but much more frustrating to record in a satisfying way.

I can't see anything being as fun as actual drumming, but there are iOS instruments which are definitely as fun for me as playing my actual guitar. Mainly the ones that leverage a kind of two handed fretboard approach with deep synthesis.

Jon not Jon + any other skeptics, if you have Sector + AudioShare already in the toolbox, just go ahead and get Figure. It's so fast to make a new weird loop and chop it up into even weirder loops; the only annoying part is having to use AudioCopy as an export pass-through.

🗻

laughed hard

Jon not Jon + any other skeptics, if you have Sector + AudioShare already in the toolbox, just go ahead and get Figure. It's so fast to make a new weird loop and chop it up into even weirder loops; the only annoying part is having to use AudioCopy as an export pass-through.

I would kill for Figure midi export. Like even just .mid files, let alone as a controller or whatever.

Have we discussed KRFT here?

OK I know this isn't ILPeople-Making, but my kid now folds her drawing paper in half and puts a grid of apps on one side, then draws an app interface on the other side. Today she drew the Figure song / file screen.

I mentioned KRFT a couple weeks ago itt -- it is a brilliant concept and it's really lighting ppl up and I wish it fit better with what I want to be doing right now. I'm just not in a looping patterny place right now.

I'm really stuck on trying to get at this non-grooving molto rubato kind of basking rhapsodic feel... I can hear/see it but the dance-gauged tools of iOS and my own anxious temperament and muscle memory keep pushing things toward squirrelyness...

Check out what my son made with KRFT:
https://soundcloud.com/djisbister/bip-05-reflection-by-benjamin-isbister

He's been getting REALLY into it, and making way cooler stuff than I've made so far.

Dang, that's really cool. It would take me forever to make that from scratch on my computer, what am I doing with my life, etc.

Like, I listened to the new Pearson Sound EP right afterward and barely noticed the transition.

:)

I gotta spend more time with KRFT obv!

just got it. will see what we can make of it tonight!

If you want to play with my kid's surfaces, his username is bip_05.

oh neat! I found one of his right away. Reminds me of Spacetime Continuum.

I'm trying to make detuned noisy stuff with it and but it is very slow going so far

Novation have a new, free app called Groovebox which is pretty good fun.

Yeah I am seeing it described as a less hobbled Figure

New and exciting for me this week is a new synth in the Minimoog style by the wonderful developer ApeSoft who did the brilliant iOS incarnation of the VCS3 Synthi. It's more than just a Mini homage-- it's got a feature where you can load a WAV sample which then warps the oscillator frequencies in some odd way, and a step-based waveform in the LFO options, and the ability to double tap almost anything in the app to assign it a dedicated LFO. The app is an Audio Unit so you can deploy multiple instances of it in GarageBand or Cubasis or whatever.

Following soon, it sounds like, is an (also Audio Unit enabled) app called Ripplemaker from the same developer who did Troublemaker and Phasemaker -- this one is his take on 'west coast' buchla style modular synthesis. THAT I can't wait for.

Also, KRFT now has virtual MIDI Out!

Yeah I am seeing it described as a less hobbled Figure

New and exciting for me this week is a new synth in the Minimoog style by the wonderful developer ApeSoft who did the brilliant iOS incarnation of the VCS3 Synthi. It's more than just a Mini homage-- it's got a feature where you can load a WAV sample which then warps the oscillator frequencies in some odd way, and a step-based waveform in the LFO options, and the ability to double tap almost anything in the app to assign it a dedicated LFO. The app is an Audio Unit so you can deploy multiple instances of it in GarageBand or Cubasis or whatever.

Following soon, it sounds like, is an (also Audio Unit enabled) app called Ripplemaker from the same developer who did Troublemaker and Phasemaker -- this one is his take on 'west coast' buchla style modular synthesis. THAT I can't wait for.

Also, KRFT now has virtual MIDI Out!

the Apesoft synth is called Mood ftr

Really excited for Ripplemaker!

I know!

Durrr me forgetting to name the apesoft synth. Pronounced 'mode' of course, cute.

Holy crap Ripplemaker is under App Store review already and might be available this weekend!!!

Holy crap Ripplemaker is under App Store review already and might be available this weekend!!!

I've bought every Bram app on launch and have had zero regrets. Can't believe how quickly this one seems to have been developed.