making music with an iPad

chordpolypad is supposed to be awesome. I haven't been able to afford it yet. Soundprism is another good virtual MIDI polyphonic controller. You can also use Guitarism the same way if you want to trigger chords in a synth using strum gestures. Also, check out a really fun and complex controller app called Firo which is free and in addition to nuanced chord triggering, lets you get different length loops cycling against each other.

Yeah midisequencer is definitely no stand-in for a piano roll DAW type app. And you have to have at least one of those. Which opens up a huge subject. There are a lot of good threads on the audiobus forum about the virtues of different ios DAWs; I'd say that on there, the consensus favorite would seem to be MultiTrackStudio (important to note that's all one word - there's an app with almost the same name which is garbage) or Cubasis. A lot of partisans of Music Studio by Xewton, Beatmaker 2, and NanoStudio as well. I personally have finished the most work in Caustic, which is basically very similar to Reason (you get an array of different virtual synths each with its own piano roll) but it has its considerable drawbacks too. Basically I keep coming back to Caustic for MIDI/sequence based construction and Garageband for live audio-in/pretending like I'm actually editing tapes. But neither are ideal by a long shot.

I have lots of tl;dr to deliver re: ios DAWs. Will have to type it offline and post later.

thanks Jon! Cubasis is super appealing to me because i use Cubase as my main axe, but i'm hoping it won't be necessary because my goal is to get everything off the ipad and into Cubase. it would be nice to have Cubase's midi programming to trigger apps though.

btw Tera Synth was making me feel insane because none of the knobs or sliders were working. they would light up and then not move, but the keys and buttons worked. eventually TS wouldn't launch because of an error, and i restarted the iPad and everything worked like a charm.

and Fieldscaper seems to have some random and inscrutable behavior, like my loop keeps playing and not respecting my oscillator parameters, until it does, and then stops doing it again. i just sat on Audioshare and pressed record when the right version triggered and managed to get some fun sounds into Dropbox.

ha, the current #2 vote 'ableton link' is not even commercially available yet, it is only in beta

http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2015/12/01/whats-the-best-new-mobile-music-app-of-2015/

There are bugs in the current rev of fieldscaper and a fix is awaiting approval by the App Store, so I hear.

What is ableton link supposed to do? Just another option for a midi in ? Controller?

Also curious about Jon's iOS DAW thoughts ... The Jon I don't know irl that is

I think it's so two (or more?) people can collaborate on the same session (wirelessly).

Or, maybe not:http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2015/11/06/ableton-link-makes-live-unnecessary/

I know it's kinda old but the korgi polysix lets you upload to soundcloud which is a nice alternative to running the sound out the headphone jack

The Curtis app is cool . Works on phones and the oldest of iPads too

this thread makes me feel like a fogey

Speaking of the korg ipolysix, today is the last day of its half off sale (15 instead of 30 bucks). I broke down and bought it. I like that it includes a multitrack sequencer with automation.

Sarah what kind of recording are you wanting to do? Multiple tracks of audio? MIDI piano roll synth stuff? Sample triggering and mangling? The iOS daw apps I've used have distinct strengths and weaknesses depending on what you want to do

(Though right now everyone is going crazy for the new Auria Pro app which is supposed to be the best al around daw yet. It's too pricy for me rn)

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.