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Are more apps better?
Back when I first got into making music on iOS I only had a few apps... Genome, thumbjam, BS-16i, and a few synths. I was pretty happy in that little microcosm and got a good way through writing 5 songs in Genome over the period of a year. Then the app flood gates were opened and now I have many, many more apps. Interestingly though all of those extra choices have caused my productivity to go down, not up. It seems when I have some free time for music, the huge array of choices causes analysis paralysis, so I end up doing not much.... just noodling around and not really being productive. Worse yet app collecting can be a means to an end, and I sometimes spend more time watching tutorials and reading reviews on apps I don't have yet than using the ones I do. Does this seem familiar to any of you?
Comments
Very familiar.
I spend my limited free time shopping apps, discussing apps here, learning the new stuff, or culling out the collection, rather than making music...
No, to your thread subject. Yes, to your final question.
I recently purged. And I'm gonna do it again. If I'm actually working on something and think "I need app X to do Y", I'll just get it (or more likely redownload it).
I've been playing with older hardware lately and the limits are creatively freeing.
Not at all...
I actually just got into using IOS for music making about 5 weeks ago, after being primarily laptop-based. I have made a decent investment in many of the key apps, primarily looking for a combination I can use live. The good thing about that is it limits me to only a handful I can get to play well together, which will also limit which ones I will use for primary composition. Of course, the more apps I play with, the more that list changes.
In the past, I've always found that limitations push both creativity and output. I'm defintely on the wrong platform for that...
@Coloobar - Very familiar indeed. Your experience this past year sounds very similar to my own: productive start to the year centered around a select few apps, followed by acquisition of half a zillion apps and a lot of noodling around with scant work product to show for it. Dismayed, I toyed with the idea of deleting most of my haul.
But recently I have come to view the experimentation as part of a valuable learning process that has actually improved my capabilities as a music maker. There are things I am aware of now that I never would have discovered were it not for the chance to noodle around on all sorts of apps that, for one reason or another, made their way to my iPad this year. I watch tutorials on some of them, others I don't, it just depends on my comfort level and the ideas the apps trigger for me.
So I now choose to look at the process of acquiring and noodling with new apps as part of the iOS territory, and I worry less now about becoming an expert at any one particular app and more about putting together something that sounds good to me. Maybe it's self-indulgent, but the shift in perspective has helped, as the work product has begun to re-emerge. Sometimes in the course of working on something I instinctively reach for an app that I haven't touched in months, it fits magically, and I am most thankful for the time I spent noodling, researching, etc.
In sum, I am firmly in the "more is better" category after leaning in the other direction following a long dry spell. But it is perfectly appropriate for others to hold the opposite view. I see no absolutes in this brave new world!
As someone who started making music on an old analogue synth, tape echo and a tape recorder, I just can't resist all the shiny, and cheap, new things. Opening each new purchase and playing around with it for the first few hours is worth the purchase price in itself, and new apps usually inspire a new track.
Like @syrupcore though I occasionally purge any apps that have fallne by the wayside, partly for disk space reasons, but I also find it good to keep things reasonably clear so I'm not overloaded with choices.
It's a gift and a curse.
New apps do certainly inspire new ideas and tracks. And they help with learning - definitely.
But they can also end up a distraction if you let them.
Having lived with iOS music making for a few years now, I'm happy to say that I've whittled my list of apps down to the essentials. I have my music making process at a "happy place" right now. That's not to say I wouldn't buy a great app if one came along at the right price, but it seems as though the endless search has at least been paused for now. I'm not complaining. I didn't spend a dime on apps over the recent US holiday. As someone else mentioned, I was getting frustrated because I started realizing that in my very limited free time I was no longer creating music, but rather spending time on forums and playing with new apps. It was fun, but i'm glad to be where I'm at right now too.
I do both. A lot. And consequently need more sleep.
I can relate. I have a lot of synth apps, that are fun for me to play around with, I use them in some projects. Mainly only presets, I don't have the time to figure out how to manipulate them, and then there's midi. I can do some virtual midi, if I'm having one of my good/smart days. But beyond that, I don't even try. I don't get it, it would take me too long to re-read everything I've read on it to prob. end up right where I'm at.
Most of my constraint with playing music and recording is trying to squeeze in family, work, sleep and life. If I get all that done, then I might have a moment to pick up the ios device and jam through JamUp or Bias or ToneStack. That is pretty effortless.
Midi can be a massive suck on time on iOS.
You hook stuff up then it stops working mysteriously and you waste time debugging. Then a restart fixes it and you have to remember to change everything back that you'd changed to try to fix it. By that time you need to sleep.
@Matt_Fletcher_2000 said:
lol, yes!
I like all of what everyone says; that's the trouble
Or as was mentioned, the gift and the curse. I tend to side most with what @RulesOfBlazon mentioned. I do this stuff for fun, for the creative challenge and release, for aesthetic satisfaction, but more than anything for the pleasure of the doing.
I also like Mister Syrup's culling however, and one of the best functions of the iOS system is that one can get all of the 'cleanliness' of deleting something, secure in the knowledge that if you suddenly decide that, finally, this is the song that is crying out for some Chinese harp you can easily go ahead and re-download it....
I also like the folder of 'Not yet' apps. Things that were bought for the germ of an idea that are not there yet, but one day, ping!, there's an update and not only do you get the pleasure, again, of a good idea now better realized, but also the sense that you supported or encouraged a dev, albeit in some very small or slight way.
@Matt_Fletcher_2000 said:
This. So this.
In desktop land, you open a project in your DAW and your softsynths are still set the way you left them. Even with hardware synths, you drop a MIDI program change message at the top of your track and you're ready to go on next load.
AB's lovely State Saving is working along that path. For simple setups (app or 3 into some effects) it works perfectly but for recalling a sequenced song across several apps there's still a ways to go (it doesn't save everything in all apps and not all apps support state saving yet).
If there was a MIDI routing app that also supported AudioBus state saving, we'd be a lot closer. AB would have to load all of the apps, those apps would have to only use their virtual port (part of the saved state, hopefully) and then the MIDI routing app would have to get a 'thumbs up' from AB so that it could route the now open apps. I'd drop $20 on this in a drug rushed heartbeat.
I enjoy working up a new app and playing with it as much as making music, both keep me entertained. I typically only buy an app if it is on sale or if I really need it for something right now (rarely happens.) If it is not on sale, you can always get it for that price anytime, if it is on sale I can get it and squirrel it away for entertainment later.
Exceptions are things like AudioBus, GoodReader, AudioShare and other apps that are just special or where the devs really connect to the users. Often I'll just buy those retail just to support the devs even if I don't need it right now.
Making music requires concentration and is hard work for me, part of the problem is I used to make a living making music and I still think of it as work. I am disabled and I don't often have the energy or the focus to make music.
"Playing" with apps is fun an relaxing and I can do it in my zero-gravity chair. Hell what does it cost to go to the movies nowadays? Can you get 90 minutes entertainment from a $10 app? Usually I get a lot more. I may never record anything with Gadget, but I've already had many hours of entertainment with it and its become my goto app with headphones in the doctor's office.
Good points and I agree, Johnny and Dawgs. I think it's about goals to some extent. There's a lot of pleasure to be found in spending 5-10 bucks on something and just playing or experimenting for an evening—costs less than my usual one evening bar tabs, that's for sure. Indeed, I spent Cubasis at a bar last week.
But if the goal is to actually complete songs, these new things can be a real distraction for me. Mind, I purchased 8 new apps in the last few days so I'm speaking my want, not my truth!
For me I think iOS is still in it's infancy, I'm just re jigging my workflow hoping to integrate iOS, desktop and hardware, IOS is fun more than anything, does have a serious side if you absolutely need mobility and the apps are progressing real well, but the best a wireless marriage of all these 'modular' parts is starting to ferment and when we get high bandwith low latency wi-fi, well .....
I think of buying and playing with the apps as part of making music.
If you, for example, want to make an album with a great and a distinctive sound then it can be helpful to work hard to research and source the best 'ingredients'. I've found some weird and obscure apps that just feel like special ingredients and I wouldn't have found them without spending that time and money reading, watching, buying and playing.
Interesting replies, and all good points. I've always gravitated towards apps that I regarded as tools for making music... versus many of them that are obviously just toys. But it turns out a lot of my tools have just functioned as toys after all. Or to put it more bluntly it's just become a new form of amusement. It's niche gaming, but just a bit more creative and sandbox than traditional gaming.
I'm just starting out with iOS and I'm overwhelmed because the apps are cheap and I own so many. On the Mac I had Reason (before the third party instruments option). It was much easier because I got to know a few synths very well.
I think one of the big downfalls of iOS is the syncing issues between apps. I like the idea of Gadget with Module because everything works together. The only thing missing are effects.
However I'd say that some 'toy' apps can be great for sampling and using as proper 'tools'.
I'd also 'never say never' with whether an app will get used.
I have plenty I have bought and bearly touched but then I read something here or see a video and it gets redownloaded and used (Orphion is a great example of this for me). Or I just rediscover it by accident myself.
Another example: I bought 'GRIT' (aka 'Crud' which is kind of a 'toy' Rompler app for dubstep bass sounds on an extremely limited keyboard. I played with it for about 30mins then not since. However I now think it provides me with a ready made folder of about 60 short looping, textured bass sounds (of exactly the same note) which I can import into Eden and try and get some interesting sounds out of (although admittedly I've not done this yet!). But you get my point. On balance I think lots of weird and wonderful apps keep things interesting.
I actually recorded more music when I used to have my faithful Tascam 688 Midi Studio. What an awesome machine that was. Once I got into PC recording, exactly what happened to you happened to me.
This is why I am so happy I bought Auria. It reminds me of my Tascam 688. Hit record and voila ready to lay down a track or tracks.
I don't see one eco-system as better than another they all have good and bad points, I'd love to see more crossovers Arturia's made a start and a few others, pick up my iPad, create a new sound, a new riff, then onto the desktop, add more wonders, fuse idea's, but the inter connection between these systems, is the real letdown, using ifunbox, itunes....I can send data in an instant around the world, but to my desktop a few metres away, oh the pain.
July 7 - I bought iPoly6 and iMS20 - first iOS synths on my shiny new iPad.
I spent two weeks solid on them, got to know them and got three tracks composed, sequenced and ready to mix.
Then I bought another couple of synth apps... Spent a day on them...
Then I bought a couple more... Spent a few hours on them...
Then the floodgates opened.
5 months later I have 97 music apps on my iPad and a dozen or so that really were a waste of bandwidth that I have deleted.
Those three tracks still need mixing down...
@xen And this is why we have the meetings....
@JohnnyGoodyear said:
Too true! As I keep chanting under my breath...
"When I add it all up it's still not as much as a Nord Lead 4 and I couldn't use one of them on a plane!"
@xen said:
Now all you need is Auria
**@Musikman4Christ said:*
>
Too late. I got it half price a few weeks ago.
I'm trying to ignore the half price sale on IAPs but I'm sure I'll "invest" in one before the nights out.
I'm not a musician although I've always had an interest in making music. I'm paralyzed so I can't play real instruments. However I can play virtual instruments. Before about a year ago I had messed around with GarageBand on both the Mac and the iPad. Then I discovered Audiobus, Midi, etc. and started to understand how all this stuff works and the floodgates opened. I even took a few classes to better my understanding of music theory and the music making process. I'm no professional by any definition but it has become somewhat of a passionate hobby for me, I enjoy messing with this stuff, and it gives me a cool way to express myself.
I think I've spent about $240 on this stuff in the year since I got into it. I don't regret any of it. Yes there's been some apps that have been mistakes but most of them haven't. It's actually still difficult for me to wrap my head around the sheer amount of music potential, if you will, that I have on my iPad for a mere $240. And the number of hours of entertainment and engagement I've collectively gotten from all of this has far exceeded the amount of money I've spent on it.
I have finished a few tracks here and there but I mostly tinker and I enjoy the heck out of it. I basically stopped buying any other apps for my iPad, including games because of this. In a sense I kind of look at these apps much like the games I use to purchase, except I "play" with these much more than I ever did with any game. So that alone makes this worthwhile to me even if I don't actually finish many tracks.
On that note I do think it would be kind of cool if there was some kind of app that contained a database of all the musical apps out there, or at least the ones that are compatible with Audiobus and inter app audio, that had a sort of "randomize" button. Tapping this button could bring up a small group of apps, that are installed on your iPad, that might work well together. You then go make a song with those apps. So, for example, it might come up with something like GuitarCapo, DM 1, Thor, AuFX Space, Tonesack, and Cubasis. So basically it's making the decision for you and hopefully helping you to focus on creating a finished track. There could be all kinds of parameters, like number of apps picked and genre of music, that you could adjust.
I guess maybe it sounds kind of silly but perhaps something like this could help some people focus whenever they feel they need to.
@Musikman4Christ said:
I'm the same with GarageBand - I've recorded more music on my iPad this year than the last 5 on my Mac and PC. I've just started another track now, a couple of minutes and it's all loaded ready to go, sitting in the armchair with headphones whilst the missus watches the telly.
Of course most of what I record is unlistenable rubbish, but since no-ones paying me to do it as long as I'm having fun (I am) then it's a valid way to spend a few hours each week.
Compare that to the hassle of setting up my MS20 or strat, routing them through hardware effects and then into Logic or Cubase....
Music apps are the best.
@Paulyboy, best way to be, the power of creation, a wonderful thing. Have fun.