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Beginner Workflow Suggestions for iPhone
Hello everyone, nice active discussion board you have here! I’ve just started getting into making music on my iPhone and really impressed so far. There are some very creative apps and the sound quality is excellent. My background is guitar player and keyboard dabbler and I’m into electronic, chillout, trip hop, world beat type music (no vocals). I’ve done some music production on my laptop with Reaper, and I’d like to augment this with ideas I come up with on the iPhone.
I read the recent post entitled Beginner Workflow and Suggestions started by tommygroove, and learned a lot, but it focused on what can be done using the iPad, and all I have is a measly 8 GB iPhone 4S! So I’d sure appreciate suggestions on what workflow methods work best on the iPhone. Here’s what I have installed:
DAW/Workstation Apps
- Nanostudio
- Beatmaker 2
Synths/Sound Sources
- Alchemy
- Animoog
- Drumjam
- Triqtraq
- Figure
- Ikaossilator
MIDI Sources
- Chordbot
- Arpeggionome
Utilities
- Audiobus
- Audiocopy
I’ve had a great time making 4-bar and 8-bar grooves using Figure, Triqtraq, Ikaossilator, and Alchemy. I’ve made some MIDI arrangements in Chordbot and imported them into Nanostudio and created some song arrangements in Nanostudio. But I’m finding that Nanostudio is really a pretty closed system and it’s tough to use other instruments with it. What I’d like suggestions on is how best to combine audio/MIDI from the all the various apps and make arrangements longer than 8 bars.
I’ve played around with Beatmaker and like some of what I’ve found, but it’s a bit of a confusing app! I’m trying to figure out if it’s better to use Audiobus, IAA, or just copy and paste audio loops. Or copy/paste MIDI loops? I’m quickly running out of space, so I think I need to get Audioshare and Dropbox to manage audio and MIDI files. Overall, I think I have enough apps on my phone to make some cool music, but I could use some suggestions on how best to make it all work together.
Comments
First- learn how to make some cool music with one of your 2 DAW apps. From there, you can determine which direction to go next. I got comfortable w/Beatmaker2 only because I didn't nab Nanostudio, Garageband, or any other DAW app to distract me. I wanted to make cool music too, and knew it could be done on BM2...so I learned the app...simple as that. From there, I learned I wanted better sound sources than the samples in BM2. I did my research, downloaded a few, and found I connected with Alchemy best. I used Audiobus, tracked Alchemy in BM2 and edited my parts there. I found I preferred Figure's drums, so I did the same- tracking via Audiobus into BM2 and edited loops there. The key is to develop that solid foundation by knowing your DAW first, then taking baby steps with developing your workflow.
Personally, I get too easily distracted making cool sounds. I have to constantly remind myself that the goal is to make cool music.
I made music on an iPhone for a lot of time. Some "essentials" you definitely should get are:
SunrizerXS: Not as good as the iPad version but it may be the best VA synth available, full of character.
Audioshare: About as essential as Audiobus. Forget AudioCopy, that's the real thing. You can also use it to "master" your final mix using the AUFX effect apps.
ThumbJam: Lots of great sounds in there, and it also allows you to play other synths via Virtual MIDI, if you need to play in a particular scale. Very expressive, too.
Caustic: an all-in-one solution that can also produce good sounds and play MIDI files. It also can read .sf2 files, though it's not as good as bs-16i for that.
ChordPolyPad: the best MIDI source for chords.
You'll have a big problem with space, especially if you will want to use other apps.
So actually I'd recommend that you uninstall BM2, even if it's the most capable iPhone DAW. Nano can go too.
Instead I'd recommend Caustic, it has a really small footprint and you can keep it small by working mostly in MIDI. For Audio, it's mostly like Nanostudio, you have to import the wav files in the sampler or pads. I'd use AudioCopy for that.
I would agree. With that amount of space, I'd learn Caustic or Nanostudio inside out.
You can get external audio into their 'closed systems' but on each track i'd think:
1) what parts of my track can i create with the Caustic (or Nanostudio synths/drum pads)... if you really learn synths then you'll be able to do a lot with them.
2) Anything you can't do 'onboard' then sample and bring in as external audio. But I believe both Caustic and Nanostudio require you to bring in clips and place them on drum pads to trigger - or sample a single note and then use them as a patch in a synth. This has advantages and disadvantages (but you just need to embrace the advantages). It's a bit of a faff at first. But it forces you to break longer sequences down into smaller chunks of audio (which saves space) - but also you can then get quite creative manipulating and chopping around these smaller bits of audio with complete 'live' control in Caustic or NS. I.e. take 4 separate samples of 4 notes or short phrases in from Figure or Alchemy or whatever and then apply effects and sequence these in Caustic/NS. You can experiment and vary things much more than if you had a rendered 8 bar loop.
Main decision is to choose NS or Caustic (or even BeatMaker2 but it's big and I find it a bit of pain to use TBH).
Garagebandwith IAA is another quick iPhone alternative - but it's pretty limited if you want to automate or FX anything.
Awesome tips guys, thanks! Yeah, as cool as it looks, I'm thinking I really don't have enough horsepower to use Beatmaker now. So if I unistall it, I can always re-install it a year from now when I get my iPhone 6, right?
So I'm going to dive deeper into Nanostudio. I saved a percussion loop from Drumjam and imported it as audio to a TRG pad in Nano. One MIDI note to the TRG pad triggers the percussion loop, interesting! Maybe not the cleanest workflow, but I can see how this would work. Now I'll try Matt's suggestions for importing some chunks of audio from Figure and Alchemy and manipulating them in Nano.
With Beatmaker gone, I'll have room for Audioshare and some other apps like Thumbjam. Sounds like most of my workflow for now will be something like this:
1) create drum or bass groove in NS or
1a) create groove in Figure, Triqtraq, etc. and import to NS,
2) add synth tracks in NS, create MIDI by editing piano roll in NS or importing MIDI
3) add external synth tracks by importing audio loops
4) arrange, add effects and modulation in NS
5) keep track of audio and MIDI files using Audioshare and Dropbox
Any other suggestions? Looks like using Audiobus itself won't be needed for now. Not much "live' playing on the virtual iPhone keyboards either.
All sounds good.
You will likely need Audiobus to record some external synth sounds into AudioShare (or direct into a NS pad). You can use copy and paste from some synth apps (like Figure) but not all of them.
You should definitely get Elastic Drums. It's incredible, only a few dollars at the moment, and works on an iPhone.
A topic near (always in the left hand pocket of my trousers), and dear to my heart, exactly for it's nearness: the phone is palm sized and always with me.
Nanostudio and Caustic are both just amazing. Nanostudio is as much a Gadget for your phone as Caustic. And that Eden synth is equal to (actually smokes) most synths found in any self-contained studio app you can name.
You may eventually leave self-contained environments on the phone and move to BM2, for sequencing and audio recording the incredible instruments that AB and IAA will hook you into...CMP Grande, Crystal XT, definitely Sunrizer as above, Mitosynth, NeoSoul Keys, MiniMapper, Unity, Addictive Micro etc. that roster did push me from 4s to 5s 32g...I don't even care about iPhone 6, for mobile music I have a universe inpocket with the 5
Thumbjam allows very good live playing on the iPhone. You shred like crazy with it. And you can use it to solve the problem of bad virtual keyboards on other apps via Virtual MIDI. By the way, I'd love if it could send MIDI CCs too.
@bixnood - right again on that Thumbjam. No matter how many mentions Thumbjam gets around here it won't be enough. It's the one app I have that my kids get all! up into, and I have all apps. And my kids aren't young, and happen both to be musical geniuses.
Awesome guys, thanks a lot! Beatmaker is gone (for now). I've downloaded AudioShare, Thumbjam, Elastic Drum, Sunrizer. Files will be stored on Dropbox.
Thumbjam is $1.99?! Sunrizer is $2.99?! That's the cost of a drink at a restaurant. This IOS music stuff is incredible value for the price!
@gmon If you want lightweight MIDI sequencers I can again recommend Xythesizr (8MB), but also MIDI Editor by Nikolozi Meladze (1MB), for a piano roll, and littlemidi Machine (6.9MB) by Synthetic Bits, for a FREE step based sequencer.
So if you wanted to you could set up your sequence in Xythesizr, MidiEditor, or LittleMidiMachine and record the audio via Audiobus into Audioshare, or, I think directly into Nanostudio.
MIDI > Your choice of synth via Audiobus (liveplaying the modulation) > Audioshare > trim > copy paste into DAW (Nanostudio).
check this, also
http://zachberry.com/blog/incorporating-an-ipad-into-a-daw-controlled-studio/
You caught ThumbJam on the last day of a rare sale!