session band app

[strummer100]

Review summary - Don't buy.

I am a Professional musician and love playing on the iPad.
I bought SessionBand hoping it will deliver it's 80,000 pro recorded loops.
I also made the extra purchase of unlocking all extra content ("complete bundle") to make sure i get all the loops.
I must say that although the UI is amazing, the app at it's current state is a rip off.
There are a 71 music arrangements in which you get 5 play types (normal, 3xfill and a finale) for 12 notes and 7 chord types (7x12x5=420)
So... you get less than 30,000 music loops.
Just that these are not real loop recording but just low grade midi arrangements that get transposed to match your note selection.

I was hoping for something great but got a crappy "band in a box" wanna be (it doesn't even come close of being a good band in a box).

I really hope they will fix it in the future and deliver the promised pro grade loops instead of the current ones.

It's definitely not midi... They are audio loops.. It does need a few features added/fixed
I'd actually prefer if it was a good midi app instead.. I've run out of room on my iPad..
The editing I find very clunky .. The acoustic/blues/folk/country sounds are played by people not sure about the electronic as I haven't listened to it much but what I did hear sounded pretty sequenced but I guess in a lot of cases in the studio it is!

I'm not a pro musician but friends are and we think this app is awesome. Definitely not midi otherwise it would be a fraction of the download size!!! Listen to the guitars and basses!!!! They're real players! Band in a box? That cumbersome pc based thing from the 80s?? Do me a flavour!!
not sure how you get to 30k loops...most of the sets are 5 deep..isnt that the point of the app...? check your maths!!

Pro musicians eh???

[locassa]

Review summary - Don't buy.

I am a Professional musician and love playing on the iPad.
I bought SessionBand hoping it will deliver it's 80,000 pro recorded loops.
I also made the extra purchase of unlocking all extra content ("complete bundle") to make sure i get all the loops.
I must say that although the UI is amazing, the app at it's current state is a rip off.
There are a 71 music arrangements in which you get 5 play types (normal, 3xfill and a finale) for 12 notes and 7 chord types (7x12x5=420)
So... you get less than 30,000 music loops.
Just that these are not real loop recording but just low grade midi arrangements that get transposed to match your note selection.

I was hoping for something great but got a crappy "band in a box" wanna be (it doesn't even come close of being a good band in a box).

I really hope they will fix it in the future and deliver the promised pro grade loops instead of the current ones.

Morning Vago,

I thought I would add to the comments others have made as we were the development firm who worked on SessionBand.

As others have stated these are definitely not MIDI clips, the tell-tale sign is the size, let alone the quality of samples especially the live sets. I'd also like to clarify the number of loops query, there are in fact more than 80,000 pro recorded loops in the product (the number published is a conservative rounded figure). You need to realise that every single channel of a loop (drums, keys, synth, guitar etc) is its own loop which gives you the flexibility in the mixer section of dropping out a particular channel to alter the composition. This is the largest project content-wise we've worked on so believe me when I say all those samples are in there because we've had to put them all in!

There is no transposing going on whatsoever. all loops are recorded in all chords including all variations and fill types. What you hear is pure audio samples, nothing else. The tempo stretching uses DIRAC to ensure that the audio quality remains high and the pitch remains constant but that is a pure timing change.

You mention Band in a Box which I don't think is any comparison, and I am sure others which may read your comments will agree with. SessionBand is a PRO music product with amazing content (that's us as developers and musicians stating that and a testament to the quality of the audio supplied to us by the client). I have my suspicions that you may be connected to Band in a Box, but whilst you are entitled to your opinions I felt it only fair to clarify any misleading claims for others.

We all love playing with SessionBand, it's one of the best apps we've worked on and I have no doubt that others will too.

Simon Lee,
Locassa CEO

[Johnser]

Whoa! This app needs background audio!

[Johnser]

Spent some time with this yesterday. The closest thing I've seen to this is Chordbot. Great for sketching some ideas together and working out the chords for a new song. The additional instrumentation add depth that Chordbot can't deliver. Unfortunately there is no background audio. What good are backing tracks if you can't play along with them? Also there is no easy way to get the finished song into Audioshare as a workaround. In fact even the email export only sends a proprietary file format instead of a wav file.

So for now, save your money and get Chordbot, but if the developers ever implement easy export and background audio this could be an awesome app.

[strummer100]

[quote="Johnser"]Spent some time with this yesterday. The closest thing I've seen to this is Chordbot. Great for sketching some ideas together and working out the chords for a new song. The additional instrumentation add depth that Chordbot can't deliver. Unfortunately there is no background audio. What good are backing tracks if you can't play along with them? Also there is no easy way to get the finished song into Audioshare as a workaround. In fact even the email export only sends a proprietary file format instead of a wav file.

So for now, save your money and get Chordbot, but if the developers ever implement easy export and background audio this could be an awesome app.[/quote]


Chordbot is good idea but there is no comparison with this app....this is real musicians playing real instruments.

[Scott Murrell]

---It's great now but soon it'll be more great....I have faith.

[Johnser]

Chordbot is good idea but there is no comparison with this app....this is real musicians playing real instruments.

I agree, the sounds are excellent. And the interface is easy to work with. But a lot of iOS musicians play iOS apps such as GeoSynth etc. With Chordbot you can play a melody in Geosynth as it plays the chords in the background. You can also audio copy and paste into, say ThumbJam, and build up some nice jam. So I'm not saying your app isn't excellent at what it does. I'm just saying there's not a whole lot you can do with it on the iPad alone.

So, please implement background audio.

[korgonian]

Review summary - Don't buy.

I am a Professional musician and love playing on the iPad.
I bought SessionBand hoping it will deliver it's 80,000 pro recorded loops.
I also made the extra purchase of unlocking all extra content ("complete bundle") to make sure i get all the loops.
I must say that although the UI is amazing, the app at it's current state is a rip off.
There are a 71 music arrangements in which you get 5 play types (normal, 3xfill and a finale) for 12 notes and 7 chord types (7x12x5=420)
So... you get less than 30,000 music loops.
Just that these are not real loop recording but just low grade midi arrangements that get transposed to match your note selection.

I was hoping for something great but got a crappy "band in a box" wanna be (it doesn't even come close of being a good band in a box).

I really hope they will fix it in the future and deliver the promised pro grade loops instead of the current ones.

Vago - something tells me you're not really a professional musician.
'cos these sound like real recordings to me. If you can't tell the difference, you should consider swapping jobs.

I LOVE this app - precisely because it sounds real.

[Karmacomposer]

Does this have audio copy/paste? I can see this being useful if I use, say, Auria to record and mix. I can create my groove in SessionBand and then audio copy it and paste it into Auria.

Can this currently be done? If not, will it be in a future update?

Mike

[Keebo]

No ACP that I can see. Even the email file is an .sbf file which is only good for backups.

I could be wrong but I haven't found any way to use this app other than creating/listening to files made in the app.

Though it sounds quite nice, it really needs some features that we have grown to expect.

Perhaps an update will be forthcoming.

[Karmacomposer]

I am going to wait then. It seems great, but I can see the loops getting old fast. Without any real way to 'render' the finished song to a exportable and playable format and without audio copy/paste or dropbox support, I am afraid it is currently useless to me. And since it also takes up over 2GB (I would buy the entire enchilada if I bought it at all), it may be simply too large for me as well.

Mike

[korgonian]

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Does this have audio copy/paste? I can see this being useful if I use, say, Auria to record and mix. I can create my groove in SessionBand and then audio copy it and paste it into Auria.

Can this currently be done? If not, will it be in a future update?

Mike

Their website support page says v2 coming soon share as audio -
http://www.sessionbandapp.com/SessionBand_Support.html (http://www.sessionbandapp.com/SessionBand_Support.html)
- I read somewhere (twitter I think) it's mp3 rendering and will support AudioCopy and auto transpose which could be useful. Free upgrades

[shanecgriffo]

Yes it needs transpose!

[Karmacomposer]

Does this have audio copy/paste? I can see this being useful if I use, say, Auria to record and mix. I can create my groove in SessionBand and then audio copy it and paste it into Auria.

Can this currently be done? If not, will it be in a future update?

Mike

Their website support page says v2 coming soon share as audio -
http://www.sessionbandapp.com/SessionBand_Support.html
- I read somewhere (twitter I think) it's mp3 rendering and will support AudioCopy and auto transpose which could be useful. Free upgrades

I bought it after reading this. I also bought all loops. Nice sound - really quite pro!

Mike

[Scott Murrell]

---One of the things I like about this app isn't the app but the people behind it, I may be totally wrong since I don't know them at all but they really seem to want to produce a professional product that's very musical even for those who might otherwise be left out of the creative process. This program is still in its infancy and there are things I've expressed to them that I think would make things better for those of us who do plan on using it live and professionally.
If we could trigger the note values, bar length, and pitch via midi to me that would be very cool when playing live. It'd be like a Yamaha Tyros only thousands less! There's also a bug that prohibts the song from stopping instead of continuously looping (if you haven't experienced this please tell me how you did it, I placed the "end" command on my opus and it just keeps looping). Copy and paste is what others want and even though I have never used this function on any app I'm sure I should've been so hopefully that will be added.
I've been called (by them) their, "#1 fan" and I guess I am but I love this program! Years of playing classical and progressive rock have made me very critical of sound, I like the way this sounds!

P.s.- do some of the acoustic rhythms sound like Bob Marley to ya'll? Hey mon, Jah wants some James Taylor! LOL