Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
Comments
@gburks, nice driving rock and roll. Song has a great feel all the way through. Mix is a bit muddy to me, and I think it's the rhythm guitar tone, instead of the distortion cutting, it's a bit too fuzzy?
@JohnnyGoodyear, what @Bluepunk said. Brilliant stuff. Mix was fabulous. It was most definitely takes you on a trip, which it most definitely should.
I always freeze everything in Auria, after tinkering with a track until I'm happy with how it sounds. This has the same effect with midi as bouncing it does - you can increase the buffer size if they are all frozen. @theconnactic is far ahead of me, (and a lot of us, I assume,) in his knowledge about mixing. I keep learning more and more - the trick with simulating the overhead mic is brilliant. I had never even thought of trying. I'm pretty basic in my mixing, which is not a bad thing, as I'm still learning how to use all the toys properly.
I feel very similarly. Isn't it great to learn! Quick, let's go back and slap my eighteen year old self around the head with cabbage and kippers etc.
It is also that thing that the more you know the more you suss what you don't. I am encouraged by remembering how it is with computers in general; someone who knows a little more than you is an absolute whiz, anyone who knows less, a n00b.
Thanks for the feedback.
Thanks for the great feedback. I am slowly putting an album together.
Same here. It's been all guess work & luck in the mixing stage. These eq tips from Dimitri really work...of course they do, he's very knowledgeable. The bass sound/feel improved 100% & I will attempt the magic overhead tip as soon as. He knows his stuff alright! Hope your mixing mixes well Rick.
If they had these things around in school to learn & play music with back in the day I would have actually gone in! Love this new learning frenzy but like my CPU, being a smidge careful not to overload it! Brain freeze sets in.
I appreciate your feedback etc. You are the most encouraging of posters. Not just a matter of the 'mummy says you done good' positivism, but there's something about your cheerfully authentic sincerity that helps drive a fellow forward. And if you're faking it please don't ever let on
This is a very kind and generous review/comment. I'm glad it connected with you. Perhaps we are both men of a certain age and stage
For me (me, me) the punchline point of all the chattering is def. to be found in the clarinets at the end. They are Surbiton and Purley and the world of net curtains that we each find ourselves to some degree living within/behind.
Must also say that I am/have long been a GB snob (Garage Band, not Great Britain!). Somehow it doesn't seem like a thing a heartfelt fellow would actually much use. No logic there; a noise is but a noise. However, the clarinets did indeed come from that app. So, credit where it's due.....but then my sarky self would go round in a circle and say "but OF COURSE you found the apotheosis of suburbia in GB...."
Thank you. Not sure if you remember the scene in "Jaws" when a young upstart had a shark fin attached to his back, causing havoc in the sea. When scuppered, he pointed his finger over to his mate. With a mouth half full of seawater he stuttered to the official "He made me do it."
For me, the "he" is all the music (& the hard hours to create it) I listen to on here & it makes me feel things. Forces me to jot those feelings down. "The music made me do it" so I'm blaming that. Long may it continue. Thanks for your kind words & I'm sure your new baby (other thread) will bring you years of top song crafting!
Thank you for the kind words, @Bluepunk and @rickwaugh!
@JohnnyGoodyear 2 tracks in as many weeks? What's happened? Will you be churning them out at a rate of one a week for the remainder of time or have we just encountered a blip in the continuum?
Anyway it's a thought-provoking piece as ever, with a little peek into the dark soul of man (and woman). The human condition, it's such a huge and beguiling subject, but I have been thinking recently that hardly anyone has ever really tackled this in popular music. It's practically virgin territory, apart from the occasional musings from Morrissey or Dylan, no-one has dared go near that one.
Out of the cooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made. (Immanuel Kant). I love that quote because it's the truth. It seems strange to me that so few songwriters have ever wanted to tackle human imperfection, delusion and inconsistency, because it's such a rich seam of inspiration. Maybe you're the man to do it justice.
Of course your mother's day story does put a different slant on the track
@trackedout quite beguiling in a chaotic and lo-fi way. Love the vocal delivery, it's very reminiscent of J Mascis with that asleep-at-the-wheel feel. Good vocal melodies lurking in there as well. There are points in the song where the timing is a little bewildering, the lead guitar and the vocal being completely out of sync, but it's all part of the fun and quite brave if it's deliberate.
Your songs have a lot of character and I think they're always an interesting listen, look forward to hearing what you have in store next month.
@theconnactic It's a fun jam with the usual virtuoso guitar playing, and some nice melodic elements in the lead parts as well as interesting breakdowns.
Your SoundCloud photos have you singing into a microphone, I think we need to hear your voice next month!
@gburks I loved that, a great bit of melodic pop-punk. Nice guitar intro, very good vocal, great melodies. A catchy and upbeat tune that is fun to listen to.
Really like the guitar solos because they are so melodic - I hate shredding-type solos but I love ones where you hear an actual tune - and all the musical parts in this track have a purpose and are really melodic.
Great effort, thanks for posting it.
Thank you so much for the compliments, @richardyot! You already heard my voice in the February SOTM: the song "Casual" had me singing the main theme from breakdown on. No lyrics, since I only do instrumentals, and the voice in this case was only another lead instrument, but still...
@gburks Very good sir. Cool drum intro to get the feet taping in time before unleashing the meat of your track upon us. Melodic, urgent, well played & sung. The two vocals (high & low) working in tandem, really fill out the singing & suit your songs feel. Enjoyed the drum dynamics when you drop them down between .30 to .36, then crunch them back up to the max again. The solo at 2.05 is fabulous. More grit & dirt to contrast the lighter (but still powerful) style in the V's & C's.
Power pop that for me sits snuggly in between The Housemartins & the middle class punky sounds of the 90's like blink-182 & Sum 41. Now, cos you're very talented, I'd love to hear the same type of stuff with that uke you played in a previous SOTMC entry. Could be interesting & probably, unique!
If you want to go the whole, punk hog, I can send you some extra strong punk gel to spike up the locks. Definitely not needed here anymore!
Great, catchy track. Nice one & well done on the mixing as it all sounds professional & vibrant.
Me and Kant go way back. Him and his pure reason. Argumentative bugger. I like that in my philosophers....Anyway, where were we? Ah yes, the human condition. Well, apart from boy wants girl, boys gets girl, boy fucks things up etc., most of the other stuff, especially when one gets into proper morbidity, dissolution, moral turpitude and so forth, seems largely reserved for obsessive consideration by the middle age and beyond. And then there's the laundry to think about. And the shopping. Dog needs a walk.
Truth be told a lot of poetry (in all its forms) does deal herein (mine does sometimes certainly), but perhaps you're right, might be a road to hoe at that....
As for two tracks in a week or whatever, consider this the anomaly that proves the fool etc.
That's another train of thought I've been having lately, as middle-aged wannabe songwriter, is that popular music is dominated by the young, which might explain the fixation with the opposite sex. Goes with the territory.
But in middle-age you have a completely different perspective on life, and that's where a proper examination of the crooked timber can really take place. When you're young you don't have the sense of perspective to really acknowledge your own (hence universal) fallibility.
Maybe middle-aged songwriters have something more interesting to say.
Never sure about the slow ones, but in the interest of variety I persevere. One day I'll be happy with one. I listen to a lot of music, but like many I'm sure, quite a narrow selection. This was initially called Lonely Soldier, and it was inspired by a two word sample in a Meat Beat Manifesto tune of the same name. I wrote the lyric and melody for the band I am/was in (don't ask) and felt v pleased with myself until I looked up Lonely Soldier and found there were lots of songs with the same sodding name. Hence it became "He's forever a soldier" and I'm sticking with that so there.
The end is a bit messy but I got fed up and just mixed it down. I'm not renowned for my patience and needed to move on. No EQing this month I tell you, goodness me no! This was done almost exclusively in Auria Pro, with just a simple beat from Patterning. Modstep continues to stare accusingly at me from my iPad, grumbling with AUM and muttering about what exactly I think I'm going to do with Blocs Wave and Samplr now I've started filling the credit card up. I'm not going to buy that Moog thing, really I'm not...
Anyway, hope u don't find it too tedious. My mate said I have a "very 80s voice" when I made him endure a couple of my recordings. He will be sadly missed.
@crouchie Had to give this a quick listen before hitting the sack. So bloody glad I did! Beautiful track. Will go to sleep with butterflies tonight. This isn't my review, that'll follow but wanted to say WOW!
Well you have a problem. You're good at lots of things and you expect and we have come to expect you to be able to synthesize (ha) them together in each piece you do. I don't know about your erstwhile mate, as regards '80s voice', there's a style maybe there, phrasing maybe?, but I think that feel is more underpinned by your choice of drums/sounds which (like all drums/sounds) suggest one genre or period more the others.
I like this song, it is a weary story you're telling, and that needs to be a balance that doesn't tip into outright tiredness etc. I liked, of course the backing vocals when they came in, felt like a toffee and I'd wanted it earlier (as we do with toffees), but by the time you were done I had come around to the timing. Could you double a bit on the second time through the 'rose tint' etc? Sure. Maybe. But like eq'ing and other stuff I think that's not wholly the issue. The thing for me (as is often in my head SOTMC-wise) is Is this a song? I know, of course they all are, but I think you know what I mean. And this is a song. I would like more color variance (not a reliable technical term) or more emotional range somehow, but all that's easier to say than execute.
I do like slow songs a lot, being a sentimental fool at root, but they are a bugger to keep from, being traced by maudlin-ness or being too one-paced....
Most, if not all of the foregoing is about the vocal delivery etc etc, however I liked the music and the sparse bleeps or squibbles that go along with the keys.
On second listening I wonder if there's too many/much war words in there and that I might like a bit more humanizing of our man, but now I'm off into lyrics and that's another whole packet of ketchup...What I really like about your stuff is it always makes me think about where another ten per cent might be found and I never think about that unless the real stuff is there or thereabouts...
@crouchie, wonderful tune. I love the way the different instruments are running different rhythms, but keeping it together at the same time, one of my favourite things in music. Voice is spot on, love the lyrics. Those two little breaks are at just the right time. Don't know why you dislike the ending, I thought it worked very well.
Hey, @crouchie! It's a slow song, all right, but never tedious. The arrangement steadily keeps moving, building towards a climax (the chorus with backing vocals that starts at 2:46) then it simply ends, which has a very good effect IMHO. The lyrics are good, and the singing is great. Congrats!
@johnnyGoodyear great stuff, I've listened to a few of your pieces now and always find them interesting and inspiring. For some reason i kept imagining ( or wanting to hear ) a woman's voice humming softly behind your voice.
@crouchie At first, i thought it might be a little one dimensional but then you vocal melody clicked with me and i have a feeling i'm gonna have "ba ba ba daa, ba da daa, he's forever a soldier" running in an endless loop in my head for the rest of the day, great hook.
Thank u, v kind. Nice to hear it's had an impact. Actually I keep bloody humming that bit too! Hope it doesn't end up being too annoying!
P
Thank u, v kind words
Thanks Rick. I just felt the end would benefit from a bit more love and attention, but it just gets to the point where u need to cut and run. V kind review, thank u.
Thanks for the time and trouble you have gone to with this review. My new resolution is to try to be more detailed in my feedback like you and others. Glad u liked Soldier. I try to vary things a bit, but I have no musical skills at all and so I have to play things in the laboriously edit the midi to make it hang together. I wish I could work more chord and key changes in, but have to compromise by try to make the little noises more layered and piece them together (I love artists that can do that, so I'll keep trying!). Rather irritatingly I notice that a pad went missing somewhere in the mix down (Auria does have a tendency to do that at times). Probably of no consequence to anyone else, but obviously mortifying to me!! More haste less speed as they say
Cheers
P
@theconnactic Thats some pretty nice guitar playing and good tone. I enjoyed listening to it as I did not get bored during the song. You kept it interesting. Good Job.