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.
Where Have All The Subtleties Gone?
I notice a lot of modern voice-overs have no dynamic range and the quiet passages where one would breath or pause have been edited out so that the voice-over is essentially continuous and at maximum loudness. This combination makes for an artificially frenetic listening experience, but I do wonder what popular apps are used to produce this in-your-face, insistent, breathlessness (anyone know?).
On a similar note I find a lot of modern music lacking in dynamic range, lacking in tempo change and lacking in harmonic and melodic variance.
It’s such as shame!
Assuming you agree with my perspectives and bearing in mind I'm not a compositional whiz by any means.
Comments
Your ears aren't lying.
Compression during mastering is the main culprit. Reading on the loudness war explain the details.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
Many of the modern music genres are based on repetition- that is part of their essence and judging by their popularity also their attraction. There is still however a massive diversity of modern music out there (more than ever) which does not involve repetition and involves itself deeply in the subtleties you describe. It's just a matter of looking for it.
Dynamic range yes agree to some degree
Lacking in tempo change. Again agree in general, but that's probably only because there is a lot of dance music out there, which usuallly works by keeping em dancing
I do think sometimes there is a tendency to quantise the shit out of everything, which has taken some of that live band speed changes feeling out of a lot of music 
Variance hmmm I thing that's pretty much down to the style of music more than it being a trend. Many new styles are much more about the beat than melody and harmony.
As for those speed talkers on many videos (a definite trend), I really dislike it for the most part
One of my friends in the SF Electronic Music Meetup is a genius young man. The tracks he plays are pretty amazing.
Once, someone asked, how do you get it so loud?
"I just compress the shit out of it," he replied.
One way to achieve it is to speak at a moderately speedy rate and then juice it with timestretching until just before it sounds unantural. Also, editing out pauses, lots of microedits. Nauseating!
For TV/radio spots, silencing or removing breaths is often necessary because they otherwise sound bad when the VO is heavily compressed. For longer form stuff the compression is usually milder so they can be left in for a more natural sound.
You can do a lot of this in most video editing software although DAW's are also used depending on the requirements of the project.
On an off note, I really miss how actors with personality would deliver lines as recently as the 90s. There was a lilt to the way they spoke that made many of the movies of my childhood infinitely quotable.
Maybe I am just getting old but I miss the days when musicians listened and responded to each-other in real-time (warts and all); not to denigrate the joint disciplines of multi-tracking and processing if used creatively. If y'all are anything like me, you do not regularly play live in a band anymore but put most of your musical efforts into non-real-time, LCD gazing, sound triggering...alone.
Ionian onanism (in a major mode)!
I agree. I miss the 'in person' music thing. I moved quite a distance to be with my lady (now wife). Leaving all the years and years of friendships behind. At my age it's pretty hard to find people of like mind to make music with (situation complicated). If I do get some money soon, the Wife is learning bass! Lol
At the risk of being a lame-o by self-promotion, I played bass on an album that did such a thing. Cut all live. Just going in without a plan and feeding off each other is the funnest way to make music. Should you have the time, I promise it's good. https://open.spotify.com/album/12iLKpdMFdOiXTXHpURShh
My wife loves to sing, the problem is she cannot sing and I certainly can (years of playing live). I do hate to put a damper on her enjoyment, but her singing makes me cringe, I suppose you could say that her singing has too many cumulative subtleties.
I feel Frank Zappa said it very well
The Internet is good for music though it's just hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Out on the Internet right now our some really talented people and even some really creative people. You can now get your music out there easier and cheaper than ever.
Making any money or getting fame though, that's where it's blooming hard for anyone that does not fit the cheesy chart mold. Getting many people to listen is harder too as it's like casting out your songs in a bottle, into the sea and waiting.
This.
Alas no, not this at all, I'm not referring to gating and the like.
I am referring to the actual deletion of recorded time in which there is no speech thus the effect is of a breathless, artificially frenetic listening experience. It would not be surprising if those under 30 or so would not even be aware of it, as they would have grown up with it. Hell, some probably like it, (along with spasmodic shaky-cam / queasy cam which I would also like to flush down the toilet of bad ideas).
Definition of breathless in the context referred to: appearing short of breath because of excitement or other strong feeling.
As far as silencing or removing breath being necessary, long live Steve Miller and his breathing!
That is also done along with retiming. Whatever is necessary to make the clients request for more more words in less time a reality...
In order to get paid!
Sounds like that crappy horror film with the shaky cam and lots of blubbering. Forgot it's name lol
Right, I should record a bunch of stuff with extreme dynamics and lots breathing, like I used to do when you first met my lovely wife, err...I mean when I first met your lovely wife, err...I know what I mean but I'm rather tongue-tied.
I've been dazed and confused for so long it's not true, wanted a woman never bargained for...by golly maybe Robert was on to something with all his breathing!
Hi anickt,
"In order to get paid!" = corporate tyranny.
Hi Fruitbat1919,
It's a sad commentary that the masses have been programed to require constant 120 bpm just to be willing to dance; so much for freedom of expression.
It used to be different in dance clubs. It may change again some time, ya never know. Maybe the next dance craze will be a resurgence in 3/3 time played by banjos. The only thing I know in my short life, is nothing stays the same forever
...and we'll be dead a long time.
Immense length, punctuated by fractional brevity, punctuated by immense length, that’s either your life story or my sex life.
Yeah probably true. But hey, it's been a good ride even if it seemed like everyone was talking too fast and we lost the melody (maker)
Sounds like 70's porn
I think that the real artistry is in coming up with repetitive phrases that don't actually sound repetitive- due to the craft that has gone into making them. As Chris Rock once said 'it sounds so good- you want to hear it again already'
I gather you are not married.
Not sure you meant myself, but yeah I'm married
Music get more and more scientific
The "millennial whoop" is taking over pop music
He may have meant me- what w
I meant Pete Rock