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
I play guitar primarily - definitely more of a chick magnet than keyboards back in the good ol' days. (Bagged me wife that way.)
But, musically, I'd have to give it to piano. Seeing chords and intervals laid out linearly just helps so much with visualizing and understanding chords and harmony. With guitar the fret board is confusing as hell - though it is so much easier to play in any key (just move chords and patterns up and down the neck).
Besides, guitar has become a bit of a dinosaur. I start the countdown to when my daughter presses "skip" in Pandora by when the guitars come in on a song. I rarely get to past 10 seconds. I was at a Floozies rave and Matt Hill launched into a absolutely brilliant funky solo guitar break, and you could literally see the crowd's eyes glaze over. He looked up and was like "You really don't give a fuck do ya'", and dutifully pressed "play" again. Sigh.
The real rock stars today don't need play either instrument. You just gotta be really good at jumping around and pretending to twist knobs while occasionally putting on and taking off your headphones that aren't really plugged in. Dammit. I could do that but I'm to flippin' old now!
I don't know where you are but over here in the UK or at least in Oxford they (guitars) are bloody everywhere. Yes, shredding is definitely defunct (no pun) but any other guitar playing is very much in. When I see an all guitar 5 piece I start making my excuses
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Nothing wrong with them, just there's so many other instruments out there, digital and otherwise, that it seems a real shame their sonic potential isn't being explored.
West Coast USA. Only old farts (like me) pull out a six string any more.
Maybe we can hope for a 2nd British Invasion and I'll be cool again.
Yep, plus with ten fingers and 5-8 octaves you can do all manner of interesting chord voicing.
I started on drums in 6th grade in the school concert band. Learning rhythm & basic reading was a huge benefit later on when I started messing with the piano a few years later and then especially when I picked up guitar at 16.
I have done guitar teaching off & on for years, a lot of time for kids, and rhythm is the hardest thing for them to pick. I think video games have helped their hand eye coordination so fingering chords is usually fairly easy to get, but if their rhythm is off, they can get very discouraged. I am thankful that strumming and time wasn't that much of a big issue for me, but without the drumming through school I'm sure it wouldn't have come as easily to me.
I think everyone should learn at least the piano keyboard first because it's layout & the note names are transferable to the guitar. For me, knowing each fret was a semi-tone made barre chords and just basic communication with other players easier.
If you learn let's say the third fret G barre chord you won't be lost if someone calls out Bb, etc. if you know how the notes are laid out on tbe fretboard.
I love the guitars versatility and the way with other tunings it can still surprise me. The piano is awesome but very "set in stone"; writing on it is more about being inspired by it's tone. Accidentally hitting upon a weird chord like you can on a guitar in different tuning provokes melodic inspiration from that totally "new to you" chord...well at least for me. Maybe the same can happen on piano but if I had to choose, desert island style, I'd have to have an acoustic guitar.
Not to mention the incredible dynamics available due to picking and strumming styles, use of open strings and different string combinations, tapping, hammer ons, etc etc etc. The possibilities are so much more open ended IMO.
Besides, switching keys - no problem! Just move what you're doing up or down the fret board to suit. It will be a long time on keyboards until I can pull that off without twisting my brain around in knots - or cheating with scale lock to the white keys.
There is no cheating only lovely.
Keyboard is probably easier initially. Guitar, you have to learn to tune it, it takes time to develop calluses, strength to hold chords, cordination between both hands, etc. With keyboard you can at least make a good sound instantly, even with one or two fingers. On the other hand, if you want to play hard rock or heavy metal, guitar is your instrument. Sometimes it's about artists that inspire you and what kind of music you want to make.
So true. I still remember the day back in first grade when I asked my parents if I could learn to play guitar. They sure "sure!" and took me down to the local music store, which had violins, wood winds, and harps in the windows and on the walls. The little Italian maestro proclaimed with utmost certainty: "No, no, no, no! You handsa they too small. We start you off on the violin! Then when you get bigger you can play a the guitar." Like the cowed and bewildered little first grader I was, I went along.
Ten years, approximately 3,900 hours of practice, four music camp scholarships, assorted trophies, a couple state-wide orchestra concert master gigs, and more nightmarishly stressful solo recitals than I care to remember, I was walking down the street when suddenly it dawned. On me "Wait! What just happened? I wanted to play guitar! Why am I doing this? I don't hate the damn violin!" I summoned the courage to break it to my parents. Packed the beastly thing away, bought a guitar, and never looked back. Every time I pick it up a guitar, I'm in love in some way.
I seriously could have been a famous violinist. I still suck after 30 years of guitar playing. Sometimes you're just born to something and for better or worse it's a part of you you'll never shake.
@wim Good story. I blame the parents (as ever)
Still. Took me 10+ years to wake up. There's a lesson there I think.
What attracted me to the piano was that it's best suited to solo playing---bass, rhythm, lead---all the arrangements possible divided between two hands. Then I want to play some Bach. I played solo arrangements on the guitar, but it was much more limited and difficult. The guitar, as mentioned, has advantages as a lead or rhythm instrument, but not at the same time. And I avoid singing. So if I'm stuck on a desert island, with only one choice, I take a piano.
Piano, if you want to produce music. With piano skills you can play tons of virtual instruments via MIDI keyboard.
Anything really, if you want to perform. Just follow your
I would also advise drums for everyone. We all need rhythm
Ha ha.. Wim.. Funny post. @JRSIV , yeah , you hit it there. The happy "accidents". If you hit a "wrong" note on a guitar chord, it can result in an extra open string taking you into unknown territory. On piano, you make a club , you're maybe a half or whole step away.
Also in terms of trends nowadays, if you hold your proverbial finger up to see which way the wi d is blowing, there seems to be a resurgence of acoustic guitar in the air. Also to be honest I don't like classical music all that much.. if you do, there's a reason to play piano right there. Lastly, guitar and piano are the ULTIMATE generative apps..
Exactly. The 'generative app' example is perfect, lol. I prefer to think of it all very spiritual and etheral where I sit and play the guitar and I channel this inspiration...but as @Telstar5 says, sometimes a simple lift of a finger off a chord shape mixes with an open string and BOOM you have the basis of a new song. Is that 100% different than changing two variables on a synth arpeggiator and it inspiring a new bit? I don't know.
For some reason the acoustic guitar scenerio seems more precious and I don't know, authentic. But isn't that bullshit? Wow, very weird to think about...
I'm a guitarist all the way, plunking sadly and slowly on the keys when I must. Invested soooooo many hours learning to play electric guitar because KK Downing.
Then "Funeral for a Friend" will come on my 70s playlist and I'll wistfully think I might have made more time to learn to play the keys properly. Every bit as expressive as any guitar.
Then of course there's the mighty Jon Lord ...
Eddie always says he switched partially because piano is essentially a machine w levers whereas guitar was more tactile. The guitar changes American music in the same way that piano did for European. My mom played piano.. As I was growing up I thought that what girls did. Piano is the "King of the instruments" but the #1 "All American " instrument is guitar (Cowboys, gypsys, Gene Autry , Hendrix, etc)
No one has said Keytar yet?!?
I love me some Banjolele!
Maybe all of the above ... at once?
https://artiphon.com/
Dwahah, I was just about to!
Piano if you want to really understand music theory, guitar if you want to be playing quickly with lots of variety.
I agree that piano is better suited to electronic music production.
If this were being asked about 80 years ago, there'd be a lot of trumpets in the answers.
Gas was ten cents a gallon, Amelia disappeared, the Hindenberg blew up in Jersey, that Mister Hitler was about to be Time's Man of the Year, and Mike Godwin's mum was still twenty years away from giving birth...
My dad played trumpet when he was young, as did Spike Milligan before the war, and pretty much anyone who would today have picked up an electric guitar - it fills the same kind of role, as an expressive lead solo instrument.
And while I still think girls today prefer the guitar as a symbol of fertility etc they never said no to the embouchure..
Maybe because of the tight Leather Trouser/Pants that attracts them, with the complimentary stick on Tattoos all over there body..... with legs akimbo while playing, trying to show off there Lunchbox......
But while your dressed like that, it doesn't quite look right when your doing the same thing, playing The Banjo, playing on stage in front of the ladies.... Than an Axe Welding Guitarists.......
I am beginning to suspect this is my problem with the Ukelele. I'm going to need something with a bigger case (Nurse)....
Which ukulele have you got?