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
Just wouldn't look the same behind a piano
Oh come on now....
Hard to say. I think knowing how to play keys better would help in playing, but having learned some bass and guitar first(for few years, but havent practised as much as i should had) has taught me more just playing around and aimlessly trying to find new riffs, melodies etc. Which for some reason doesent come to me as naturally as with a guitar or bass. Sadly it still doesent translate to keys as well, but i can first figure some riff with bass for example, then look what scale it is and see how the scale plays on keys.
Maybe guitar and bass gave me more in the end, but if i had been focusing on keys, i would be much player key player now(which is nowadays more what i want to do). But i value personal expression over technical skills, and maybe in 10 years when i learn to assimilate my understanding of guitar and bass more to keys, playing guitar first could make me a better keyboard player as well.
Keef is actually a pretty decent pianist as it happens. I saw him playing it in some documentary and he was awesome.
It's Under The Influence ( 2015 ) .. it was on Netflix .. Still is maybe?
I was also struck by the off the cuff piano bits he did in the film-- pretty eye opening as he was really quite good
That sounds like the one.
Yes, I saw that too. I also saw him saunter over to Chuck Leavell's piano and take short solo during "Honky Tonk Women" once. He can play alright.
Love the blue eye shadow.
Worth digging out that doc?
Under The Influence is well done. If you're a Keith fan, it's a must see.
I am and I will, thanks Mister.
Several guitar players have told me that whenever they played gigs with saxophone players, that the sax players got the most “attention” .
I’m giving serious consideration to getting a piano, not so much to learn to play it, but as a tool to try to understand music theory through it.
I already have sundry (mono, non touch sensitive) synths, guitars, and basses, none of which I can play, and I feel most creative tweaking apps or twiddling knobs on my modular.
But, almost as a separate activity from my actual noise making, I do want to understand theory, and it seems to me (perhaps I’m wrong?) that piano is a better device for that.
I do love the sound of slow, quiet, unaccompanied piano, and would get a great kick out of maybe being able to play some Satie one day, but it primarily has an advantage over guitar in that I can interface it with learning apps and my actual existing investment in hardware a lot more transparently than I can guitar, which clearly requires at least a modicum of physical skill to get anywhere with it.
I can’t sequence a guitar!
I play both pretty well, so wouldn’t want to give one or the other up.
If I had to start over I think piano for enjoyment of playing, but guitar for the ability to play anywhere.
Guitar, mobility, I prefer the sound/s
Learn both. Once one learns how to read notes, chords and scales it matters not if you are concentrating on guitar or keyboard. I think it's also important to learn how to play the drums and/or bass so you learn timing and restraint.
Both for sure with a view towards a lifetime of musical adventure. I found guitar to be painful as a teenager and re-visited 10 years later and worked to full callouses which I have had to regain multiple times over the decades. I spent the most serious effort mastering drum set and orchestral percussion. But I haven’t met an instrument that
I wouldn’t pick up and play around with.
With iPads you can do what I couldn’t do… play quietly at all hours using headphones. Being a creature of the night that’s a huge benefit.
I lost my calluses over the past year, but I find they build up fast enough. Also, as I became a better player, I found I really don't press hard. My callus-free fingers only hurt if I start with the slides and the big bends.
Piano kills my wrists though, and I don't know why. I actually prefer to play keys on an OP-1 keyboard, or one of those flat CME keyboards.
It’s more likely to be how you sit and how you hold your hands. A good piano teacher can help with that very easily.
I’m certain the error is mine. I’m very sensitive to this kind of thing as I write for a living and get RSI if I’m not very careful.
I plan to start piano lessons later in the year!
Lol. While the music is really coming from their connected phone, lol.
Let your piano teacher know about those concerns, as the chances are that they were also given advice when they started, and often correct posture for students. It’s really important not to be tense when you play the piano, particularly if you play for long periods of time.
Guitar.
I actually started with keyboard, which is also great, and an instrument I’m pretty sure would’ve come second anyway, rather than the other way around.
Love them both, but honestly, guitar is “cooler” (FWIW), and a bit more fun to actually play (IME).
My vote is training your ear. People like Burt Bacharach did not need a piano to compose . https://www.perfectpitch.com/relativepitch.htm
Google cellist Allan Shulman, played with the NBC orchestra under Toscanini as well as on Jaco Pastorious’s first album. He said the #1 attribute you could work on to improve your musicianship is training your ear.
Have you ever actually tried playing guitar or piano with your ear? It's harder than it looks.
@Telstar5 : interesting point, but I think there are two different, though obviously related issues at play here.
One is the pleasure and creativity to be accessed from the organic physical aspect of mastering an instrument - any instrument. And then there is the matter of understanding, at a technical level, the interplay of scales and rhythms and harmony etcetera.
Of course the naturally musically gifted will synthesise all of this, and the mechanically competent and disciplined will master an instrument, and for all those persons, an excellent ear will likely be part of the package.
But we fortunately live in an age when there are forms of organised sound which do not follow conventional song structures, and devices which allow the most mechanically inept and musically untalented to program and corral at least passingly pleasing noises.
I place myself in this category, and feel that, despite my general ineptitude , my noise making will nevertheless benefit from extending into an intellectual understanding of theory, even though it is very unlikely anyone would ever want to hear me play an instrument unaided. It is this which is pushing me to consider piano, less as an instrument in itself, but more as a tool through which to explore theory.
You have to use both ears
Well obviously, but once you have the pick in one ear and you try to fret with the other ear, that’s when the problems start…
Ca> @Telstar5 said:
It is impossible to play cello or other non-fixed-pitch instrument without ear training. So his perspective is understandable.
Some guitarists and keyboardists perceive ear training as an optional activity, because quite frankly, it is possible to learn how to play either instrument without ear training. There's so much learning material that relies only on visual representations such as fretboard diagrams, tablature, and even sheet music.
Having "trained ears" includes being able to listen to what a rhythm section (and/or drum machine/sequencer/etc/) is doing, and play something that is in time with that rhythm section. That is why experienced guitarists tend to advise playing with a band instead of just jamming by yourself with backing tracks.
When a guitarist takes a solo, I can hear if that person has done ear training or not. Those who haven't tend to sound like they are just playing picking exercises. Keyboardists can hide their lack of ear training a little more, but eventually some sort of mechanical regularity comes out in their playing too.
Even classical musicians like that cellist need to listen to each other and sync with each other. When I was in an orchestra, even though we're all, in theory, watching the conductor for time-keeping, there were still some players rushing ahead of others. When the director got irritated enough, he isolated each section (French horns, trumpets, etc.) to figure out who is playing out of tune and/or rushing.