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.
身骑白马
Another exploration into Chinese Music
身骑白马 Shen Qi Bai Ma
This is a popular ethic Chinese song that I fell in love with it. It was introduced to me by my friend “Una” who's featured in this video.
_(Later I’m hoping to score a “studio” version using the Chinese instruments in Garageband and BeatHawk AU) _
The verses are in Mandarin but the chorus is actually adapted from a Taiwanese Opera (Hokkien)
The concept of this song:
"Xue Ping Gui" joined the army as a young boy. He gradually moved up the ranks to become a general. However he was captured and imprisoned while fighting against Xi Liang.
Though he was meant to be executed the pricess of Xi Liang fell in love with him and wanted to marry him.
So He married the princess and eventually took control of the kingdom, but despite his wealth and power, he missed his family and wife back in the mainland.
He travelled on a "white horse" in plain clothes, crossed three borders, from Xi Liang to the mainland, to look for his wife who had waited 18 years for his return.
Comments
Really Awesome!
Good luck to you & your friend ...
You might want to change the title of the thread. Most people are probably assuming it's SPAM, which we had a lot of a while ago - and it looked a lot like this.
Thanks and Yes I’m actually aware of that. It’s making this a bit more fun
助けてください！私はマカオの警察署で立ち往生しており、私にはお金はありません。今日私に10,000ドル送金してください！彼らは今日金を受け取らなければ私を刑務所に入れます。
Eh?
I don’t think that’s Chinese 
Beautiful !
Already said on Youtube, will say here: this is very cool, congrats, David!
Maybe is standard chinese scale microtuned to resemble western stuff. Who knows?
I'm not sure the "standard" Chinese scale is microtonal. That's more middle eastern.
Very nice. Young lady has a lovely voice.
This is so Fucking Beautiful........ I could create a Soulful House of this........ It has Sooooooo many great vibes to the vocals....... Totally Brilliant.
Interesting you’ve given me something else to explore...谢谢
Well right now it’s the language and culture that has my interest, but I’ve found much more ‘western’ tunings and chord progressions than initially expected. My focus isn’t reall the ancient stuff right now. I am curious about the Peking Opera though.
Thanks a lot! It’s been a major personal leap to dare to have a YouTube channel...your encouragement has been very helpful.
Did a quick look, as I suspected, most traditional Chinese music is based on pentatonic scales. However, they didn't go to an even tempered scale until western music came along, with instruments such as the piano. So that's why traditional Chinese music, on traditional instruments, can sound "odd" to our ears. But it's not normally microtonal, though some traditional music in Western China could have some middle eastern influence.
Don’t forget some eastern scales resemble the major pentatonic. Not all chinese music will sound exotic: many of them, if not most of them, will be very friendly to european and american ears like folk music of all places generaly are.
It's Greek to me.
@realdavidai. Beautifully done friend.
Thanks so much Ben.
Καλημέρα .......... να χαλαρώσετε και να έχουν μια μπύρα.
Thanks mayne!!
Wow, very nice, and a great start to my morning. Please share the recording process. Is that a Launchkey your playing? The piano sounds great, where are the piano sounds coming from? And the reverb on the vocals? Did you mix this in iOS?
thanks for sharing this!
Thanks
Yes that’s Launchkey 61 the Audio interface is Apogee Duet. I generally use these with iPad Pro and GarageBand.
However GarageBand doesn’t allow simultaneous recording of MIDI and Audio so I had to go back to Logic for this. You can see me panic for a brief second when I wasn’t sure I had armed the MIDI track
Piano is the stock Steinway in Logic and Space designer reverb on vocals.
On the master bus I used the “Platinum Analog Tape” preset in Logic’s default Compressor. Followed by the limiter.
I’m hoping the next GarageBand for iOS update will let me permanently retire the MacBook.
I do find it very difficult to enjoyably play Piano sounds with Launchkey and most of today’s MIDI controllers. years ago I used to use Roland weighted keyboards that were so much easier to play. But they are too big and heavy for my life right now.
The singer is a graduate musical theater student from China who convinced me to perform this song live with a full band a few weeks ago.
Great, thanks for this! I haven't used Logic, so I'm not familiar with the plugins you used there, but useful information nonetheless.
Regarding your piano playing - I'm not a piano player, but as I watched, I thought you did extremely well with the semi-weighted keys on the launchkey. It playing sounds (and you made it look) very natural. Cheers!
不错。我真不喜欢京剧。听起来像踩了猫尾巴。
哈哈哈哈哈