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.
Bands/Acts you know you should know but you don't know (confessions in search of encouragement):
The Tragically Hip
Comments
Radiohead. I doubt they'd be my cuppa, but I don't think I've ever heard them.
On Netflix. “Long Time Running.” I knew nothing about this band before seeing this documentary. The band is very good. The lead singer is a treasure. Must see.
Courtnet Barnett (among others) for me. I hear the critics sing her praise but I haven’t been able to get on that bus yet.
I was underwhelmed by Barnett. Last week, I heard from a friend in Portland who had seen her the night before and his assessment was "well, it wasn't quite the snooze fest I anticipated"
A less than ringing endorsement...
Mine is more a case of
Acts That I am Supposed to Like And Go Back And Check On Every Decade And See If They Finally Click With Me, But So Far Nothing
Some so far:
The Band
The Buzzcocks
The Smiths
The Teardrop Explodes
Neutral Milk Hotel
Cat Power
Buzzcocks Singles Going Steady LP is pretty sweet.
Has everyone one ´gotten’ Gregory Alan Isakov yet?
There's a Harmony in my Head. Why Can't I Touch It ? the Noise Annoys, but I Don't Mind as long as Everybody's Happy Nowadays, they'e not ? Oh shit ! ... Somethings gone wrong again.
John Coltrane and Charlie Parker. I love getting horny in my music, so really should put in the effort
Just approach Coltrane as blues and it should click with you. It worked for me.
Parker is not as initially accessible- "Man, that's a lot of notes doing things that are somewhat hard to follow!", but then the click will also come.
Jane Weaver, but I’m about to rectify that by getting a couple of her albums.
Their last album prior to the first hiatus (1981?), "A Different Kind of Tension", is also excellent and quite accessible.
Leonard Cohen's last album. I'll stick it in my Spotify right now.
Jacob Collier. His name keeps popping up for me. Need to check the ol’ YouTube.
@JeffChasteen. Yep. Neutral Milk Hotel and Okkervil River for me. Animal Collective also to a lesser degree but for some reason I keep buying their albums.
Snarky Puppy. I have friends who are absolutely rabid over them. I even opened for this singer, Chantae Cann, who has recorded with them...I just have never gotten around to listening. Maybe I will because of this thread.
I’d tell you but I don’t know.
Diego stocco. Everyone should listen to this guy.
Oh. My girlfriend has been bugging me to go see Courtney Barnett next month. Its 25quid and I'm rubbish at falling asleep, upright in a chair.
Cat power... still got plenty of spunk
Funny, it was when I heard Coltrane is rocking out that it finally clicked with me. I was a teenager and it was maybe my tenth listen to Giant Steps (I reallllly wanted to 'get it') and suddenly it occurred to me just how hard these dudes were rocking.
And for sure, like so many other musical influencer<-->influencee relationships, I basically had to get into the more accessible side of Coltraine before Parker or Kirk (etc) made any sort of sense to me. I love that Charlie Parker's credo was to "Play the hardest song first". Every night.
I like this case. I'll do the same if'n you don't mind. Though many of those are head-scratchers as to why they haven't clicked with you (knowing some other music you like).
Some of mine:
Anybody heard of the Apostle of Hustle? Saw him live in Austin few years ago.
May be off on this but I think a member of this band is a sometime player with the bands Vulfpeck and Fearless Flyers. Both look to be kind of a rotating collective of sorts. Both very cool.
Thank god I am not alone. Our worst export yet, worse than skippy the bush kangaroo.
I like Barnett.
Never got the appeal of The Doors, Deep Purple or Carlos Massivelyoverratedimo Sanfackintana.
Genesis and Phil Collins in particular can also take a running jump.
I fear this is just a rant post ignore, just wanted to stand up for Ms B really.
@Crawlingwind Same here. Had too many fellow lit theory friends who were so obsessed that I shunned - no doubt a mistake.
I dig Vulfpeck! Gonna have to check out Fearless Flyers. Thanks!
Wow, so surprising. Her first record is phenomenal, mostly for the lyrics and catchy Buzzcock-like pop-punk songs early on the record. But she's a tremendous guitarist. If you don't like this, then... (Try to make it to the solo at the end.)
For me: The Band. Could never understand the adoration.
But I'm sure it's just a generational thing? At 14 I got into the Clash and threw away all my Rush and Led Zeppelin records and abandoned guitar solos and hippies in general. I know, I traded one orthodoxy for another, and I quickly expanded, mostly with the advent of hip-hop, which made a virtue of small-c catholic crate digging. (Later retrieved the Led Zeppelin, but really, Rush is terrible.)
The Band is a rootsy outfit, and not to everyone’s taste. I like em ok but don’t slobber over them.
As we’re getting into negativity, I never understood the adoration of Pink Floyd. Post-Barrett esp. I was continually bombarded with their music in high school and found them to be incredibly boring. Not awful, but tedious. And yet, the number of guitarists chasing David Gilmour’s “tone” must number in the many thousands.
Story of my life.