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.
Captain Beefheart: 10 commandments for guitarists
LISTEN TO THE BIRDS That’s where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren’t going anywhere.
YOUR GUITAR IS NOT REALLY A GUITAR Your guitar is a divining rod. Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over. A guitar is also a fishing rod. If you’re good, you’ll land a big one.
PRACTICE IN FRONT OF A BUSH Wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. If the bush doesn’t shake, eat another piece of bread.
WALK WITH THE DEVIL Old delta blues players referred to amplifiers as the “devil box.” And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you’re bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts demons and devils. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.
IF YOU’RE GUILTY OF THINKING, YOU’RE OUT If your brain is part of the process, you’re missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.
NEVER POINT YOUR GUITAR AT ANYONE Your instrument has more power than lightning. Just hit a big chord, then run outside to hear it. But make sure you are not standing in an open field.
ALWAYS CARRY YOUR CHURCH KEY You must carry your key and use it when called upon. That’s your part of the bargain. Like One String Sam. He was a Detroit street musician in the fifties who played a homemade instrument. His song “I Need A Hundred Dollars” is warm pie. Another church key holder is Hubert Sumlin, Howlin’ Wolf’s guitar player. He just stands there like the Statue of Liberty making you want to look up her dress to see how he’s doing it.
DON’T WIPE THE SWEAT OFF YOUR INSTRUMENT You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music.
KEEP YOUR GUITAR IN A DARK PLACE When you’re not playing your guitar, cover it and keep it in a dark place. If you don’t play your guitar for more than a day, be sure to put a saucer of water in with it.
YOU GOTTA HAVE A HOOD FOR YOUR ENGINE Wear a hat when you play and keep that hat on. A hat is a pressure cooker. If you have a roof on your house the hot air can’t escape. Even a lima bean has to have a wet paper towel around it to make it grow.”
-Don Van Vliet (Aka “The Captain”)
Comments
Jeff Morris Tepper used to come by at our apartment on his lunch breaknfrom his job and get a guitar lesson from my roomie , the late Rustle Laidman , R.I.P.
Interestingly, the whole of “Electric Ian”, my concept album, was composed and instrumented up entirely while wearing a hat. I always wear a hat when out, I go to work in a hat, come home in a hat. The album was created on trains (typically the Overground between Canada Water and Clapham Junction, but others too) and I’d have been wearing a hat all the time for that, 100%
RIP one of the greatest ever to have booglarized my brain.
Number 9 is very important. A dry and thirsty guitar will crack, twist and forever hold a grudge for such mistreatment.
This is gold. Thanks for sharing.
Number 3 reminds me of a short, short story by Frank Key:
http://podcasts.resonancefm.com/archives/569
Number 5 rings true.
I could go on.
Electric Ian’s a cracking album title.
Damn, that is the shit right there.
Shockingly good.
You gotta have a hood for your engine brother.
I'm telling ya'. California produced some really innovative folks considering what a massive cluster fuck of civilization it is. If people don't have t be smart enough to avoid fressing to death they can concentrate on pushing the envelope with art.
Zappa
Captain Beefheart
Jerry Garcia
David Crosby
Just a few examples.
INSPIRING but only as useful as zen. I have no idea how to make music like a drowning man. Ive almost been killed by the sea a few times so Im going to reflect on those moments and see if I can get my arse is gear for a SOTM.
I thought it was def. koan material and with a nod and a wink at that
I'll take California's civilization over a fair few of the others mankind has come up with so far
Truth
I lot of this is fanciful and perhaps willfully eccentric (yet still very entertaining), but he is absofuckinglutely right about Hubert Sumlin. He's the man who made the electricguitar truly electric.
I love this so much! Thanks!
Love the Captain, his paintings too.
Apparently he used to have long rambling telephone calls with Viv Stanshall, I’d pay good money to have heard those.
I came around to Captain Beefheart fairly late, the “Spotlight Kid” era. ‘Click Clack’ is unreal...
Lick my decals off baby!
Not sure whether he’s pro or anti hummingbirds here. Is he saying that guitarists should search for statis within speed or that guitarists should avoid speed? Or that hummingbirds shouldn’t play guitar? (Not sure what their ideal instrument would be - maybe they could nest in a cello...) Anyway, what hummingbirds do is exactly right for hummingbirds, so he’s just being ethnocentric, really.
...drowning was the reference that makes the most sense to me. Part of what makes electric guitar so great is that even when you’re playing something with structure and order you are simultaneaously riding that edge of chaos, especially if you are making it up as you go along.
Maybe just that a melodic guitar solo is much more interesting to listen to than a bunch of scale runs in 128th note divisions... or maybe I’m just projecting.
Did chuckle.
One has to ask, where did he get all that from in the first place? Who told him, or where did he learn of those commandments? What were his sources?
As a scientist-type person, I’d have to say, I disagree with absolutely none of it.