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.
Cannibals For Dinner / MidEast Drummer
My most ambitious attempt. All the iOS gremlins came out to buzz, readjust, freeze and otherwise make life difficult. Kind of a sonic adventure with a Zappa gestalt, leading to a frenzied climax. Eleven minutes, but please stick with it. I would like some feedback on this. Shit or a new high. Hard for me to tell. Too close. Loud listening recommended.
There was a discussion of context in what we want to hear as listeners. When I listen to modern recordings I hear a very processed sound which is what we have all come to know and love. Finding a certain sameness in this sound I have decided to go my own way with this. Clarity yes, compression, no. When someone says “hmmm... the production sucks.... it must be Mike Levy” then they have heard a genuine LinesrLineman production.
Two tracks of MidEast Drummer, one overlaid on the other, mixed up and down, in and out.
For those interested in the greatest iOS piano available, you won’t find it here. My cherished RC275 didn’t cut thru the mix. Cubasis acoustic piano patch was perfect. This is why the search for the ultimate sampled iOS piano is a valid pursuit for some, I am more of the right tool for the job approach. And it did answer an old question... are robots my partners and this track answers it for me in the affirmative. All tracks except the lead line were generated by the MidEast Drummer MIDI track. The bass was amazingly good and I never played a note of it. Screenshot of instruments included for the price of borrowing your ears for eleven minutes. Thanks!
Comments
New high water mark for sure. It actually reminds me of something that post-rock hipsters Tortoise would cook up--although they'd probably throw in an electric guitar played live or something. The production is spot on. Loved every minute.
Wow, @lukesleepwalker, you made my middle of the night. I’m sure you know that feeling of “what the hell am I doing!” that comes to all of us who create. Thank you so much and very much appreciated. Glad you liked the production.... clarity without compression is what I seek.... or something like that😈🤯😇!
I'm so over the compression wars!
What a wonderful heady brew! Like stumbling through a scene from a Paul Bowles novel. Really enjoyed this!
No matter how many times I read the thread title, I keep seeing “Cannabis for Dinner”.
Very odd. Just watched the first episode of 'Hannibal' (for the first time). Was very impressed. Surprised at how much etc. Left the theater (that room) and came here (this room) and this is the first thing I fed the head which is televisually full of empathy and liver and the uncertain and rituals and that which is not of the normal kilter. And, yes, cannibals. The lights are on. Quite sober. Most disturbing. Good.
I love your stuff man. I really do. So I hope you don’t take the following out of context. I fucking love this!!! Here’s the thing though, and it’s where you might be insulted. I recently decided I wanted to watch Westside Story. Hadn’t seen it, but heard it was a staple of American cinema. Convinced my lovely adorable wife to watch it on Sunday. I told her it was about american gangs in the 60s (she’s a keeper). So we started watching and she’s like, “what is this nonsense?” She’s looking at me like I’m an outer space creature and wondering if I’m trolling her. I tell her I’m not and to give it time. I’m secretly wondering whether I royally fucked up with the movie choice.......then. it. seeps. in... the rhythm. The amazing counterpoints between two songs, with different rhythms. It all comes together. And what’s most fucking fantastic about the movie is the raw collision, the real production of the music and the dancing. It’s mesmerizing, even half a decade later.
Your song brought the best of this back to me. It wasn’t eleven minutes. It was minutes. It’s not for everyone. Sorry if I compared this to a musical but it won’t satisfy the Snapchat or Instagram crowd. You need to let it seep in, forget everything the radio is telling you to enjoy and just absorb it.
Also, fuck the loudness wars.
Also, thank you.
@JohnnyGoodyear, what can I say? we are brothers under the skin ( and the skin is my favorite part!).
So glad you enjoyed this @gusgranite...Johnny has me thinking weird now... "heady Brew" ...visions of brain stew savored by head hunters. Yikes, must watch these titles.
Again @wim, I think you are envisioning a different type of "head" hunting, thanks for listening, oh mentor. Not familia with Bowles. Can you elucidate?
@Robert Reynolds, your words warm me deeply. One because of the personal touch to your post and the way you expressed the whole episode with your wife (I haven't read this type of thing in your posts before, probably just missed those that you have written), but also because of your remarkable insight into WSS. Most here don't remember what musicals were like in the fifties and sixties. But it was dismal, though filled with wonderful music by greats like Richard Rogers. WSS was a break through work. Not since Threepenny Opera (Berthold Brecht, Kurt Weil, for those too young to know anything about them except, maybe, Bobby Darren's "Mack the Knife") did two geniuses bring something almost entirely new to the NY stage.
Bernstein's indelible music (who ever began a song in a musical or elsewhere with a tonic to an augmented fourth in the melody (Maria)? When I heard that as a fifteen year old I was stunned. It was so odd... and beautiful. Then you add in Sondheim's lyrics. He could have had a brilliant career simply as a lyricist. Compared to the saccharine love song mainstays and "Corn as high as an elephant' eye" breadbasket American values in "Oklahoma", which brought the meaning of "corn" to a new level, WSS was groundbreaking. Add in, as you so rightly observe, the fantastic contrapuntal choreography and it is a total masterpiece. And, of course, the ever timely topic, immigration. It was followed by Evita and Hair and then musicals in general sunk into the Lloyd Weber morass of melodic narrative with nary a hitch,
Of course Bernstein wrote Candide and Sondheim went on to continue to break the musical sound barrier with Sweeney Todd, Pacific Overtures and many more, but WSS was a turning point and opportunity for musical theater. It's uncanny sur-realism and promise, as in vivid representation of human conflict and emotions, has remained merely a branch of what folks think of as a musical. As far from Broadway as Philip Glass' epic constructions. That WSS story drew on Romeo and Juliette bespeaks its profound undertaking. Cole Porter did Taming of the Shrew prior, but that was pretty lightweight Shakespeare. Porter was an undisputed genius, but he came from a different time. The integration of songs and action as done in WSS was yet to come.
Not sure why your wife was so turned off, Robert. I'd have to know more about her musical tastes, but you certainly were not wrong in thinking she woud be interested (but then again, you know her a lot better). I would be interested in her opinion about it and if a Sondheim oeuvre like Sweeney might go over better with her. But, I can easily understand the powerful reaction you had when seen for the first time (even after sixty years it wears damn well). Were you familiar with many of the songs?
And no, far from offended by the comparison. I have written four musicals in my time and attended a workshop run by Sondheim. I wish my stuff had had a tenth of what WSS story has, but, alas, except for the one I wrote about Nazis invading Czechoslovakia, they were pretty standard musical fare.
As you say, this piece is not for everyone, but certainly for the Zappa crowd. Your enthusiasm about Cannibals for Dinner buoys me aloft. I don't need mainstream... just the sensitive erudite 😉😁😘 Thank you so much!
Not my place to elucidate another man's comparison, but Bowles wrote The Sheltering Sky and was Mr. Tangier to many. Very interesting life. Worth ferreting through etc. Often wish I had dinner on a good night there with him and his table.
@JohnnyGoodyear yes, disoriented, paranoid, stoned and randy in Tangier. Why did we always says Tangiers with an s in England?
@LinearLineman Thanks for dropping some amazing knowledge about the genre on me. I really appreciated reading your perspective and insights into why WSS is so great. As far as my wife goes, I think I misrepresented her perspective. She loved it too, just as much as I did. She was just shocked by the first scene because she wasn’t actually expecting a musical when I told her I was putting on a movie about gangs. We’ve also not really watched a lot of musicals, so I think she may have had an immediate impression it was going to be a yawner. She’s now talking about going to see a musical live, which pretty much describes the impact it had on her.
Interesting and weird. Just out of cultural interest, what decade was she born in?
Faskinatin’, Robert. That is a totally different story. If she has seen Gangs of NY (highly recommended!)
It makes even more sense. I also recommend highly Jeff Wayne’s musical adaptation of War of the Worlds on YouTube. Choose the one with Richard Burton narrating, Rock band, string section and at least half a dozen analog synths, A hip 70s retro trip about the ultimate migration problem! I watched it several times and found it wonderful. I also related to that one cause I did a musical based on The Time Machine.
Uuuu-laaa! (Watch the musical).
PS I think Sweeney Todd is on YouTube as well. Unbelievable! Angela Lansbury and that Canadian guy whose name I can’t remember at the moment. Fantastic music about the penny thriller barber butcher,
Late 70’s but it’s more cultural than era, I think. She’s from a very small town in Newfoundland where their entertainment is very different from ours.
Thanks LL. These are great suggestions. We will check them out!
Ah. Makes sense. I lived in a small slow Maine village and one of my far-flung neighbors had a cabin in Newfoundland where he'd go 'when things get all a bit too busy round here'
Wow @LinearLineman ... Congratulations, sounds awesome ! I love it, very Zappa!
This approach: starting with a really powerful rhythmic context and layering your melodic insights over the top using unusual instrumental sounds (leaving the piano for a moment) works really well to pull me back into your musical universe. I was expecting something with some much rhythmic drive and structure. It shows significant growth for you using IOS for composing as an alternative to your large body of spontaneous compositions.
You might be interested in an App called "Axon 2" as an additional source of structured rhythm that's a contrast to the Lumbeats drummers to give us groove based listeners a solid base to create over.
NOTE: It has some presets that sound closer to real instruments like Marimbas, etc and a lot of synth'y industrial sounding setups.
Doug made a demo video of it:
@LuisMartinez, jeez. The great (but humble) man himself! Luis, I cannot tell you how much it means to me to get praise from someone who has given me so much pleasure with his creations. I know I speak for most here when I say my admiration for you is unbounded. You are just so damn clever! Up there with @michael in the genius circle. So thank you very much, for everything. I used two different tracks of MEDrummer on this. The combination, especially with the jam intensity at max, produced some great algorithmic solos which I mixed in and out with each other. And, yes, very Zappa.
I have been using SoftDrummer and now MidEast Drummer in some unconventional (as I describe above) ways. In In Sticks and Snares (below) I built a track in Soft Drummer and duplicated it three times, so four instances. Then in each of the four tracks I duplicated the same track two times and overlaid them, with overlaps each time I added a new duplicate. Then I staggered all four tracks against each other. I mixed each track in and out as best I could and the result was nice and dense. Please give your ears to this...
Looking at AfroLatin and Brazil Drummer now. I finally figured out the edit mode (duh) and love building my own jam intensities with that great ( and easy to use) feature. The possibilities with these apps are endless and you made it so! Gratitude!
@McD, thank you for listening and liking this one. You know how much I regard your opinion. I will definitely look at Axon2. You see more structure here? Hmmmm.....
@LuisMartinez, Thank you so much. You don't know how much it means to get praise from you. I cannot tell you ( but I will) how incredible and inspiring your tools have been to create with. I know I speak for most of us here when I say my admiration for you is unbounded. You are up there with @michael in the genius circle! Yes, this is Zappa inspired and I have been using MEDrummer and Soft Drummer in some unconventional ways lately. Here I created two separate drum tracks and mixed them against each other throughout the piece. The combination of ratcheted jam intensities and algorithmic magic made for some terrific breaks, as you heard.
In the track below I recorded a track with Soft Drummer, duped it and created four tracks. In each track I duped the original two times and overlaid them. Then I staggered the four tracks against each other, lining up to the beat. It created some impactful density, I thought. Please give your ears a listen and thanks again for these unique instruments. I wish you continued success. Gratitude!
@McD, thanks so much for listening and liking. You know how much I value your opinion! I certainly will look at Axon2. Thanks for the suggestion.
@Linearlineman wrote: "You see more structure here? Hmmmm....."
Yes. The strict use of rhythm to make a danceable groove is rare in your work. You have even added drums later and just got the tempos of your track "close enough" but that to me is a type of chaos (anti-structure). Being the whole piece on a driving drum track and play close to it made a big difference for me. I can't take 10 minutes of "close enough" drumming.
It's like an out of tune piano to a person with perfect pitch (stop the madness).
You also approached the long form in an interesting way... sliding in one new voice and then adding another. Mixing textures into and out of the track like a composer would paint with the orchestra to build a long form piece. Not nearly as repetitious as some of the projects where you let your musical muse loose and the piece doesn't have a lot of textural variations. The strings get a section and later the keyboard draws the focus. It keeps the listener more engaged.
I do realize that this type of creation doesn't use your strongest suite of skills which lie in
polyphonic improvisation but it's good to see you compositing a piece using Cubasis as the canvas. This is how you'd create a film score with precise timings and textures to match the moment.
I has always said that I would have wanted to live Bowles' life.
Brilliant writer, talented composer, living in Tangier wearing sun-bleached clothing while smoking hashish all day. Who wouldn't want that?
I recorded this little thing inspired by him a few years ago:
Those drums....those damn drums! So hypnotic!
It held my attention all the way though and loved the build ups and the choice of sounds. Reminded me of an old black and white film score from the late 60s early 70s. No particular file, just the feel. Excellent stuff!
VERY Cannabis for dinner there Captain. And fine pipes, but be very careful. Imagine you will like the new TAQS if it ever gets some ins and outs....
Thanks!
PSA: "Hamish, clean those pipes!"