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.
How many should a band line-up be?
This is a bit of an odd question, I appreciate, but let’s see if there’s consensus.
Imagine you’re forming a band and you want to play live and stuff like that. Imagine you’re a pop band, you know, 3 minute pop singles, that sort of ethos. Perhaps a synth band, perhaps a guitar band, doesn’t matter too much. Nothing esoteric or outlierish. The band doesn’t rely on backing tapes, looping or any artificial means of bulking up extra parts.
I personally have a lot of respect for three-piece bands, I think there’s been some excellent examples through the past many decades, and that a three piece has some special magic and energy that works. The Jam. Police. Young Marble Giants. Mötüüürhëad. Zed Zed Top. ELP. Bananarama. Haim (with which I share my birthday with one member). Two Door Cinema Club. I’m sure you can add more.
But four piece bands have a special energy too. The classic Kraftwerk line-up. Bucks Fizz. Queen. Sweet. The ‘Ooo. Ultravox (at one point). And so many more, I’m sure I’ve not forgotten any.
What do you think the ideal line-up quantity should be? I mean, Earth Wind and Fire (plus The Emotions) must’ve involved quite a lot of slicing up of the takings to sign the pay cheques.
Comments
The stuff Primus can do with three people is beyond incredible and has made me always prefer the three piece set up. Four is a good balance as well. P funk size is huge and awesome and the sound is so big but there’s so much to have to think about with a band that size.
Best projects I played (bass) where 3 to max 4 people
@Korakios
same here (bass)
Rush then Tool set the standards!
I think the golden rule is one guitar max (playing only with wah and infinite delay on tube amp facing his ears)
I'm going with seven. But, that's because I recently saw King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard live and it was incredible.
Hmmm, maybe three. Saw Animals as Leaders recently too.
Maybe five. Steven Wilson a couple of years ago was one of the best concerts I've ever seen.
...
One of my favorite local bands had six people - all multi-instrumentalists, and all songwriters. Lots of trading instruments around during shows. Instrumentation included guitars, electric piano, pedal steel (studio only), viola, melodica, bass, and drums. They occasionally had guest horn players.
I haven't seen band with multiple songwriters last this long. They've got something special.
I feel like no band can really call itself a "real" band without 100 or more players
Something I don’t like is seeing a band where you can’t really hear some of the instruments. Often this is a keyboard player if there is also a guitarist; other times it’s a second guitar player - especially when the second guitarist is the singer just strumming along. I’ve seen percussion players who are just inaudible (or their parts are unnecessary) against the drummer.
I’m a big three piece fan where the singer is also the drummer, bass player or the guitarist. Obviously that’s four parts but I find it’s so much stronger working with just two other people, musically and the rest. Sometimes I feel like I’ve never really met some of the people in bigger bands - even after playing many gigs with them. And the chances of everyone’s taste aligning are decreasingly slim with more people.
But four is ok, too, especially if you’ve got essential keyboard sounds. My first thought here was Metric where Emily Haynes also plays keys some of the time.
So three if it works, otherwise four.
3 piece bands are amazing. One of my favorites is Coroner if you are into metal.
Guitar, bass, drums, it's all you need.
Best four piece bands: Beatles, Black Sabbath, Kyuss.
Usually once a band adds a keyboard player, then he's the fifth: Deep Purple, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Faith No More.
Don’t stress yourself play with 4 people. 3 means everyone has a serious amount of work and work arounds. If you play with backing tracks do whatever you want or just hit play and dance around and you can play a 0 piece band. Ask yourself if you need a dedicated sax, kazoo, and musical saw player and take it from there if that is the extra push you need to succeed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_duo
Split the profits fifty fifty.
3-piece is good!
Three for the rhythm section and the singer, three in the horn section and three sweet background singers. Playing live is for the eyes too.
Two ... Chas n Dave ... or just Dave as he is now ?
From a gigging perspective, I enjoy the safety in numbers, if not the financial rewards.
The folky Pogues-ish band I was in started as a four piece. During a French tour, I had to put down my bass and deal with some young farmers who were throwing chairs at us (everyone’s a critic). By the end of the year the band had swelled to a 10 piece - we’d file into the pub, drink the bar dry, take to the stage and blow the roof off. No-one dared take aim with furniture, we’d become a fearsome prospect, and I could just get on with the job of bass playing.
I realise this approach wouldn’t work for everyone, but we played some rough old venues.
I’m in a 5 piece alt-rock band (https://weusedtoseethesky.com) and it really shows when one of us can’t make rehearsal!
I'd say six: singer, guitar x 2, bass, keys, drummer...
I think you should go for 954.
I will say... one?
Just kidding
I think the most you can afford will be a great number.
That's the way I think about it. Vocal, drums, low end, mid/high. So many 'power trios,' but I think about great examples like Morphine too that fit this scheme.
I am in two four piece and one six piece band. I also do solo and duo gigs. It all depends on what your goal is. Three piece power trio is great fun though.
That means, we also only need four tracks
The reason I ask is that I've noticed that the synth stuff I've been composing over the past several decades is overly complex.
I listen back and think that I had no real discrimination in terms of separation of parts (partly because I knew no limits in terms of buying analogue synths in the 90s, or adding more instruments to a Gadget composition these days). Drums that live alongside something percussive which adds to something repetitive and rhythmic but still unpitched, side by side with some regularly triggered thing possibly pitched because I shove everything through a flanger then a phaser. A mess of bass generating sound sources, blending into lower mid somethings, into higher mid something or others, ending up in something competing with lead lines, and of course lead lines competing with my vocal lines. Pads which are probably percussion which are probably also lead lines.
If I were a band, I'd have to be more disciplined in this. I'd have to supply lots of space and air. I'd have to pay attention to who plays which role in terms of sound. Just because I've got vast amounts of tracks or mixer inputs doesn't mean I have to fill them. So, I've been thinking about three piece and four piece compositions, as if that's the target. It'd be quite interesting to actually form a band, but none of my songs are playable as a band, and it shows.
This is Talking Heads as a three piece before they added Brian Eno. Oh, and a drummer from another band.
I'm not sure they were better as a three piece, but they weren't worse.
Yep, I've been thinking about how I used to really fight against the limitations of my four-track Tascam (which was basically a three track because I had track four on sync tone all the time).
I wouldn't like just four tracks now, but I would like to put all the tracks to the test and see if they qualify, listen to whether they're earning the rent or not, and keep it down to only the tracks I'd want paid members of a band to have to play. If it's just some feeble additional thing that's only there because it can be, I now want to translate that into someone's wages and then see if it still deserves to be there.
I've been using a 8 track limitation with AUM for a few months with some success. If you look at most "DAWless" hardware jams, they don't use lots of tracks or instruments like you could do in, you know, a DAW. Same with modular jams, limited voice count but lots of modulation.
So my typical setup is 4 synth tracks (chords, FX/pads, melody/lead, bass) + 4 drum tracks (kick, snare, hats, other percussion) plus sends and master track.
Similarly, an OPZ is 16 tracks but only 8 tracks are instruments. Digitone is 4 tracks, Digitakt is 8 tracks. Less is more as they say.
From composition standpoint 4 tracks to 8 tracks are the way to go for me. If you have a look it seems a common approach from apps to mixing workflow (subgrouping into less than 8 groups).
GTL gives you 4 layers (plus 4 more at main group being the common part between song parts like drums vs fills) or Launchpad/GrooveBox gives you 8 slots which fulfill them isn’t a must, just an option.
Drum bass melodic and vocals seems enough to make a picture in my book and most of the time less is more...
So we’re not talking about Marching bands right?
why not?
12 paired just in high winds, low winds, drums (high and low if you want too), melodic (xilophone and even if you bring some strings)... makes them less than 8 and near to 4...
If you want to be able to cover (not literally) a great amount of rock and pop genres and history, 4 is sufficient (dr,b,g,k) if one of them can do the lead vocals too. You can cover (literally) about 95% of all songs ever written.
7 is better, if 5 to 7 is a sharp horn section.
I used to think 2 guitars, a bass, and a drums, with one of the three guitarists taking lead vocals and the other 2 providing bgvs. Lean and efficient, while being able to maximize almost all studio vocal harmonies. So pretty much the Beatles/Cheap Trick.
But over time I've learned the real answer is Booker T. & the MGs. There's something that much leaner about everybody doing their own thing on a single instrument. Guitar bass drums and keys or synth.