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.

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Ask the Artist: @JoyceRoadStudios

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Comments

  • @JoyceRoadStudios said:
    The thing about performing and presenting Trumpian characters like this is that these people exist in real life and in our societies. They’re not caricatures or cardboard villains, they’re real people that need to be given a voice, because that’s the only way to understand them. We can’t hide from villains or terrorists, we have to really see them to understand. Art can be great at achieving that.

    We offer this example of misguided leadership for the benefit of future generations.
    People will say "He thinks he's Trump and it will end many careers in politics."

    What he does in the next 6 months will test the limits of a democratic system and make a great story for a @LinearLineman musical or Opera. The BLM project does have some catchy
    hip-hop numbers but @LinearLineman's hero for large projects is Philip Glass.

    Do you have any Philip Glass or John Adams stories?

  • edited September 2020

    @Gavinski said:
    Only had time to get a quick skim through this, but it was fascinating. I'm curious if you have ever had problems with losing your voice etc over the years and if so how you resolved them. You mentioned beer etc, certainly I found, sadly, that hanging out in bars, drinking and shouting over loud music was a killer for my voice.

    @Gavinski great question that I will answer as best as I can. Opera singers are trained to use their entire body as a support system for their voice. You need the mechanism to operate free of tension so you can produce that much sound and “push” the voice in a way. After a performance singers are physically exhausted in their body and legs but not in their throat. So I don’t sing a note or say a word in a bar or anywhere else without first relaxing and engaging my body and moving focused air. We are taught diaphragmatic-andominal breathing instead of clavicular breathing. The thing is most people who sing pop or with a mic or even talkers, they don’t support their voice at all. They talk on their vocal fry, collapse their body, and speak through muscular restrictions. Now imagine if everything you ever said was first prepared with a breath and expansion of your body and every word you said or sang rode on the breath. You would never get tired. We are trained for this. I’ve been fortunate enough to have never lost my voice, and even if I’m hoarse after a long show, I wake up fresh as a daisy after a good night’s sleep. Sure I won’t talk much the day of a show, and warm up slowly. But I actually warm up my body and all the blood flow before stage, not my voice. Sometimes I don’t even warm up. I’ve been trained to speak and sing into the mask and prepare everything with my body and breath. Singers will lose their voice if they’re sick and sing on it when the cords are swollen or dry, or if they’re singing way out of their range. People are too quick to forget about hydration and sleep. Anyway, beer or smoke or karaoke or spicy food or whatever, none of that bothers me because my voice has been trained to function in real life and on stage in a meticulously calibrated way. But it becomes second nature, it’s muscle memory. The point is people take their voices for granted, they just yell through their fry without considering the mechanics. Happy to help you with more on this!

  • edited September 2020

    That is beautiful, Aleksey.

  • @McD said:

    @JoyceRoadStudios said:
    The thing about performing and presenting Trumpian characters like this is that these people exist in real life and in our societies. They’re not caricatures or cardboard villains, they’re real people that need to be given a voice, because that’s the only way to understand them. We can’t hide from villains or terrorists, we have to really see them to understand. Art can be great at achieving that.

    We offer this example of misguided leadership for the benefit of future generations.
    People will say "He thinks he's Trump and it will end many careers in politics."

    What he does in the next 6 months will test the limits of a democratic system and make a great story for a @LinearLineman musical or Opera. The BLM project does have some catchy
    hip-hop numbers but @LinearLineman's hero for large projects is Philip Glass.

    Do you have any Philip Glass or John Adams stories?

    Sure I do! I worked with Philip Glass in 2015
    on his opera Appomattox, Christopher Hampton was the librettist. They were virtually at every rehearsal, and I remember we were woodshedding the role I was creating. So he’d tell me that we’d cut this system or that, or change a note to something else, etc... He was also very receptive to the production team and his own work wasn’t holy and sacred as he wrote it. For example the instrumental ending to Act 1 dragged on for a little too long and the director asked if he was willing to truncate it for dramatic flow and orchestra union overtime etc... so he just went to the piano and played a short bang bang rendition of it and said “like that?” and that’s how it was premiered. So he was quite receptive and collaborative. Also it’s a great opera that mirrors a lot of the unsavoriness going on today, and Philip was openly critical and worried about DJT even in 2015.

    I met John Adams in 2010, at a masterclass where I sang one of his pieces for him, “News” from Nixon in China. He said “if I had known you were around I would have written this for a more rich voice like yours!” and I died right there and then. It was a brief encounter with him but he was also gracious and supportive. This is the piece I had to sing for him, it’s kind of insane...

  • @JoyceRoadStudios said:
    The point is people take their voices for granted, they just yell through their fry without considering the mechanics.

    True but frankly people seem to prefer Rod Stewart, Phil Collins and Joe Cocker.
    We'd all get a laugh if they attempted to be heard over the orchestra at the Met
    without a mic.

    There's a similar quality to the tone of a symphonic trumpet player and Miles Davis.
    One aims for perfect control of the air stream and the other is focused on finding
    an emotional nuance.

    Sometimes the experiment in tone IS the quality people are attracted to.

    "Customers prefer the singer, yellin' through the fry."

    I found it incredible when Aretha Franklin could step in for an ailing Pavarotti to sing "Nessun Dorma" and still tear up another iteration of "Respect".

  • edited September 2020

    @McD said:

    @JoyceRoadStudios said:
    The point is people take their voices for granted, they just yell through their fry without considering the mechanics.

    True but frankly people seem to prefer Rod Stewart, Phil Collins and Joe Cocker.
    We'd all get a laugh if they attempted to be heard over the orchestra at the Met
    without a mic.

    There's a similar quality to the tone of a symphonic trumpet player and Miles Davis.
    One aims for perfect control of the air stream and the other is focused on finding
    an emotional nuance.

    Sometimes the experiment in tone IS the quality people are attracted to.

    "Customers prefer the singer, yellin' through the fry."

    I found it incredible when Aretha Franklin could step in for an ailing Pavarotti to sing "Nessun Dorma" and still tear up another iteration of "Respect".

    Aretha had great technique though. With popular singers you’re not listening for their technique, but rather the color of the timbre and their delivery. I love Springsteen’s voice, or Leonard Cohen, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Nina Simone. It’s the tone and the nuance of it all. But my larger point is there’s a reason why there are broadcast announcers and public speakers, narrators, opera singers. They’re trained to produce the voice with maximum projection and minimal strain, and lots of calibrated support. There’s a reason pop singers keep losing their voices and have vocal surgery. But I’ll still listen to them, polyps add that extra magic to the tone... the real vocal damage happens from whispering or under-supporting the voice, not from going for it. It’s quite athletic, just like a golf swing or ball throw. You have to prepare and follow through and engage the whole body, not tense up and squeeze and carefully under do it...

  • edited September 2020

    Great comment, Aleksey, yes, I'm aware of approaches like Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais etc, and have done a lot of yogic breathing, meditation etc too. In my case it seems to be more linked to things like 'silent reflux' actually, which I think bothers a lot of singers though they may not actually be aware of what it is. I need to be careful what I eat and drink - and smoke, 😂 very good tips here though!

  • edited September 2020

    @Gavinski said:
    Great comment, Aleksey, yes, I'm aware of approaches like Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais etc, and have done a lot of yogic breathing, meditation etc too. In my case it seems to be more linked to things like 'silent reflux' actually, which I think bothers a lot of singers though they may not actually be aware of what it is. I need to be careful what I eat and drink

    • and smoke, 😂 Great tips here though!

    Yes meals have to be timed properly. I will eat a big meal about 90 minutes before a show but not closer, to give it time to move down and digest. And generally if eat late at night I try not to get horizontal for at least an hour. Also the pressure of singing for some people can move the acid upward. Most importantly I would suggest doubling your water intake, it is the great lubricator of cords and flusher of systems. I don’t know, beer is food to me. Sure it could dry me out but it doesn’t cause reflux. Some people find specific foods cause it and that’s a reality, but I think eating foods that are more basic and less acidic, timing meals, and lots of water, can all help. You could have a silent culprit as you say, and it’s reasonable to do some detective work and weed it out. For sure the easiest and fastest way to lose your voice is reflux, and people don’t even know that it’s happened.

  • edited September 2020

    I remember Nixon, well. You do a great job. John Adams.... a Richard Rogers Philip Glass. All that Einstein On The Beach stuff. When I first heard it I was transfixed. It was music I had always wanted to create... and suddenly I didn’t have to! That happened in jazz piano for me with Liz Gorill/Kazzrie Jaxsen.

    Fantastic you are here. Brings some class to the joint.

  • I already know some things that are triggers for me. Unfortunately it's all the good stuff like onions, garlic, low pH foods, wine, beer and a bunch of other delicious items. Been trying to get it at the root for years, but no success so far, the search continues....

  • Oh, and coffee! All the f*ing great stuff I love to consume 😂😂

  • @Gavinski said:
    I already know some things that are triggers for me. Unfortunately it's all the good stuff like onions, garlic, low pH foods, wine, beer and a bunch of other delicious items. Been trying to get it at the root for years, but no success so far, the search continues....

    Of course onions and garlic! I don’t mess with that on show days, also my cast mates prefer good breath. I drink 3 cups of coffee but always black and never after 2pm on a show day. And I mostly drink hazy ipas. I have rules!

  • Of course onions and garlic!

    😂😂😂 Yeah, years of living in China and eating out too much have taken their toll

  • McDMcD
    edited September 2020

    @LinearLineman said:
    Fantastic you are here. Brings some class to the joint.

    It's analog and totally OT. Is there a decent AUv3 "Baritone"?
    Roughly the same range as the Euphonium when it stays in it's proper range.
    When it goes up an octave it's a fluegelhorn or a "counter tenor".

  • Might seem a strange question, but I’d like to mine your operatic knowledge for a film project I’m working on... what piece of opera would a near future Venetian who was working to revive the former glory of the (Venetian) empire listen to while they were in their down time?

  • edited September 2020

    @McD said:

    @LinearLineman said:
    Fantastic you are here. Brings some class to the joint.

    It's analogue and totally OT. Is there a decent AUv3 "Baritone"?
    Roughly the same range as the Euphonium when it stays in it's proper range.
    When it goes up an octave it's a fluegelhorn or a "counter tenor".

    Is there an AUv3 Baritone? Don’t know, I just turn myself on!

    One of my favorite vocal choir sounds is the Alchemists Choir in GarageBand, it is so eerie and real. And you can really customize the voicings and harmony, but it’s like a great one-off choir not for every song. Also Emo Chorus from VirSyn is pretty cool. And of course Bebot can be a baritone robot if you want him to be.

  • @Krupa said:
    Might seem a strange question, but I’d like to mine your operatic knowledge for a film project I’m working on... what piece of opera would a near future Venetian who was working to revive the former glory of the (Venetian) empire listen to while they were in their down time?

    What a question! From what you describe that would be something by Cavalli, or a selection from Monteverdi’s Poppea. Cavalli operas were the most frequently performed in Venice at the time, and Poppea is probably the most well known opera that premiered in Venice, in 1643. You would probably use a selection sung by castrati, or at least a male soprano or countertenor. Those were the glory days in Venice. Of course it depends on if you’re looking for someone singing, or Just orchestral music from an opera like Poppea which is great stuff. And you could consider Death in Venice by Benjamin Britten as an inside joke, that music is modern but so evocative and cinematic. It all depends on what color or mood you’re looking for. Sounds like it’s someone listening to Venetian
    glory days like 17th century?

  • That sounds like a great set of points for me to start my research, thank you! I think the castrati one might be an interesting angle as they’re listening to it on a gramophone that keeps jumping because they’re on a boat and his daughter is jumping up and down :)

    I think the character would probably hark to the sixteenth/seventeenth centuries, although the empire was beginning to show its age at that point, still powerful but decadent and beginning to lose influence.

    Your bio was a great read, what a story and an inspiration 🙏

  • @Krupa said:
    That sounds like a great set of points for me to start my research, thank you! I think the castrati one might be an interesting angle as they’re listening to it on a gramophone that keeps jumping because they’re on a boat and his daughter is jumping up and down :)

    I think the character would probably hark to the sixteenth/seventeenth centuries, although the empire was beginning to show its age at that point, still powerful but decadent and beginning to lose influence.

    Your bio was a great read, what a story and an inspiration 🙏

    Thank you for your kind words!

    Your premise is very interesting. Whatever you decide on, consider looking into the Death in Venice by Britten, at least for research, because it’s very evocative music with lots of water imagery and boat/beach scenes. Plenty of light tenor and countertenor singing, and it’s in English. Of course the Italian stuff would be more direct for your correlation, and yes the jumping gramophone is reminiscent of castrati losing their jewels. Lots of that in Cavalli, and Poppea which is actually about Nero.

  • Thank you, that’s all really good knowledge that I can put into this. It’s a small but important detail in this piece, which is actually a boat race between said Venetian and a Greek fisherman on a wager for spaghetti marinara... it’s a short (animated) film that I’m putting together in the hope that I can eventually raise interest in a feature with the same characters in a much more epic and dramatic situation...

    Thanks again!

  • Haha, I love the meandering and fascinating detours this thread is taking us on, what nuggets!

  • No questions here, just want to say how much I’ve enjoyed this thread. What an amazing voice @JoyceRoadStudios!!!

  • Tell us what you had on the calendar for 2020 and what actually happened. Any hints at the loss of income and what you have tried to do to avoid bankruptcy. You seem to be very good
    at finding a backup plan and making a buck.

  • @pbelgium said:
    No questions here, just want to say how much I’ve enjoyed this thread. What an amazing voice @JoyceRoadStudios!!!

    Thank you for your kind words @pbelgium, enjoyed your amp vs sim comparison.

  • Brilliant thread...

  • edited September 2020

    @McD said:
    Tell us what you had on the calendar for 2020 and what actually happened. Any hints at the loss of income and what you have tried to do to avoid bankruptcy. You seem to be very good
    at finding a backup plan and making a buck.

    My last performance was March 1 in Tulsa. Flying back to NYC through Dallas, people were already really concerned. My next contract was supposed to start in April at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm, in one of my favorite signature roles, and after that got cancelled, the rest fell like dominos. So Stockholm April-June gone, Colorado June-August gone. These were huge contracts with long show runs. Then the whole fall disappeared, Maryland, Oklahoma, Virginia, the Met! etc... and Australia next May just got cancelled. May!!! Right now I only have two contracts on the books that haven’t officially been cancelled, Barcelona in December and Austin in April. I suppose it’s un-American to talk about money matters, but I’ve lost 6 figures worth of executed contracts so far. That doesn’t even address all the contracts I was on hold for that now have to be reprogrammed. Anyway....

    Some companies have paid out a partial fee to artists, like 25%, in good faith. Others haven’t given anything except a promise to reschedule. Some gigs are gone for good. We’ve stayed afloat with income from last year. Not being on the road has benefits, I’ve been fully engaged in the father thing, I have a 13 month old right now. So haven’t been looking too heavily for other income. I mean, what skills do I even have?? So I’m really getting into studio recording and audio engineering, voice over... But I’m far far far from a professional. Having the creative outlet has been great though...

    Live performers such as Broadway and Opera performers have really been left in the dust with little to no protection. Of course the job situation is really bad all around, but the perfoming circuit doesn’t really have furlough or severance or other protections to weather times like these...

  • @JoyceRoadStudios said:
    He enters 30 minutes in and carries the rest of the show until he’s stabbed to death.

    I sometimes think that would be our fate should @Bluepunk and I ever unleash our noise on a live audience.

    Fascinating to read of such a different path taken through music and life.

  • @JoyceRoadStudios I seriously thought to myself reading all of this “I bet he could hit a Chris Cornell song out of the park.”

    What are your thoughts on using a certain voice for singing, i.e., there are those that sing with their “given” voice vs those who go about changing their voice slightly (or sometimes dramatically) to have a distinct tone or timbre? Not necessarily talking about vocal fry here, more about how certain “trends” in singers seem to show up here and there.

  • edited September 2020

    @mjcouche said:
    @JoyceRoadStudios I seriously thought to myself reading all of this “I bet he could hit a Chris Cornell song out of the park.”

    What are your thoughts on using a certain voice for singing, i.e., there are those that sing with their “given” voice vs those who go about changing their voice slightly (or sometimes dramatically) to have a distinct tone or timbre? Not necessarily talking about vocal fry here, more about how certain “trends” in singers seem to show up here and there.

    It’s a good question, reminds me of that scene in Ted where Seth MacFarlane makes fun of grunge singers. Or I like to think about all the singers that roll through American Idol or Got Talent. They could all have great chops but there’s a reason almost none of them are famous. None of them have singularly unique voices or timbres, they’re just imitating like parrots. And few of them can actually write great lyrics or vocal melodies. Voices that are famous or signed to major labels have a uniqueness but also the ability to write a great song and insert it into their vocal styles. And then to keep going they basically become a caricature of themselves so the audience knows it’s them singing. So take a singer like Layne Staley or Chris Cornell, their timbres are really unique, and their breath control and ability to wrap around vocal melodies and create compelling songs is what makes them special, and when they wail it actually sounds great rather than imitative. Eddie Vedder is unique. It’s not any of their faults that the singer from Creed or Nickleback does a poor imitation of them, but it’s more obvious because their music sucks. Anyway what I mean to say is singers will find a style or delivery that really suits them and is marketable, but then they have to maintain the caricature of themselves to keep selling records and it can start sounding dated. In the case of a Cornell or Staley, their timbres and melodic skills more than made up for it.

    Then you have the male falsetto style singing, and in that scene I will only accept Prince and Jeff Buckley. Or the Alanis Morrisette Cranberries Shakira style where they yodel crack at the end of every phrase. It’s what the masses want, recognizable styles that sell records, just like a specific trap style beat or something. The great singers transcend all that, no matter what style they’re in...

  • edited September 2020

    @mjcouche I like chameleonic singers like Bowie and Mike Patton as well. The thing is, when it comes to microphone technique, singing with your true pure voice isn’t necessarily the best for selling records. All the singers have to be stylized and hone in their own delivery, they’re all acoustical designers in a way. With a mic you can whisper a whole song. So it’s pretty obvious whose stylized singing is sincere and elevates them vs an imitation. Virtually all the singers we idolize aren’t using their “real” voice, at least in rock or alternative. Jazz and standards are different. And don’t even get me started on the indie rock voice, that anemic washed out singing that all sounds the same...

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