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.
Comments
Haha this is what I was thinking of but you had a good example with NickelCreed too.
Bowie does have a great ability to make changes to his voice while still sounding like himself.
The discussion about individuality is interesting actually, because, to the uninitiated, opera has a very distinct timbre and style. We can all hear in our heads what a typical male operatic voice sounds like, right? Despite differences in register etc. So is it hard to get this uniqueness within the demands for loudness called for by the medium of performing opera? I'd be interested to hear to what extent having your own style came naturally and to what extent it came from needing to sound in some way different from others @JoyceRoadStudios
A fascinating question that merits discussion and an in-depth answer, that I will get to after lunch.
Thank you for asking.
Remember, extra garlic! You're not performing today 😂
For the casual reader it's worth noting @JoyceRoadStudios is the forum member that exposed the audio qualities of the OverLoud TH-U "Rig Products"... he purchased and reviewed somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen Rig products and turned me and others onto several great OverLoud packages and made some demos to highlight the differences.
@flo26 picked up the trend and has also made several OverLoud demos that he's raving about.
To be fair @flo26 started the trend with his Brit1987 and Bogner Ecstasy demos. At that time I only had the Full Pack and the Bass Rigs and was participating in everyone’s excitement, then I got the Silver Jubilee rig because it was priced right and made me very happy, after that I went crazy for the Fender rigs and a few others. My videos have been very rudimentary but I’ll post more as there are so many great tones in the rigs. I found a bass preset yesterday that I’m so in love with. I only discovered Overloud TH-U a few weeks before they updated to AUv3, having heard about them as major players in the desktop market. Some time before that I had discovered Nembrini Crunck and then went in on all their amps and went crazy for them, not even knowing about the previous hum issue. So I missed all the hoopla and criticism, and they continued to hit it out of the park with Sound Master. There was more trending about Bias failing their customers and being buggy when I was scooping up apps. I feel like I entered the market at the perfect time, which is right before investing anything in the previous players like Bias or Tonestack and exactly at the time Nembrini and Overloud sorted themselves out to become the favorites they are today.
GE Labs too, they’re totally next level (could be a tad more stable/compatible though). Anyway as a guitar audiophile I’m nuts about this and what we have available to us today for the price of one meal.
Opera is wierd. They shout alot. But some shouting gives me goosebumps (Die Walküre, napalm edition and Verdi Otello)
@JoyceRoadStudios
Well I'm impressed. Both that you can sing opera, and also that you have the commitment to make a living out of it.
Are you familiar with this novel at all? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mixture_of_Frailties
Among other things it's about a young woman training to become an opera singer (in the 1950s), and I wondered how accurate it was. One of Davies earlier works, but worth a read maybe.
A friend saw a lecture/workshop by Ian Bostridge up in North Carolina at the music school there. And he said all the singing students spent all their time complaining about his crappy technique... Still not quite sure what to make of that except to say that I might run into a fire to try and save his recording of Winterreise...
By the way, all the mention of Death in Venice earlier makes me want to mention the Visconti movie and the gorgeous use of Mahler’s Symphony No 5 Adagietto. A book that would never get made into a movie in today’s world, perhaps, but what a piece of art.
A 'grunge' singer that never really got the success he deserved was Greg Dulli. Listen to some of the Afghan Whigs and his ability to really sell emotion, particularly extreme emotions, get me every time. Is he that much of a bastard in real life? Who knows, but he's certainly convincing in the role. Technically not the greatest of singers, but he makes it work.
And while I despise the current whiny indie thing, it is possible to do the folk rock thing with power. Listen to the (probably insane) David Eugene Richards on any of his projects (16 Horsepower, Wovenhand). A limited voice in some ways, but god the conviction as he tells you how his god of hell and brimstone is going to destroy you sinner. Nothing more metal than old time christianity I guess...
oh yes 16horsepower heh epic
I’m not sure what this whiny indie voice is supposed to be by the way. I think indie contains a multitude of different vocal styles.
Haven’t heard of that book but it looks interesting and I’ll check it out.
Singers spend a lot of time shit talking other singers, because it’s very competitive and subjective, and many are bitter. So you’ll have a famous singer like Ian Bostridge make one bad vowel sound and suddenly he’s crappy. Ian is a fantastic artist and interpreter, but plenty have a love-hate opinion of his voice. Peter Pears too, love-hate. Impossible to deny the artistry though. Students are too quick to forget that a career is a daily grind and you have to stand out there and deliver every day better than you did yesterday. So those that don’t know the real biz, they criticize.
What you’re describing as the distinct timbre and style of operatic singing has a few aspects. Mainly, the heavy use of vibrato, that’s a big one. Lots of people think that vibrato is unnatural and that singing with straight tone is natural, but it’s actually the opposite. A voice that’s free and flowing will always have natural vibrato, and singing with straight tone or in that stylized way is actually the stifling of your apparatus. If a singer’s vibrato is actually a wobble or it’s really fast and inconsistent, then it’s a matter of improper technique and tension. But think about string instruments like violins and guitars being played with vibrato, historically they’re just trying to imitate the human voice. Then you have the need to project the voice without amplification and the need to enunciate the words because you are basically storytelling. So all that added together gives off a very intense impression of what that singing is. And the implication is true in the sense that an opera singer’s main objective is to project to the back of the hall, be understood, sing in tune and in rhythm, and have the appropriate color for what they’re saying. Now the last one is a big one. Imagine not knowing a word of Italian or German and then it all kind of sounds like shouting. Now imagine you know what the words mean and the artist is shading and shaping every aspect of his phrase with interpretive power. And these composers wrote specific vowels on specific notes and scale degrees of a phrase just so the singer could interpret it the way it was meant to be for the emotion of it. So within the framework of this art form you have the interpretive power that every singer brings. Most are throwers and some are pitchers, to use a baseball term.
Singers spend a lot of time trying to sound beautiful or have the darkest tone or loudest or whatever, but people forget that opera is about text and words. When you feel what you say, the color of your voice acts accordingly and the audience knows. I always lead with text and intention when I sing, and it helps me sing better, more focused, and actually gives me more color, rather than just worrying about how pretty I sound. That’s boring after 90 seconds. As a singer you’re not supposed to listen to yourself, this is why your ears are behind your mouth. You hear yourself in your head, but that’s not the actual sound of how it is in a room, bouncing off the acoustic. So of course singing in tune and knowing the music is important and having a body and voice connection technically speaking, but it’s the craft of interpretation, the fact that someone can sing this sentence soft or someone else can sing it loud, not because of their voice but because of their life experience, that’s what hooks people into becoming fans I think.
@Gavinski There is nothing to be gained from sounding like someone else. Having a singular style and color which also happens to help you perform at your most optimal level is the only way. You’re not a different version of someone else, you’re just one constantly evolving version of yourself.
cool read thnx @JoyceRoadStudios I learned something
Me too. Breathe from the diaphragm... support the voice.
Another fascinating comment. What's the difference between a thrower and a pitcher, in terms of singing?
+1000
I kind of want to give this a +1000, but I also recognize that we all learn from, and are influenced by others, and that genre demands a certain amount of conformity. A lot of the problems happening in the world right now are due to the apotheosis of the idea of self. All musical traditions, whether classical, pop, or indie, involve some kind of adherence to a preconceived idea. The fun part is deviating in a (semi-) unique way. You're never a hundred percent original.
I know what you mean. I think I see it as tradition versus emulation versus imitation. Of course we are influenced and informed by the institutions that came before us, whether musical or societal. But there’s a big difference between imitating something someone did versus actually understanding why they did it. As an imitator you’re just a version of somebody else, but as someone who studies and understands tradition and then tries to emulate it with their own interpretive understanding, you expand it into something original. We are all imitators as children, in a way, but originality is bred by an individual’s journey I’d say.
Opera is straightjacketed by “correctness”. You have to sing all the correct notes and rhythms and words as the composer wrote them, so it becomes an exercise in trying to achieve perfection. You never get there, but it does breed technique and consistency. So just to gain entry into the profession this is the bottom line. On top of that you’re singing the same pieces over and over and over, presented as “great works of art”, no changes or deviations. For example, some kid singing one verse of Nessun Dorma on a TV show a 6th down is not and never was opera, nor is it Paul Potts or Bocelli. Opera is about acting and text, it is political theater that’s musicalized. Beaumarchais wrote the play Marriage of Figaro in 1778 and after passing many censors it was premiered in Paris in 1784. Mozart took this play to Da Ponte and they made the opera version that premiered in 1786. People in several countries from all walks of life went to the theater to see the play and the opera, and maybe for the first time in their lives they saw a work of art in which nobility was being questioned and ridiculed, servants were mouthing off to masters right to their face or behind their backs, and masters were portrayed as ordinary people, or worse, as inept buffoons who merely had the fortune of being born noble. These theatergoers walked home empowered and emboldened, thinking to themselves “wait a minute, you’re telling me that I can question authority?”. Cue the French Revolution. Whatever you think of it, this was the beginning of human rights, equality, liberty, and democracy. Art was responsible for this.
With indie bands or EDM groups releasing albums of their “original” music, it all sounds quite the same and imitative. There are always a few deviants, innovators, and originals. Opera or Symphony doesn’t pretend to be anything else than interpreting existing works of art using artists as vessels. But it’s so much more than just music, and not one voice nor artist is the same.
So you have a guy who can throw 100mph fastball with no movement and maybe has one other complementary pitch, once he’s gauged he’s totally hittable. Thrower. Then you have someone like a Greg Maddux, who used finesse, location, deception, and if he finally threw a fastball it seemed like lightning at 88mph. Pitcher. In opera “throwers” are the singers who discovered they can sing loud and they just go out there and make noise without much nuance or artistry. Or they are a singer who just wants to sound the prettiest, so they go out there and only worry about how pretty they sound. Now the “pitchers” of opera are the vocal actors who internalize every aspect of what they’re saying, who know how to shade every syllable or accent and caress a phrase perfectly in order to get its intention across. Pitchers will sing with much more dynamic control and variance, and the color of the voice will suit any given sentence at any time. They will use “method acting”. “Pitchers” are storytellers communicating with their audience and having their own original catharsis as well, rather than just noise makers. Throwers are imitators while pitchers are originals. There’s merit to both though. I’ve always been a thrower trying to become a pitcher, and I’ve gotten closer and closer just from my willingness to “go there”.
For example, some kid singing one verse of Nessun Dorma on a TV show a 6th down is not and never was opera, nor is it Paul Potts or Bocelli.
Oh god... That stuff is so embarrassing.
I'm curious how you feel about musicals. I adore opera for the reasons you've so eloquently explained, and for similar reasons tend to loathe musicals. The singers are bad, the music is mostly predictable. There are obviously exceptions - Kurt Weill, Westside story, Stephen Sondheim. But mostly they seem to be spectacles for people who don't like music very much, or at least like a very bland and predictable form of music.
Opera still can be dangerous. John Adams got into a lot of trouble over his (very good) opera Klinghoffer. And there was a new piece done recently in LA that upset a lot of people.
Damn it this thread has made me want to spend the weekend listening to a ton of opera. Thanks for that... I guess?
Love this ❤️
Ha, I've seen quite a few of these. And on record I guess it's fine (if you don't speak the language). I've seen it kill plenty of staged performances though.
As a kid I used to laugh at the fat ladies in Wagner, who could sing the hell out of it as they waddled improbably on stage. Tough art form.
@JoyceRoadStudios I'd like to join the appreciation here for such an interesting thread. For me as a wind instrument player (trumpet and saxophone) the breathing part - and the breathing techniques of singers - has always been particularily interesting. Good luck on getting your career on track again.
Aleksey, can you circle breathe? A circular breathing opera singer! Lol. I saw a photo of you with a guitar. What instruments do you play? And what, actually, are you doing with iOS?
Originality is central to my own musical feeling and thinking. Influences, certainly. Openness to creative risk, a must. Faith and Risk plus the sidestepping of self judging. Probably impossible in the world of opera and classical music. Imitation has been elevated at times. I think the ancient Egyptians did that at a certain point. The roots of Glass, Adams and Steve Reich are easily found in musical history. You could call these guys granular composers, maybe.
Aleksey, you might unseat @McD as our capstone of encyclopedic musical knowledge. Do you do woodworking and engine rebuilding also? I suspect you might.
That's a physical impossibility. A sax player puffs out his checks and maintains an airflow
by using that air in his mouth to keep the reed moving while he catches a quick breath in through the nose. With the larynx (sound box) in the throat how could you blow air across it
while intaking air using the same airway?
Now, there is a Appalachian music vocal technique known as Hillbilly Beatboxing. It is a kind of hiccupping, rhythmic wheeze that started in rural Tennessee more than 100 years ago.
Aleksey is a subject matter expert... but for spreading manure wide and deep you need a generalist. I am not concerned. You also have to be willing to be wrong most of the time to
encouraging the lurking experts to set the record straight to avoid the proliferation of "fake views".
@McD, so you mean resident bs artist... oh, sure... change your handle to @sinequanon and you’re good to go.
I might consider @sinequaalude but then I'd have to give you partial credit. You could claim you "made me the handle that I am" and have solid evidence. Assuming we can find this thread using "Search". I suspect sinequanon would do it. Let's re-group in 6 months on this question of credit.
@JoyceRoadStudios how are you marketing your Studio and hedging your bets for 2021 income? Do you have a practice giving online vocal lessons?