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 Long Before Jedi Status?
So I’ve been learning iOS production for a few months. Always been a writer but didn’t play any instruments growing up. Did read a bit on music theory a few years ago and have a very good sense of rhythm from bboying my whole life. Needed some beats for my lyrics so I decided to learn how to produce and iOS seemed like the best option based on convenience and price. I am often stunned by the depth of knowledge many of you on the forum possess. Sometimes I’ll jump into a thread and it might as well be written in Aramaic or Hieroglyphics. I want to learn how to automate a delay so I search the forum and find a thread where someone will inevitably start citing what sounds like high level string theory and quantum superposition as it relates to a reverb tail. I feel silly asking how much twisty to put on knob A so I tuck tail and go fiddle with stuff until I figure it out or convince myself the sound does not need automated delay. My question is, how long did it take you to achieve this depth of knowledge and level of mastery. For me, the hill seems insurmountable sometimes so I’m curious of the arch for some of the wizards on here.
Comments
I’ve been at it for about 40 years, roughly, and still learning more every day.
The hill is never insurmountable, it’s just a long walk sometimes. You really shouldn’t feel like it’s silly to ask questions though - we’ve all been there, an have often stuck out our thumb to get a lift to the top of the hill.
It's most of the time refreshing to 'refresh the memory' when questions pop up, especially if it's not something that is super obvious...
Like one of my teachers said back in the early days.
There are no stupid questions only stupid answers!
And if a stupid question should pop up it's better to stay quiet and let the person who asked the question figure it out the answer for them selves which they in many cases do with a bit of effort and rtfm.
One way I learn the apps is to dig thru them and see what the knobs, sliders and buttons do, it's not like the device will explode but one can bump into a bug and crash them apps
I saved up money for years to buy a reel-to-reel tape deck in 1974 (I was 13) and have been buying and studying gear since then. A huge percentage of the basics that I know were learned over a few years during high school. I bought every music magazine that talked about music gear and got books from the library about recording. And read the manuals of every piece of gear I had. Then I spent afternoons in the electronic music studio at the local junior college when I was in high school.
I think one of the problems that people have now that the tools are cheap is that they get tons of stuff and don't have the time to learn any of it in depth. I could only afford a piece of gear every once in a rare while. So, I'd be exhaustive in figuring out how to use it -- and I'd read every interview with every music producer I could and every guitar player and keyboard player. If I didn't understand something, I would pester people till I learned what it meant.
So, for example, when I finally bought a synth (a single oscillator Arp synth) that was all I had. So, I spent all my time figuring out how everything worked. It was the only keyboard I had for years.
There were a handful of books in our library system about recording engineering and I'd read those.
The journey is a lot shorter if you're able to embrace rather than resent or fear the learning challenges. But that's not the right path for everyone. It has a lot to do with what inspires or is fun for you. If just creating music is your passion then quirks and obstacles are simply frustrations and hinderances to that. That's fine! Better to focus on making music the most direct way you can and only deal with the roadblocks that you need to at the time, getting as much help as you can along the way.
It may sound odd, but there are some people who get as much satisfaction from solving technical challenges as they do creating art. Believe it or not, they're both creative endeavors! And, they don't have to be mutually exclusive. I regularly go off to figure something out based on a question here, and end up spending the entire evening creating music inspired by that beginning. Not everyone is like that though.
I do think that people can learn to be less frustrated with obstacles, both technical and creative, by being more accepting of those challenges, and by pushing themselves out of their comfort zone from time to time. Timing is important. During a good jam session is not the time to try out some new midi routing or to learn a new synth. I have definite times when I'm in a problem solving zone, and times when I just feel like making a groove. Often one leads to the other, but what's important is I do what I'm in the mood for at the time.
That said, we're all different! If creativity is the only thing that's fun and technical challenges are nothing but frustration then there's no reason to fight that. Perspectives do change too. Over time, many of the things that seemed impossible to understand earlier get absorbed and you find that there're understandable later on.
@wim that was right on point.
Jedi status heh, Pre fader or Darth Vader...in the end it's the musical (well any noise) results that matters, no need to know everything. Start with a DAW BM3 c3 Auria Zenbeats Garageband. .. or Koala sampler and Loopy Audiobus (modular setup)
A common thread running through many of the most learned folks I’ve run across is modesty. Coming from environments (non creative) where the least skilled expel the most gas, it is really refreshing. For example, @gsm909 stating that 40 years in they’re still learning or @wim whom I’ve learned from reading posts is on some yoda ish and still approaches questions with patience and grace. I do see a tad bit of jock mentality from time to time in response to some noob questions/suggestions, but it’s rare and I also take into account that hierarchies exist in all communities. My freshman year, I had an English lit professor who could quote so many famous works from memory and it felt impossible to reach that point. At 19 I thought it was way too late to learn and know so much about any given subject. Funny now at over twice that age feeling like the ship had sailed at 19. Yet, somehow, I still feel that way now sometimes, that’s why I’m curious about people’s individual arcs. At this point, I’ve learned about the importance of mixing in mono, doing reverbs and delays as send fx, tempo syncing reverbs based on predelay times, sidechaining delays, choking samples... in other words, I’ve learned just enough to produce and mix my first song start to finish at a level that sounds good in my estimation. But spending a lot of time on this forum teaches me that there is so much more to learn. I’m eager and also patient (mostly) to reach the point of comfortable competency where I don’t have to constantly check my notes or second guess myself. Thank you all for your stories and advice, makes the voyage up the mountain seem more manageable.
@noob Darth Fader, dope idea for a name, I’m sure it’s taken
take it! its yours
@king_picadillo you mite get some insights from this thread. btw we should summon Scooby and Shaggy @McD @LinearLineman for some tips
What wim said...
Dr Bob Moog is remembered as a great pioneer of sound and synthesizer design.
(I think of him as one of the greatest musical pioneers)
Was he also a musician who put out albums? There are none that I'm aware of.... What I mean by that is that there can be many ways to enjoy music. Some will find enjoyment in contemplating the complexities of sound design. Other will find enjoyment in laying down tracks and creating musical compositions.
What is great about a music community such as this.... Is people with varied categories of musical interest can share what they have learned with others, and the result of hearing of what others are interested in, can inspire people with differing musical interests, in ways that are relative to their own interest.
Different musical goals for different people.
ditto, and not a jedi.
This guy on the other hand can raise the ship out of the water
https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBillsTunes/featured
Its never too late. In fact, I think it's the opposite. I've come further the last 5 years both creatively and technologically than I did in the prior 30. Some people are blessed with huge amounts of talent and don't need much discipline to take off. Others, like me, need, but lacked, the willpower and discipline that builds with age.
Not that there aren't still plenty of things that can kick my ass.
Same, and not interested in becoming a Jedi.
Just having fun.
Hopefully not a sith either.
I remember in an ancient interview there was talk of a possible Alan Parsons Project tour.
Alan was asked what his role would be during the tour and he replied that perhaps he might be able to sweep it after the shows.
A musical giant who was totally honest about his incredible musical strengths — yet humble and completely at peace with with a lack of certain skills that others might perceive as weaknesses...
In addition to what's been said, remember not to make your goals too lofty. Rome wasn't built in a day. Or "Patience you must have, my young Padawan," said Yoda.
Setting piecemeal smaller goals so you can feel yourself making progress and reaching each one is helpful to make sure you can keep going and don't just give up thinking something is too difficult. So forget about becoming a Jedi for now. Maybe start by aiming at the equivalent of young Luke shooting womp rats back on Tatooine: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/T-16_skyhopper
I can only say work with what you got. There are infinite solutions at any musical juncture. No one can compare these to the actuality. If it is pleasing, one choice is as good as another.
In other words, it doesn’t matter, IMO, what you might know in the future. Rather, it is maneuvering what one brings to the table at the very moment of creating. And that always is enough if you express it to the fullest.
Just like to say re the above that this very afternoon, at age 58, after, um, about a year and a half of swearing, a lot of stupid questions (many of which I posted here), a lot of manual reading, YouTube watching, head scratching and occasional upwelling of despair at the thought that my reach for gadgets had totally exceeded my grasp of them, I finally managed to make my Iconnect Audio 4+, er... connect, to my little Soundcraft desk, (as an Aggregate Device, with the Iconnect, no less!), aging MacBook Pro, R8 digital recorder, IPad, Launchcontrol XL, Beatstep & Launchpad Pros, three hardware synths, Launchpad mini, and a Korg SQ1 sequencer, all running at once and recording both Audio and midi into Ableton pretty much in the way I thought it theoretically could...
(This incidentally, follows on from the previous 40 years of buying gear that I never learned to use properly.)
Now it feels like I’ve built a giant house of cards, and I’m holding my breath in case it all falls over again...
...Just don’t ask me how I did it. I don’t really know!
(Oh, and I still haven’t worked out how to get this setup to record Audio back into the iPad or play any apps on it via MIDI from Ableton, the communication seems to be strictly one way, IPad to Ableton, but now I’m terrified of changing anything in case I break it all again.)
Still... progress, I guess?
Until the next Apple update, anyway.
Some great points being made here...I especially agree with @wim on this:
"During a good jam session is not the time to try out some new midi routing or to learn a new synth. I have definite times when I'm in a problem solving zone, and times when I just feel like making a groove. Often one leads to the other, but what's important is I do what I'm in the mood for at the time."
I'm finally getting to the point where I can begin a jam session or song concept by assembling an elaborate FX chain, and I think that's a main goal. To just know what you're in the mood to hear, and slap on a downward expander, saturator, low pass, reverb, compressor...to be able to think, "I'll use a mix bus here...make this effect about 60% wet...and automate this frequency knob with a ramp LFO feeding into a square LFO."
I don't know the science behind every type of reverb or filter, and that's probably because I've done the opposite of what @espiegel123 did. I started learning in 2017, on an iPad Mini 4, and immediately began collecting effects.
But I did allow myself to modularize my workflow as @wim suggested. Synth presets, AUM presets, jamming, and songwriting are separate processes. (Mozaic scripting too, but I kind of took the summer off from that due to back pain.) I accepted that if I want to create songs that I'm happy with...then it's okay to devote a session to learning a synth, or spend my time watching YouTube, or reading forum posts. And I never, ever just open up a sequencer and start placing notes into a loop anymore. That may work for people who produce house, experimental electronica, or hip hop beats.
Artists in those genres really seem to enjoy their creative process, and they often make great tutorials. They have more fun than me, but my brain doesn't work the same way. What should my workflow look like if I'm trying to create new genres that incorporate prog and pop elements? That's the question, that's the journey. Plus, I'm just nostalgic for the era when ambition was defined by trying to write a classic album, rather than by being hard-working and prolific. I think there's a social pressure to follow a formula that works for YouTubers and sync artists.
👆 👍
20 years ago I bought a digital 8-track and recorded anything and everything without fear. Then I learnt about compressors and eq and all technical things and didn’t record half as much because I worried I didn’t have the right settings.
Now, with this wonderful iOS music village, I can balance a bit of knowledge with some serious crazy.
I can’t be like half the people on here with their knowledge but I need to remember to be me and make what I make. I’m here each day to learn though and I truly love this forum.
The trick, @king_picadillo , is to learn just enough to be able to make music, without learning so much that it becomes an inhibitor.
I fear my insatiable thirst for technical knowledge killed my love of photography. I'm determined not to let that happen to my music-making.
Besides, most producers will face far greater mental obstacles to releasing music than the mere trifling technical stuff.
...and the next time you might feel intimidated by the breadth of another forum user's technical knowledge, it may help you to remember these famous words from George Bernard Shaw...
IMO the key to this is separation. Some people may be able to be creative while thinking about things like mixing, EQ and compression, but I bet most people are better off focusing on composition, mangling, mixing, and mastering (for example) separately. Same for learning new stuff, which should expand one's horizons, but like you say, can get in the way.
It's great to dabble in all of those and to learn as much as possible, but maybe not all at once. I forget who originally posted about separating phases of music making, but it totally changed my outlook and liberated me like nothing else has since I started to make music. Since I started thinking that way, I've had more fun and come closer to making things I like than I ever have.
@king_picadillo thanks for this thread! I'm in a similar position to you. Having just started production during the pandemic, it's great to hear the perspectives from the experienced gurus on here and their advice for the newbies. Thanks to all of you for being open and sharing your knowledge!
Shot my first Womp Rat, posted in general. Got the stones to post it from all the encouragement on this thread.
@Lil_Stu07 i feel you. I once started this journey many years ago on desktop and didn’t get anywhere due to lack of support from forums like this. Greatest resource on earth as far as I’m concerned.
For convenience sake.