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.
Ask the Artist: @mlau (Laurent Leclère of Mi and L'au)
Laurent provided a brief bio as an introduction:
I began playing clarinet and saxophone with my dad when i was a kid, then took on the trumpet at the conservatory. Later on, i got an old drum kit and that became my main instrument.
I played in many bands, until i flew to Oregon and California where i got a Martin guitar. I felt the need to compose my own songs. And so did i.
When i met Mira, the other half of MI AND L'AU, we spontaneously began to sing and write music together.
At the time, i had work in different fields. I taught philosophy for a very short time, worked with Martin Margiela and Agnes B, and finally, worked for a cinema production company.
We decided to go to Finland, where we lived by a lake for a while. There, we wrote many songs, sent about 50 to Michael Gira - young god records -
He came to Finland, we played a gig together, and he signed us. Before making the overdub in Brooklyn, Josephine Foster invited us to tour Europe during three months.
When our first album got released, we started to tour US extensively
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/arts/music/songs-born-in-a-cabin.html
and then Europe, US, Europe again etc … all in all, between 2005 and 2010 we played about 1000 gigs. Many festivals like Roskilde, Green man festival, etc
Touring the way we did, almost everyday , is not easy. We stopped, because we felt like two astronauts. It was time to rebuild the body and so we lived in Valencia, spain, for a while.
We recorded our second album with our good friends Enrique Ara and Arturo vaquero. We wanted to have classical musicians and gypsies playing in the same project.
Meanwhile, i was looking for a drum machine, and as i discovered ELEKTRON, it was the week when they released the Octatrack. I had never sample anything, the " machine " seemed attractive but way to complex and i had many things to do, like recording our third album.
I got a computer and bought a plugin called ALCHEMY which you can find nowadays in Logic pro. Our third album was recorded with Alchemy. That was our first experience with the " machines "
we then got ourselves a virus ti2 and made our 4th album almost entirely with this synth.
In 2016, we decided to go back to the lake and record live in our cabin. The album is made with a guitar, a piano and mira's vocals. We just put mics in the room and went for it.
In 2018, our house burned in Helsinki. The conjonction of the strange noises i heard during the fire, and the death of Mika Vainio a year before, made me buy the Octatrack and the Digitakt.
That's when i really immersed myself in, let's call it, electronic music. I felt the need to find a way to recreate this fire musically.
We released this album in 2019.
Then, while surfing on youtube, i saw someone using AUM and a bunch of apps. I felt at home immediately and got an ipad.
i feel like a student in music. I like to learn about different kind of music, different instruments, different productions, etc
last app i fell for
is auGEN x , last week. And i have a blast. I love SeGments too. Piano roll, riffer are my go go. Yukawa, audiostretch, poly 2, bleass, FAC bundle, playbeat, spectrum, bram bos, shape synth, Xequence2, audiobus 3, midi lfo's, Koala FX, so many apps were recommended to me on this forum, i'd like to thank you all and hope this short note finds you well and in good spirits
L'Au
Feel free to ask questions in any language and we can use
https://www.deepl.com/en/translator
to follow along.
Comments
Are you working on a new album?
Bread is cooking, yes. We’re right in the middle of it. It will be a collection of songs. We will release it in 2021. In December, we have a little photo exhibition in Helsinki, and will publish a book for a new publishing comp called VALTA. Hand made books by Antti Valta, who will also release the first numero of his new magazine called “ Keppihepo “ . Everybody is welcome to visit minibar, near the Orion Cinema. We will sing a bunch of new songs, and play an electronic set with a digitakt, Octatrack and ipad.
@mlau what a charming and romantic story. I'm listening to some of your stuff now, was happy to find it on the app I generally use to stream music. Really great stuff!
Which albums did you start with? Any tracks that you recommend? There are 4 albums to choose from on iTunes:
I listened to some from Good Morning Jokers - Bingo, for example @McD
Good choice. I'm afraid "Four Pair of Wings" will make me buy the Octatrack and the Digitakt
too.
I enjoyed Four pair of wings/Four pair of wings and More than we can say/H2O from the few i randomly picked. 👍🏻
Just tell yourself you don't need them cos you've got Octachron and Drambo 😂@McD
@McD GOOD MORNING JOKERS is an acoustic album mixed with classical instruments and gipsies interruptions 🙃 it’s a good start.
or
or
then you can check our first album with young god records,
or
and FOUR PAIR OF WINGS
or
IF BEAUTY IS A CRIME was made with Alchemy
H2O was made with a Virus TI2 and a little orchestration
or
and NUTRISCO & EXTINGUO is on bandcamp. it’s recorded live on a zoom h6 with Octatrack and Digitakt.
https://miandlau.bandcamp.com/
am glad you enjoy @MrBlaschke 🥂
Have you ever played the Octatrack @Gavinski
I haven't! I try to get as little hardware as possible @mlau and of course I'm being flippant about drambo and octachron. Just trying to pour a bit of fennel tea on McD's GAS levels, so to speak 😋
@Gavinski it’s like falling in an arena full of bulls ! and 50000 people screaming “ mind the knobs ! “
En anglais:
In French:
Glad you're here @mlau
My friend Syra put one of your songs on a mix for me in 2007, when I'd recently been destroyed by a broken heart, and it made me feel a little bit better (my name is Andy - I figure she's singing about Andy Warhol, but still. It's a lovely song). Thank you for that.
i like your nick name @colonel_mustard ... At the time, we had this correspondence going on with Devendra Banhart. Instead of letters, we wrote each other songs. He wrote " gentle soul " and we answered by " the bird ", things like that. The song " Andy " was both about Andy Warhol and a big hello to Andy cabic ( from the band Vetiver ... listen to the album : Tight knit ) a musician we would then meet on tour.
we are deeply touched that our song made you feel a little bit better. be well !
Thanks man. I appreciate the backstory. I like Devendra too - especially his 'Rejoicing in the hands...' era. That was a great summer
Vetiver have been on my radar for a long while, but I never got around to them for whatever reason. I guess now is the time. I'll be sticking my ears in your bandcamp first, mind.
Bless you both.
Yes, Devendra has some great songs, definitely. I also really love the eponymous Vetiver album. 'Without a Song' is my favourite. I have a lot of fond memories associated with listening to that album while travelling around India and Nepal, good times!
@McD The press always chooses an angle to talk about you. And so the press chose a way to introduce Mi And L'Au to the public.
They could have said that Mira had previously worked in an Hospital, or that she was also a sculptress and a painter. They chose the " model " side of her.
This, like " cool hardware " is just a detail in our lives.
Nietsche had a big moustache, Dali a very thin one. So ?
We began with an acoustic guitar and our vocals. Ok, there was cheese and wine, and a little sony recorder from the 80s. There was the lake ! When you play a note, it goes on the surface of the lake until it reaches the other shore. Not always. Not everyday. But sometimes, it does. And sometimes you close your eyes, you play your guitar, and when you open your eyes again, you see seven devil birds looking at you. It's dawn and the world is beautiful. You close your eyes again, and you continue to play. Cause we can't forget that the world is not a panorama, at least for Schopenhauer.
I always been blown away by how many languages Finns speak. Coming from France where we speak French and French only, a bit like in Manchester they speak Manchester and Manchester only, it's humbling.
While i was trying to learn Finnish, Mira was in the other room learning Russian and Mandarin. What can i say ? i'm a total failure when it comes to learning languages.
But Finns, they Rock !
While we were learning how to play the guitar, we listened to a lot of different bands and musicians. Here and there we would hear a sound that was a little different from the usual and we would ask ourselves how this sound was made. You know, like the first time you hear Mika Vainio and it's 1996, in Paris, there's no guitar, no drum, no nothing ! just some clics and pops running around, all over the venue. I had never heard something like that. It stayed somehwere in the back of my mind.
Imagine the first people who heard the sound of a piano …
Anyway, at the time, we already talked about our " palette ". Acoustic guitar would be the skeleton, we would be the flesh, and the clothing would be made out of classical arrangements, electronic sounds, and whatever would please our ears.
Before you play music, you have to understand that you are too an instrument. This instrument needs to be tuned. In a way, you are the coolest hardware there is.
" Well, fuck them if they think they can keep electricity out of here " Bob Dylan
It's another era, electricity in music was a new way of doing it and it seems that a bunch of people didn't get the point. 55 years after, we can clearly see how ridiculous this was.
Once in a while, there is a storm, a volcano eruption, an earthquake. And then, everything is quite again. Or so it seems.
Dylan was right in the middle of this historical event, we were not.
I don't see why a fan could tell a musician what he or she has to play, and how. It's ludicrous. a fan or a critic, by the way. Or anybody.
That said, we still don't really know what happened that day, do we ?
Composers of all time made music with every instrument they had a hold on. A violin, a cello, a cascade, a spoon.
It's the same for us. We choose our instruments, we learn our instruments, and then we make our little sauce. Sometimes, a song doesn't need more than one instrument, sometimes it can be expressed with 40. There are no rules.
An instrument needs to be played, it's not a flower pot.
If you take into consideration that we've been playing together for 19 years, we do not own much. An acoustic guitar, An ipad, a digitakt, a piano, a cello, An Octatrack, a toy piano, A synth, few things really. But every one we have is being played.
And if i don't feel like playing, i do something else. Until i'm in tune again.
Henri cartier Bresson said that the best camera in the world is the one you have in your hands.
I like his attitude. to know your instrument is way more important than to own one hundred.
But if you can handle one hundred, go for it.
which reminds me of the way i was taught about music in Madagascar. 1. The colors of your surrounding give you the notes to play. 2. If you play drums, it means you know how to play the guitar, and every other instrument. Cause it's all the same.
@mlau. I love what you guys do. I’ve seen you on the forum for a while and have enjoyed your music for some time.
I may have outed you to @McD so hope that wasn’t an intrusion.
Really digging the recent stuff you posted.
It was an excellent suggestion for an "Ask the Artist". I'm not sure we've actually had someone that approaches it from such a pure perspective on "art". That's my opinion and not intended to slight anyone that came before but I know art when I see it and this music
is organized around art and not complexity, traditional concepts or intention of commercial
success. And as a result and probably a lot of other factors it's gotten significant commercial
success because it's obviously art music. People respond to originality and personal expression. There's an audience that judges their music purely by the connection they make to the artists that are not strictly related to dancing, performance criteria or the acceptance
of the masses. This music has that distinguishing characteristic... it's crafted as expression.
The music stands on it’s own but coupled with that lovely back story. Bonus.
I really appreciated the detailed history.
@Ben no intrusion at all sir ... a pleasure talking with you all. Without this forum, i would not have discovered samplr, spacecraft, borderlands, seGments, and all the goodies .... and would probably wonder how to switch ON my ipad 🐔
Several fully formed artists have arrived on the Forum without a technical background and this forum is the perfect place for navigating the learning curve to iPad mastery.
ABF is a pretty magical place with a very low percentage of angry negative souls. But even an
angry person can get a chance to vent a bit here.
@McD i really enjoy the discussion between musicians and devs .... that’s something that didn’t really exist few years back. it reminds me of the relationship a guitar player can have with the guy making the guitar. lately, while talking to Antti Valta, i learned a lot about the making of a book. fantastic experience. we went through calligraphy, then the art of putting space in between letters, then the fabrication of the book itself. One day, i’ll go to Austin and have a little talk with the guys from Collings Guitars. 😎
This forum seriously rocks. So many helpful, knowledgeable, talented people. Definitely one of the best places on the Internet I think.
Je ne peux pas croire que les membres francophones du forum n'aient pas profité de cette occasion pour poser une question et y répondre dans leur langue maternelle.
Représenter !
OK. It's a french goodbye, then.
Which Album is You Favorite?
Only one per customer. If you need to vote multiple times.
https://miandlau.bandcamp.com/album/lenkki
A beautiful addition to the Mi And L’au catalog.
Nicely done.
So much atmosphere.