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.
Song Of The Month Club - July 2021
What is the Song of the Month Club?
It's a place where musicians come to give and receive feedback on their work. Anyone is welcome, whatever their level of ability.
The spirit of the club is to contribute: if you submit a song for others to comment on, you should also have the courtesy to listen to everyone else's contributions and give as much feedback as possible. Posting a track and not listening and commenting on others is not cool.
The purpose of feedback is to be honest. Essentially you should give your truthful impressions of the song, whether good or bad. Negative feedback, if done in the right spirit and with courtesy, can be the most useful and can help the artist to grow and improve and correct their mistakes.
All submissions are welcome, don't hesitate if you want to contribute. We like all kinds of music and we are particularly fond of vocals (but of course we still love a great instrumental). If you are thinking of experimenting with vocals this is a good place to get started.
We ask that you only post one song per month in this thread - if you're lucky enough to be able to produce more, then please just submit your strongest material
And finally, iOS is not a requirement for posting here. If you've recorded your song using nothing but a ukulele and a Fostex 4 track, that's fine
Comments
My contribution - lyrics in the spoiler:
Bouncing up, bouncing down
Bounce your head all over town
You’re all set for lift off
You’re all set to fly
Lift me up, let me go
Don’t care where you wanna go
We’re gonna touch the heavens
We’re gonna kiss the sky
Yes I can if you want me to
Yes I would if you asked me to
I’m happy and twisted
Tongue-tied and lifted
Yes I can if you want me to
Sure I would if it pleases you
Because I’m happy now
Wind me up and watch me go
Twist the dial from fast to slow
Buzzing and believing
Crashing into walls
Tear it up, tear it down
There’s no need for you to frown
We’re gonna be so happy
Happy as can be
Yes I can if you want me to
Yes I would if you asked me to
I’m happy and twisted
Tongue-tied and lifted
Yes I can if you want me to
Sure I would if it pleases you
Because I’m happy now
More epic rock from us this month. Loving those analog synth sounds at the moment. This one was mostly done in GarageBand on the iPad
“Happy and Twisted” - This one tops the rest of your productions for me. Energetic and lively song with lots of interesting changes in the arrangement. Is the tambourine and clap sound recorded live? I really enjoyed this one. Top notch!
“You and I” - Superb! That piano intro was great! Almost like the Tubular Bells intro but darker. The synths and the piano all worked well together. I really enjoy the unique sound of your productions - especially provided by the vocals. Great job!
Thanks! Only the guitar and vocals are recorded live - the tambourine is provided by Klevgrand's Skaka and the claps by GarageBand's D'Arcy.
All the other instruments were recorded as performances using GB's touch instruments (bass, synths etc).
The piano riff intro/outro is killer and the guitar is pretty epic sounding, and the way the intro theme is then repeated on the guitar is very clever.
It's a good song and a good arrangement with some nice ebb and flow. Nice guitar solo after the break and then one final chorus before the outro, it all works very well indeed.
This one is from 2016. I was doodling around with the moodscaper app and came up with this tune.
While playing, I spent time in each of moodscaper’s seven sound sets (four that were included with the app, and three that were available for download). I used Mobile Convolution as an effect and Auria Pro to record it. Then I ran the recording through the Lurssen Mastering Console app to sweeten and expand the overall sound.
There are no edits except to trim some silence at the beginning.
It's titled Tokyo Shadows.
Sitting here looking out at the South Wales drizzle this one really cheered me up. It has got a great upbeat summery vibe. The tambourine and the clapping are great and they really add to the feel. A very strong production on the vocals. They sit really well in mix which I know is never easy to achieve. Great job.
Thanks for the listen and the feedback. It’s greatly appreciated.
Thanks for the listen and the feedback. As always it is greatly appreciated. And thanks again for keeping Song of the Month going. I know we have dipped in and out over the years but my wife and I really enjoy taking part.
The verse is a Brandon Wolf quote from a recent CNN interview.
Chorus is taken from “No More, My Lord” by the Jimpson and Axe Gang, recorded by Alan Lomax. I think that is Bess Smith singing.
The drum loop is from from Ableton.
The piano is from Module
The metal guitar has Chow Centaur, Nembrini MRH810, Delay 3000, and a bunch of AEM’s reverb. (Me playing)
It is probably obvious where the cleaner guitar track came from.
The wobble bass was sampled from my Modal Craft Synth SE into Cubasis, filtered, and exported into AEM. I had a hard time automating the filter in AEM.
MixBox is on most tracks.
Almost all work was done in Audio Evolution Mobile
I put the Tonebooster V4 compressor on the master track and the limiter, but the limiter messed up my fades so I didn’t use it. Point of more studying for me.
I chopped the drum loop, chopped the spoken word and chorus singing, and chopped the guitar for a simple volume edit. I know that is pretty basic stuff for most people but it is new to me!
This is by far my most ambitious project to date and the first project I have completed outside of Caustic. I’m pretty excited about it. I feel like I really learned a lot. The Bess Smith part had been kicking around in my head for a couple of years and finally started to come together earlier this year. When I heard the monologue from Brandon Wolf, that really excited me to finish this piece. Over all I’m pretty pleased with it. There are a few spots where the original Wolf recording clips and I could have tracked those down and edited them out and the weird break in the middle could have been smoother. I wanted something jarring compared to the rest of the song, but yeah, maybe a little smoother.
Thank you for listening!
@richardyot I second the thanks for maintaining the SotMC. It feels like a safe place to start sharing my stuff with the rest of the world. Definitely digging your tune! It’s very upbeat and catchy. You consistently have such polished offerings to the Club. Your singing is almost soothing, do you ever “belt out” lyrics?
@orchardman Wow, what a great tune! Right up my alley. Nice guitar work, the piano intro and outro are sweet, the vocals sit well in the mix, I’m lovin’ the synth sounds. You two put out a really nice sounding song, well done!
Thank God, it's short!
Long absence since December 2020
This piece is also quite short this month.
I wrote this as a theme song idea to a friend's podcast. Just a melody in my head, then kept building from there. Was also listening to The Soundtrack Show podcast about Danny Elfman, so a little influence there too.
I'm curious how the mix came out. It's my best try so far to mix orchestral music in iOS.
Also, a big THANK YOU to @richardyot for keeping the SOTMC going!!!
Here is an one track from an EP I did with Kimicoh. I think i will get into trouble with @richardyot if I post all of the EP?.. Enjoy!..
Thanks for the listen! I'm not really into belting, I'm more of a softer singer.
Nice contrasts in there, the menacing bass and the lighter guitar create an interesting juxtaposition. The distorted guitar in the background also adds some nice texture, it's a great use of an aggressive sound in a more laid-back context.
It's a cool collage of sounds that meshes together to create an intriguing whole. The vibe has a great mix of the chilled and the sinister.
@richardyot Nice song! I enjoyed listening.
Negatives first...
1. Some pitch wavering in the singing of "because I'm happy now" in the choruses. The third chorus was much better.
2. Maybe need a de-esser? It seemed so to me.
3. In the choruses, when the harmony vocal is added and the pad playing chords, the stereo image seems to get wider - to me it seemed a little distracting, and maybe too much contrast to the less wide/more center focused verses and synth solo sections.
I thought the mix was really good (except #3). Everything clear and placed well in left/right/front/back.
I loved the rythm changes from verse to chorus, with the tambourine and claps added.
Again enjoyed listening to your song!
@McM that’s a really sweet and uplifting tune, sounds likens theme to a series I would enjoy.
@richardyot you make some really pieces, this is one of them. But every time I feel like the voice is too loud for the style of music. This is purely 100% personal!. For me in that shoegaze style, that I love, the vocal should be more like another instrument and preserve the “wall of sound” kind of thing. It’d obviously mean loosing intelligibility but would sound more cohesive. It’d also require equing and stuff… Again, personal opinion.
@tahiche thanks for the feedback. Vocal levels are a tricky one, usually people say I mix them too low 😀 What I tend to do is to flip the mono switch on to check the levels. If they sit well in mono then they are also usually ok in stereo.
I will take another listen with the vocal mix in mind though.
Just logged in after a long time to say I really liked it!
Nice song! I reminds me a lot of the music I used to listen in my teens: Pavement, Lemonheads, Guided By Voices etc.
An old song originally recorded on an analog 8 track over 30 years ago Enhanced here with some cool iPad AU effects, trying to make it sound better. This is a classic latin style jazz song MIDI sequenced on the KORG (one of my first sequencer attempts). The piano and trumpet was recorded using a shure sm57 mic.
Amazed at all the effects available today on the iPad. Wow! I'm jumping back into recording after a long time off.
I haven't signed on anywhere to share my music yet, so I've attached it here as a mp3.
Dav
Good job, the theme has a nice melody which helps to make it memorable. And I like the ending too.
Maybe it would be nice if there was a short intro with just the main theme without the background orchestration, just to give some contrast for when the rest of the instruments start playing.
Thanks! Where you been? As you can see we're still here
Darn, I like this idea-thought I was done.
Thanks for the feedback!
Wow, that piano intro! Love the entire song. Sounds fantastic. Performances are great!
My only critic is it sounds like the lead vocal has a low pass filter on them that might be set too low? It feels like the highs aren’t there as much as would be expected - just my opinion though. The performance is really good!
Fantastic ambient sound! Enjoyed listening. I don’t have Moodscaper, but the sound you’ve produced with it is very cinematic.
@DavidEnglish
“Tokyo Shadows” - Really lovely pads morphing from one to another and it sounds perfect for relaxation as it feels emotionally quite neutral. I suppose that’s what moodscaper is meant to do.
@Sawiton
“I want no more” - I spent a lot of time on this one and I have a few thoughts (from a very amateur position, so nothing too deep). This is a very interesting piece. I like the jarring bass and the piano with the guitar and all these nicely complement the spoken words and the chorus. What I would have done is at some point toward the end taken this a notch higher in terms of drums coming through louder, maybe a distorted guitar in the background and really emotive lead (with guitar or synth) solo coming in. For me, that would have really provided the answer to the hopelessness expressed in the spoken words, that of people doing nothing and nothing changing. The music could have shown some change (instead of the same progression looping on) and that, for me, would have felt very powerful.
@Kitusai said:
“Midnight walk” - Oh my! Yes, thank God it is short! That is quite intense and, as I sit in this room alone, I actually had to look side to side for a bit. And that says a lot about this. It is done really well. The experience of it and the power of suspense it creates is great!
@McM
“Secret Life Of” - Short but to the point a theme song. I like that it felt whimsical because of the bells and at the same time gave a feeling of some mystery from the main melody. In fact, after a few listens it’s stuck in my head. Really nice!
@Dav
“Coconut Butter” - Ok so, there is no denying that coconut butter is smooth and delicious! And so is this piece! I thoroughly enjoyed this one and would have given it several likes if you were on some platform. I am not good enough to comment on technical anything so I’ll just say this; that trumpet was the cream on top!
It’s great to see / hear so many submissions. Thank you for sharing. 🙏🏾☺️
Thanks for the feedback! Lydian mode is good for mysterious/whimsical. I hoped it would be a catchy melody.
Oh that’s very interesting. Thank you because it has added to my learning of music theory. So, is this going from C Lydian to E Lydian? And any particular reason for choosing those? 🤔