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
Another nod to Ableton, which I have, but I think I’m going to try to start using Cubasis 3 on the iPad.
Oh yeah, definitely important. I recognized this ability when I was a kid, and was probably the reason I started playing. I think it was 1981-1982 I remember it! I had the main riff from Ozzy’s Crazy Train in my head and I thought “I could play that!” So I told my mom I wanted an electric guitar for my birthday and the rest is history!
Haha you’re talking about so many nights as a kid laying back with headphones on listening to Van Halen 1 imagining that I was EVH jumping off of the Marshall stacks and getting all the girls!
…and pretty much everything I’ve ever heard from that point on up through today lol
Dittos!✌️
Yeah, it's a good feeling. 🤘🏾
Good point! Especially these days with all these Terabytes and such.
Exactly!
I hear you. It’s true that sometimes when you listen back, to what you thought originally was a mistake or flub, can actually be a hint of a different direction you may not have thought of. I believe that sometimes great ideas can spawn from subtle mistakes, or things that just happen by accident.
All sounds like great advice to me my friend. I’m 52 and worked for 30 years as a meat cutter so I feel you. It does suck getting old!
Yeah, I’m going to try to start using Cubasis 3 for this kind of thing. I like the David Gilmour strategy mentioned above. Probably a widely known and used method I’m sure.
I believe it’s going to be a winning formula.
Y’know, I can’t even remember the last time I tried Garageband. I have CB3, but now that you mention it, I think I’ll have to give GB a spin again!
I think I am as well?
There was a time, before the internet, when I was in my teens, that people around my circles of people would have told you that I was going to be the next Eddie Van Halen. I never felt it, but my friends and family, and other bandmates insisted that I was great.
Well, we all know the end of this story. The internet happened and suddenly we realize that there’s millions of people out there that are just as good as us, and there’s many, many that are way better. Shoot, some are even 5 year old kids lol
So I don’t even try compete or compare any more. I’m happy just being average and I’m happy knowing that it doesn’t take “shredding skills” to compose beautiful music.
Good god you’re right!
Ok, guitar is the 2nd most unforgiving instrument lol
Thanks @flo26
I think sometimes my problem is that I’ll try to overcomplicate things. (And I’m still guilty of it in the piece I posted above!) I’ve learned this by using apps like GeoShred or others where I might compose a “solo”.
I need to keep reminding myself that sometimes “Less is More”! There’s pieces where a lead line of just two or three tasteful notes with something like a SWAM trumpet or my favorite GeoShred Tenor Sax can be all thats needed, just those three notes!
I grab the guitar though, and for some reason, I want to play 37 notes 🤨
.......
......
My playing is pretty mediocre but I think I have become noticeably less mediocre over the past year. One quote from Michael League (bass player, composer and main arranger for Snarky Puppy) pulled things together for me when I watched a "master class" video. "As frustrating as it is to slow things down as much as I am suggesting, once you have mastered that thing you are working on -- you will have mastered it and it will apply in all kinds of situations and you won't have to learn it again. Whenever I have settled for "good enough" and not taken the time to slow it down and really nail it, I have ended up having to revisit whatever it is."
Re playing slow, metronome and getting bored. Apologies if this is obvious and/or you already know this. You can practice slowly without a metronome (but it it is probably imperative to at least tap your foot). What I am suggesting is playing so slowly that getting the metronome that slow might even be a problem. (Now that I have been doing this for a while, I am also finding that when I do turn on the metronome that I fight with it less than I used to).
I am in the same boat with you -- I am pretty impatient and struggle to keeping up my attention enough to play slowly especially REALLY slowly. But, I have made a ton of progress at that and have been surprised at how big of a difference it makes. I sometimes end up playing things many times slower than what I used to consider slow. It has been instructive to me to find out with some things how slowly I really have to play to be able to articulate the notes in the way that I want or have it be clean. It has improved my hearing even at tempo, too. I think it gives our brain a chance to fully register the connection between the sounds and what our muscles are doing and what our interior ear is hearing.
I do occasional reality checks with a metronome but most of the time I don't -- ever since a world-class player I know said that using a metronome was such a drag for him that he could bring himself to practice if he used one -- but he also records himself a lot as a reality check. He thinks the best way to work on time is to play with musicians that are better than with you live and play along with records of people with great feel.
My technique of recording live playing to 2 tracks, as described in my previous post, is not unique to Ableton anyway. I used this technique on my previous DAWs - Digital Performer (the trial edition) and Logic. Long story short, don't take my post as an endorsement of Ableton Live.
One thing I will be explore more in the future is recording my instrument tracks without FX first. Then later experiment with FX on the instrument tracks. The reason is I've added electric violin tracks to my friend's song, then when I hear back from her, she will sometimes say she wants more distortion, or less of it; or make the reverb a little less thick or whatever.
The obvious problem is I have to re-record my parts (usually electric violin) all over again because the tracks were recorded with violin already processed with FX. That's a pain because I suck on violin worse than on guitar. Intonation is always a challenge. But the bow is one that really makes violin a bitch to play.
The advantage of recording my violin parts dry: I won't have to waste time re-recording the actual violin playing. all over again. Instead, I can keep the existing violin audio and just make changes to the FX.
Generous of you to call my rambling "advice". 😁Your statements about practice brought a train of thought to mind and I had to let it run it's course. A few thoughts more in line with the discussion:
Intros : Having listened to more than a few of your recordings I can tell you understand the importance of a good intro. When making a solo out of multiple recordings it never hurts to have multiple intro options.
Flubs : As mentioned by others, if you plan on editing, play like you're playing live. If you miss a note keep going. Sometimes a wrong turn leads to a more interesting path.
Editing :The great thing about building a solo is how much freedom you have with not only notes, but with timing. When you are assembling your parts, try turning off any snapping on the timeline and sliding your edited bits and pieces around. If you don't like it, undo is your best friend.
I really enjoy listening to your tracks and watching your videos. I look forward to hearing the results of whatever this discussion spawns. Do take care of yourself (and your hands) Edward and just so you know, friends call me Mac.👍
I totally agree with him. Thats what I was saying above regarding playing with other people that have some talent. You learn a lot really fast playing with talented people. It rubs off on you, especially if they push you.
Oh I know, I was just thinking I do have Ableton on my Windows PC, but I think I’m going to stick with the iPadOS platform and use Cubasis 3 for my DAW. I love how quiet this platform is.
We’re going to leave the violin playing to you! lol
But that is a smart way to record, without the effects. You can just add them in post, I get it. I think in some cases though, it would be hard for me anyway, to record dry, as sometimes the effects are part of the feeling. Like a delay. Playing the part dry to record you’d lose that feeling and end up with a track you’re not happy with, and adding the effects afterwards wouldn’t be the same.
Thank you Mac, I appreciate that!
I’ll have more to add to the discussion later, but right now I’m posting from the car, just got off work, and headed home to a hot shower!
I go in blind when I get a track to do for someone. Don’t listen first, just load it into Cubasis and hit record. I get my instinctual reaction and all the ideas I need from that one-take rough pass, then I just split them up into 2-3 guitars (if necessary), get my tones and effects just so, and nail them down in one more take each or section by section if there’s more advanced playing going on. Of course there’s a few retakes required here and there, but by and large, it’s still really efficient.
It works incredibly well, better than you might think. You ARE better than you think when the pressure’s on. There’s a weird dichotomy when doing it: you tend to stick with what you know and do what you know well, but you also have room for spontaneity, playing free and loose like that with no time to think and trying to keep up with something you’ve never heard. Suprising playing tends to pop out. Plus, recording can get pretty stale after 2-3 listens of a song (especially if it’s not very good!) Get that stuff done unless you have a perfectly crafted masterpiece on your hands.
I used to struggle on my own to get a satisfied guitar track. Serious, certified OCD stuff. Then one day, a friend whose music I didn’t really like asked me to do guitar for his album. Was able to not worry about the quality because I knew he was never gonna seriously put it out. I knocked out about 15 songs on guitar in a day and it actually made me feel more like a musician than ever, because the playing turned out quite good. Totally unlocked something in me, and this is still how I do tracks I do actually love and care about as well. Once you’ve heard a track in full and become familiar with it, the brain starts thinking too much and overtaking the original instincts. In my experience, that’s a bad thing.
I suggest trying it once at the very least.
Comp takes are one of the best things that happened to me (I started recording when 8 track reel to reels were the standard).
I used to go into the studio with a part totally 'perfected'. That would mean limiting it to something I could reliably reproduce. And I'm not even talking necessarily about an issue with overt mistakes...often it is just subtle things like, I want to pick this part near the bridge, and this part more near the neck or I want a perfect finger scrape here as I change positions.
Comping, well also just that my time is less limited I suppose home recording, I will well and truly improvise. One tiny silly thing I started doing in comping a bunch of improvised looped takes was have a bar or two at the end where I'd yell a grade for the take. "A" "A-" "shit" "embarrassing." "insane, maybe good, maybe trash"
That just saves a lot of time. Go back and listen just to each grade and highlight those for full listening, editing.
This is great!
I don’t think I’ve ever done a guitar track for someone else, or for a piece I haven’t already heard, so that is interesting.
Actually, now that I typed that out, I remembered that I have done guitar for someone else’s stuff. (Recently and back in the day) This somehow just reminded me of this band I was in back in the 80s. We never did a studio record, but did do a 4 track demo tape EP that I guess we tried sending to the radio stations and record companies.
The leader of this band was a lady by the name of Mary Wilkeson. She was Leon Wilkeson’s little sister. Leon (RIP), was the bass player for Rock & Roll hall of famers Lynyrd Skynyrd. I was 17-18 at the time and Mary was like 40 something, maybe even in her 50s I don’t know, I just remember thinking she was old as hell, BUT, being who her brother was, meant she had connections in the music biz, or so I thought.. and so she thought.
We met as she lived in the downstairs apartment from us at this apartment complex we lived at. I had an acoustic guitar out on the balcony steps one day as she came walking by, complimented my playing and started singing along. She was one of those kinda “Gypsie” type of old cougars, you know, all spiritual, always wearing long colorful clothes, singer songwriter type. I really couldn’t stand Lynyrd Skynyrd at the time (still not a huge fan, but I’ve grown to appreciate their contributions to music) but when she explained who her brother was, I made no hesitations to join forces.
Mary was another one of those people, back in the 80’s who thought I was some kind of guitar prodigy. She really believed in me… man, I wish I had a copy of that tape!
And I have a loooong story about how I went on a trip to Texas to see Skynyrd play with Mary and Mary’s then boyfriend who was a biker/gangster and member of the Outlaws. The long and short of it is, that I’m lucky to be alive, and lucky to have survived those couple of days.
Anyhoo, sorry about the rambling and trip down memory lane. Back to your suggestions, I do like the idea of going in blind, though everything I’ve been doing is for my own tracks that I’ve composed from the ground up. So there’s nothing blind when going in, but I have found it helpful to finish a backing, and just let it play at random times. I’ll play it in the car, or have it playing while I’m cooking, or even at work. The best place though, for me, I think, is at the end of the day, while I’m taking a hot shower, I’ll play my composed backing again, and here is where I feel like I come up with the best ideas. I’ll hum along and actually start singing out the guitar lead parts. By the time I’m out of the shower, and all dried off, I’m ready to do some recording.
haha nice! I was just thinking about the amount of free time I have lately. Very slim, so it seems like I’m always in a rush to get things done as I’m always pressed for time. I’m actually looking forward to my retirement (only have about 15 years to go) where I’ll have all the time I want or need to “comp” aka do some “tracking”.
I like the idea of the grading system, I’d have a couple categories “cringe” and “Meh” would be two lol
meh has definitely been used. I'll have to add _cringe _to the scale. My band mates get a kick sometimes of the grading and that I label the takes as such. Sometimes I get down to a couple I can't decide between and give them a listen.
"So dude.... it is between 'wtf' and 'lol wtf?'"
Fair points.
Also, the effects cover up the imperfections in my violin tone, which is controlled by the bow. As long as my parts are in tune with the rest of the song, less than great bowing tone is covered up by distortion, reverb, etc.
My friend's music is not structured for loose jamming. So I only "improvise" my violin part when I'm composing it for a song, because improvisation is composition done quickly, and composition is improvisation done slowly, with more deliberation. I record my part after I've decided I've finished composing it.
I'm looser with my own stuff. It's just that I learned over time to be more cautious when approaching music written by someone else. Some songwriters can have strong emotional attachments to their work. Some are really laid back and do not seem to care to what directions other people take their music. And quite a few are somewhere in between.
@GovernorSilver
I’m probably in the somewhere in between category. Of course it depends on the piece too, like this track I composed in dedication to a friend that passed; I’d rather not have anyone mess with that one.
Agreed.
Your friend would’ve enjoyed listening
to the track and reading this thread.
Sorry to hear of your loss.
My condolences.
🙏🏾
I’m sure you’re fully aware that you can record a dry track + monitor the fx (or record to a separate track) at the same time..
Not committing to a particular sound at the time of the recording can be a blessing + curse..
Yes, you can change your mind and your sound completely + keep trying different settings or setups.. BUT.. that’s also the curse.. you can change your mind and you could tweak endlessly + maybe never find the sound that you’re searching for.. too many options can waste too much time..
I like to commit as much as possible (sound-wise) to the track being recorded.. as you mentioned, the inspiration + feeling comes from what you’re hearing RIGHT NOW.. NOT LATER.. of course YMMV.. 😁
Thank you my friend
I’m aware. And you’re right about the curse.
And you’re right about the effects inspiring the performance.
I have sometimes even lifted a piece from a take and used it twice in the same solo, particularly if it’s only replacing a small error with a note or two that sound much better.
Condolences on the passing of your friend.
I agree; the wet sound is a part of the performance and sometimes can’t be recreated in the mix. But you can record both a wet and a dry track.