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.
IOS7 session rub in
A track from our last practice that I'd appreciate some feedback on. All IOS looping gear as usual. Not to make excuses but the drummer went straight on my (stupid) request. Should have told him to play what feels right, as he normally totally gets it right and interesting. Got to fight my inner bossiness! 
Comments
That was awesome. My brain can't even begin to process working like that. And congratulations on finding a drummer who controls his volume really well, that's very rare. I dug the drums a lot, there was enough going on from your setup that a straight beat was cool, and he is musical enough to add the little things that did not keep it straight but still gave the impression it was. Great work!!
Cheers @mrufino1 much appreciated. We're currently working on a solid set so I'll be posting occasionally to check people's opinions. There's a lot of expertise around here and while it may not be everybody's cup of tea the constructive criticism is always good, other than praise of course
. I'll make sure I pass the compliments to the drummer. He is one of the tightest drummers I know but has been playing a lot of rock lately so prone to play in that style but said his drumming idol is Stewart Copland so I'm not too worried about the ability to mould into any style. He also likes to stay on the groove making slight changes as he goes which is possibly the best thing for a looping band.
Good stuff as always @supadom. Great vocals, love the chiptune lead, and yeah, excellent drummer. Look forward to hearing more!
Random top-of-the-head notes: Love the ceiling cam. And the groove. Sounded like a Fela-thing until the chiptune started in
Like the vocals/harmony, wanted a hymn sheet for the verse. Drummer good, amazingly restrained (in terms of velocity). Keep this video, perfect to intersperse with other footage. At about 6.40 I was waiting for a Flo-summer-night-car-ride guitar riff, but then at 8 you picked up the guitar again (but then put it down, grrrr)...Def. room in the last two minutes for a guest appearance from David Byrne. Would have liked more resolution. Much foreplay etc. All round cool.
Love it. Cool as always. I also like the drummer not going crazy but easy. @JohnnyGoodyear the "Fela thing" made me want to hear the chip tune going Fela crazy.
The whole thing was really interesting and I liked it a lot, the 9:00 went by quickly. At first I was not liking the lead line and by the end I was singing along with it. Very cool stuff. I find it fascinating to watch other people use the same tools in totally different ways, all with cool results.
Frankly, I like 'weird' music!
I'd like to hear more of this kind of stuff! Fun groove!
Yeah, really like the funky weird groove on this one. Definitely nice that your drummer showed restraint too. Everytime I've had a chance to jam with a drummer, they've taken my head off with the volume of their kit! LOL
I found the groove most agreeable. Reminded me of Eels or Beck. Loved the E7#9 underpinning the jam and especially the melody line with that Bb note. What's not to like.
There's time for loud and time for less loud. The combo of both is probably best. In this tune I wanted to keep it fairly tame and focus on the groove. Dan is also holding back because I am not that loud, I'll try to push it more at the next practice. But you're right @Flo26 it feels good hitting hard and it does get quite intense at times. I'll post something more driven next time.
Haha cheers @Brain I'd be happy to be inched in the weird pop category.
Yeah @pangolin love a lot of Beck, especially guero and information but also some of his mellow stuff. Definitely some of the inspiration comes from there. I've got to try Eels, I heard of them.
Cheers everyone, I just bought a 235' fish eye lens which with a little luck should be a little clearer then this muddy mess. May it travel fast all the way from Shen Zen.
Interesting no one commented on the fantastic kiddy voice changing megaphone I used for the verse. I love it! Especially the lights!
Edit: I definitely want more guitar on this one but it is still fresh and I'm still getting lost in what's where. At times I'm like a rabbit in the headlights with all of the IOS possibilities that I forget about the old axe.
Really great stuff @supadom. Drummer's restraint is indeed smashing. Vocals are great too. Love the change up at 5:40 or so.
Only feedback is sort of the classic live looping problem: it took a little to get going for me. I imagine with practice that could all be tightened up (if you wanted to). Also, with this groove, I'd like to hear the drummer cut out entirely occasionally in place of some of the fills. Still has the feel of a fill but varies the dynamics. Think hip hop cut outs (when using a record or sample loop, they couldn't exactly add a drum fill so they'd silence the beat to do a 'fill').
Hey @syrupcore you're totally spot on. Looping unfortunately has the tendency of stretching out of sections and danger of getting 'death by repetition' disease. We'll be working on breaks and build ups. I think for the moment the drummer is playing safe because we've played this track only a couple of times. I'm also still trying to get my head around many things at once which leaves little time for much communication with the drummer.
(Edit) I'd like him to drop the snare out completely with 4 on the floor kick and going crazy on the hihat etc.
I'm starting to save songs and set ups so they're ready to engage for quicker access. The fact that the dynamics are flat is partly due to the fact that the tunes are for most part jammed and there's no defined structured. A vague universal structure is developing though which roughly translates into: intro - theme - jam - messy bit - back to theme - outro. On the other hand I really like stretched out parts reminiscent of minimal techno or trip hop but I think a healthy balance of the 2 should give good results. I was pondering on what genre am I actually trying to fit into and electro pop is probably what fits the bill. I really like minimal techno, drum and bass, trance grooves and punky guitar vibes so they'll definitely feature here and there. Great stuff for open air rave like situations! Especially with a battery powered rig.
To be honest I shouldn't have posted this half baked thing but the excitement got the better of me. You probably wouldn't have liked the overly polished product anyway.
I don't think the jam lacked dynamics nor do I think it came across even remotely half baked. It's awfully good! I definitely felt the structure of the tune emerging. I only mentioned the word dynamics in context of the cut out/anti-fill because that technique adds another dynamic element. I just listened to the whole thing again. Really dig it and am even more strongly wanting to hear him cut out occasionally. And for the beat during the 5:30 breakdown to be different enough so that when the 'back to the theme' part comes back around, he can change back to the main groove to make it punch out some.
Interesting that you hear it as electro pop. I'm not sure what I'd call it but I could imagine this opening for the Talking Heads circa 1981. Guess that's when electro was getting legs though!
@supadom said:
Nonsense, I love these vids, very inspiring.
Since you asked: the one bit of feedback I have is that your vocal harmonies are often very similar (if I recall from other videos). You might find it rewarding to explore some variety away from just taking the vocal line up a fifth, or whatever it is you usually do.
Or ignore me and keep having fun, it's infectious :-)
+1. infectious is a good word for this.
That was great. It rocked.
Any chance of a run down of which apps used?
Cheers @Matt_Fletcher_2000 here's the preset I mostly use. Would love to ad Xynthesizer, Animoog/isem and WOW but I'm at 97% of RAM most of the time. Will need to wait until Air 2 is out. As it is I'm only using one synth: Sunrizer which responds to program change messages from mpk mini. Loopy's on the output and the rest is just effects: magellan on vocals, tonestack on the guitar but running separately on an iPhone 4s, then I put loopy tracks through: effectrix and turnado.
Audiobus preset 'Final + Samplr X': http://preset.audiob.us/Mq6VmoiYWv0bz1Y
Edit: I shamelessly (or shamefully) forgot Samplr. I tend to keep that in the foreground as all of the other functions are assigned to controllers. I also have blueboard that is bound to loopy record/mute for when my hands are busy playing the guitar.
Thanks.
So quite a lot to think about then... As well as, you know, singing and playing the guitar!