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 Store

Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

Song To The Siren, a Tim Buckley dreamy cover (shoegaze)

edited September 2022 in Creations

One of the most beautiful song from Tim Buckley. This has been covered by so many artists since it was released in 1970. Some people believe that This Mortal Coil made the ultimate version of this song, and even though I like their version, I believe that the haunting quality of Tim Buckley’s original performance cannot be equaled.

Over the years, I tried many times to cover it in many different ways, but I am finally satisfied with the feel of this version. No dynamic here, for shoegaze ethereal atmosphere lovers.
As usual, iPad only.

Hope you will like it.

Comments

  • edited September 2022

    Beautiful, I especially love the slide guitar, it creates a really eerie vibe that suits the song perfectly. Only gripe is that I would have liked the vocals a little higher in the mix.

  • @richardyot said:
    Beautiful, I especially love the slide guitar, it creates a really eerie vibe that suits the song perfectly. Only gripe is that I would have liked the vocals a little higher in the mix.

    I agree. The balance was hard to find. A lot of reverb and delays all over the place and so many things happening in the mid range... I tried to push the vocals in front but they ended up masking other elements. For the time being that's the best compromise I could find with my limited mixing skills. I might leave it like this for now and try to improve the mix a bit later. If you have any suggestions, please PM me ! Thank you for listening!

  • Agree with Richard!
    The vocals can actually come up in the mix.
    And the slide guitar is very nice.
    Looks like a very challenging mix to handle, but the important thing is the learning.
    I am enjoying the creation.
    Rene

  • @ReneAsologuitar said:
    Agree with Richard!
    The vocals can actually come up in the mix.
    And the slide guitar is very nice.
    Looks like a very challenging mix to handle, but the important thing is the learning.
    I am enjoying the creation.
    Rene

    Thank you for taking the time to listen. It is very kind of you to consistently listen to each creation on this forum and drop supportive comments. Thank you for being here !

  • Beatiful! 👏 Love the guitars. Are you using amp sims?. I’d love to hear about the effects and mix details.
    I agree with the comments above about the vocals, maybe there’s too much “atmosphere” and they loose definition.
    Nice one! 🙌

  • edited September 2022

    @JanKun : very nice. i agree about the vocals being a little lost -- you mights be able address it without changing the volume of the vocals but changing the amount of reverb/delay on it (or on the other tracks) -- judicious use of a dynamic eq or multiband compressor might work to ever so slightly adjust where it sits.

    Fun fact: Song to the Siren is actually a pretty early composition. He performed it in 1967 on the last episode of The Monkees TV show.

  • The hardest part of becoming a singer is learning to overcome the natural dislike for your own voice. The best path is to expose your voice without reverb masking and get positive feedback from “your” audience. Every singer has an audience because each voice tends to be unique and each of us value different qualities… for me it’s pitch accuracy and I can tell you have that down perfectly. Hopefully without the need for dozens of takes but just naturally.

    I hope you revisit the mix and pull one or more vocal tracks out of the fog of reverb. It’s really a powerful track as is… very “Dark Side of the Moon” in it’s recalled experience.

    Please post that track with vocal over Staffpad orchestra that reminded me of the great VDP. That had a great vocal mix and that fact it’s in French just made the music more compelling.

  • edited September 2022

    @tahiche said:
    Beatiful! 👏 Love the guitars. Are you using amp sims?. I’d love to hear about the effects and mix details.
    I agree with the comments above about the vocals, maybe there’s too much “atmosphere” and they loose definition.
    Nice one! 🙌

    Thank you for listening.
    I used plenty of amp sims for this track.
    Here's the breakdown.
    There are basically three guitars, all played on my telecaster, fingerstyle (I rarely play with pick, only when my nails fail to give the power I am looking for). The first two are the foundation of the track playing arpeggios.

    Guit1 (left side):
    Nembrini PSA1000 JR + Nembrini BST100V2 (NORMAL CHANNEL) + NEMBRINI Delay 3000 + FAC Alteza

    Guit2 (right side):
    Overloud THU (CHP BOGIE FILL50 DLY Clean Rig) + DDMF ECHOREK2 + BLUE mango stratosphere reverb)

    The slide guitar is my telecaster played as lap steel on my knees with a Tone Bar:
    NEMBRINI minotaur + NEMBRINI HIVOLT 103 (BRILLIANT CHANNEL) + FABFILTER Pro-R

    The bass is played through NEMBRINI Blackice

    Drums are made using the Drumdrops Slingerland Drum kit going through microwarmer inside Auria + FabFilter ProR

    There are also 2 experimental tracks used to add texture to the track, made with Yonac Galileo 2, recorded live, hard LR panned, heavily tortured beyond recognition through a chain of effects including FabFilter volcano3, FabFilter Saturn and velvet machine and then applied EQ to smooth them a bit (these are pretty ugly and kind of scary on their own. Even though These are barely discernable in the mix they add something because if I mute them the feel of the track changes. you can hear them somehow at the end of the track. )

    Main vocals and harmonized vocals have their own instances of Mixbox with different effect chain for each.

    I applied FabFilter pro c2 on the master bus to glue the mix+ ProL2

    I guess that's it.
    Everyone seems to agree that the vocals should be more in front. It might be some kind of psycho acoustic phenomenon from my side but when I listen to the track, I only hear the vocals... or maybe my ears are completely dead 😀

  • Maybe boost the vocal circa 200 and 5000, and cut everything else at the same frequencies. But to me it sounds good the way it is.

  • edited September 2022

    @espiegel123 said:
    @JanKun : very nice. i agree about the vocals being a little lost -- you mights be able address it without changing the volume of the vocals but changing the amount of reverb/delay on it (or on the other tracks) -- judicious use of a dynamic eq or multiband compressor might work to ever so slightly adjust where it sits.

    Fun fact: Song to the Siren is actually a pretty early composition. He performed it in 1967 on the last episode of The Monkees TV show.

    Thank you so much for listening. I have always appreciated your presence on this forum, so I am glad you took the time to drop one of your kind and knowledgeable comments. I'll definitely give it a try. I went pretty nuts on effects on this track which was probably not the smartest thing to do. But I had a strange mixture of My Bloody Valentine, Galaxie 500, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Mogwai and Explosions In The Sky in mind while working on it. Most of these bands are not known for subtlety when it comes to delays and reverb, so I decided to go all the way in. Most probably a bit too far.

    Tim Buckley's performance on the Monkees TV show was my reference for this cover. It is beautiful. I didn't know it was recorded that early. My favourite album is "Goodbye And Hello" from that 1967 period with the gorgeous lyrics from Larry Beckett. I always thought Song To The Siren shared the same quality as most of the song on this album so it makes sense since they were all written around the same time. Glad to meet another Tim Buckley fan here.

  • @JanKun : thanks for the kind words. So, one thing about the best shoe-gazey stuff is that a lot of care is often taken to achieve that lush bed of delay and reverb while preserving details. A few things to play with if you haven’t: use a separate bus for vocal reverb and experiment with the amount of pre-delay. Start by making it obviously too much and slowly reduce the amount. Another thing is that it often sounds to me with Blur and My Bloody Valentine that there is often a fair amount of compression on the vocals which can bring them up front a little without increasing overall volume. (Might be good in combination with someone’s eq suggestion upthread).

    To my ear (not that my opinion really matters), your mix is really nice..so this may be as much an exercise in exploring techniques to see if they are fruitful.

    Many apologies if this is over sharing or obvious stuff you’ve played with.

  • Sweet! Great version of this song @JanKun. I like the mix as is and love the layered guitars - got a Floyd/Bowie vibe. Thanks for sharing.

  • edited September 2022

    @McD said:
    The hardest part of becoming a singer is learning to overcome the natural dislike for your own voice. The best path is to expose your voice without reverb masking and get positive feedback from “your” audience. Every singer has an audience because each voice tends to be unique and each of us value different qualities… for me it’s pitch accuracy and I can tell you have that down perfectly. Hopefully without the need for dozens of takes but just naturally.

    I hope you revisit the mix and pull one or more vocal tracks out of the fog of reverb. It’s really a powerful track as is… very “Dark Side of the Moon” in it’s recalled experience.

    Please post that track with vocal over Staffpad orchestra that reminded me of the great VDP. That had a great vocal mix and that fact it’s in French just made the music more compelling.

    Thank you for listening and for the kind words @McD !
    You're right regarding the way each of us tend to dislike our own voice at some point. I believe we all have something we can express with it, there is no good or bad voice. We all need to learn to use it. It is the greatest tool to convey emotions.
    I personally passed the point of disliking it long time ago. I even recently find myself liking it, I hope it doesn't sound too narcissistic 🤔. I got used to listen to my own voice when I was maybe 6 or 7 years old, before I even started playing guitar. At that time I had a cassette dictaphone, and I was recording all kind of stupid things with it, small sketches. Very very silly stuff... That's around the time I got used to the fact that my inner perception of my voice was totally different from the way it actually sounded. I remember it was a weird feeling but I also kind of liked it. My elder brothers were listening to all kinds of music and I started to sing on top of the songs I liked. Few years later, after learning to play the guitar I started playing in local bands as a teen, and naturally started to take the guitarist/singer role.
    I don't consider my voice beautiful in itself, but as you pointed out, I believe I can sing in tune because that's something I learned to do by ear while imitating singers I liked. You mentioned Pink Floyd, and they were obviously one great influence at that time. So I am pleased that this track somehow reminds you of them.
    When tracking vocals, I try to do as less takes as possible. For exemple for this track, I did 2 takes for the main lower part, kept the second half of the first take and used the first half of the second take, and did only one take for the backing vocals. If I need to record too many takes, I believe it means that something is wrong with either the key or the intention chosen when signing or even with the general direction of the arrangement. It has to flow naturally.

    I might work again on the mix of this track at some point, but for the time, despite many comments on the low output of the vocals, I like it this way. Everything was done quickly, which I think is generally a good sign.

    I'll post the original track in French you like very soon. Not sure it will get much love here, but I like it a lot too. I need to finish one orchestration for a @LinearLineman piece first.

    I hope you and your loved ones are doing well, my friend !

  • I think the reaction to your original song will be very positive. It’s a very singular work.

  • @Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr said:
    Maybe boost the vocal circa 200 and 5000, and cut everything else at the same frequencies. But to me it sounds good the way it is.

    Thank you for listening and for the kind words. This is something I should definitely try. My only concern is that the vocals are already pretty boosted in that range of frequency it might sound really harsh... Like you, I kind of like it the way it is. So maybe I shouldn't over think. I'll revisit the mix at some point. Once again, thank you for your recommendation.

  • @espiegel123 said:
    @JanKun : thanks for the kind words. So, one thing about the best shoe-gazey stuff is that a lot of care is often taken to achieve that lush bed of delay and reverb while preserving details. A few things to play with if you haven’t: use a separate bus for vocal reverb and experiment with the amount of pre-delay. Start by making it obviously too much and slowly reduce the amount. Another thing is that it often sounds to me with Blur and My Bloody Valentine that there is often a fair amount of compression on the vocals which can bring them up front a little without increasing overall volume. (Might be good in combination with someone’s eq suggestion upthread).

    To my ear (not that my opinion really matters), your mix is really nice..so this may be as much an exercise in exploring techniques to see if they are fruitful.

    Many apologies if this is over sharing or obvious stuff you’ve played with.

    No apologies needed, all your points are valid and very welcome 😀
    I like to mix in Auria because it is the most flexible DAW in terms of routing with buses, auxiliary and group. I usually send my vocals on auxiliary instead of buses and then set the auxiliary as input on a separate track where i then use a reverb as insert fully wet. I prefer this level of control because this way I can keep the dry signal on its original track and blend the reverb to my taste with both send and the fader on the "auxiliary" track itself. I am not sure my English is understandable... I tend to do this with drums as well. But I didn't do like this this time because I found that everything fell into place naturally without this method. But I might try when I decide to revisit the mix later
    I kind of like it the way it is for now, despite the many comments about the vocals low output. Strangely, when I listen to the track, I mainly hear the vocals. Might be some psycho acoustic bias.

    Both vocal tracks have their own mixbox insert with different FX chains but in both cases there is compression, I really like the vintage compressor emulations inside Mixbox, specially the LA2A which I think works great on vocals.

    It is really nice having your insights you seem extremely proficient technically so your recommendations are more than welcome. This forum is such a nice place to exchange simply, without being looked down on. Thank you very much. If you don't mind I might contact on PM when I will be needing for advice for my next projects. And sorry for my poor English.

  • edited September 2022

    @pbelgium said:
    Sweet! Great version of this song @JanKun. I like the mix as is and love the layered guitars - got a Floyd/Bowie vibe. Thanks for sharing.

    @pbelgium , merci beaucoup. Floyd/Bowie, c'est un joli compliment. Content que tu aies apprécié l'écoute.
    A bientôt

  • You’re a very versatile creator @JanKun, with a lot of different talents. We’re fortunate to have you regularly producing now. The creations, in general, have really stepped up in the last year. The forum feels more balanced now.

    Hadn’t thought about Tim Buckley in a long time. You did him proud.

  • @LinearLineman said:
    You’re a very versatile creator @JanKun, with a lot of different talents. We’re fortunate to have you regularly producing now. The creations, in general, have really stepped up in the last year. The forum feels more balanced now.

    Hadn’t thought about Tim Buckley in a long time. You did him proud.

    Thank you for the kind words, Mike. Always appreciated !

Sign In or Register to comment.