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
A lot of terrible music has been created by technically gifted geniuses too.
I'm not anti-skill and learning, I just think that, like art, anyone has the potential to create an uplifting and inspiring piece of work regardless of whether they've had training or not.
You have the potential.
Musicians who learn by ear can make some great music by following the music theory rules that they don't know or understand. Many believe that they can do just fine by not knowing and often they are right. However, I believe that one can make better music with at least a basic understanding of why certain ways of doing things sound better than others.
Like most anything, it's easy to get bogged down and frustrated if you don't understand it fully. I can identify with the comment above regarding the "Hendrix chord." And I've used that same nomenclature before ...
They know how to play the chord by ear, so they're using the theory. They just don't understand why it works. So the next time someone says to play an A7#9, they can think to themselves ... Oh, the Hendrix chord in A.
No one is going to be harmed by learning the basics of music theory and I believe it can help anyone going forward.
Don't try to learn everything at once by just reading books while not playing any music. Start slow with things you do understand and incorporate new music theory connections you learn into your music you make from what you are learning.
Instead of getting frustrated with what you don't know, celebrate and use what you do understand so far while continuing to learn and understand new things. No harm will come from this.
I have to disagree with every sentence you wrote.
Music theory is not inelegant at all and if you think it takes far to long to learn, then you're getting too bogged down in the details. Yeah, you may be right that it takes too long for one to gain a deep understanding of music theory, but most performing musicians can benefit from a far less in depth understanding of theory than a college music professor may have in his brain.
It's not too much work if you take it slow and try to use one new thing you learned today. And try to carry on the next day with something else new to learn and understand.
At first you may have to think more about it, but as new learnings become integrated it will become more natural and then you can "forget the rules" and just play.
The problem with learning any new technical challenge is understanding how one can use the knowledge in a typical situation.
For example: Say you just learned how to find the relative minor of any key signature. Great! But what does it mean for your music?
Here's a typical situation: Hey, we're playing the blues in the C major key signature today ... but ... horrors! ... all you know how to play so far is the minor pentatonic scale. How can you jam along with this unfamiliar major blues? Oh yeah ... relative minor of C is Am ... So I can just play the Am pentatonic scale over the C major blues changes and it sounds good!
So, maybe you already knew how to do this without knowing the technical details about relative minors, but what harm comes from now knowing the reason why it sounds good?
One simple music theory lesson just put into practice. Try to learn another one tomorrow.
A long time ago, in a music shop far far away...I used to sell keyboards. It was Hessy's in Liverpool.
Anyway they had this keyboard department in the basement, it was full of organs and right at the end shoved in a corner and round a bend was the synth section and me.
Their organ salesperson was the most annoying human being in the world who would spend his days bashing out awful Beatles covers and other numbers that all sounded like they would be at home in Blackpool Tower.
At that time I had very little knowledge of musical theory, I learned everything by watching and listening and playing.
One day Pete came along with some sheet music and said something like "Can you play this?" And thrusted the sheet at me.
This is true, I looked at him and said "No I can't' but I can make a paper plane and throw it."
For me this is an interesting thread, which .i have been reading and thinking about. I have been thinking about doing a few piano lessons, the real basic stuff made easy. In fact later today I'm recording a video showing how to play JS Bachs Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.
A..because it's fun.
B..it makes you sound amazing.
C..It's super simple to play, with a little practice.
But back to the topic. What I have learned over time is that I did know lots of theory, I just didn't know what I knew. Once I began to grasp it all it became harder to compose because I felt a little constrained by "Musical Law" I can't do this because, or this wrong I have to do it this way etc etc...
But that only lasted for a little while, once I realised that I could still break all the laws the extra knowledge was hyper useful in everything that I then did, and still do now.
Anyone who knows how to transpose the Hendrix chord to an A shape or play a I, IV, V progression has some basic music theory knowledge. I think many people who don't want to learn music theory may already have more than they realize. For me, I see it as an extra tool, and I think it helps me. Others may not feel the same, but it's harder to dispute the other advantages....communicating with other musicians and logging what you've composed for future reference.
I forgot to add, another advantage is that understanding the theory is helpful for me in finding all the shapes and positions you could play that E7#9, or any other chord, across your instrument. Not that I'm there yet, but I'm getting closer.
Good thread. @thesoundtestroom Can't help but wonder what Pete's doing right now....
I get the sense that some people in general (not on this board, you guys are great!) hide behind a fake aversion to musical theory out of a lack of self-confidence. They use it has a crutch so that they can argue that their amateur work isn't comparable to whatever they consider professional music. And they justify it with the very strong argument that they don't want to sound like the soulless douchebag shredder from their local guitar shop.
Personally, i find that view short-sighted. I pretty much take advantage of every learning resource made available to me through the internet and the ipad... Stuff that would have been inconvenient if not totally impossible to learn prior to 1995. Turns out that there's some great youtube videos about non-technical topics like playing blue guitar with feel and emotion as an example.. Stuff that i can't learn in my regular daily life because i don't have a time machine to take me back to the 1930s Mississippi Delta. I am truly blessed to have this opportunity to learn. Playing music won't save us from dementia in our old age, but continuous learning will.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -PK Dick
Edit: double post.
cough all this music theory turns into useless knowledge if you leave the western post Bach music world and its 12 tone system
It's not like that no music exists without all that
Try to play some chords to this, and while you try try to tell me that this isn't beautiful, lol
you'll have to agree that playing the blues is quite boring compared to this
You can't even explain the difference between Ravi Shankar and George Harrison without a basic understanding of musical theory. The 12 tone chromatic scale is but a subset of music and is not all-encompassing. It's not like the great Indian masters didn't have scales or rely on a deep understanding of musical theory.
Indeed. Indian music has its own theory and musical notation. The forms are very strictly adhered to in traditional music.
How many here want to leave western music entirely? I would like to know as much about the entire spectrum of music, and that would involve different theory for the many sub-sets. Laziness is all that is stopping me.
I would like to know if it's possible for a developer to create a music app without any musical knowledge whatsoever.
And i wonder if it would be of any use. Because I look around and see nothing but synths with built-in scales and locked-key mechanisms that a lot of people are using like training wheels to learn how to ride a bike. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
But are we really at a point where people are complaining about guitars having 22+ frets and pianos having 88 keys?
I had cello lessons as a kid and was pretty good at it, that and a love for music got me into it later (oh how i wish i'd kept playing) but i couldn't understand why i couldn't churn out tracks like my idols, i used to think i needed loads of theory to reach that level and/or lacked the talent but that course i mentioned kinda turned things on it's head.
There loads of things that factor into it outside of music like life, environment etc as well as your feel for music and ability to express it, if you have that you're off to a good start and can build and develop on it.
The takeaway i got from the course was finish finish finish even if the musics crap you may have to get through a bunch of it to reach the good stuff. I hadn't finished a track in years cause i thought i had to reach a certain level of technical skill, not just theory but engineering but by finishing tracks i discovered where my weaknesses were and what areas i needed to improve on, mixing or theory or whatever and focus on those.
Anyway there's a lot of theory used in dance music and that's what seperates the good from the bad stuff IMO so it is worth learning some but just enough to get where you need to go otherwise it can be overwhelming. You could have all the theoretical knowledge in the world but what good is that if you don't have any songs to show for it?
Just my 2c.
Hm, western music is always 12 tone and based around the idea that you can harmonize it with chords - raga is very very different its 22 tones and has no chords at all - the richness in sound comes from microtuning unknown in western music ...
Careful, you spilled musical theory all over your point.
Hehe, yes, but who would have understood if I just said listen to this and keep your blues?
@Lala, I already understood the difference between western and Indian musical theory. Chords are harmonies. Indian music has harmonies. Ergo, Indian music is not that different from other music.
What I don't understand is your point that learning musical theory at all is a waste, because everything is not 100% consonant, 100% of the time, to your ear.
@Lala, i just noticed that you keep going back to edit your posts after we've all replied, to modify your illogical point and bash certain genres of music for no reason at all. The irony is that I use iTabla as one of my top-3 go to drum machines for jamming in key to. Not sure why you felt the need to turn this into a competition of genres, but you seem entirely disingenuous with your constantly evolving arguments.
I don't - I've played guitar for over 30 years and have picked up a fair bit along the way. I would say though, that imagination and discrimination are far more important qualities to have.
@soladar78
I know you understand.
maybe I am just bored with western music, it gets kind of boring if you know what the next 4 variations of chord will sound like with a 4/4 beat ...
Here's an example of how musical theory, collaboration, and the AB community can overcome a 4/4 beat that sounded wrong, so that it now sounds like an authentic Jamaican one-drop:
http://forum.audiob.us/discussion/8163/jamaican-pipe-dream/p1
Maybe I shouldn't edit my posts
I'm only editing to make a cleare statement,
Btw. It takes a while on this end to see new posts, so thanks for the flowers &_&
I am a dolt and a fool and in musical terms a village idiot with a neon kick me sign for a brain, but I don't luxuriate in my failings. I DO like the notion here (@musikmachine I think) of finish. And realize now I have avoided it often because it's hard and also because, for sure, ones failings are suddenly very evident. Oh for a critical faculty that was as under-developed as my technical understanding
Thanks for sharing! I'm gonna read it. Looks interesting.
I liken it to the domain of visual art and design. My own demarcation between art and design (and us ex art students discuss “what is art” endlessly, and then when we’ve finished, we move on to “is that art or is it design?”) is that you can tell a designer they’ve designed it incorrectly, and show a more correct design. Art, on the other hand, nobody can tell the artist that they’ve done it incorrectly. Even they don’t even know if they’ve done it correctly or incorrectly. As far as the artist is concerned, any artistic output in return for artistic effort put in is what it is.
For music, though, is a good ‘musician’ merely a manual-labour tape-recorder? Able to play back a previously existing creative event all over again and again, with impressive dexterity and control? We don’t usually have painters that strive to do that, or photographers. I don’t think I could actually play an already existing song at all, I’d never be able to remember the exact distances and directions and timing. I can hardly remember any of my own compositions (but there it’s because of a different reason — I keep changing the tune or the words or the melody or the timing, and fail to remember the new one because it’s less muscle memorised than the out of date versions).
I think I simply don’t like notes. Or to put it more accurately, I don’t like it when a note ends, and another one has to come along, the decisions are far too complex. I also don’t like it when more than one note happens at the same time. What I do like is sounds themselves, especially the complexities of different types of sound.
When I was in my formative years my idols were people like Cabaret Voltaire; The Residents; a very obscure Melbourne band called Essendon Airport; that sort of thing. This is distinct to the sort of music I liked to listen to — disco; Kraftwerk, Sparks, and of course, Eno. But not for one minute did I ever think myself capable of doing (or wanting to do) what Kraftwerk, Eno, do, or ever make actual disco music myself — I didn’t classify myself as capable of that. But I seriously did want to go down the path of making a similar impact to that of Cab Voltaire; Residents; and many of the people listed under “experimental music” in my music books. I honestly thought I could do that sort of thing myself, and intelligently push the level further.
I have a mate with a musical degree, who built the most amazing studio in Switzerland with the intention of creating his musical masterwork. Filled with synths of the finest vintage, racks of effects, and considerable musical knowledge I waited eagerly to hear the results. Ten years later and nothing has been recorded, and he's since sold most of the gear. He told me he just couldn't commit any of his ideas to tape because he was never satisfied any of it was good enough.
I've heard him play and sure that wouldn't be the case, but it seems he'd raised the bar so high he thought he could no longer reach it.
Disclaimer: what I wrote above refers to (most) Western Hemisphere music rules and other learnings I have received from occasional beams originating from Saturn.