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.
“Humming Lighthouse” (with Rising Tree Sighs) an ambient / cinematic track in a world gone blind
Lighthouses are made to guide us on our journey through the dark. Apparently most have stopped working…
This one is a special one for me. First, it is my first ambient track posted here. Clearly not up to the forum ambient standard of excellence but hey...who cares, we’ll be happy if we get 10 listens in SoundCloud and open a bottle of champagne if we get 3 likes !
Second and more importantly because it is the musical reunion with a very good friend, Rising Tree Sighs. Together with him and another friend Tazio, we recorded our first album in the summer of 2002 at his parents house. to our surprise the album ended up distributed, to no commercial success as expected, but with few nice critics and some unforgettable memories of live opening for great artists (Stereolab, Lambchop, Andrew Bird). A few guitars, a fender tube amp, one sm57, one sm58, a tascam portastudio used as interface plugged into an old PC running a cracked version of Logic 🤦! Man, those were funny days.
Anyway, for this one, he sent me a file of one of his sonic experimentations. He is the kind of guy who could spend hours filtering the sample of a whale farting and make something incredible out of it. He is also the one who initiated me to the sonic delights of Einsturzende Neubauten, Stars Of The Lids, Sunn O))) to name a few.
Apparently he used a stock preset arppegio that every Korg Minilogue owner should recognize as a starting point and processed it through his pedal chain. If I am not mistaken, the heavy lifting is done by a ZOIA empress.
I then added a few synths, a few layers of unconventional slide guitar and some orchestral sounds from Staffpad. Sent him the audio stems and let him cook the mix on his own. It seems he liked one my synth so much that he decided to push it really in front in the mix. Hey, why not ?
So this one is not properly 100% iOS, just my part.
Merci Nico, love you, mate!
Comments
Lovely stuff… a beacon of light!
Loving the coastal sounds too.
Filters! I love me some good filters. The kind where the source sound is just aching to break through and be heard.
What filter app (or hardware) was used on those aching synth sounds? This will start another round of digging through my app looking for the best filters that choke the input within an inch of it’s audibility.
UPDATE: JAF Collection for the win… the Low Pass filters can rumble like the earth in pain.
Open the champagne…
Just lovely sounds, definitely got that Boards of Canada thing going on. And a perfect visual too. Based off an arpeggio? Sometimes simple is simply great.
This is lovely JF!! And great back story too. Stereolab Dots and Loops is one of my favourite albums of all time, I was also fairly partial to a bit of Lambchop around that time. Must have been exciting indeed to play with these legends!
I love the wobbly washy textures, they create the perfect vibe for this piece.
And what a roster of openings, I love all those artists.
Thank you. When you were born by the ocean, you take it with you everywhere you go !
I am not sure about my friend's workflow but I think he mostly used the ZOIA empress. It seems to be a very powerful modular synth fitting in a guitar pedal ! There's a big community of people sharing their patches.
For the wobbling synth very present in the mix, I created it with Sugarbytes Factory synth passing through Wires and Reels (both from Audiothing), voilà !
Cheers, Irena!🍾 🥂
The BoC wobbly effect, indeed !
I spent a bit of time on the visual, glad you noticed it 🙏
@richardyot @Gavinski
The live opening for Stereolab was a disaster in terms of playing conditions. Very small bar without proper scene one small stage monitor. I was amazed that a band with this status (it was in 2004) was still playing this kind of small venues. We played very poorly but the Stereolab members and specially Laetitia Sadier were so kind, supportive and non judgemental.
On the other hand, opening for Lambchop was incredible, the best experience. They brought their own opening, Andrew Bird who was also playing during Lambchop's set.
Our album had a very good review in a famous French music magazine, written by their most notable critic at that time. So this opened many doors to us. We were very inexperienced, so to help us preparing the Lambchop live, we were offered a 3 days residency in another venue in the same city, with 2 sound engineers. It was surreal.
We arrived on the day of the concert for the soundcheck, and there on the scene was the incredible Andrew looping his violin singing and whistling beautifully on top and playing glockenspiel, the whole thing effortlessly. It felt like a dream.
I remember that we went for dinner in a nearby Moroccan restaurant with everyone before the concert started. I was sitting next to Andrew Bird and facing Kurt Wagner and his legendary cap. Kurt knew we were intimidated and made fun of it but in a nice way and kept pouring wine in our glasses ! The live went perfectly. Amazing memory.
This is beautiful, thanks for sharing
@JanKun amazing memories, thanks for sharing.
A lovely sound poem!
I was not sure this piece would be of any interest, as there are many great ambient and cinematic producers here, and you're one them. So your comment means really a lot!
Loved the mix of “found sounds” acoustic sounds and synths. Really nice ambient piece!