My Masterbatory Masterpiece. You might like it!

[docjeffrey]

My jouney into Mobyland continues. This one has some pretty cool guitar parts, but you will have to be patient for about 1:12 at which point my Les Paul Baritone make an appearance thru a gorgeously clean Mesa Mark V. Then at 2:31 things get even more interesting as I kick it into Mark IV mode and lay down a crunchy rhythm. At some point, a regular scale Les Paul arrives, again courtesy the Crunch (Marshall-ish) channel, so it's all Mark V, all the time! I might as well sell all of my other amps.

I started this on my iPad using Animoog, iElectribe, Sunrizer, DrumJam and SoundPrism Pro--all very cool music apps for the iPad. I recorded the parts into various loopers and also made good use of Animoog's 4 track recorder before using Audio Copy to get the basic pieces into Auria (iPad DAW). Then I recorded more parts and transferred the entire session to Pro Tools on my MacBook Pro.

At which point I decided to add the aforementioned three guitar parts which took the better part of the afternoon.

Then it was mixed down and given a few mastering touches in the T-Racks Deluxe standalone app. 

OK so most of you won't read all of this and that's fine with me, but I wanted to point all of this out because it's been exactly a year since I rededicated myself to writing music and recording songs. I've written and recorded about 50 songs and I have another 100 or so pieces and ideas on my iPad and MacBook. Almost 350,000 people have visited my YouTube site and that's all the motivation I need. I won't get rich from any of this. I do it for the love of music and especially playing the guitar. Rock on. Enjoy my new song. Seriously, I'm generally self denegrating about this stuff, but I like this piece.

The working title for this song was Moby's Grape. Some of you will get the meaning, most will not. It's the sad nature of my sense of humor with is neither sensual nor humorous anmore. You can find the early version of Moby's Grape on SoundCloud. This is the more fully realized version and it's called The\_Void. Many of you will like the original better, but I know that almost all of you will enjoy either Moby's Grape or The\_Void a lot more that the ususal stuff I grind out. Stick it out for the rather lame solo:-)

 

The Void AKA Moby's Grope by Jeff Bauer

 

 

[docjeffrey]

I took some screen caps of the apps I used. Again, maybe someone will be interested, but probably not. These days I enjoy replying to my own Harmony Central posts. I have the entire place to myself, so I can do pretty much anything I want except say words like {censored}wad and dickface. So, since I am between projects right now, I'm just gonna post stuff, use this discussion board as my own personal blog space, and write like a man possessed unitl I'm inspired by something else that's new territory for me. I'm sick of heavy music and classic rock. It all just sounds so stale to me, except for Neil Young. He never sounds stale. OK, so here are the caps:

First up, the Auria DAW:

Next, Animoog. What an amazing program!

Third, we have Sunrizer, another synth just too good to be ignored:

This has been around for years, and the iPad version is as good as the hardware version:

I'll break this in a couple of pieces...

[docjeffrey]

This is a simple app for laying down pads, leads, and rhythms in a very intuitive layout that works almost all the time. It's called SoundPrism Pro:

And this is the glue that holds it all together, Audiobus. It allows you to route any of these apps into a mutlitrack DAW like Garage Band or Auria. It works about 80\% of the time. We're on the bleeding edge here, but I've figured out what it doesn't like and we've been getting along fine lately:

OK, so I'll check back sometime soon. Who knows. Maybe someone will actually engage in a discussion, but if not, I'm enjoying my personal BBS where I can hold discussions with my conjoined soul.

[JRicoC]

I get an error with the link ...

[docjeffrey]

 

---

JRicoC wrote:

 

 

I get an error with the link ...

---

 

Thanks, I'll fix it!

[JRicoC]

I don't know if you want any and all commentary or just encouragement, but I'll say this:  I don't really understand digital sound creation software or interfaces.  The screen caps you posted all looked great, but look way too complex to understand, learn and use for my taste.  Granted, I could barely even use GarageBand on a macmini, and not at all on an iPad.  It's pretty much all I can do to use Audacity.

That being said, I did not really "get" the track.  It just sounded like computer-generated tones; reminiscent of '80s MIDI music.  It sounded more like "professional" music that would be played behind a slide show or a video credits than something one would listen to for enjoyment.

I'll also openly admit that I don't like Moby, but I do like Moby Grape, so I was hoping for something more like "Omaha".

 

That's my take on it, for what it's worth ...

 

[Guitzilla]

I'll have to check out the Sunrizer app. I love experimenting with electronic tools too and have enjoyed your posts.

 

The Ipad is amazing to work with. I started out using Auria as my Ipad Daw, but have since bought Cubasis, which "feels" better to me...although, I'm not knocking Auria. Auria has some amazing specs. I would love to see how many tracks of audio I could record simultaneously on it.

 

Have you tried Korg's Ikaossilator app yet. It is a fun synth app that I've found to be very fun and useful?

[docjeffrey]

JRicoC--I appreciate you listening to the song. I think your take is right on target. It is computer generated music except for the three guitar parts. It is not easy to create coherent compositions, even with the myriad of tools. You still have to understand rhythm, musical scales and harmony, and you have to learn to use the tools, some of which are complicated for folks who never got into midi instruments and sequencers back in the 80s and 90s.

[docjeffrey]

Guitzilla--Sunrizer is a cool synth, not as good as Animoog IMO, but it's a tremendously powerful system with great sounding oscillators. It is one of the top rated products for iPad instruments.