Original instrumental - all uke

Jim Hanks

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Nice arrangements and playing Jim! I can see electric uke in my future :cool:
 
Love it! Dreamy...
 
Mike Oldfield comes to mind stylistically, but that may be before your time Jim.

I have just gotten comfortable enough on the uke to start recording it, and hope share some stuff here soon. Maybe we can collaborate. I rediscovered drop box recently and it seems like a convenient way to share wav files. It would be fun to send you a track, and let you do your magic on top, or visa versa.
 
I'm aware of Mike Oldfileld but haven't listened to much of his work. I know I had Tubular Bells at one point but it freaks me out too much to listen to it now. :eek:

I'm open for collabs. PM me if you have something specific in mind you think I could contribute to. :shaka:
 
Nice work Jim Hanks. I enjoyed the finished piece and the blog that details your workflow is fantastic.

I've been running into the limitations of GarageBand on iPad recently and am trying to decide whether to invest my efforts into learning Cubasis or Auria Pro. Are you able to push me in either direction?
 
Sounds great Jim!

I like the way you have carefully applied reverb and that it's not too drippy and cavernous, but has a nice sense of ambient space, and the filter on the lead melody line sounds like an envelope-follower, similar to an old EHX pedal I used to have. I also like the sort of metallic-shimmer feedback that you have going on the harmony line too.

The song has a sort of lazy-Sunday feel at the start and then kind of lifts up to a higher plateau as it continues, and then resolves and rests naturally at the end. It feels like a nice flow.

IMHO, the overall mix has a very good blend. I think you have a good ear as evident for the end result in both the songwriting and production.

I'm looking forward to more...

Well done brother! :)
 
I've been running into the limitations of GarageBand on iPad recently and am trying to decide whether to invest my efforts into learning Cubasis or Auria Pro. Are you able to push me in either direction?
I haven't look at GB in ages, but it just had a huge (yuge? :p ) update and I've been thinking about giving it another look. My only experience with Auria (not Pro) was on my original iPad 2 several years ago and the experience was, hmm, "underwhelming". It was just too much for the hardware I think. I hear good things about Auria Pro but I picked up Cubasis for $25 so did not feel compelled to get AP. I think Cubasis has a lot going for it especially for working with MIDI *and* audio. AP might be better from a strictly audio perspective but I'm not sure. As I said, I haven't used it.
 
Logic Pro, is the pro version of Garage Band, and for me, it is well worth the $199 investment. I do almost exclusively real instruments, so I don't have any experience with some of the tools your using. But, if you can use them in Garage Band, you can definitely use them in Logic Pro.
 
I have Propellerhead Reason on the PC. Way more "power" and options than the iPad, but the iPad is so much more convenient and portable that I've been using it a lot more recently, especially since upgrading to the iPad Air 2.
 
I haven't look at GB in ages, but it just had a huge (yuge? :p ) update and I've been thinking about giving it another look.

It's worth a download just for the Alchemy synth. I like how easy GarageBand makes it to go from idea to a decent song, but the limited and automation makes it hard to go from decent song to good song. It's great for putting together short backing loops for jamming over and multi-takes lets you pull out the best bit/s to use as a riff or solo.

My only experience with Auria (not Pro) was on my original iPad 2 several years ago and the experience was, hmm, "underwhelming". It was just too much for the hardware I think. I hear good things about Auria Pro but I picked up Cubasis for $25 so did not feel compelled to get AP. I think Cubasis has a lot going for it especially for working with MIDI *and* audio. AP might be better from a strictly audio perspective but I'm not sure. As I said, I haven't used it.

Thanks. I'll have a play with the demo version of Cubasis and hope to pick it up 50% off. Not that full price is unreasonable, but I've got Auria Pro already.

Have you tried an EarPods mic as an alternative to your iRig? The tech inside is very similar, but I prefer the sound from the EarPods. I'm going to write up my experiments in a separate thread.
 
@ Dan -

From what I know, Jim is running Windows on the desktop, but has a newer iPad, which is his only current option without buying a Mac of some flavor...

GarageBand does not work on Windows, but does work on iOS and Mac.

Logic used to have a Windows version back when it was a product by a company called eMagic, which Apple bought back in 2003, and then shuttered the company, and internalized Logic as an Apple product and then made it Mac-only.

The closest thing to GarageBand on Windows is a program called Sequel by Steinberg, also the makers of Cubase/Cubasis. last time I checked it was ~$99 USD for the basic version, but project files are not compatible with Garageband nor Logic (nor ProTools either).

There are a few other DAW programs that have versions for all three of Mac/Linux/Windows, such as:

Tracktion
Ardour
Harrison MIXBUS/MISXBUS-32C
BitWig Studio

and Ableton Live has both a Mac and PC version.

Hope this helps.

@ Jim -

Apologies for speaking of you above in the third-person :)


source: longtime computer geek going back to Z-80 and M6502, and M6809 cpu-based system in 1976, then PC since 1981, switched to Mac in 2005, and now use Mac and iOS only for music, but Linux for main desktop since December 2014.

Also having worked professionally both in IT and as an audio engineer for 35+ years, I've seen lots and lots of hardware and software systems that I've used both at home and in pro studios.
 
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Indeed I do!

They come free with iPhones or can be picked up for around US$7 on eBay. They use a MEMS microphone and circuit that looks very similar to what's inside an iRig Acoustic. I know this because I pulled mine apart the other night.

NxFLIBb.jpg


I find the iRig Acoustic prone to picking up _tick_ sounds from the string when strumming the ukulele when mounted the standard way. If I put it further inside the uke it's better, but still gets weird with high frequency harmonics. The EarPods mic is better (to my ear anyhow). I've got it taped to the neck-side soundhole brace, soundhole side. I'll replace the tape with a 3D printed clip when I get a chance and install a couple of 3.5mm jacks at the tail so I can plug one into my iPad and the other into headphones for monitoring. And I'll cut off the EarPod bits so it's just a mic.

Monitoring is a problem if you just use the EarPods without butchering them. You can get audio splitters from eBay that separate the headphone lines from the microphone line at the iPad.

Here's a little clip from messing around in GarageBand the other night:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4vuo2nnmiw89f0n/My Song 7.m4a?dl=0

It's got one fuzzed out ukulele picking chords, a cleanish uke strumming and another cleanish improv lead all recorded from EarPods. Plus an alchemy synth line and auto drummer.
 
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Very very good :music::music::music:
 
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