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How can I convert an eBowed string.....
I'm working on a composition where I've written a multi-part string section.....but I don't play bowed strings. I want to play the bowed parts on a steel guitar using an eBow, but need an effect that will give it more of a cello sound, even if it's a space-age cello. If you are not familiar with an eBow, it's just a magnet that oscillates a metal string and result kinda sounds like a theremin.
My general theme is to physically play all of my tracks on multi-tracked videos using instruments I own.
Here's what I've tried:
1) I've tried applying fuzz but it really just sounds like fuzz more than a cello. Maybe there's a specific type of fuzz that works better than Audio Damage FuzzPlus 3?
2) I bought Roxsyn as it's technically not a synth, but I find it pretty much unusable. Maybe it works better for more rhythmic playing, but feeding it a long steady note over several bars just doesn't work with the trigger/gate unless there some setting I've missed.
3) Though it's outside the aesthetic I'm considering Thumbjam. It's falls outside of my self-imposed limits as it's samples and not an effect, but I might have to be more flexible. The audio-to-midi conversion works great with a steel guitar through AUM, but I'm not sure how to use it with Auria as it's IAA only and would need to be used on several tracks. My first attempt to connect an Auria track to Thumbjam did not work out but I havent' tried everything. I'm guessing there's an Audiobus solution.
Any suggestions?
Comments
I haven't tested it with my Ebow, but MIDI guitar is very good at tracking electric guitar and converting to MIDI. I would imagine MIDI Guitar going into Geoshred SWAM or the official SWAM Strings app (currently in Beta) would be a pretty optimal solution.
Although another avenue worth pursuing would be to simplify your approach and simply play on the screen, using Geoshred SWAM instruments to create the string sounds. It's very expressive, possibly more so even than your pedal steel.
Another thing to consider is that if you convert audio to MIDI you don't really need the E-bow. For example you could play an electric guitar with a pick and use MIDI Guitar to then drive a virtual cello in Thumbjam with your physical performance. The slow attack of the E-bow isn't needed since you can control the attack of the virtual instrument anyway.
Thanks for the suggestions. I have "MIDI Guitar 2", but I could never get it to work well. Thumbjam works so well because I can use a volume pedal to simulate "breath" or bow pressure. It seems like Midi Guitar didn't react to subtle volume changes very well or at all. I also remember it not tracking well when sliding between notes. Maybe it's improved. I'll look into it this evening.
I hadn't thought about using GeoShred. I'm writing a spaghetti western theme, and I'm having trouble imagining the visuals of seeing an iPad controller on screen. Not that a pedal steel visually fits that genre, but it's not as far of a leap. In the end, I'm not going to let the music suffer just because my aesthetic is violated so I'll consider this option.
If I was in your shoes I would definitely go the Geoshred route, it's a much simpler solution than trying to use the pedal steel. I imagine you're more comfortable with the physical instrument since it's much more familiar to you, but I think you're over-elaborating the process (IMO of course, I'm not always right). If you sat down with Geoshred and the SWAM strings I'm sure you would be able to master it really quickly (I've seen what you can do with a ukulele and a 12 string banjo!).
You could record the performances as audio straight into Auria if you want the simplest possible workflow, if you want the MIDI though (to fix timing errors and the like) you would need an MPE-compatible host such as GarageBand or Cubasis. Personally I tend to record and arrange in GarageBand and then export to Auria for mixing.
I forgot to mention that I don't have the full version of Auria that allows for midi. I was thinking thumbjam would work anyway as the conversion and the instrument are in the same app. I could just pipe in the audio from Auria and have Thumbjam do it's thing. My first attempt at this failed, however. No notes were triggered by the audio in Thumbjam. If I touched a note on the screen, I could hear my audio track in the background. Weird.
Overthinking is my thing
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GeoShred is a bit expensive when you start adding in the SWAM instruments. My app budget is already exhausted for a while. So, I'll be trying other methods until I can justify the purchase.
Yeah GeoShred and the SWAM packs aren’t cheap, that’s for sure. You can probably get decent results with Thumbjam too but it won’t be as expressive. Still absolutely doable though.
Nothing wrong with Thumbjam ... does a very decent cello ... you can throw your shoulder into it... very expressive.
Even more expression with the Audiomodelling SWAM Cello and other strings ... but still no bow.
I suspect rather than constructing a cello from scratch with Roxsyn and the like that you'd be better off starting off with something that sounds and responds like a cello and then start annoying it with effects to get the sound you are chasing.
But if you plan on doing a lot of this sort of thing then you'll need some gear - largely based on modelling of the physical instrument.
The best approach for me is to use an external midi controller - touché - to get yourself a bit of bow action by manipulating FX ... their arche string collection is very good ...
Keyboard players always - instinctively - use this gadget on their left hand - but as a string player this gadget actually becomes far more natural and bow like when you swap to the right hand - yer bowing arm. Really clicks into gear.
There's also a little app - Pen to Bow - that lets you get a wiggle and a sense of a bow at work with a pencil ...
but there is still a lot of work to do on capturing this complex controller made of wood and horse tails.
I spent a few years building experimental electronic cellos - make a very convenient double bass when you drop them an octave... but I got drawn into tinkering with the bow as a controller - DAT magnetic tape over the horsehair, light sensors and the like. Wires everywhere! Absurdly complex physics in that gadget - arguably impossible to replicate accurately on any sort of screen or keyboard ... but SWAM comes closest. That midi bow might be worth another look now we have Bluetooth.
Incidentally Audiomodelling are currently running a public access beta test of SWAM Cellos and other strings ... you get 80 days of free full use to see if it's what you're after. Right place,right time. Should be able to get there via their website or the app shop - if not let me know. You give them your email and they send you a link to join up.
PS Roli's RISE in combination with their best software does a decent impression of a cello ... of many things actually. Nothing else they make though.
IMO, while a pain to play (if you aren't a string player - because you need to actually bow -- with your finger) is Finger Fiddle. The sound quality is excellent as is the amount of achievable expressiveness and tone variation.
I was going to suggest finger fiddle as well, sounds great but it is a little tricky to play. I was a violinist for a long time when I was young, then played classical bass through college, so I get the concept. It’s just tricky for me to position the iPad in a way that works.
Another option is to just play the strings in GarageBand using the control surface there, is pretty intuitive.
If you’re going to use your guitar, make sure you try layering your parts as well. “Spaghetti western” type stuff wasn’t single instruments from my recollection, but a whole orchestra, so if you did a cello part on guitar, as well as violin 1 and 2 and viola, maybe 8 or 9 times each, that may give you a more orchestral sound. I’ve done that to make choirs before with just a few singers at a time. If you really want to get nutty, use an amp and set up a stereo pair of mics, then move the amp to different spots in that stereo field so that you’d simulate each sections depth and spread if it was an orchestra. That’s what I’ve done with choir sounds before and it worked really well.
It all sounds a little crazy, but things like that are the times I remember most from recordings and was all a lot of fun.
Does Thumbjam not respond to your picking dynamics directly?
I just tried the voice input with my voice and I found that it tracks my voice volume better when I lower the Vel setting from the default of 50 to around 10. So if it can track the dynamics of my voice, it should be able to track your guitar picking dynamics, as long as you refrain from playing chords or intervals. I would think it would be more intuitive than having to use the volume pedal.
Everyone, thanks for the suggestions. I'm looking into all of these options.
@GovernorSilver Yes, it works fine without the volume pedal, but sounds much more natural with it. For a bowed instrument, the volume and attack are very similar to what a steel player does with a volume pedal. Same with wind instruments, the "breath" that I mentioned above is a natural fit for riding the volume pedal.
Alas, getting Auria to send audio to Thumbjam and back again has been a failure on my end. I'm not sure it's possible as Thumbjam can't be inserted as an effect in either Audiobus or AUM. It works fine if I'm just jamming in AUM with Thumbjam as the source input, but that would make for difficult tracking (if it's possible, haven't tried) and "no-reamping" to another instrument.
Ah I see what you're saying.
I also play viola and electric violin. I do try to emulate some of that on guitar myself. Volume pedal does allow the most control. I've also messed with slow attack/swell type patches on my Empress Zoia and trying different attack settings on my Digitech Freqout but both of those approaches are dependent on a preset attack envelope rather than manual control of the envelope.
Jonsi (Sigur Ross) and Jimmy Page famously bowed the low guitar string. Noveller in recent years has gotten into bowing the high string.
Good luck!
Try using Audiobus and routing the ThumbJam output to Auria via Audiobus
In Audiobus, I have the inputs source as Auria so I can get the Audio into Thumbjam. I have the output set to Thumbjam and am able to hear my Auria audio triggering the sampling.
However, I haven't been able to get any output from AB to show up in Auria at all. In the "mix" view, I see the header for Audiobus in the input dropdown, but nothing is under it. If I open the input matrix and switch the "Audiobus", there's nothing there and none of the input buttons will activate.
Any ideas?
@sabicas: I made a quick clip to show a routing that works. There may be a more elegant way, too. You may want to pause the video to see the details.
Basically, in AudioBus, route Auria main to your interface or system output. Route Auria Sub 1 to ThumbJam. In Auria, track 1 is recorded guitar whose output is sent to Sub 1 (which AB routes to TJ). Track 2 takes its input from TJ.
In Audiobus, I now have an little information symbol on the Auria node that, when clicked on it, says "Audiobus can't communicate with this app" and suggests manually setting up Local Network permissions (how?) or that it might not have been updated to IOS 14.
I wasn't getting that before.
If I launch Auria before AB, then try to add it as an input, it shows "launching" then "ZZzzzzzz", I tap to launch which switches to Auria. If I then go back to AB, it shows the problem I describes above where it can't communicate.
I've rebooted the iPad. Checked all settings in both apps and in the iPad's native Systems app. I've opened a new blank project in Auria. The communication issue persists.
I know I got it to communicate yesterday pretty much doing the same thing.....at least for routing audio out of Auria, through AB to Thumbjam.
@Michael ?
Update: even with the warnings it does route audio into ThumbJam. Warnings were probably there yesterday and I just didn’t notice because I was getting it to trigger the sample as I am now. Now the problem is routing it back to Auria. There is still no option in the track input to select an audio bus track as I see in your video.
@espiegel123 one difference that I see is that you are at 44k and I am at 48k. My audiobus shows it's at 48k, same as Auria.
I’m afraid Auria is no longer Audiobus compatible, at least until it gets an update. The developer, Rim, is unavailable right now as he’s flat out helping to make COVID testing machines apparently (good cause at least!).
Whoah. Well....crap. Thanks for the update.
@espiegel123 you just running an older version?
@Michael Do you know when Auria fell out of compatibility?
As a former violin player, I endorse FingerFiddle also. It’s among the very best available for stringed instrument simulations.
I am on iOS 13.7. The permissions handling changed in iOS 14 -- but there must be a way to solve it because there are people using Audiobus and Auria on iOS 14.
iOS 14
Interesting. I’d like to know what the workaround is too
FingerFiddle cello a good option, very expressive and if you are used to bowed instrument it plays like one
Maybe I am mistaken about them using both AB3 and iOS together with Auria. I’ll see if I can find someone who has done it.
I was starting to wonder if I should be tracking in another DAW and maybe just using Auria for arranging and mixing. Lately, I've been having a few pops and crackles when tracking, despite my CPU% being in the mid-30s and having every other track (6 of them) frozen. I feel like it happens most when I'm using TH-U or Gain Stage Vintage Clean amp modelers, but I haven't been scientific about it. This is on the latest version iPad Air. I just wasn't expecting performance issues and it seems to be getting worse with more and more crashes and a period where I couldn't open my latest project at all until I suddenly could with no explanation as to why.
The major reasons I've been putting this off are:
1) I have a setup that @espiegel123 guided me through for triggering Auria's transport at the same time I trigger my iPhone via the MIDI Camera app so I can track audio and video at the same time. I'm not even sure which other DAWs can do that. For example, I was reading Audio Evolution's manual and there is no mention of midi transport control. I have "Multitrack DAW" and I know it can't do it.
2) everyone seems to complain about every other DAW being buggy anyway, so what's the point in switching?
I have no issue with Auria's GUI and it does everything I need up until now with the Audiobus issue.