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The One Millionth International Bug Jamboree
Imagine a hidden society of insects around the world.
Every year ITCI, the International Trade Council of Insects, selects a species to host a grand celebration. This recording is from the final concert of a recent event hosted by NATC, the North American Tribunal of Cicadas.
Featured performers, in order of appearance:
- Infestation - a top of the charts bug band
- Mosquita Mae and the Mosquiteers - her haunting and introspective style is famous in all of bugland.
- The Carapace Choir - a cicada ensemble known for its pure airy sound and artistic range.
- Swarm - the dance sensation
- Chirpy - the pop superstar cricket.
Backstory:
In 2024 there was a rare simultaneous emergence of multiple species of cicadas in the US Midwest. It was a once in 221 year event. Mixed in with the normal cacophony of sound there was a steady pitch of E produced by one of these species. I recorded a little of it which you can hear at the beginning of the composition. Most of the instrument sounds are derived and processed from this and other insect recordings. The original working title was “Bugs in E”.
Comments
That's really inventive and fun to listen to! Loved it.
Thanks man. Much appreciate the listen and comment. It was fun to do.
It sounds fun! Which DAW or host did you use?
LP entirely. Heavy use of sample alchemy and quick sampler. Powerful tools - when they aren’t losing references to samples. I had started it over a year ago when I first got the new iPad and logic, but abandoned the effort. It took me this long to gain the skills to overcome the bugs in logic. Logic can be a real buzz-kill. Okay I’ll stop now
LOL! Having used Logic Pro on iPad, I can definitely agree in some respects.
Logic Pro on iPad, when I last used it, had some bugs that killed my creative flow. But in many other respects, it is super powerful and one of the best DAWs to mix down stems in (or separate them with its AI stem separation tool). Also, it has the AI Mastering Assistant in case you're not into mastering your own tracks. At only a fiver monthly, it's one helluva bargain.
That said, Garageband on iOS is great for jotting down quick ideas which can then be ported into Logic Pro on iPad (it opens GB files). So, my advice is to use Garageband for creating the ideas and use Logic Pro to finish them.
That said, I'm a Cubasis 3 diehard. 😂 Although I've been currently messing with FL Studio Mobile the past two and a half months for my beat-based work with a small stint in Korg Gadget 3. Then again, I'm always shifting between creative environments.
There's only one DAW I don't mess with - friggin N-Track Studio 10. That thing has so many show-stopping bugs in it that it's pretty much the only app I ever got a refund for. (And I never bother getting refunds for apps. Sometimes apps just don't work the way I had expected, only to later become that "hidden gem" I didn't know I needed until I used it for the first time in earnest.)
Okay, enough of my yammering. Gave your track another listen, and just as enjoyable as the first listen, although caught a few details I missed during the first listen.
Another great composition. I won’t go into an another detailed analysis, but I love how all of the various parts transition so smoothly and effortlessly. I know it actually took a lot of effort, but the magic is making it sound easy.
I remember my first experience with the cicadas. I was working as a house painter. Do you remember College Craft? Whenever we would finish a section, a bunch of them would fly into the wet paint and we would have to put the ladders back up, pick them out, and touch it up. I decided I didn’t want to do that for a living.
I like the concept behind this. Many years ago I was talking to some friends about the idea that insects might actually be highly intelligent. We had been toking at the time. Since insects don’t have to go to work, and all they have to do is survive, maybe they spent most of their time contemplating the meaning of life and the Millennium Prize Problems. If we could only communicate with them.
Have a great 3 day weekend!
Ahh, you were catching a buzz…. Sorry, couldn’t resist
I try to communicate with them with a fly swatter. They don’t get the message though
Being retired I have 7 day weekends. It’s great. You need to try it asap. Thanks for the comments!
@jwmmakerofmusic thanks for heads up on n-track. Always wondered about that daw. You saved me from more wondering. How is your experience with FLStudio so far? My problem with cb3 is the built in instruments. They are not nearly tweakable enough for me. The editable parameters are never what I want to modify. Nothing beat Obsidian in that regard.
Yeah, N-Track's biggest show-stopping bug was - it would forget plugin parameters in the middle of a session without me switching to a different app and back. I don't mean just for the AUv3s either. It also did that with its own internal plugins too. 😂 Holy shit. I thought N-Track would be the ultimate Ambient music environment because of its advanced automation curve functions, including LFO automation curves. Pity. As I said, that was the only time I ever got a refund for an app.
(The only time I ever tried to get a refund for an IAP was back in 2018 when Korg discontinued this one organ pack from Module Pro, and it was no longer downloadable, effectively breaking my Gadget project. Korg eventually rectified that and made it available to download only for those who already purchased the IAP.)
I will get this out of the way first - screw Matt (BlipInteractive) for sunsetting Nanostudio 2. 😬 That was literally the best environment I used for producing music of all sorts. I know others wanted to keep NS2 around, but when I got my current iPad, I didn't bother to redownload it to here. Reason is, I'm not going down with a sinking ship. 🤣
I love CB3's built-in instruments, and they work fine for me for various genres like Country and Pop-Rock. Especially when I use OneShot (Klevgrand) for the acoustic drums. But as far as CB3's instruments tweakability is concerned, it's just not deep enough. Another gripe is - I think it's a bug, but sometimes I can't access the parameters for third party plugins in CB3 in order to automate them, and I love using automation for shaping sounds. But these are miniscule gripes as far as I'm concerned. The pros far outweigh the cons for Cubasis 3.
And for a good synth to pair with CB3, I suggest FabFilter's Twin 3. Even though I can't automate shit with it in CB3, I can use its various modulation sources (LFOs, envelopes, you name it) on most any parameter within it.
Now to actually answer your original question - I'm able to use FLSM's various synths like 3xOSC and GMS (short for Groove Machine Synth) to get a wide variety of sounds. FLSM's synths are not as complex and deep as Obsidian, but everything is far more tweakable than Cubasis' instruments and Minilogue.
3xOSC is the subtractive synth in FLSM which can do a helluva lot of great things. It's my favourite for very fat basses. In my latest piece of Ambient titled "The Question Remains", I used it for the drone bass. I think that was the synth I used for the lead synth in "Dance Floor Hero".
GMS is kind of the "Dubstep Bass" synth, but I've used it for other sounds (such as the chimes in "Dance Floor Hero" and for the plucked lead in "The Question Remains"). GMS is not as deep as 3xOSC, but GMS in of itself can yield some mighty impressive results.
Supersaw is exactly what you'd think it is - a Supersaw synth. (Then again, it can also do "supersquares" as well.) I used it in conjunction with the recently-added "wow & flutter" in FLSM for the fat 80s pads on "Dance Floor Hero". Quite a massive-sounding synth that's good for more than simple Trance leads.
Transistor Bass is one of my favourite 303 emulations I've heard on iPad (outside of Pure Acid). Not much to say, but it has plenty of parameters to automate.
Speaking of automation, you don't have to menu-dive for a specific parameter. Just tweak the parameter of an instrument or an effect, set the time marker to where you want the automation to start, tap the 3-dot menu by the play button, and choose "Create Automation Lane" (I think that's what it was called, too tired to look up the proper name, lol.) Simple as that, and then you can lay out automation any which way you want in automation clip format! Plus, you can automate anything in FLSM!
OH YEAH! Minisynth. Let's not forget about the very first synth introduced to FL Studio Mobile (I think it was FLSM 2 back then, aka during the era when Image-Line worked in conjunction with Xewton and originally built FLSM on the Xewton Music Studio framework.) It's super simple and not as tweakable as the other aforementioned synths, but then again Minisynth has some limited sound design possibilities in of itself.
Then of course you get DW Sampler, which is based on the DirectWave instrument in FL Studio proper. A lot of FLSM's IAP packs are multisampled presets for DW Sampler. That all said, DW Sampler in FLSM can also load in single oneshots. So if there's a specific instrument not covered by FLSM's IAPs, I usually use AUM and sample a oneshot from an AUv3 plugin to load into DW Sampler. This is especially true when I want to import one of Beathawk's amazing sounds, or I want to sample a unique synth like Atoms or sample one of Gadget 3's synths or whathaveyou.
The only downside of FLSM is the fact it doesn't host AUv3s, but what comes with it (including a ton of drum samples and DW Sampler instrument presets and the IAPs) should be more than plenty to keep you busy for hours. I wish I could use a MIDI Auv3 plugin in FLSM like Harmony Bloom or Fugue Machine Rubato, but alas.
Honourable mention - Slicer. Yes, FLSM has its own beat slicer! I used it on a Breaks track I made called "A is for Acid". FLSM comes with a lot of great loops already, but even better is (afaik) you can import your own loops. I haven't tried the latter yet, but soon plan to experiment with that.
And, FLSM comes with a multiband compressor, a limiter, and an analyser with a loudness section for LuFS metering! So when I create a project in FLSM, I usually just master it "on the spot" in the project itself. I usually put a Leveller plugin before the Multiband Compressor (it's a volume control plugin which can act as a pre-stage gain, which is handy for boosting or attenuating the mix as a whole to feed into my mastering chain to get the loudness level to around -14 LuFS).
When I did my two aforementioned stints in Korg Gadget, I used FLSM to master those tracks rather than Cubasis and a bunch of third-party plugins. Just goes a lot faster that way.
So in short - my experience in FLSM is simply wonderful.
I can't recommend it enough for tweakable internal synths.
Excellent idea and execution!
@Pxlhg thank you!
@jwmmakerofmusic - thanks for the rundown on FLSM. Sounds like the synths are good. How about midi editing? You can DM me if you want so as not to keeping bumping this. Or better yet, start a thread on iOS daw comparisons. Pros/cons. You seem to have deep experience with all of them
I'll probably stick with the DM route, lol. A megathread on iOS DAW comparisons would probably take too long and cut into my music production time, would be my opinions of each DAW only with facts sprinkled in, and with the small possibility of the thread turning derisive. 😂 So expect a DM very soon, my friend.
Surely for this you wanted ‘bugs in Logic’ ?
Really imaginative piece, very enjoyable 🙏