Originally posted on August 11, 2013

In this episode, I talk about and play two songs that I creating in the iOS app Figure: Lypasi and Do Re Mi. I also talked about Jenn and my participation in Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir 4.

My wife Jenn and I discovered Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choirs, and after seeing the first 3, we wanted to participate when the next one was available. When we got notified about it, we rehearsed our parts and recorded and submitted videos. Eric and his team edited and mixed the audio and produces a great video of VC4: Fly To Paradise.

During this process, I got ideas on how to mix V’Shamru, a song I arranged for choir or quartet, and I will try to get my parts recorded in the next month.

On the Home Recording Show, episode 166, they talked about different apps that were available on iPhones and iPads. Jon Tidey mentioned a great app by Propellerhead called Figure. It’s a simple but powerful app for making music. The songs are loops that are 2, 4, or 8 measures. You can record and edit a drum part (kick, snare, cymbal + one other part), a bass part, and a lead (synth) part. You create the part by drawing a figure in a rectangle while the song is playing or recording. You can modify the timbre of the parts using Tweaks. You can modify the key and tempo of the loop as well.

My son Logan likes to use this app as well. I played a couple of his songs. I made a video of him creating a song with Figure. I decided to take two of my songs from Figure and publish them.

On the first one, Lypasi, I exported a loop, and put it into Cubase where I added electric guitar parts and a shaker part.

On the second one, Do Re Mi, I recorded myself playing the loop, and live-changing a bunch of the settings to vary and extend the loop.

Figure is only $0.99 in the iTunes store, so I encourage everyone to try it. I’d love to hear what you’ve created. Send me an email to tsnivelymusic@gmail.com.