studio diary 20150315 – or, that was then…this is NOW

today I had the uncanny realisation, that I am about to embark on the creation of my 18th “eternal album”, which is a large series of recent recordings featuring mainly apple iPad music applications, along with the odd PC music program or “generic eternals” such as the “classical” album.

that in itself is no more significant than the fact that I launched the 17th one today, “music for apps: thesys – an eternal album” and while this album focusses on the fantastic “thesys” application from sugar bytes,  I am already planning the next (which is set to feature the absolutely remarkable app “SECTOR” from Kymatica – which involves one of my favourite developers, Jonatan Liljedahl – inventor of audioshare, and the AUFX series of awesome effects apps).

I did some pre-planning last night, and I could see that I had sufficient material for at least two new albums in the series almost immediately – and I’ve been a bit remiss this year, waiting until March to release the first eternal album of the year – of 2015 – but – hey, I’ve been busy. 🙂

 

what is significant about the fact that I am about to release my 18th album in the “music for…” or “eternal album series”, is this:

prior to the world of ios applications, I used to make “normal” albums ( from the mid 1980s till about 2011, when I got my first ipad…)  – so, you would record music, work on songs, mix and master those songs, and after x amount of time, usually, months, sometimes, years, you would release another finished album of music.  that’s how it always worked – until ios applications came along.  so the compile, wait, compile, wait, compile, wait some more, way of making albums, gradually gave way to a new way – a single album, dedicated to one instrument, app, software or even genre, where there is no limit on tracks, and I basically just keep adding tracks to each one of these “eternal albums” –  forever. so in 20 years’ time – I could have a very, very large number of tracks up there 🙂 on a broad variety of topic-based albums.

so – in the period between 1992, which is the year that my first album proper came out (“voices from the desert”) and 2012, which is the year my “last” “normal album”, “gone native”, came out – so, in 20 years, give or take – I had released 18 “normal albums” during this time – or, I should say, 18 normal “dave stafford” albums – I am not counting bands or collaborations here. that would have probably put the total count for the 1992 -2012 period to “over 30” – but I am focussing solely on my “solo” albums now.

however, more recently, and, overlapping the end of that period slightly, I realised tonight that as I am planning my 18th eternal album album right now, that this means, that I have done exactly the same number of applications-based, or pc-based / generic, albums in the “music for…” series, in just over three years, that it took me to make 18 “normal albums” in !!

 

that is – remarkable.  and difficult to believe, too.

but – it’s real.  I started out working with apps in about December, 2011, and of course, have worked with them ever since (in some ways, it feels like I am just getting started!!) so that means through 2012, 13 and 14 – and here we are, now, in March 2015 – so actually, approaching 3 and 1/2 years in total.

twenty years – to make 18 Dave Stafford albums in the traditional way.  Then, a mere three and a half years, to make the NEXT 18 Dave Stafford albums – in the “eternal album” way.

 

that is simply – astonishing.  oh, how I wish I had thought of the “eternal album” concept back in the late 80s, when I started recording in earnest, as an adult, and as a looper.  just imagine the one, massive “music for loopers” album I would have compiled by now – featuring 246 looped or live improvs played with guitar, ebow and looper, over twenty years.  and, another similar one for rock and prog works…and so on.

instead, I worked the way we all worked, we would not release anything until we had the whole album, built painstakingly one track at a time – “in the can” – even if that took three or four YEARS !  You just kept going, until you had “enough” songs, to make a decent length record, or, until you had the right songs for the album concept you had. it was quite a realisation, though, that, thanks to the “eternal album” concept, and thanks to advances in recording techniques and processes (no more tape recorders for me!) that I was able to mirror my first 20 years’ output, in just 3.5 years, using these new tools to my distinct advantage.

I would stress, too, that it’s not just that things took longer back then, or that it’s more time consuming when you are working with tape machines than in a purely digital environment, and so on – it’s also because, the tablet itself, in my case, the apple iPad – has radically, and unalterably, changed the way musicians work.  if you ask me, it’s revolutionised the way we work. everything is designed for speed, and ease of use.  everything can be done quicker, and usually easier, than in a real studio.

so the ipad, the tablet, the way that some of these absolutely, practically magical applications work…that just changed everything – and that is why I was able to produce 18 albums, with probably, more tracks than my previous 18 albums, in such an incredibly short span of time – 3.5 years.  that’s something approaching six full length albums each year – which, back in the day, would have been not only a prohibitive schedule to maintain, but also, a punishing one.  No one would “try” to make six albums in one year – it was unheard of.  OK, maybe two or three albums per year, at a stretch, maybe, in pop’s heyday, or at the beginnings of rock music – but generally, established patterns of record production mixed with touring, were established and pretty much, followed, by all bands and artists.

then, in 1967, the Beatles actually slowed down this process, by taking an unheard-of six months to complete “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. and for a while anyway, from then on, bands would compete to see how long it could take them to make one record, in the same way they competed for the “biggest crowd” or the “loudest concert in history” or whatever silly, prideful contests went on during the worst of rock’s excesses – whenever you consider that period to be (1980s, anyone?) 😉

 

of course, you do tend to work more quickly with applications, in most cases.  There are exceptions, and certain pieces just require a little more time.  But nowadays, even if it takes me, say, six weeks to finish a concerto in three long movements – the MOMENT it is finished, I can load it up to the “classical” album to join other tracks in the classical genre.

so the new system is working really, really well – for a number of reasons, and I can’t really get my head around the idea of making 36 Dave Stafford albums across 23 years – with the first 18 taking up the first 20 years, and the second 18 taking up a little more than the remaining three years!!! that is just – really stunning.  something to think about, I suppose.

and of course, at this rate, it won’t be long before the “eternal album” series exceeds the pre-2011 “normal albums” in numbers, and I cannot imagine how many albums, not to mention, how many tracks, these 17 soon to be 18 eternal albums will have at the end of THEIR first 20 years – a staggering amount, even assuming that my output will slow somewhat, as I grow older 🙂

track wise, I am not sure how it rates, I would have to do some manual counting, but I would guess that it’s probably a case where there are nearly as many “eternal album” tracks, or maybe more, than the original 18 albums would bear – because back then, tradition said put 12 or 14 tracks on an album, and of course, I would ignore tradition, I had one double album, “other memory / sand island” that had a whopping 33 tracks; while other “normal albums” maybe only featured seven or eight lengthy pieces – and EPs, of course, which I’ve counted as “albums” – might be as short as four tracks.

so I would bet that the track count of the “eternal album” HAS already exceeded that of the original “normal” albums.

I will actually be able to find out over the coming weeks, I’ve begun work on a thorough updating of the discography on the old pureambient website, I plan to pair it up fully with bandcamp, which has all of the albums, old and new, up there – so I will get full counts as soon as I expand the track details and so on, I will have a more concise resource that I can “count tracks” from much more easily.

however, please do not hold your breath, to include more useful information, I’ve had to alter the format of the discography entries slightly, which means an extensive, laborious re-write – but, I really want to do this, for one reason, so there will be a one-stop resource for information about each of the albums, old or recent, for another because it appeals to my own internal sense of order :-).

I do have an interest in statistical information, I can’t really help it, so things like this fascinate me, but it’s a really interesting comment on the speed of life, too – now, I have tools that I can use, to VERY, VERY quickly, build music of real complexity and beauty, on a tablet device (that’s where the magic comes in, I reckon – anywhere and everywhere, I can work on music – with dozens of amazing, powerful music-making tools – incredible!!!), which I can also use to make high quality art work, and then the music can be uploaded to bandcamp, instead of being made available on media as it used to be – it all happens so incredibly quickly now, it’s no wonder that I was forced to invent the “eternal album”, just to deal with a situation where suddenly, after 20 years of slow and steady music production; the ios music apps suddenly turned me into the most prolific musician on the globe – and I had to do something about it if I was to even be able to process the ios music I was creating!

what I did, of course, is invent the “eternal album”.

it took a while to get it all working, but in a very short time, for example, I was able to upload no less than 61 tracks to the album “music for apps: mixtikl – an eternal album” – and that right there, is the equivalent of five or six normal albums – produced in perhaps, six months at the most – astonishing!  so everything is…very much faster, there are no more endless delays waiting for the drummer to set up, or dealing with instrument problems (although, I do still get those, since I DO still use real instruments, and I do plan on making at least a few more “normal” albums of guitar music over the next few years – so please, watch this space!).

music just took longer back then, you had all hardware devices, so to do looping – you needed a LOT of gear.  And a nice rack mount to put it all in.  with a nice digital reverb in it.

now – all of those rack mount devices, exist not just on your computer, where all your recording takes place, too, but also – on your bloody tablet device as well ! and that is a downright miracle – multi-track studio apps like auria, sophisticated effects units like effectrix and turnado, begin to rival the quality of that expensive hardware that now sits in a corner in the studio, rarely if ever used any more, which is really sad, so I continue to make the time to use both – because as much as I love and fully embrace the music / ios technology – I still have a huge love for real guitars, basses, keyboards and drums – real instruments, recorded the old fashioned way – that still has a lot to be said for it!

 

sure, for playing guitar, I still use a LOT of hardware, especially, “loopers”, but more and more, any processing, any effects – are almost easier to apply using your PC, or even your tablet – which to someone from my generation, who grew up with electric guitars and amps, where basically, it was all about the hardware – hardware was the only option in 1971, when I started playing electric guitar for the second time, in earnest, when I was in my first few “garage bands” – is almost incomprehensible.  yet – it be.  it definitely be !!

I was really quite taken with this revelation, then, about just how much has changed.  but it’s today’s young musician that can benefit the most from all of this amazing technology, bypassing the difficult skills of learning to actually play the guitar, bass, drums or keyboards, but instead, in their bedrooms, using technology – to replicate it – and, much, much faster than we could ever do it back in the 1970s with hardware.

sure, they won’t have some of the hard-won skills that those of us who grew up in my generation will have, but, they will have the advantage of the “quicker, better, faster”, etc. – technology – and I hope we hear some amazing music being created by bands that, for example, have five members who all play the iPad.  how fun would that be!

things have changed, and today’s music making person, has a huge range of devices, software for PCs, and apps for tablets and phones, none of which we had back in 1970.  I think that this unavoidable fact has both positives, and negatives, and I can only hope that the former outweighs the latter – because the danger is, that we get too many folk who have no musical talent, “playing” the iPad, and finding limited success – because of the mediocre skill levels that CAN be used to operate some of the simpler music apps – we will, unavoidably, have an even larger stack of not-so-good “electronic musicians” to wade through than we did five years ago – but, at the same time, there are still a fairly large number of “traditional musicians” around – so, I am hoping for a balance – and I think there is merit to both types of musician – the traditional such as myself, the electronic, and, hybrids – such as, myself again – because I absolutely love playing with ios music applications, very nearly almost as much as I love playing my Gibson SG – so, for me, it’s win, win – and win.

 

have fun – until next time –

 

 

peace and love,

 

dave at pureambient

 

 

 

 

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studio diary 20150214

I had thought that “fair play”, my new “korg gadget” piece, was finished, I did make the odd adjustment here and there, but I thought it had reached its final form, until I sat down to listen to it a few days ago.

 

the listening session was fine, I am happy enough with the song, “fair play”, as it stands – but, I felt like I wanted to hear more of the “middle section”, which, as it happens, is a key change up to C major, there were only a few bars, so I copied those three bars, inserted them before the existing three bars, and then set about modifying just the Chicago bass / synth (which I am mainly using as a lead synth, not a bass – the hammond has taken the role of the bass for the majority of this track) part so that I had, effectively, three “new” lead lines, and the third, was sort of a very monotonous, circular sort of riff, so I instructed the device to play that bar twice, which gave us this:

Chicago 1 Modified Chicago 4 X 1
Chicago 2 Modified Chicago 5 X 1
Chicago 3 Modified Chicago 6 X 2
Chicago 4 Originally Chicago 1 X 1
Chicago 5 Originally Chicago 2 X 1
Chicago 6 Originally Chicago 3 X 1

so, wonderfully, that means that the “middle eight”, which is a whole tone above the basic song (which appears to be in F or Bb, I am not exactly sure!) is…seven measures long ! I love stuff like that – it makes it odd – but musically, you would probably never notice, it just sounds like a synth “solo”, which is in a different key to the bulk of the song – and it brings musical relief because it jumps up a whole tone – it’s very exciting, it builds tension beautifully…and hopefully, no one is counting bars, and the fact that my middle eight is not, in fact, a middle eight, but a middle seven – will go unnoticed by everyone except; everyone who just read this paragraph. 🙂

we have then, a whole piece of music, at last, that begins (and continues for most of the song, to be honest) in the staggered, drum-driven rhythmic world of gentle giant, moves to some beautiful acoustic v electric piano sections, with a solid and wonderful hammond bass underpinning everything – it then, finally mutates to a seven measure long “middle eight” – (perhaps, I have invented the world’s first “middle seven” – who knows? I’d love to take that credit) and then, via a reprise of the opening segment, moves onto a spectacular ending featuring a four-measure version of the “middle seven” – why not?
So at no point does the “middle eight” ever equal eight bars, it’s seven in the middle of the song (and four when I re-use it at the end) – and I think that is just fine.

 

“fair play” to me, is a proof positive that the newly-enhanced “korg gadget”, which to be fair, they only added a few instruments, but, the instruments they added are so awesome, that it makes creation with them easy, in fact, with the 15 original synths, you could do a lot, already, but having the core electronic keyboards – well, one is acoustic, I suppose, so having one acoustic and the rest of the core electronic keyboards, to hand – gives us CONTROL…it means you can build songs using those more familiar, more comforting keyboards, and then bring in the 15 original korg synths – the “gadget” originals – to add colour and shade and light and dark…

 

I basically started this piece out with organ, acoustic piano, drums and electric piano – and that IS the core of the song, and all of those are instruments that are made available in “korg gadget” from “korg module” – which, right away, shows us the real value of “korg gadget” – and that’s just the start – what will it be like when you can access ANY instrument via “korg module”, in high quality samples??

I vote for mellotron, sitar, and anything else they fancy sampling…go for it. I want to see “korg module” become the premier sample based app on ios – unless native instruments jumps in – then, I would have to wait and see what THEY come up with 🙂

I was eager to try “korg gadget” now that it’s been “upgraded” – simply by the existence of “korg module”, that gives “korg gadget” a whole new face, and transforms it into a player of high quality instrument samples – directly parallel (in its basic function, anyway) to kontakt in komplete – we have our world class sample player now – the ubiquitous “korg gadget”.
this is a really clever idea from korg (they seem to be having a lot of really good ideas lately – witness the Ibanez RGKP6 guitar and bass, which feature a korg kaoss pad 2S built right into the guitar’s body – a fantastic idea whose time has finally come – a very clever idea). korg makes really interesting synths and other products, too, and the more I get into their stuff, the more I enjoy it – they have been around the block, they obviously listen to their customers, and, their stuff is well built and long lasting – korg is a name that says “quality” to me.

 

they seem too, to be able to compete in the world of ios, in the app world, at the same level and with the same commitment to quality that they show in the virtual world, the bricks and mortar world. I like that about a company, and I think that they are handling themselves well in both arenas – not something a lot of companies can probably boast about.

 

I have listened again now, to the playback of “fair play”, and I am now fairly certain, that it is indeed, complete. I hope I will not change my mind about that again! It’s ended up just about four minutes in length, which for this type of piece, is ideal. I hope to master it and upload it as soon as possible….(update: now done! “fair play” can be found here).

 

and then…well, things happen 🙂

I was and am totally happy with the completed track, “fair play”…but, while I was doing some final tweaks to levels and stereo placement, it struck me that I’d really like to do two things: I already have finished and mastered “fair play” as it stands, in it’s complete form, but also, I’d like to take it from the point it is at, and do some further work on it, make it an alternate version of itself – so I did a “save as” of the completed “gadget” track, and named it “fair play – advanced version” – and immediately began work on transforming the by-now familiar “fair play” towards new musical areas, I have removed some of the sparser parts, I’ve added more drums, there is far less “space” in this new version, it just rocks straight through rather than having dynamic sections as the original does, and so on.

I’ve also been doing some serious “randomisation” – this is a process that I tend to get into in “korg gadget” especially – where I will lift one melodic pattern, and randomly copy it over a different pattern in a different instrument, so, organ bass part becomes electric piano riff, or acoustic piano now doubles with electric, synth solo becomes hammond solo, and so on…taking existing themes, melodies, and solos and moving them to different places within the composition – it’s huge fun.

I might also decide to just remove four bars of music here, and then, copy two others into their place, remove five bars here, and not replace them, add some of my favourite bars from the first half into the second half, and so on – endless possibility, and it’s very quick, very easy, to edit in korg gadget, too – add extra snare drum hits, add extra bass drum hits, change single hits into double hits – it can all be done so, so quickly – and probably, within the first fifteen minutes of editing, I had radically altered the basic DNA of “fair play” into a completely oddball variation of itself – “fair play – advanced version” – which I plan to work on for a few weeks, to give it roughly as much gestation time as the original got – and then master and upload it as well.

I am very, very glad that korg has jumped into the area of high quality samples for ios, with the beautiful “korg module” app, and I am extremely glad that by chance, they made those samples available to the “korg gadget” app – that, prompted me to re-visit “korg gadget”, and create a song that utilised some of those amazing samples – and I find that it makes a HUGE difference to me, to have hammond organ, acoustic piano, and electric piano as three of the most important samples in my new piece(s) “fair play” and “fair play – advanced version” – which might get re-titled “unfair play” or “fair work” or some such – I don’t know.  or…it might just stay as “advanced version” – this remains to be seen.

I have a lot of work to get on with now, I’ve recently recorded a lot of guitar sessions which should hopefully yield some new videos (down the road a piece, probably, but, maybe some interesting takes in this last batch of videos…) as well as a lot of audio mixing to do before I even think about the video side of things – this is always the challenge for me – I am now able to record a lot of material very quickly, but with only myself to handle post-processing, it takes me weeks, or in some cases, years, or in some case, never, to create video content – or sometimes, even process the audio and create master audio mixes.

the backlog is not getting any smaller at the moment, which is actually OK, and what I’ve finally decided is that I will abandon utterly my original intention of trying to present my video work chronologically, I will master and upload what videos I feel are the most important, what videos are the most interesting or unusual, and then, as time permits, I will go back and continue work on the “old” video backlog.  controlling this, will be playlists.  I’ve already created video playlists, by date, for many of my legacy video sessions so I would suggest that whenever you visit the pureambientHD channel or indeed, any of my video channels on youtube, that you always go to the Playlists section, rather than the Uploads – because as of 2015, uploads will no longer be chronological, but completely random – so you will find instead, that in the Playlists section, you will find “dated” dave stafford live music video session in chronological order – and this then frees me to pick and choose between the now, and the historical-that-haven’t-yet-been-processed – so I am recommending that you stick to the chronology as imposed by my “dated” session Playlists – or else, complete and utter confusion may be the main result 🙂  as for me – well, I am chronically chronologically challenged anyway – and confusion, well, it might be my epitaph 🙂   but playlists will get you the unconfused view of dave stafford live music videos.

I really enjoy creating these music videos, and trying out new instruments and techniques, I have never gone in for the “here is my demo of the roland gr-55 guitar synth” and then sit there, and play you ten seconds of each of it’s voices – instead, when I acquired the synth – I just started making videos with it, I just started using it, so you can learn along with me – and I hope that this can, will and might inspire others to pick up some of these interesting instruments, and have a go yourselves – I reckon that it’s easier to learn about something just by trying it – so, for my first ever video, “st. alia of the knife”, I selected the “oboe” voice, set up a nice reverb, ran an existing reverse loop – and did a live oboe solo / improv on video.  from there – I just kept working with the synth, until I eventually used it to create my first classical composition, my “concerto no. 1 in em for oboe and guitar” and also, I’ve continued to use it on improvs, as well as part of multi-track recordings such as “this is a test”, as well as the title track, from the “gone native” album, and in fact, I used it on several of the tracks on “gone native” – I really think that the roland gr-55 guitar synth is a great instrument – and I find that all of us who use the device can compare notes and share what we’ve learned via video, audio, and other modes of communication – indeed, why not?

but I digress, this is mainly a report of the now split-into-two “fair play” – and I hope you enjoy the original version while I continue to develop the second version, “fair play – advanced version” 🙂

 

until then I remain

your faithful servant

yours truly, etc.

 

 

dave

pureambient HQ – 20150214

 

 

 

 

studio diary 20150202

it’s a new year, and since during the past two months, I have completed not one but two major works, first, “concerto no. 3 in D major for piano & strings”, and more recently “concerto no. 4 in F major for harpsichord & strings”, I thought it was high time I turn to some of the other very neglected, and very excellent apps – I am not ashamed to admit that I have allowed Notion to dominate my musical life in the area of applications, for pretty much all of 2014 – and, that’s fine, because out of that, I’ve created two very interesting bodies of work: “music for apps: notion – an eternal album” and “classical – an eternal album” – and the quantity and quality of the pieces in those two albums meets with my wholehearted approval – I think these are strong works using an excellent application, and I know that over the years, both Notion the iPad app and Notion for the PC, will be my go-to apps for classical composition, and for alternative works involving a lot of orchestral instrumentation.

that is for the future though, right now, in the here and now, I have embarked on a new composition, entitled (at the moment, anyway) “fair play” – and this is my first piece created (this year) using the most excellent “korg gadget” application, which, in a sense, is like a new app – because of the presence now of “korg module”, which, interestingly, directly interacts with korg gadget” – in practical terms, this means that I now have available high quality grand piano and high quality electric piano samples available within gadget, via module – which is brilliant, don’t get me wrong, the original 15 synths supplied with the original gadget were and are, they remain, very functional and some of them, like the beautiful ambient synth, are both unique and very pleasing to the ear – and, very useful when composing for 15 synths, too!

so, I had downloaded “korg module” several weeks ago, and I had played through most of the extremely high quality samples available, and, really, as someone observed, that if you have this, and “neo-soul keys” (which I have but haven’t used much so far), and maybe, what is it, “sample tank” (which I don’t have) – that is “all you need” for sample-based jamming fun. I agree, but at the same time, I would actually welcome any number of products similar to “korg module” – basically, world-class samples, available for use on ios. Not just the ordinary ones, either, sure, those are great to have, but I’d welcome a sort of “komplete” for ios, obviously, it couldn’t have the many GB of content that “komplete” does, but, in a very scaled down version, with only the best and most essential samples – it would, it will, be brilliant !! come on native instruments – build for ios! teach korg how to do it right lol !  🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

another example of this type of thinking, in new applications, is “ruckers 1628” a high quality harpsichord sample that I was very happy to obtain, so there are more and more of these apps out there based on quality samples – quite a lot of them already, really.

 

knowing that I now had the high quality keyboard samples available to me within “korg gadget” from “korg module”, I decided to create a new piece of music in honour of that. however, the song itself, had a strange genesis; when I first got “korg module”, I went through whatever process there was, and I was testing within “korg gadget”, to verify that I could indeed access and record with, say, the electric piano sample from “korg module”. I opened up a new, empty file, and randomly stabbed at the keyboard, just to make a noise, and recorded two bars of “music” – and there I left it. “fair play” for the first week or so of its existence, consisted of a sort of vaguely-gentle-giant-sounding electric and acoustic piano “riff” – so that was how it started. and when I say vaguely…I mean…vaguely :-). the riff was just about nothing, just a feeling…

 

a few weeks went by, and finally, I found some time, and I went in to create this new song – and I decided that its intro, at least, and possibly, part of the actual song, would be based on these random events that I had stabbed carelessly into the app weeks ago – so, I made a couple of very minor changes, and away I went. within a day or two, I had a lovely, 17 bar tune, with two decent themes, one of them based on that accidental intro.

 

The accidental intro worked beautifully, in fact, I ended up using it as one of my main themes, with various modifications, and it sounds as if it were planned into the song – when it absolutely was not – a complete and utter accident.

 

In the next incarnation, now at 34 bars, a third theme was added, which included some lovely parts done with the electric piano v. salzburg, one of the existing solo synths – a nice lead sound – I had them trading melodies back and forth, and it was really a lot of fun. I did also use acoustic grand piano, but not in a solo capacity, more in a supporting role, it’s time will come, but immediately, I was really enjoying the fantastic and very realistic electric piano sound – and I even took the opportunity, in the next incarnation of the song, to have a couple of bars of it “solo”, playing a lovely circular once-again-a-bit-like-gentle-giant riff – and it sounds great, when the drums stop, and then, when they start up again, it just rocks – really nice effect, having JUST that beautifully-sampled electric piano playing on its own out there for a moment, into a nice bit of reverb – fantastic!

 

the final session to date, added yet another 17 measures, bringing the total up to the current 51 bars, and this was really just further development of the existing themes, some different juxtaposing of electric piano v. salzburg riffs, and other refinements and improvements. when I do a play back now, I can’t believe this started with just two stunted, inaccurate bars of non-music riffage – it’s really sounding quite, quite good already.

 

It’s odd, when I read back the above description, it sounds like a really long song, so I should probably say, that the entire piece right now, in its unfinished state, waiting for a resolution to bar 51, which is just hanging in space, in the middle of a song, clocks in at a modest 2:15 !!! so I am thinking that I am perhaps, half way through the piece, compositionally speaking – I can’t see it being a lot more than four or five minutes – maybe, but it depends what happens next. I like the activity of the piece, I love that there are a number of themes and changes that really grab the listener’s attention; but I am far from finished with the piece.

 

so now I am just in a period of reflection – what will happen next? – add more instruments? carry on with additional content?, more refinements?, repetitions of themes? – or, make it short, end it sooner? – I have no idea (!?!?!?!!!!!) – what will happen next.

 

 

I will say, though, I have REALLY enjoyed working with “korg gadget” this time, moreso than ever before, and that is simply because the app has grown up, instead of those 15 synths of varying usefulness, there is now a core of truly great sounding important, core, sampled instruments, with the 15 synths providing a bit of variety and spice to those central samples. It’s amazing how going from 15 to 17 or 18 synths (depending on what you get in terms of in-app purchases) makes all the difference, but, it really does.

 

the weak spot: users of “korg gadget” will already know what I am going to say: drums. yes, there is a choice of drum machines, and some pretty decent and some pretty interesting choices of instruments within those drum machines. but…they all sound a bit wimpy, when I mentally compare them say to the drum samples in “nanostudio”” – well, then, I long for the powerful sounding drum kits of “nanostudio”. ok, sure, for a lot of modern styles (which I have almost no interest in) such as I don’t really know, dance music or whatever today’s version of “hip-hop” is) – the drum machines provided with “gadget” are probably sufficient.

 

I can (almost) make them sound like rock drums if I really work at it, but that’s really my only “gripe” about “gadget” – and I would have said so from the very beginning. I should be a bit clearer here: the drum synths are not BAD, they are just not in the Dave Stafford style, and they don’t have a lot of big, loud, rock and roll drums like some other devices do have – “nanostudio among them.

 

I think in time, with a few more high-powered, well-sampled sounds inserted, that “korg gadget” will be top of the heap, at least in terms of a sort of “studio” where you have a lot of good instruments from which to create whole songs. It’s already one of the top (MIDI) studios, along with “nanostudio and a few others – there are a lot of these, and some are better than others – but “korg gadget” is one of the good ones – and, it’s made better now through its marriage to “korg module”, which gives you more powerful sampled keyboards – which has taken a great app and pushed it towards the fantastic – well done to korg for that.

 

It still surprises me sometimes, after being away in the wilderness for many months using mostly “Notion” for everything, occasionally dabbling with other apps just to learn more about them, that I can return to an app like “korg gadget” or “nanostudio” after many, many months of not working with it – and (much to my surprise!) I can set up and build a new song as if I’d been using the app every day for a year! I think apps are like this – once you learn them, you don’t forget – unless it’s really, really tricky, in which case, you will need a written procedure ANYWAY – so for “korg gadget” or for “nanostudio” – I just sit down, and I build a drum track, and then some bass, and then some synths…and then I’ve got a song. they are equally easy to use, and I actually really love working with both of them.
there are others, like, “synergy” – I’ve done exactly one piece in “synergy”, which came out ok, but I’ve never “finished” it; same for “isequence” – one song, never finished; same for “cubasis” – one song or part of a song, never finished; same for “impc” – well, that’s a sampler, really, but again, I have started a song in it – and it’s an interesting process; never finished – but not nearly as easy to use and not as easy to get going in, as “korg gadget” or “nanostudio” are – those are the two most user-friendly, almost without a doubt.

 

then there is “auria”, which is audio only, and works well enough, it took me a long time to really get going with “auria”, and actually, it was through de-constructing that amazing james mccartney song that I learned about editing in “auria”, and it’s extremely useful for throwing tracks together quickly, just to see if they “work” together, or for editing audio which isn’t easy to do elsewhere on the iPad, I am glad I have “auria”, although my tendency is to master tracks in their original app, and then take them to the DAW on the PC for proper mastering, EQ and reverb – I have a LOT of tools for those processes on the iPad, but I just don’t trust them, and it’s just a bit tricky getting around on the iPad – I can do it SO fast, on the PC, that usually, my goal is, get the piece done, mixed as well as possible, and then, get it exported – get it OFF the iPad ASAP – and then take it to the DAW for all processing.

 

when I have time on my hands (almost never) I promise myself, that I will spend time working more in “auria”, using my various stereo placement and mastering tools, using my beautiful reverb units (and, I cannot fault the quality EFFECTS available on the iPad – I have a lot of those, and I do use those on tracks), in Audiobus, when I want a beautiful atmosphere for a track – I will use ipad reverb units – the best of which, strangely is probably AUFX: Space.

 

but it really depends, most songs, I tend to get to a certain point, where the playing is all done, and the mix is OK, and all I want to do is get it off the ipad! And hence to the PC for some PROPER processing! Master it, reverb it, etc. using the superior PC tools available in SONAR – I have an audio mastering template that is fantastic, where I can add appropriate amounts of compression, EQ and reverb – at will, whenever I finish a track – I tend to finish it here.

 

so somehow, I am not able to commit fully to the idea of making music FULLY on the ipad – I am happy enough to create in the apps, and mix in the apps, and even sometimes, use reverb to treat whole tracks – but then, it ends, and I want it off the device and onto the PC, so I can master and eq and compress and reverb to my heart’s content, the old-fashioned way.

 

I am completely set up for making music on the ipad, the WHOLE process, so I could carry on, add EQ as necessary, work on stereo placement, add reverb, etc. – and create FINISHED tracks that would not require a trip through the DAW mastering stage. I will try to start doing this in 2015, to see if I can “let go” of this desire to do things half and half – I want to create ipad music on the ipad, from start to finish, and PC music on the PC, from start to finish, and maybe even some pieces that combine the best of both worlds – who knows???

 

So that is what I will attempt to do, for one of my many resolutions I suppose…see if I can resist the temptation to do it the “easy way”, in SONAR, and instead, develop high quality, quick way of mimicking the PC process on the ipad – thousands of musicians are doing that every day, and I am avoiding it! I guess I am more old-fashioned than I had realised…

 

However – I am sure I can do this, there are already a few tracks of mine that were created without the PC process, so I know it’s possible. I can do it – it just takes time 🙂 :-). The challenge will be to create a mastering process that is just as quick and easy as it is on the PC (and, more importantly – just as good) – and I think that now, in 2015, that is actually possible. There are some nice mastering tools available now, for the iPad, and I am sure with time, they will just get better and better.

 

As time goes on, too, there seems to be more and more a “merging of church and state” – i.e. PC and ios ideas and processes are often duplicated (for example, “Notion for Ipad” and “Notion 5 for PC”) ok, that’s a bad example, because they are not duplicated, but, they are essentially the same, it’s just that the iPad version is less capable. So I believe that often, the processes on PC and ios are becoming more similar, although ios has lagged, and because of Apple’s desire to be a bit of a CONTROL FREAK, for example, Apple makes the “what SHOULD be the simple act of moving a WAV file”, into a ridiculous production – a little thing called “iTunes file sharing”. It took me a long, long time to accept that this is actually the way I have to move files in most cases (thank you, “nanostudio” and a few others, for your Nanosync or equivalent…bliss) but now, I am used to it, so I just hook up, attached to iTunes, download all my files, and distribute them to the correct folders on the PC for processing.

 

So Apple wants to control you, it wants to make things difficult to accomplish, and that is annoying and that is partially why everything takes so much longer on ios than it does on PC – it’s just SLOW!!! Annoying! Too slow…PC is a million times faster, for every process. But – the gap is closing, slowly.
Audiobus, was a huge gap-closer, a great workaround, and I love it, especially now the turbo-charged version where you can have multiple chains – wow – that is amazing! I love you Audiobus, – long may you reign.

 

OK, I have bent your collective ears long enough, I really just wanted to say that I am very happy to be working in “korg gadget” again, and I am looking forward to working in a LOT of different applications this year, to try and keep up the good work – please wish me luck – I really want to add many, many tracks to all of the existing eternal albums, while at the same time, I’d like to ADD as many NEW eternal albums as is humanly possible.

 

So we move from the notion year, to the everything else year – that’s my plan, and I hope I can stick to it. Am I missing “Notion”, am I craving lines and notes on the staff?

 

You bet I am.

 

But I will resist, and I will work in many, many other apps – without a doubt – and I will present the results somewhere on a Dave Stafford eternal album; existing or new – that’s my 2015.

 

Oh – and, I will also be doing guitar work, and guitar songs, and guitar improvs – including some new things which I will talk about next time around…can’t wait till then !!!

 

peace love apps and guitars

 

dave

🙂 🙂

studio diary 20150126 or, the making of a monster (concerto)

I find an evening at last, to sit down and attempt a final mix of my most-ambitious-to-date piece of modern classical music, the above referenced “concerto no. 4 in F major for harpsichord & strings“. I’ve been working on the score for weeks, and for the past couple of those weeks, I’ve been reviewing the score, the arrangement, the instrumentation, the relative instrument levels, and actually, over a period of many days, I have made numerous small edits to the instrument levels in particular, trying to make sure none of my brash, overbearing solos are indeed, too brash or overbearing.

trying to keep the beast tame and submissive, without taking away any of his brute strength – maybe that is easier said than done. I know this piece like the back of my hand, better, in fact, because I really want it to be the best of breed, my first classical release of the new year; the second longest in duration, but, it has also become, what is almost certainly the most ambitious classical piece I’ve composed so far..

so to that end, I’ve spent even more time, than I lavished on my previous classical works, let’s face it, classical music is slightly more serious than rock, prog, or even ambient loop guitar, and, due to it’s relative complexities, it does take more in the way of time to acheive the perfect mix, the perfect master, the best sound quality that I can manage, and I don’t mind in the least that it does – because I believe it’s worth any amount of time – if the results are what I can “hear” in my head. and…they are.

‘concerto no. 4‘ to me, is like an old friend, that I’ve recently spent a lot of extra time with, and in doing so, learned new things about that old friend – and I think that’s really the best analogy that there is, a friend, and now, as I sit down to mix and master the piece, it will be like taking that perfect snapshot of my friend, as I wave his / her car down the drive and he / she heads off into the sunset.

the snapshot that maybe at the time, you take, and set on the top of your desk, and forget about for a while, and then, you run across it, weeks later, and you reflect back on the time you and your friend spent together – and you smile, because the snapshot has successfully caught the image, spirit and soul of your friend, as perfect of a moment in time as can be.

I undertook a piece of work last year, which was the rebuilding of the studio in a new premises, and that work is finally “done” – well, at least to an acceptable stage, so what I am doing now, is that each time I engage in a musical function, I make sure I have my tools and processes in tip top shape, so as to consistently get the best sound quality possible, to try and instil as much life and joy into the recordings as I possibly can.

in this case, that means a standardised mastering session in SONAR X3, one developed by me over the passing weeks, this one’s current template is called ‘Audio-Masteringx2’ and it is a very straightforward session indeed, consisting of two audio 24 bit 48 Khz stereo audio tracks, a pro channel preset that includes a compressor, an equaliser, and an RC-48 reverb from the world of komplete.

various presets have been developed, and this piece uses a fairly standard one, with a subtle, evenly matched compression that is hopefully undetectable to the ear, a gentle frequency enhancement from the hybrid equaliser, and finally, one of my very favourite reverbs at the moment, from the RC-48, “large random hall with random echoes” which at the moment, is set at about 32% wet. in this case, that might be the final level of the reverb, or not, depending on how the master I create tonight plays back in the morning.

I’ve carefully readjusted both the compressor and the EQ until they sound right to my ears for this particular piece of music, and the reverb level is the icing on the cake, the large hall is perfect for the boldness of this piece, and the keyboards and the strings fly out into that beautiful stereo reverb with equal beauty – it just enhances everything that I drop into it.

so I have done what I can as an engineer, after rejecting the first exported Notion file as too hot, the second export came out just perfect, still strong but never clipped, which is right where I want to be. I’ve spoken elsewhere of my penchant for producing music that is not slamming the underside of zero db; preferring a nice, gentle -4 db or even -6, occasionally moving up to a -3 or -2 db final output level if it’s rock, or prog, and it’s meant to be very ‘in your face’ and ‘LOUD’. I do like a good sense of dynamics, but I don’t like senseless or extreme volumes battering my poor, tired ear-drums.

for a piece like this, my final target will almost certainly be -4 db, but that will be subjected to several listening tests before I accept it. if need be – I will adjust it as my ears dictate.

but – there are many other things to consider when mixing and mastering this piece of music. I’ve made some unusual mix choices, for example, I have purposefully “placed” one of the main instruments in the piece, the harpsichord, panned almost all the way to one side. this is because I visualise this piece as being performed live, so I am sitting in the centre of the audience, the harpsichordist is on my far left, for example, the pianist, on the far right, and the poor celeste player is sat dead centre on the stage.

yes, this is to simulate a live situation, yes, it is intended to create an unusual stereo effect unlike that on many other classical recordings, but there is an even more unusual reason for my unusual stereo panning set up – it enables me to perform live circulations, a la Guitar Craft, using the keyboard instruments. and furthermore, I have also set up the string players into a similar scenario, because I have called upon them to harmonise with the keyboard instruments, while what happens is in essence, a “classical double-trio circulation exercise’ during the performance.

If you listen to the second movement, which begins at 7:18, after a brief introductory piece, begining at 7:39, you will hear the world’s first harpsichord – celeste – piano ‘circulation”, which at this point, is just single trio, from 7:39 to 9:00; but at 9:00, you will hear the second trio arrive; string trio of violin, viola, and cello, also set up with similar radical stereo imaging, ‘join in’ with the keyboard circulation, playing in unison or harmony with it up until 9:43, so from 9:00 to 9:43, we have the world’s first ‘classical double trio circulation’ – which was very interesting and exciting to score – I love the idea of using one of the best things about Guitar Craft, in my own classical music of today – why not? To my ears, a circulation of guitars is one of the most beautiful events in music (just listen to the California Guitar Trio or indeed, the League or Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists if you don’t believe me!!) so why not create one (or two, indeed) in my music now? And why not use keyboards instead of acoustic guitars?

I don’t have the luxury of having half a dozen Crafty Guitarists at my beck and call, so I can engage in acoustic guitar circulations, whenever I please. years ago, I solved that problem by making an album of ‘solo’ circulations for one electric guitar and a very long delay; now, I just add my circulations into my latest classical score! why not?

I’ve described now, in broad strokes at least, some of the physical work that has gone into this piece. but – I still have questions. metaphysical questions:

how is this even possible?
where does the knowledge come from?
how is it that, almost as if by osmosis, I can score classical music?

on a more practical level how do a handful of piano lessons as a child, one semester of piano theory at college and a long career as an ambient loop guitarist (and sometimes-member-of-the-orchestra of crafty guitarists), prepare me to be able to score classical notation? starting at the tender age of….fifty-six??

and the honest answer is: I truly do not know. I have no idea how I am able to do this. I start with a melody, I add in more instruments, I build the pieces measure by measure. but what I really don’t understand is…where do the classical melodies, harmonies, counterpoint, come from?

when I write rock music or pop music, I can hear the influences, I am conscious of playing in the style of guitarist a or bassist b. but for classical music, I don’t have the education, or the mad skills, to copy or mimic any influences…I just start scoring melodies and the rest, takes time…and days or weeks later, yet another concerto appears.

this one being perhaps the most musical and surprising one to date.

but I am not rejecting this particular ‘gift horse’, he / she can stop by any time if this is the result,

I give you, ‘concerto no. 4 in F major for harpsichord & strings’ by dave stafford, created in the Notion for iPad application.

seems like a lifetime ago… (or, studio diary 20141101: arriving too late to save a drowning fungo bat)

A blast from the past as it were, sometimes, when you are involved in one project too many, various routine tasks (such as, uploading completed pieces of music) slip through the cracks.  This is the story of one of those projects – a project that was actually completed at the end of October, 2014, was rough mixed on November 1, 2014, but is only just now seeing the light of day.  The rough mix was acceptable, but for reasons unknown, the final mix was not made, and the piece just sat in the completed masters section of the database – done, complete – but not published!

That would be, my “third”, the “concerto no. 3 in d major for piano & strings“, my third concerto, but, the first to feature piano and strings, I’d always worked with horns before, specifically, oboes (my lead instrument of choice it would appear – see concerto no. 1 [in e minor] and concerto no. 2 [in a minor] – both for guitar and oboe – do you see a pattern emerging there?) so I wanted to test some uncharted waters, and see if I could “say” as much with just piano and strings.  It was challenging, but in the end, I believe I have succeeded quite well in that particular aspiration.  But I will let you be the judge of that…

A curious melody, sounding for the life of me, like a lost European folk melody, begins the piece, but then, suddenly, a banging and clashing of strings and timpani takes over, with urgent, repeating “morse-code”-like bursts, which then settle to almost ambient, mellotron-like strings, which wash over the listener in beautiful, deep waves…or so I hope, anyway! 

That folk melody established at the very beginning, then re-occurs in various places within the larger work, as do other themes – I really like to try and establish a number of different, short musical themes or ideas, in the first (and sometimes, second) movement, and then, reiterate them, often in totally re-arranged or re-configured ways, at various points during movements 2 and 3 – I like to always refer “back” to earlier themes wherever possible, I find that gives you a cohesiveness that can otherwise, be lacking – you can hear the relationship between the movements, as well as their own unique characteristics.

What I found was, that of course, you can’t really have the strings or the piano “soloing” endlessly, so various interesting musical events probably “take the place” for me, of the missing oboe, short instrumental passages, plain and simple chord sequences; lovely pizzicato sections (I find pizzicato strings to be absolutely gorgeous, and I will use any excuse to include them in my work – I really will); but what I found very interesting was that I continued to turn to the percussion section, to take over sections of melody!

In particular, I began to rely heavily on the timpani, to express musical ideas, that normally might have fallen to a more common solo instrument (my missing oboe again, or clarinet, or flute…) – so I found that timpani alone, or, timpani with xylophone, became my new weapon of choice, and even better, when you contrasted those two percussive instruments against the best percussion instrument of all, the piano – it sounds great!

So I found myself playing xylophone a la Ruth Underwood, taking my cues from the world of Zappa jazz more than from the world of serious classical music, and I tried to think like a Zappa would (not an easy task) – however, I will say, that this concerto has a far more…”modern” sound to it, it’s far closer to jazz then my previous two works (in places), and normally, I am not a huge fan of modern classical composers or modern classical music, but I learned here, that it can be very invigorating and indeed, a joy to take those sort of almost jazz-like flights of fancy, and then keep bringing back to earth with the strings and piano, making sure that the normal classical motifs and forms are still in place, so that it still retains a flavour of non-modern classical music – elements as old as the hills – the piano, leading the way, the strings, supporting, questing – I really enjoyed the composition process in this instance, as I always do, and each time I produce a new piece, I learn something – actually, not “something” – many, many things – new.

Then, it’s almost as if the percussionists have temporarily “lost the plot”, as they seemingly almost wander off onto a strange melodic quote from “the firebird suite” – played on the xylophone in a humorous style [between 5:59 through 6:25].

More Ruth Underwood-style solo xylophone follows, which then resolves into the most incredibly ambient section of strings I’ve ever scored, which is the long, flowing section that ends the first movement – in such an incredibly calming, slow, and luscious way, and, the first time I’ve used a long fade out in a classical piece– the calm after the modern jazz storm I would almost say.

A strident string and piano theme begins at 6:42, but very quickly, loses its stridency, and becomes calmer, with pizzicato “dropped chords” occasionally appearing, long, deep strings, fade gradually along with the ever-calmer piano melody, which is now dream-like, almost ambient – eventually, the piano disappears altogether, leaving those gorgeous strings on their own for the last few moments running up to 08:07; until the first movement fades to complete silence, when another “first” is to immediately follow; the start of the second movement, has an even longer “fade in”, which then becomes a new piano theme (which, curiously, had originally been part of the first movement, had been rejected and removed to the outtakes section – and then, because I really liked it, re-instated as the first new piano theme in the beginning of the second movement; which then begins to merge and intertwine with more timpani and more xylophone, but, fleetingly; once again, the long, beautiful ambient “string chords” threaten to overwhelm, they just flow over what is happening whenever they will, often, at unexpected moments, and I really like the sound of those long, string section held chords – simple, effective.

Then we have a section of string madness, where more new themes emerge, including a brief, bowed solo from the bass (another first for me, I think) I have tried to be a bit more bold in terms of allowing individual players to have more solo “moments” – and probably, more solo piano than in any other piece.  Some really lovely violin and viola leading up to ominous bass notes, long, held notes.

At some point, we are briefly re-visited by the opening “European folk music” theme, which is a nice place for a re-iteration, tying the first two movements together nicely.

Normal string melodies, trade off with pizzicato ones, followed by more moments of madness, from 11:18 thru 11:29 for example, when the lead violinist, begins playing high speed pizzicato riffs way above the top of his/her normal range, a piece of musical joyousness I simply could not resist, which started out as just one instance, and soon grew to a full 12 seconds of high pitched pizzicato madness – a temporary loss of sanity on the first violinist’s part, no doubt. 🙂

The second movement then settles into a sort of strange mixture of piano, timpani and xylophone, in more supporting roles, as violin, viola, and cello play interlocking lines, this section gave me a lot of grief at the time, but it was worth the pain, I persevered, and it all came out well in the end.  Some sprightly up and down arpeggios for both the piano and for the xylophone are interspersed, accompanied by powerful timpani, the pianist playing with some wonderful flourishes and beautifully underpinning the piece with subtle low bass notes, while his/her right hand is playing double-quick arpeggios in the top octave of the piano keyboard.

Our familiar D suspended 4^th to D major theme re-occurs too, extending out into a timpani–led improv section, followed by more mournful, long mellotron-like string parts that bring the second movement to its inevitable conclusion…

…the third movement begins immediately, without the customary rest between movements, at 16:02 on an eerie, ominous minor chord, with the bass alternating with a short-duration minor chord, a cello melody begins, and we are once again, away…

More new themes are immediately presented, piano and strings being featured heavily throughout this movement, we then move into some “octave” piano work, followed by a beautiful, strange almost Rundgren-esque chord sequence [17:31 – 17:42], involving both major seventh chords and bass notes that are not the root note – as example, C major 7^th with a G bass, or C major 7^th with an E bass – anything but a C bass!! (two of Todd Rundgren’s trademark devices, the major seventh and the 3^rd or 5^th in the bass – why  not!) – which are then reiterated briefly by the strings –and then on into the next emerging theme, a descending chord motif…which then resolves to a piano theme first introduced in the first movement; our bright, major key sequence of D suspended 4^th to D Major chords once again; which then resolves to a really stark, honest solo piano section that I am inordinately proud of [19:51 through 20:30].

A tension-building exercise is next, using a new piano riff to drive home a musical concept via repetition, and I love the powerful way that works, once again, resolving back to a reprise of that stark solo piano piece with its odd tempo slow-down [the one just referenced, from 19:51 through 20:30] – I love the fact that the tempo changes so often in this piece.

Again, the tension-building riff, but this time, for a shorter amount of time, it then dissolves into a piano and strings section that builds and builds in volume, until finally I reach my “Beethoven moment” [22:41 – 22:47] which while it may sound simple, it actually took some doing to get that part to sound right.

SPECIAL NOTE: since we are for now only producing recordings of the full concertos (previously, we have offered both the full concerto; and recordings of the individual movements, but we have discontinued that practice, and for the foreseeable future, we will be producing only complete, full versions of the concertos online) – here are the start times for each movement, and the total time as well, for those who like to know such things:

• Beginning Of First Movement                       00:00 Approximate Duration: 08:07
• Beginning Of Second Movement                 08:07 Approximate Duration: 07:55
• Beginning Of Third Movement                     16:02 Approximate Duration: 13:09 (13:15 with added silence at the end of the piece)
• Overall Duration                                         29:11 (29:17 with added silence at the end of the piece)

 

As is my custom, it would seem, the third movement of every concerto I do, seems to always end up to be by far the longest of the three; I do not know why this is, I am not intentionally doing this, it just works out this way – partially, I suppose, because I want to add in themes from the first movement, and sometimes the second, that if all three movements started out life roughly equal, that the third would always end up having several minutes added, because, first of all, I want to re-insert certain earlier themes, but also, there just seem to be more emerging new themes, as well as sometimes, I like to re-arrange or sometimes, radically modify earlier themes, to present them with all new instruments, or with one instrument taking the lead and another a background part, the reverse of how they were in movement one, and so on – a place to experiment, a place to really stretch out both compositionally but also, as a player.

The piano parts are where I get to compose what I would love to sit out there in front of that audience and play, so they are special to me – I do tend to spend inordinate amounts of time working on the piano parts, solos and other instances of piano – which I use for everything – bridging sections, supporting the strings with some percussive, piano “rhythm” – I love to play piano, but I have also learned – that I love to score piano – it’s a real delight, and I love it when things work out well, and it ends up sounding just as I “hear it” in my mind – and that is an accomplishment, it’s not often easy for musicians to do that, but Notion is an app that actually does allow me to do that – it lets me wander compositionally where perhaps my mere, human hands maybe never really quite could – but my mind – my mind can!

To date, then, my “third”, the “concerto no. 3 in d major for piano and strings”, also remains, as of January, 2015, in any case, the longest in duration of my published concertos, although the Concerto No. 4 is nearly as long, clocking in at 27:22. I think this longer form suits better, allowing me more chances to introduce new themes or refer to existing ones…

In this case, the third movement of the third concerto becomes a vehicle for a fair amount of solo piano, which appears repeatedly in between other musical events; in my humble opinion, the piano solo in the third movement is one of the most surprising bits of music that I have come up with in recent times, it really surprises me, and, it contains a wonderful slow-down of tempo at one point, which really drives home the melody playing at that moment.  After the long piano improv, a longish section of strings, with cello and viola soloing over the top of short chord bursts of strings, follows, again, this time, gradually slowing in tempo, with the cello leading the way to a long, long final sad chord…and then, back to the bright, beautiful string section with piano, theme of D major suspended fourth to D major, repeating, that originally appears in the first movement.

That piano theme fades away completely (I seem to really, really be on a “fade in / fade out” kick at the moment), or is that, rather, a “fade out / fade in”?? – the latter, in this case, and a completely new section, mostly piano-led, appears very gradually, fading in – to take us away into the lands of solo piano once again, repeating the wonderful “slow-down” tempo section, and then – to an incredibly Peter Hammill-esque duet between the lower registers of the piano and the string bass – it really, really is reminiscent of early Hammill there for a moment. [from 26:23 – 26:50 and beyond…] – I like how the piece lingers in this very lower register, where things are dark and deep – but then, moments later, the sun emerges again in the form of that persistent, sunny D suspended 4^th to D major melodic section – what a swing of mood that is!

So many different moods and emotions are present here, especially in the third movement, which becomes a very rich and complex juxtaposition of themes, but somehow, I manage to make all of those recurrences, alternate versions, variants and mutations, all fit – and all work together nicely.  It was sometimes not easy to fit it all together, at times I wasn’t sure if I could do it, but in the end, I made it work – and, I think I have some nice tension built in certain places, that resolves into some of the quietest, most ambient sections that to date, I’ve been able to include in a classical work.

Notion has been absolutely instrumental in helping me to learn how to score, but by the time I reached concerto no. 3 (September – October 2014) I had gained enough skill with Notion, and with scoring, that I could, somewhat playfully I admit, insert these short sections of odd music just for the sheer fun of it – and when you listen, you might think, hey, wait a minute, did I just hear…the firebird suite, by Igor Stravinsky, played on a solo xylophone?  I am afraid the answer to that question is – “yes, you did”.  Or “hey, wait a minute, wasn’t that Todd Rundgren on the piano there?? “yes – I am afraid so!”.

You are not imagining it, it’s really happening!

Therefore, I present, better late than never; completed on November 1, 2014, but not uploaded until January 2015, with a great amount of pride and happiness, here is my third major classical work to date, “concerto no. 3 in d major for piano & strings” by dave stafford – we hope you enjoy it.

🙂 🙂

studio diary – 20150115

as always, there is a lot going on here at pureambient, I never quite know where to begin – so I will just start, and see what happens!

Dave Stafford – Concerto No. 4 in F Major for Harpsichord & Strings (approx. 27:30)

first of all, I am very happy indeed to report that the third movement of my fourth concerto is now complete, it required one last harpsichord theme to be reverse engineered as a piano theme with harpsichord support, from its original form of being a harpsichord theme with piano support. once I had transmogrified the section, I inserted it into its appointed spot somewhere near the end of the third movement – and voila, the movement, and therefore, the entire concerto – is done!

I don’t have my notes in front of me, but I can ascertain from looking at the score in Notion, that I began work on the concerto on November 6, 2014, completing it three days ago on January 12, 2015 – so two months and one week, approximately – and that is almost certainly a first – the longest time I’ve spent on any Notion project, the longest time I’ve spent on a single classical composition (not counting the first concerto, but as that was made painstakingly slowly anyway, note by note, using the guitar synth) – in the pre-Notion days – I can’t really count it – that was an absolutely insane process, and I am so glad that I now have Notion which allows me to score, and test my ideas instantly, without the whole “record a bar”, “record another bar”, etc. the very tricky manual playing of each part using all of the different instruments available on the guitar synth.

this long gestation time for the fourth concerto actually doesn’t bother me in the slightest, I was doing something a bit different, up until the fourth, I’d always used a lot of woodwinds and or horns in my classical pieces, and often, classical guitar, too – but this time, I kept both of those out of the score deliberately, and worked with strings, harpsichord and some piano, too – and, with these very different parameters, a very different kind of concerto has emerged, slowly, patiently – all twenty seven and a half minutes of it. I am astonished at how lengthy this piece has grown; it was really, as it always is, down to the creative processes when working on the final movement – somehow, the first two movements are always less fluid, they appear, they are set, that’s the way they are – but the third, the third is the place for soloing, it’s the place for wild new themes and ideas to appear and just as quickly, disappear, it’s the place where a lot of interesting instrumental passages occur, moods are set, and, a bit of a surprise to me: the string section with its mad harpsichord leader, proved to be a powerful musical tool.

I even wrote a section featuring unaccompanied solo harpsichord, something that, in the past, I would never have been so bold as to attempt, it just seemed right, and I felt that the soloist really wanted his moment in the sun, so there it is – almost impossibly quick, but still actually playable (by Johann Sebastian Bach or someone else at his capability level – a REALLY good soloist!!) – this “solo” harpsichord is one of my favourite parts of the piece. (For those of you following along in the score, the harpsichord solo, included in movement one, begins at bar 257).

so if all goes well, I will be able to mix and master the piece soon, although that process could take some time – it’s always very difficult to get your levels correct when you have so many instruments doing so many different things. I hope to have the piece out and published to both the Notion and the Classical eternal albums, hopefully no later than the end of January, if I am fortunate, significantly sooner.

Dave Stafford – sliver – live improv (2:14)

The next Kaoss Guitar video has been prepared and assembled, and was actually uploaded to the pureambientHD channel on YouTube on Tuesday night, January 13th, 2015. This is the third in the current Kaoss Guitar series, entitled ‘sliver‘, this one is all about power chords travelling backwards, with another go at the “slicer” patch, or rather, a variant of “slicer” called ‘mid slicer” I produced this little sliver of music using the “mid slicer” patch, which is a similar sound to the one used on the song ‘slicer‘, which was made with the “slicer” patch – if that makes sense. 🙂

I really am looking forward to both, producing the remaining videos in this series, but even more so, filming some new ones, where I push the boundaries of what can be done with the Kaoss Guitar – in one of my very first test sessions, which was, sadly, neither filmed nor audio recorded, I played some very, very chaotic and “damaged” pieces, where tools such as the decimator and the wonderful “grain shifter” literally destroy the sound of your guitar briefly, then, it comes back, only to be further tormented and tortured in the most wonderful way. 🙂

If you prefer your Dave Stafford music a bit on the quieter side, the first Kaoss Guitar video, ‘shiver‘, is in a much more ambient vein…which proves that Kaoss can be Ambient, too 🙂

Note: I have since begun work on Kaoss Guitar video number four, which is entitled ‘slider’. This should be forthcoming within the next few days, also on the pureambientHD channel. It is a decidedly completely more sonically radical affair, featuring the “grain shifter” patch which absolutely warps and wefts the sound of your guitar…to territories unexplored. I can’t wait for this video to be published, this is bleeding edge guitar sound…courtesy of the amazing Ibanez RGKP6 Kaoss Guitar.

Sonic devastation is more than possible with the Kaoss Guitar, it’s almost unavoidable – which I also hope will be featured in my next studio composition, which I started work on January 10, 2015.

Dave Stafford – Return Of The Native (working title only) (7:36) – Track 01 – of the as-yet-untitled studio rock / prog album – the follow up to 2012’s “gone native”.

Begun on January 10, 2015, I basically sat down and started recording a new studio album for 2015; beginning in the traditional way – with a drum track. I spent the entire day working on this rather tricky drum track, which has a lot of very interesting things going on in it, I wanted something that is quite heavy, I am going to introduce some elements of metal, I think, I’ve used a sort of “nu-metal” drum motif, but with many, many different permutations, to be used to create different sections of the song, for specific solos, one section for a keyboard solo, a few sections for various guitar solos or duets or trios or harmonising guitars, or..,Kaoss Guitars…maybe one section for a reverse guitar section, maybe one section for an ebow solo – a variety of guitar sounds and possibilities.

I always find this process to be very, very abstract – it’s very, very odd, constructing a drum part without any chords, melody, or idea what will go on top of the drum part. I’ve given up trying to imagine, although occasionally, something in the drums will suggest something. In this case, there is a pause, where a single cymbal builds up the beat again, back up to the full rock and roll feel – so in my head, I’ve designed an Allan Holdsworth- style clean-volume-pedal-chords-into-reverb part, like some of the amazing chordal work on Allan’s first solo record, I.O.U. – really atmospheric stuff, beautiful, strange chords floating over a huge reverb – delicately swelling up with a volume pedal, layering over each other – maybe I can do this, maybe not……..

Within this piece, which I arbitrarily gave the working title of “return of the native” to it on the first day, just so it had a name, there are various sections that can be assigned to various instrumental or solo passages. But when I am actually creating the parts, beyond trying to use logical numbers, so, an even number of bars of the same or similar beats, so 8 bars or 16 bars or whatever, but also, with interesting fills to break things up, and, a few specially-designed drum measures of my own, I feel that it’s OK to work with pre-made MIDI grooves, if they are of sufficient quality, but it gives you a much more “human” feel if you put in a few extra, non-groove non-approved bars of music here and there, just to get you to notice, or maybe, so you don’t notice – the drummer is then human, he plays something simple, so as to not make him or her to appear to be a faceless automaton, a machine (which, unfortunately, he or she IS) – anything to break up a drum part that could become too rigid.

I did then begin working on a bass part, I spent a lot of time playing with the almost endless tones available to me via the scarbee Rickenbacker bass instrument, once I found a basic tone that I am reasonably (but not totally) happy with, I did lay down a few unconvincing bass parts early on Monday morning – which came out OK, but not fantastically – it’s a start, and it gives me a launching point for the introduction of melody into the piece. Further work and I am approaching something usable. I will need to work on the tone more, and get some of the notes to sustain better, but it’s coming along OK now…

But before I put any bass down, and before I’d thought of the Allan Holdsworth clean guitar chords idea, or the other ideas for how to use all of the contrasting sections – it’s just odd, because I spent what, six or seven hours creating a seven minute and thirty-six second drum part – and if you sat there, and played that back – it is impossible to imagine what music might go on top of it – literally impossible. Yet – I am sure it will work out fine, because this is exactly the same procedure used by myself for a few of the songs on “gone native”; – and this “blind drum part” followed by “blind bass part” often evolved into some of the best pieces I have ever recorded – the title track of “gone native”, or “wettonizer”, or “sinuous thread” – in those cases, and others, there was this same moment, where I had just a drum track – and absolutely nothing else – and I literally could not imagine what would work “on top” of such a beast (aka “beat”) – especially this drum track, which is quite heavy compared even to “wettonizer” or “sinuous thread” – but, I am hopeful, I am sure it will turn into something good or awesome or unusual, if I just take my time and don’t try to rush any of the parts.

So I have a long, long way to go with this piece, but I have started the ball rolling, at some point, in the next couple of years, I will embark on the fourthteenth or seventeenth and final track of the album, and I will release the album at that point – when I know it is finished. It’s a nice process, a traditional process, that can operate happily at the same time that I am contributing to multiple eternal albums in real time as pieces of music, like the concerto mentioned above, get completed – and personally, I think that’s fantastic, because now (finally) I have the best of both worlds – I can create an album, which is a creative statement of the state of my music as of 2015, in the traditional way, track by track, until I am happy and I release it (on download only, I am afraid – no CD release this time unfortunately) and at the same time, I can continue to expand and build on the eternal albums that I’ve been working on – in two ways – by adding new eternal albums, to support new apps or pc-based music software packages – and, by continuing to produce music created with apps or pc software that already has an existing eternal album.

As of the end of 2014, I had created no less than 16 eternal albums; the first five, in 2013, the latter 11, during 2014 – so I would hope that I can at least, fall somewhere in between that this year, of course, I’d love to do one every month, but that just hasn’t worked out – I will try, but I would be very happy to create, say, nine more this year – 9 more for 2015 ! If I can get that closer to 12 – I will – but I’m happy with nine.

That would put me just past two dozen, although with the number of music apps out there, and the amount of pc music software, I could go a lot farther than 25 – with eternal albums, the sky is the limit. There are already several high quality apps that I’ve owned for several months, that I’ve done good quality recordings with – but these remain unreleased, simply because I’ve not had time to locate and master the tracks nor have I had time to create another eternal album on Bandcamp for that app. I do have this down to a process now, so if I can find myself a window in time, I will do my best to get app or pc app up – number 17 – soon. I look forward to it.

Once I have 30 or 40 eternal albums up there, I can literally sit back and just create – I can take my pick of the best of the best of the apps or pc softwares, I can spent time creating tracks in Diva, or Bazille – and knowing where to put them – up onto the u-he eternal album. A place for everything!

What Eternal Albums Can We Expect In 2015, Then?

MUSIC FOR APPS/COMBOS: THE AUDIOBUS SESSIONS (or similar name)

One of the proposed eternal albums for next year is “music for apps/combos: the audiobus sessions” – this would be for sessions like the ones I did with the ITablaPro app, where I enlisted the use of ITablaPro and then played one or even two different synth apps on top of the tabla beat and tanpura drone; the wonderful NLog Pro being one of those synths – huge fun, but what do you call it? You can’t say it’s “iTablaPro” music, because there is a lot more to it than that.

Three different apps were used – so it has no real name, except a name expressing something about the music – like my “synthraga” series for example – rather than the apps – nothing wrong with that, but, I felt that there will be more and more sessions where I am using audiobus to work with more than one app or effect – so it would make sense to have an eternal album where ANY combination of instruments and effects is allowable, which will be a wildly experimental album, but, it will also contain tracks of captivating beauty – like those beautiful iTablaPro tracks – in fact, those would be the first tracks to probably go up there, followed by a track made with Korg Electribe and another app whose name I can’t currently recall. Ah to be young again, and have a young memory that never, ever fails. What was I talking about? Oh yeah…

MUSIC FOR APPS: SECTOR

Next up, an amazing, amazing app created by one of my very, very favourite developers, the great Jonatan Liljedahl – creator of Audio Share, AUFX: Dub, AUFX: Space and many others – that I have actually done both audio and video recording with, but simply never had time to master any releases or put up the eternal album for it – and that will be “music for apps: sector” – “sector” is very difficult to explain, but when you hear it, you will get it – it’s out of this world.

It’s a beat slicer, it’s great for chopping up loops but that description doesn’t really do it justice, it’s absolutely one of the most amazing looking apps of all time, working with it is almost mesmerising, and it’s very intuitive, you just work the beat using the most unusual tools that are provided, and the results musically, are absolutely out of this world – so SECTOR is absolutely on my “to-do” list for eternal albums – no doubt about it.

MUSIC FOR APPS: SLIVER

Then there is SLIVER – another very interesting, very beautiful app, I’ve done a couple of audio recordings of this one, and I definitely want to create an eternal album for this app. The app store says that “Sliver is a powerful tool for soundscape and sonic texture creation” and I personally, would not disagree with that sentiment. It’s a bit tricky to get used to, but once you get started, you will find yourself getting lost in what this app can do – another definite choice for a high quality 2015 eternal album.

When I look at this list of possible musics, of eternal albums as yet unmade, I just get a bit annoyed – the video backlog ate up so much of my time last year, I could have released at least a few tracks on each of these apps’ albums – if only I’d had the time to create the albums!! Och well, ces’t la vie, etc…time. Time the avenger…

The possibilities…are simply endless.

universe of sound (the komplete world)

after forty-odd years in the music business, we decided at the start of this new year, that we would acquire a software suite called komplete 9 ultimate for use at the pureambient studio. the software comes from a remarkable german company called “native instruments”, who are truly the masters of sampling technology – and a few other things, too –

 

KOMPLETE 9 ULTIMATE – OVERVIEW & PRE-APOLOGY

 

this acquisition was intended to fill a few glaring omissions in our capabilities, such as proper strings, horns, basses, percussion, and so on, as well as providing the main elements for extending the classical music that we began releasing last year on the eternal album “classical”. this tool will allow for a speedier construction of classical pieces, rather than relying on the more piecemeal approach used on my first piece of classical music, “concerto no. 1 in e minor for oboe and guitar” – which was constructed almost line by line, using nothing but a guitar synthesizer.

 

as well as supporting classical music over the coming years, komplete 9 ultimate is also a natural for, and is eminently suited for, the production of music for films, which is another area that we hope to expand into over the coming years. this acquisition also bolsters the worlds of ambient music, as well as pop, rock, funk, jazz, and countless others – it’s hugely supporting in all genres, especially ambient.

 

we’ve only been using it for a short while, but already, we can see the enormous potential that this software suite has for adding quality sounds to the pieces that we create here.   and, it’s infinitely expandable, too, native instruments have purchased third party sound libraries and bundled them into komplete 9 ultimate, but you can also purchase other third party programs which you can play using komplete 9 ultimate “kontakt” sample player. so we will also be looking to acquire some of the best ambient libraries, which will also greatly expand our capability.

 

before I speak more specifically about what komplete 9 ultimate can do musically, I’d like to apologise to all early adopters and those who own komplete 9 ultimate or “kontakt” or both, I freely admit I am an absolute novice, I’ve been studying the suite in detail, learning the processes, slowly, over the past few weeks, and I do have a basic understanding in principle for most of what can be done with komplete 9 ultimate.   forgive me in advance if I say anything that shows just what a rookie I am at this, or I otherwise put my foot in my mouth – learning something like this can be a somewhat slow and painful process, even more painful when you are no longer young as I am. and – komplete 9 ultimate users – feel free to jump in and correct me, or offer advice or expand on anything I mention here – we are all of us learning at all times…and it’s best to share such knowledge freely.

 

my friend and collaborator ken mistove, my partner in saffron matted voids (the band), is a long time “komplete” user (I am talking about really long time – ten years! – and he has been doing electronic / digital music for longer still), and he warned me that I would be overwhelmed by this program – and, he could not have been more correct. in fact, weeks after it’s arrival, I continue to find more and more incredibly well-thought-out functionality, as well as becoming familiar with the synthesizers and the sample content. and it is almost totally overwhelming – it seems, almost, as if there is nothing this device cannot do…everywhere I turn, everywhere I look, I find something else that makes my jaw drop…

 

 

 

KOMPLETE 9 ULTIMATE – THOSE AMAZING SYNTHESIZERS

 

[ULTIMATE INDEED!]

 

 

so – where do I begin?   well, when it came down to it, even though I was incredibly excited about the sample library, and the sample player (which allows multiple instances of many, many instruments in one session – I had fourteen instruments loaded into a session yesterday, and the software coped beautifully) – it was the synthesizers that I gravitated to initially – because, perhaps, I knew they would be easy to set up and use – familiar. before we purchased komplete 9 ultimate, I had read in detail about the synths, so I couldn’t wait to hear them in person – and I was right about the ease of set up and ease of use: within seconds, I was up and running with “absynth”, a personal favourite synth that seems to favour ambient and atmospheric sounds.

 

but “absynth” is a drop in the bucket, a handful of stars in this incredible universe of sound, and while it features hundreds and hundreds of truly beautiful preset sounds, it’s just one of nine synthesizer models built into komplete. the entire list of available synths looks like this:

 

• absynth
• fm8
• massive
• monark
• razor
• skanner xt
• reaktor (modular synth system – containing many synths)
• reaktor prism
• reaktor spark
• retro machines (which contains no less than 20 classic synthesizer instruments within)

 

so far, I’ve only truly managed to hear and use five of these synths, absynth, fm8, massive, reaktor prism, and retro machines, but even so, I’ve been utterly impressed with the build quality and the amazing attention to detail – this is precision german engineering like we used to have back in the 60s and 70s!

 

I have created a few test pieces in absynth (consequentially falling in love with it); I created an entire suite of 23 pieces using the fm8 synthesizer dave stafford – music for pcs: komplete synths”, I’ve created one very complex ambient piece (which is incredibly atmospheric) using massive “wanders down to the sea”, and for fun, I’ve played some of the classic organs, electric pianos, etc. in “retro machines” – “synths within a synth” which is a strange way of working, but I am getting used to it 🙂

 

in every case, the attention to detail, and the extremely fine level of control over sound in every one of these synths, has been overwhelming and most, most welcome. I have a lot of soft synths, but this collection of nine software synths kind of…blows away the competition, and as my friend ken mistove also said: “you will never need to buy another instrument” – and I can already see the truth in that.

 

while I might not “need” to, of course, there will still be some cases where I will “want” to – I am especially interested in some of the available third party ambient sample libraries, but that will have to wait – in the meantime, I have an awful lot to learn and trial just with the komplete 9 ultimate package itself.

 

after my initial very positive experience of playing and using “absynth”, I moved on to “massive”, and I decided to lay out and record a track using four instances of “massive”, each set to a different sound – and I then did a somewhat clever arrangement where I muted sections of each track, to allow other parts to shine through, creating a sort of ever-changing mood – a dark mood, with the sound of wind and seagulls crying and a vision of a bleak, grey storm-tossed day – again, I was amazed at how quickly and easily I could set up four instances in my host (my somewhat antiquated SONAR 8.5) and it coped beautifully – no problem.

 

I also created a short ambient piece within “reaktor”, using the “reaktor prism” synth; a portion of this track remains, entitled “fragment of a lonely molecule” – a truly beautiful sounding synth, which I plan to revisit often and use much, much more…

 

encouraged by the success of “wanders down to the sea” in “massive”, I then turned my attention to “fm8”, in which I created a whole series of tracks (“the rings of saturn”) from “dave stafford – music for pcs: komplete synths”, as well as some arranged “suites” where I took a set of smaller files and mixed them into long, linear sequences – providing a blended view of the basic tracks, as opposed to the individual view of each piece.

 

a few hours later, I realised I had created no less than 23 tracks using “fm8”, and I am so enamoured of this synth, it has a lot of great, visceral sounds, and a lot of charming, melodic, or dissonant, or strangely jazzy, arpeggiators, and the sheer range of voices available within fm8 is mind-boggling. It was a fun session, and as such, I made the decision to create two eternal albums for komplete: one for “komplete synths” (LINK) and one for komplete samples (LINK).   These have both been up and running for a couple of months now, and while the “komplete synths” album has a reasonable number of tracks, I’ve been very slow to create using the “samples” – but, I will get there, I will – I just need time! 🙂

 

the 23 tracks made with “fm8” and the one piece made with “massive” “wanders down to the sea”, are all uploaded to the “dave stafford – music for pcs: komplete synths” eternal album. I plan on working with each of the synths in turn, and uploading the results, so you can hear what each one of these remarkable sound creation tools can do. If I have my way, by the end of this year, the “komplete synths” eternal album, will have dozens of tracks made with a myriad number of available synths – and I hope I can just keep creating and creating – those are 9 amazing synths, each a master of the domain it covers, and I can’t wait to create more music with all of them – the synthesizers built-in to komplete 9 ultimate are absolutely brilliant!

 

THE HIDDEN GEM WITHIN KOMPLETE 9 ULTIMATE – GUITAR RIG 5

before I continue on to the samples section, I must not forget to mention one of the biggest selling points of komplete 9 ultimate, for me, which is the presence of “guitar rig 5 pro” – I had been underwhelmed by an earlier version of guitar rig, which I got bundled with SONAR, “guitar rig 3”, so I’ve now uninstalled that and I am using “guitar rig 5 pro” instead.

 

what a difference. the preset library is vastly improved, and the range of effects, and the flexibility provided in setting them up in the rack, are simply astonishing – to me, this is one of the most important pieces of guitar software to come along. so after working with the synths, purely for fun, I recorded a handful of pieces using “guitar rig 5 pro” – and I am more than impressed with the sound quality and the presets – it’s an awesome and powerful guitar amp and speaker cabinet emulator, and it has a huge range of high quality guitar effects as well. a couple of these pieces may see the light of day, but they were mostly for reference, and just a way of trialling certain patches and sounds.

 

this is now to the point, since “guitar rig 5 pro” is clearly superior to many guitar processing devices in both the hardware AND the software arena – I am at the point, where I can now happily retire my ailing “line 6 x3 live” hardware pedalboard guitar effects processor, which is now basically redundant (it has served me very well since 2008, but it’s now time to be retired at long last).

 

because I can pretty much re-create every sound in the line 6 using “guitar rig 5 pro” instead, and more – so that’s actually a blessing – no more effects on the floor (although I will always have my faithful “output chain” of hardware effects, harmonizer, delay, reverb at the end of my signal chain) I believe I will now use “guitar rig 5” for most of my guitar sounds, and anything it can’t handle, I can program into my gr-55 guitar synth – so guitars, and guitar signal processing – are covered! and I mean…covered.

 

it’s always very difficult, because over time, you have various tools that you use to record guitar or synths with, and eventually, better tools come along. and, you can run both old and new, that’s not an issue, if you want to – but my preference is to keep effects units down to a dull roar – so I am going to TRY to retire the line 6 x3 live – I mean, it is six years old, which in dog years, is, I don’t know, 70 years or something – and technology has moved along SO FAR since the X3 Live was designed…

 

so for the first week of my fledgling native instruments life, I learned about the synthesizers and I learned how to run “guitar rig 5 pro” – and that was a huge amount to learn, but, I have the basics down, and I can rely on both the set of nine included synthesizers (plus 20 more vintage instruments within “retro machines mk II”) and the extremely impressive “guitar rig 5 pro” interface. I could have gone on working with the synths and guitar rig for weeks and weeks, but I wanted then to shift gears and look at the sampling capabilities of “komplete”.

 

SAMPLING – THE HEART AND SOUL OF KOMPLETE ULTRA

[REAL INSTRUMENT SOUNDS – AT LAST!]

 

the list of sample-based instruments is even more impressive than the list of synthesizers:

 

• kontakt – the main user interface / sample player for all sampled instruments:

 

kontakt is a very powerful environment, that allows you to load multiple instruments (built by native instruments, and many other vendors as well), which can then be routed either each to their own output (for maximum recording flexibility) or they can be routed to various stereo or mono sub-mixes – really, whatever your heart desires. you can save overall “presets” in kontakt itself, so if you hit upon a winning combination, say, “abbey road drums 1960s” and “scar-bee rickenbacker bass” and “guitar rig 5” you can save that configuration, including whatever output configurations you have, as well as the specific settings of each device – to a kontakt “preset” – for easy recall / re-use..

 

another positive aspect of the kontakt sample player is it’s ability to play not just native instrument plug-in instruments, but also, instruments made by third party vendors such as soniccouture, waves, scar-bee, g-force, and many, many others.

 

each instrument that is loaded into your kontakt session, also has a page for it’s settings, where you can choose instrument presets, adjusting the sound of the instrument until you are happy with it – then, you save your changes – then, you save your kontakt preset – and all of the instrument settings are saved as part of your “overall” kontakt saved preset – fantastic. so you can create very complex presets, that contain your favourite instruments, set just the way you want them, which can be recalled instantly in any combination – it’s absolutely outstanding.

 

here is the seemingly never-ending list of sampled instruments that come with komplete 9 ultimate.

 

• action strings
• session horns
• damage (industrial and orchestral, cinematic drums and percussion)
• evolve
• session strings pro
• evolve mutations
• evolve mutations 2
• battery 4
• abbey road vintage drummer
• abbey road 60s drummer
• abbey road 70s drummer
• abbey road 80s drummer
• abbey road modern drummer
• studio drummer
• west africa (a personal favourite)
• balinese gamelan (another personal favourite)
• maschine drum selection
• scarbee rickenbacker bass
• guitar rig 5 pro
• scarbee funk guitarist
• scarbee mm-bass and mm-bass amped
• scarbee pre-bass and pre-bass amped
• rammfire
• scarbee jay-bass
• the giant
• vintage organs
• alicia’s keys
• george duke soul treasures
• scarbee a-200 electric piano
• scarbee mark I electric piano
• scarbee clavinet/pianet
• berlin concert grand piano
• new york concert grand piano
• vienna concert grand piano
• upright piano

 

bear in mind that each one of the above instruments, has a broad range of “presets” giving you as many different optional sounds for each instrument as is possible, “muted”, “picked”, “fingered”, and so on – so it’s not just a “rickenbacker bass” – it’s a rickenbacker bass that can be configured from anything such as a very timid, high pitched highly eq’d clean bass sound, to various much louder presets that emulate different sounds that this bass is capable of, and that includes both DI and “amped” sounds, so you get an enormous range of flexibility with every instrument listed above!

 

as explained elsewhere, those settings can be saved as part of a kontakt “preset”, so you could have one set up with a super clean, thin sounding Ricky bass, and another with a very distorted Ricky played through an emulated British amp – two EXTREMELY different “bass guitar” sounds from the same instrument.

 

In the classical world, the options are of course, much different to the options for a rock instrument, so for violins, you would have a huge range of various playing styles or articulations, legato, staccato, pizzicato, and so on – and just about any kind of articulation you can imagine, including some rather obscure ones, and also, it’s incredible to get these precision articulations, and of course, as with all quality samplers, there are also extreme velocity choices, so that you can emulate the velocity that you would apply to the real instrument, on the keys of your keyboard instead. all of these options are on every instrument where they exist, although some instruments may have just a handful of possible presets or articulations, others may have dozens – maximum real-life playability issues have been addressed as much as humanly possible.

 

 

…not to mention a massive range of high quality software effects and audio processing tools included in komplete 9 ultimate:

 

• solid EQ
• solid bus compressor
• solid dynamincs stereo compressor
• rc-48 reverb
• rc-24 reverb
• vari comp compressor
• enhanced EQ Equaliser
• passive EQ Equaliser
• transient master Equaliser
• driver distortion unit
• VC76 FET compressor/limiter
• VC2A electro-optical compressor/limiter
• VC160 drum compressor
• the finger – live performance and remix tool
• the mouth – generates melodies and harmonies from any audio input
• reflecktor high performance reverb effect

 

 

for full details, have a look at the product page on the native instruments site:

and here is the effects page on the native instruments site:

 

 

my first foray into the world of sampled instruments was a piece I created using various sampled elements, entitled “the giant’s causeway”, which contains three sections:

 

1)     “the giant prelude” features “the giant” cinematic instrument (a cinematic / orchestrator / ambient piano kind of sample set) – I played one take, which was best, and that became “the giant prelude” – perfection.

 

2)     “allegro in a minor” features “action strings” (which include moving passages of strings created with an “animator” function – which is truly awe inspiring)

 

3)     “giants on the causeway” following, the third and final section of the piece; features a manually played drum part;/ the scarbee “rickenbacker bass”; and a truly beautiful flute and strings mellotron sample, plus a short solo on a vintage organ.

 

“the giant” instrument just blew me away, I did a take one take of a sort of reverse piano strings/unknown kind of sample, and it came out totally usable – in one take!!! I will absolutely be revisiting this instrument, and I could see creating large, ambient compositions using JUST this instrument.

 

once “the giant” section was recorded, I added in the “action strings” instrument, and spent quite some time writing and laying out a short violin quartet piece in the key of a minor. note: this is where the “staff” view in SONAR becomes invaluable!) while short in duration, the SOUND is amazing, it sounds so incredibly real (because, let’s face it – it IS real!) because of the use of the strings animator – which gives you real “sections” or “passages” of bowed strings – in a significant number of styles, legato, staccato, pizzicato and more. this section took me a while to complete, but eventually, I did finish it to my satisfaction.

 

the third part of this unfinished piece was a rickenbacker bass line, set against some manually played drums, finished off with a live mellotron take, flutes and strings – plus a short solo on a vintage organ – and I have to say, the scarbee rickenbacker samples are out of this world – there’s even a “british” setting which gives you a roaring live distorted chris squire sound that just blows you away. even on the clean settings, this instrument screams “I am an authentic ricky bass” – and the distorted scarbee bass part just SOUNDS amazing…

 

this piece remains unfinished, but I always considered it as a test piece, a learning curve, a learning tool, a learning experience. I did rough mixes, and kept the three sections separately as demos, but I don’t believe that this piece will be published, but if it does, it would definitely be “the giant” piece, possibly the string quartet, and doubtful, probably NOT the rickenbacker section…which SOUNDS great (especially the distorted ricky bass line!), but wasn’t (necessarily) a great piece of music…

 

so “the giant’s causeway” went onto the shelf, however, since it was my very first piece (beyond playing a few synths) – proper piece – done with komplete – I was happy enough with it. I learned…

 

I will very, very probably attempt the piece again; I would retain the original part one, since it’s a live, take one, that is basically flawless, I would rebuild and expand the string section, and completely revamp the “prog trio” of drums, bass and mellotron/organ at the end. so – I am keeping the shelved demo as a reference…for now.

 

I then turned to an instrument that I was very, very curious about, “west africa” – I lived in east africa for four years, and learned to appreciate african music back then (especially congolese music) so having high quality samples of african instruments was a very exciting prospect to me.

 

I first constructed a “duet” of two koras; one, playing midi patterns emulating a rhythmic picking cycle, and another kora, where I played melodies “free hand” on top of the moving background. I did two takes, both of which I enjoy, but since I am not entirely happy with the melodic content on either (although the second take is actually quite good) I have also shelved those – and since then, much more recently, I sat down again with the kora duet template, and create a third piece, another kora duet, entitled “the heart of africa” – and this take, I think is quite decent – and I thoroughly enjoyed working with these amazing sounds.

 

I plan to practice on all of the west african instruments, and I hope to arrange more complex pieces of music involving west african drums, flutes and stringed instruments…a side project that will keep me busy for years! I would never have dreamed that I would have a sideline in african music one day – but I will, because I love african music, and the more I work on it, the better I will get at emulating it…

 

after the two shelved kora duets, which were followed very recently by the successful kora duet, I then turned to my first use of “multi” instruments, and, with the invaluable assistance of ken mistove, I eventually learned and understood how to create multiple instruments within a single instance of kontakt – and once I “got” that, I could sit down and attempt a full on piece of sampled music.

 

I randomly selected a preset “multi” instrument from the evolve mutations instrument, and it proceeded to load 12 instruments that created one of the most atmospheric, eerie “drum kits” I have ever heard.

 

it took a couple of tries, but eventually, I got a good quality drum track, and then I turned to the other instruments. a proper bass part was in order, so I loaded up the scarbee pre-bass (amped version) and got a nice, full bass sound – recorded a bass part to go with the drum part – and again, very impressed with the scarbee instruments, they seem to do a very good job of getting the authentic sound of classic instruments sampled to perfection – the “pre” bass (i.e. based on the classic fender precision bass guitar) is another one that is of the highest quality, as the scarbee rickenbacker bass samples are as well – Native Instruments has scooped up two fantastic bass instruments from scarbee, and it’s a great acquisition – I hope they adopt more scar-bee products, I really do.

 

finally, I worked at overlaying a section of grand piano, courtesy of the “george duke soul treasures” instrument, an absolutely stunning set of riffs recorded on grand piano, electric piano, organ and other keyboards – and all simply classic – great sounding samples!

 

in this case, I actually reached the maximum possible number of instrument that can be crammed into one “kontakt” session – so once again, familiar theme emerging…I abandoned the piece unfinished – again. in order to complete it, I will need to mix down the drums and bass together from the unfinished session, and move to a new session to overdub many george duke piano samples atop the pre-mixed (bounced) bass and drums – and at that moment, I didn’t feel like going through that process.

 

instead, I set it aside, and I moved on to my next test piece, my next “komplete” learning experience.   I wanted very much to try the “session horns”, so I built a short introductory piece, entitled “softly, softly we go”, which featured a group of horns, in a nice reverb room, with a “soft” instrument setting, playing a mock classical theme – a lovely sound, and as far as it goes – a good intro or lead-in piece to some larger production.

 

to follow the horn intro, I wanted a drum track, using the abbey road 60s drummer (because I wanted to learn how to compose drum tracks) so using this instrument, I built a nice long drum part, with various sections, and some fancy fills, and I have to say, although completely unadorned, it’s one of my best pieces yet.

 

finally, I sat down and re-made my kora duet, creating a much better backing track, and, hopefully, performing better melodic lead parts atop the pattern generator rhythms.   that, “the heart of africa”, and my unadorned abbey road 1960s drum part, is where I am right now with sampled instruments – and using kontakt to create drum parts, using the abbey road 60s drummer – could not have been easier – in short order, I had the process down, to where I could build an intelligent, varied and interesting drum part quite quickly – the whole thing took less than an hour.

 

but – the piece remains unfinished, again, I have kept two separate demos, one of “softly, softly we go” – my gentle, quiet horn intro – and another of the untitled-so- it’s-called “abbey road drums 1960s” aka “run into town – run 1” for reference, I hope to probably re-make the horn part, make it more concise, and create more space in it, and of course, I then need to decide what goes on top of my beautiful, recorded in abbey road studio no. 2 drums. sigh… (note: eventually, of course, a Rickenbacker bass part went on top of the drum part – and then, a host of live energy bow guitars…),

I also had an absolute blast doing a bass solo with the scarbee Rickenbacker bass instrument, “amber waves of grain” – over 10 minutes of sheer Rickenbacker tone.

another aspect of komplete 9 ultimate is the undeniable fact that it is making certain instruments and software, no longer useful, it is literally making them redundant – as komplete can do the job more easily, with better samples, with a mature GUI (kontakt) than earlier third party apps can, or, better than older hardware effects can L.

 

so in this case, for example, while I will probably install my old drum machine software, which is called “BFD2” (this was utilised heavily during the making of “gone native”), I will only do so, so I can see and use the drum kits / samples it contains – which I would use via kontakt within komplete – NOT through the much more difficult to learn, and use, BFD GUI.

 

in a way, I really don’t NEED BFD any more, because I have several sampled kits from abbey road studios, plus, I have “battery 4” and a few other percussion based instruments – there is functionality and samples far beyond what BFD offers. so as I say, I would still use their kits (which sound great) but not their interface J.

 

so, if I am honest, komplete has made the following software and hardware items redundant:

 

redundant software:

 

bfd2 drum machine software + sonar’s session drummer 3 drum machine software – replaced by:

 

• damage (industrial and orchestral, cinematic drums and percussion)
• battery 4 (massive drum machine / sample player, with many, many drum kits)
• abbey road vintage drummer
• abbey road 60s drummer
• abbey road 70s drummer
• abbey road 80s drummer
• abbey road modern drummer
• studio drummer
• west africa
• balinese gamelan
• maschine drum selection

 

note: both bfd2 and session drummer 3 are still available to use, either by using their kits from komplete / kontact, or by using their own GUIs if desired – but, not sure I would ever use either again given the list above.

 

redundant hardware:

 

 

line 6 “x3 live” guitar effects pedalboard – replaced by: guitar rig 5 pro, plus, sampled guitars and basses:

 

• guitar rig 5 pro
• rammfire
• scarbee rickenbacker bass
• scarbee funk guitarist
• scarbee mm-bass and mm-bass amped
• scarbee pre-bass and pre-bass amped
• scarbee jay-bass

 

 

 

“digitech” TSR24-S hardware 24 bit reverb unit – replaced by:

 

• rc-48 reverb
• rc-24 reverb
• reflecktor high performance reverb effect
• galbarnum breeze 2C reverb (reverb plug-in for SONAR) – additional reverb choice “outside” of komplete itself
• all four of these reverbs can be “called” from within SONAR, so it’s very, very useful to have access to these high quality effects, even for improving content that was not created in komplete 🙂

 

plus

 

• eventide “space” hardware reverb – this is part of a permanent installation of three hardware four hardware effects that sit at the “end” of my mixer output chain – so, the final stereo output of the mixer, goes directly to these four hardware plug ins, and THEN to the sound card.

 

I’ve learned over time, that certain effects sound best in “front” (so just after the guitar, as part of your mix, occupying two or three stereo pairs on the mixer) while other effects work best “after” the mixer (such as pitch units, delay units, and absolutely, reverb units).

 

so, reluctant as I am to do so, it’s probably time to retire the “digitech”, and rely on the three high quality reverb units within komplete 9 ultimate – as well as galbanum’s 2c “breeze” reverb software – which in itself, was and is probably a replacement for the ancient tired “digitech” rack mount 24 bit reverb, not to mention the eventide “space”, which again, in itself, is probably a replacement / improvement over the digitech.

 

In a perfect world, I’d love to just run everything, and in some respects, I have been doing so, I’ve certainly kept a number of hardware devices running that I have replaced several times over – so I have to bite the bullet now, and actually remove the older, noisier technology, and whether I will or not, it seems that software synths and software effects are gradually taking over my set up, which is actually not unwelcome, and I hope that this summer, when the studio is moving, I can re-arrange the studio to support a less-hardware dependent sonic environment.

 

Purchasing komplete 9 ultimate gives us a lot of that software, bleeding edge software synths and effects, awesome high quality samples, and other factors, such as the emergence of very sophisticated applications for the ipad tablet and also, for the PC. In future, I will probably end up using a very hybrid system, were some tracks are created on the ipad (and eventually, too, mastered and mixed – tools have emerged…), and then moved into komplete, and then mastered and mixed in SONAR and/or komplete and/or Adobe Audition (where I do a lot of my simpler mastering now). The fact that I can do these processes in multiple “places” gives us an enormous amount of choice, it’s absolutely fantastic what can be accomplished.

 

Other tracks would be created wholly on the PC, using PC software only to create, master, and mix them.   Still others would involve the use of “real” instruments, guitar, synthesizer, keyboard, kaoss pad, percussion, etc. which can be processed through software packages such as “guitar rig 5” and also, the studio quality effects within komplete 9 ultimate. The RC-24 and RC-48 reverb units are especially absolutely lovely, they sound great, and I am really enjoying them.

 

The appearance of a massive army of music applications on the apple ipad, has changed forever the way I make music. Over the past few months, I’ve been scoring classical, acoustic guitar, and alternative music using a notation application called “notion” – and I can see myself exporting tracks from notion, and then importing them into komplete, to add the highest quality sampled instruments to the basic instrumentation created by my original score on the ipad.

 

I will absolutely be using a combination of pieces:

 

• music created wholly on the iPad (which WILL include guitar and loop work, not just synthesizers – thanks to some truly quality guitar applications such as BIAS, Ampkit+, and GuitarTone)

 

• music created using the ipad and my guitar or guitar synth

 

• music created using the kaoss pad and my guitar or guitar synth

 

• music created entirely on the PC, not utilising any ipad applications, the kaoss pad, or any “physical instruments” such as guitar or bass

 

• music created using the ipad, the korg kaossilator, my guitar or guitar synth, bass guitar, live keyboards courtesy of various software synths, and anything else I can throw into the mix

 

(I call this last one the “all instruments” set up – it allows me to use, in a completely live setting, guitar, keyboards, kaoss pad, ipad, and of course, a lot of effects units, including loopers). The looper captures the live performance, and the output of the looper is optionally run through the pitch pedal, the delay, and the reverb (my standard set of output live hardware effects pedals), and finally recorded in SONAR.

 

The arrival of application-based music meant that my record-keeping was really thrown askew, because you can create so much amazing music so quickly with applications, I realised early on, I would need a special forum to create them in, so before things got out of hand, I split my recorded music collection into two distinct areas:

 

Music Dave Stafford – the traditional home of most traditional recordings, anything involving real guitars, real basses, real keyboards, and looping thereof – which may also include the occasional ipad or kaoss pad in a guest starring role – they are not banned, it’s just this is the home of more traditional instrumentation.

 

App-Based Dave Stafford – there is a folder for each app, containing both sessions and finished product, I am so glad I did this now, because now whenever I complete any piece in an app, I have a specific place to store it, from which to upload to Bandcamp, or Soundcloud, or to my website – or for whatever purpose I need it for.

 

This means that any very hybrid music, that crosses over between these two broad categories, I’ve chosen to move that kind of music into the “Music Dave Stafford” folder, because it contains the real instruments, which is really the main characteristic of the music in this folder – the presence of real instruments, played in real time or looped.

 

The arrangement is working well so far, I am not surprised by how many app folders I already have, and as time goes on, there will just be more and more, but I think that’s brilliant – and the emergence of more and more sophisticated application music creation tools, is almost irreversibly moving me more towards app-based music – my next eternal album is focussed on one of my more recent app acquisitions – the iVCS3 , a perfect replica of the 1969 beast of a synth that powered the sound of early roxy music and early king crimson – one of the first truly sophisticated modular synths, and the application version is uncanny for it’s realism – it’s a fantastic, primitive, visceral, wonderful device that spits and fires, drones and warbles, and has a fantastic set of pre-sets, too – including the famous never-ending synth pattern of the Who’s “Baba O’Riley” – and it’s very, very odd to hear that playing on your ipad, from an emulation of the device it was originally created on!   The makers have included the Who session as a preset – amazing!

 

I’ve been playing the iVCS3 recently, and I have recorded a number of tracks, which while not quite ambient, I am happy enough to give them the name “drones” – so, some elements of ambient, then, but, some other, harsher elements too.

 

I believe I recorded about a dozen tracks, a few of which turned out to be somewhat substandard (clearly a beginner with the device, you can’t win them all!) but I believe that about eight tracks have survived and are some cracking representations of what this amazing synthesizer is capable of. I’ve mastered three of the tracks, and I hope to work on the rest this weekend, with a view to get the album posted before Monday – that’s my hope, difficult to say if I really will make that date – I shall try.

 

The pieces recorded are simply remarkable, no thanks to me, my involvement is minimal, but, I did need to be involved, it’s strange, in that when you “play” the iVCS3, you don’t often really use the keys, you more often use the knobs to create variation of a running theme. I was very intent on getting some excellent tracks out of the device, so I very, very carefully and very gingerly turned knobs, until I understood what each one did…and then I felt free enough to really experiment, so I really branched out on the last few numbers, which were all longer-running pieces, one of them extending to over ten minutes.

 

So I have momentarily, turned away from working with komplete, but that’ not to say I have stopped, in any way – it’s my intent to work with komplete as much as my schedule with allow me – and my first goal, is to take a complete bass and drum track, that I did a lot of work on, and see if I can create a proggy version of it, complete with precision prog guitaring – that is my goal for this piece. So komplete is waiting for me, and as soon as I get back to it, you can expect a slow but constant stream of music, of many, many kinds and styles, to be built with the remarkable toolset available within komplete 9 ultimate – an awe-inspiring piece of music software that if you had told me about it 20 years ago, I would not have believed you, I would have said it was impossible for such a thing to exist, on a computer…

 

But – exist it does – and we really wanted to step up a bit, and have the capacity and ability to create a much, much broader range of sounds than we previously had available – and the nine synths and the many, many sampled instruments within Komplete, gives us just that! And – the future – there are many amazing instruments available that will run in Kontakt, so we do plan to pick up some of them over time – the first acquisition will be a very special tool, meant to bolster the ambient sampling capability of the studio – soniccouture’s remarkable “geosonics” instrument.

 

This remarkable third-party instrument, which runs in kontakt without issue, manufactured by soniccouture, is comprised of four different musical “sections”, each one representing a season, and many of the sounds have been sampled from nature, all over the world, and compiled into this unique instrument – and some of the “combinations” of sounds they have created are truly remarkable. So I have “geosonics” on my wish list…and I also have a large number of other third party instruments that I would love to add to my sample player set up 🙂

 

In any case, I cannot recommend native instruments highly enough; who have patiently worked on kontakt, reaktor, and all the instruments that plug into them; and Guitar Rig, one of the most amazing software guitar processing packages I have ever seen –and their choice of subcontractors, i.e. companies that have created unique and very special instruments, which native instruments have added to their product offering to make it more attractive. That includes but is not necessarily limited to Soniccouture (whose “gamelan” instrument is included in komplete 9 ultimate – one of my favourite instruments so far – have a listen to my gamelan-created track “bird of paradise”), Scarbee, who make the amazing “rickenbacker bass” instrument (and several other bass and guitar emulations, too!) – which you can hear on “run into town – run 1” or “run into town – run 2”– that thing is just so amazing sounding, completely authentic, and when you couple it with a high quality sampled drum track, it sounds completely real – because of course, it IS completely real.

 

That…is the beauty of sampled instruments. They are real ! Therefore…they SOUND real.   Which is a good thing 🙂

 

a new year, a new beginning – and the piece that is – providence suite

here we are, then, on the cusp of another year, 2013 is over, seemingly in a flash, while 2014 is about to begin: and with it, my second major classical work, “providence suite” which has now been published on bandcamp – on the newest eternal album, “classical”, available for your listening and downloading pleasure.  if you read my last blog entry, you will know about the music for this project; it was meant to be a collaboration between John Orsi and myself, but, this was one project that was fated not to be, at least not in the collaborative sense that it was originally intended.

the seven new pieces that make up “providence suite” join my only-just-released first-ever classical work, which was a piece written on the guitar synthesizer and released earlier this year (2013), “concerto no. 1 in e minor for oboe and guitar”, from the dave stafford eternal album, “classical”.  originally known here on the blog as “the orsi-stafford project”, at some point during the work in 2012, after some months and some deliberation, John and I had agreed that our new band should be called “providence” – so – “providence”, the band, was born, from our collaborative / collective imaginations.

when I heard the sad news of John’s untimely passing earlier this month, I felt even more determined to see if I could complete and finish my “providence” demos – which consist of two fruitful days’ recording in the studio, back in march, 2012.  so over the 2013 christmas holidays, I sat down for another two days, and had a good look at the material.  these two sessions done three weeks apart during march 2012, over the past week or so, with 2013 winding down and 2014 looming on the horizon, have captivated my attention and my ear; the music has somehow, almost magically, transformed from two (rather large and somewhat daunting) batches of unrealised tracks into a substantial piece of classical music: “providence suite” by dave stafford (music inspired by the band “providence”). I was surprised (and still am, if truth be told) at both the quantity and the quality of the music, I remember being satisfied with it at the time, but I had forgotten exactly what was there…musical buried treasure.

inspired by our discussions and plans for the band, I sat down to record “sketches” for John to listen to and consider, so he could listen to what music I was thinking of for the project, from which he could then work out what his percussion goals for the album were, and respond with sketches of his own. the bulk of the demos for “providence suite” were played by myself on the keyboard, for the first two movements, on march 4, 2012, and for movements three through seven, from (what became) the final “providence” demo session on march 24, 2012.

since I am known primarily as an ambient looping guitarist, I didn’t want to sit down and create lots of really beautiful, but perhaps, predictable ambient music, it seemed too easy:  I could just set up my guitar, and create a bunch of ebow loops (which, I now realise, I’ve been making for over 25 years…sigh), and send them away to John. so I decided to purposefully do something unexpected: instead of doing what was comfortable / expected / easy – instead, I played the piano.   and, stranger still, I wrote classical themes, instead of ambient or rock or pop.

such an ambitious move might well have backfired, but good fortune smiled on me; my many years of self-taught piano playing stood me in good stead (not to mention my fortunate / apparent / ability [??] to improvise without rehearsal or plan!) – the two sessions went very well indeed.  of course, if you are known as a guitarist, ambient or rock, what you do is…play classical piano?  well, strange though that idea may seem – it worked out quite well in the end.

so, I set up my MIDI grand piano in the now-familiar way, with more than one sound output; so I could have a choice of grand piano, and various mellotron “versions” of the pieces, with which to later build the album.  I then sat down and played – and for the most part, with some minor editing, what you hear in “providence suite” is exactly what I sat down and played.

played extemporaneously, I might add – for example, “grace”, is compiled from a series of 16 takes of the same evolving theme, with a number of mini-musical-themes within those 16 takes, originally, it was three mini-themes: takes 1 and 2 were “theme  I”; takes 3 and 4 were “theme II”; takes 5 through 15 were “theme III”; while take 16 was my attempt to incorporate all three themes into one single take – certain piano phrases, chord changes, and melodies that repeat in different configurations, as the takes…and hence the resulting movement…progress.

when it came time to assemble the piece, it just sounded “right” with all of the variations intact (the original plan had been to use the “best” takes – but what do you do when all sixteen tracks seem to be…”best”?. you publish them all…of course!)  🙂

so, the movement consists of all 16 takes, in sequence, in the order that they appeared – simply “tacked together”.  I merely “closed up the spaces” between the takes – and that was the movement – “grace”– it could not have been simpler.

this is an example of myself composing classical music on the fly, and luckily, with the recorder running; but at the same time, it’s a glimpse at the creative process, too; with each take, I am improving the themes, testing out alternate ideas, and generally perfecting the themes on the fly, as I was playing them. the takes for “movement no. 1 – grace” start out fairly basic, and then they grow and grow, and then for the final take, take 16, I attempted to reiterate each of the three mini-themes within the session all in one take – so that take does a wonderful job of recapitulating the 15 takes that went before, and was the perfect way to conclude the movement, too.

using both the piano tracks and the various mellotron variations, the music recorded in the first session, on march 4th, could then be assembled into the first two movements, “movement no. 1 – grace” and “movement no. 2 – redemption”.  “grace” is strictly solo grand piano, to clearly establish the themes using a familiar instrument; while “redemption” (which uses 17 iterations of the same 16 takes from grace, re-configured) restates those themes using the various mellotron voices and piano, including some unusual-sounding voices such as “after glow”, along with the more traditional, and more easily-recognisable, string and choir voices.

originally, there were four main keyboard themes, which shared two titles (“grace” – representing the march 4th session; “providence” – representing the march 24th session) – so originally, themes one and two, from march 4th, were “grace”, and themes three and four, from march 24th, were “providence”.   in the end, while I was assembling the pieces, and realising that I had a lot more viable material than I at first thought, I expanded the titles to seven distinct movements, which incorporate the four original themes.

when I read the above paragraph back, it seems a bit unclear ! so perhaps the simplest way to clarify it, is to draw a mapping from “theme” to “movement”:

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providence demo session – march 4th, 2012:

themes I & II      “movement no. 1 – grace” (solo grand piano themes) – from 16 sequential takes total (essentially a live performance, with some minor edits)

themes I & II      “movement no. 2 – redemption” (piano and mellotron variations on the themes) – 17 iterations total (from 16 takes)

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providence demo session – march 24th, 2012:

theme III             “movement no. 3 – providence” (piano and mellotron variations on the themes) – 13 takes total – including. from march 4th, one short excerpt from theme I and one short excerpt from theme II – which neatly ties together all of the themes from march 4th into the “providence” movement (the only movement to contain music from both the march 4th and the march 24th sessions)

theme IV              “movement no. 4 – atonement” (live performance – takes 1 through 5 of theme IV) – 5 of 9 takes total

theme IV              “movement no. 5 – purity” (live performance – takes 6 through 9 of theme IV) – 4 of 9 takes total

theme IV              “movement no. 6 – perfection” (piano and mellotron variations on the themes – takes 1 through 5) – based on the same live performance as “atonement” – 5 of 9 takes total

theme IV              “movement no. 7 – transcendence” (piano and mellotron variations on the themes – takes 6 through 9) – based on the same live performance as “purity” – 4 of 9 takes total

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the themes were originally intended to be first piano; then piano and after glow mellotron; and then, finally, a combination of those two plus additional choir / electric piano tracks, which were recorded live / direct from the output of my MIDI keyboard (using it’s very high quality internal voices).

however, thanks to some relentless digital noise (a constant problem with “pops” that plagued my studio for many months, and is now blissfully, mostly gone), all of the MIDI keyboard choir, strings and electric piano tracks were scrapped (ALL of them – from both sessions – so, dozens of tracks – all too damaged to salvage), which at first seemed an insurmountable loss – until I came up with the idea of re-creating them in an even more beautiful way, using a violin orchestra and a specially-designed stereo choir.  problem solved.

that is the beauty of working with MIDI – your output can be literally anything – although for classical music, I would basically always stick with using true pianos software for the grand piano sounds, and the m-tron pro mellotron software for more exotic sounds, in this case, strings and choirs.

by adding the additional three mellotron elements in – violin orchestra, choir ahs, choir oos, I was then able to “mix and match” instrumentation for any of the sections within each theme or movement.  and where the instruments change, that’s an indication of one take ending, and another one starting – so in some of the pieces, you can actually hear where each individual take “is”, because the instruments change each time the take changes from one to the next – solo choir, then piano and strings, then piano, strings and choir, then solo strings, and so on.

some of the pieces are presented just as I sent them to John, and pretty much just as I played them, unrehearsed, unplanned; especially the solo grand piano pieces, which had his approval – “movement no. 1 – grace” is very close to the demo versions; while “movement no. 3 – providence” did require some editing – there was simply too much material, too many takes, so I had to (reluctantly) remove a couple of the sections, and edit together what remained – but I was careful to preserve the musical themes – very, very little in the way of music has been taken out, just excessive repetitions of certain phrases were carefully removed.

so “grace” and “redemption” share the themes from the march 4th session; while “providence” presents the third theme (plus a reprise of theme I and a reprise of theme II – one take of each added in to the piece to tie all of the march 4th themes together – within the first theme from march 24th).

in the mixing stage, “movement no. 3 – providence”, gave me the most grief, it took three tries to get a mix I could feel happy about, the exuberance of the young pianist knows no bounds – but a little creative editing sorted that out – while some unplanned and exciting juxtapositions in the last four movements, and indeed, the inclusion of some of the earlier themes in “movement no. 3 – providence”, to tie the whole suite together, well, this was as much of a joy to assemble and mix as it was to play, it really was a pleasure – and it’s difficult for me to comprehend that all this music came from just two days of unrehearsed, extemporaneous piano playing – it was as if I’d composed it in my head beforehand, or in my sleep, in a dream, perhaps, and then; just sat down and played it from memory – the themes appeared like magic, with little conscious input from myself.  I recorded quickly, take after take, refining the themes as I went along.

when I sent the demos to John originally, his responses were both enthusiastic and very positive, and, he paid me an incredible compliment; when speaking about one of the pieces, he said “this piece is complete as-is, there is nothing I can add to it – it’s perfect” (paraphrased but you get the idea) – and that speaks to the sort of “completeness” or “completed-ness” if you will, of the pieces – they felt complete, they felt composed, despite the fact that I literally sat down, pushed “record”, and started recording with no notes, no rehearsal – and from that – this massive suite of music now exists – much to my everlasting astonishment!

I was particularly eager to mix and master the last four movements, because they utilise the incredibly beautiful “ebow ensemble” mellotron voice, which while it consists of sampled ebows (my normal instrument of choice) when played back on the mellotron, it doesn’t sound quite like ebows, it has a more ethereal, beautiful, string orchestra-like feeling to it, so it’s like a cross between the most beautiful ebows and the most beautiful strings you never heard…a magical, beautiful musical voice for the final four movements of the suite.

again, I used the strings and special stereo choir to augment the “ebow ensemble” voice on the final two movements, but for “movement no. 4 – atonement” and “movement no. 5 – purity”, you hear just the “ebow ensemble” in it’s purest form, with nothing added and no variations – and again, these two movements are basically what I played on the day, march 24th, 2012 – “movement no. 4 – atonement” is made up from combining takes 1 through 5, unchanged and unedited, while “movement no. 5 – purity” is composed of takes 6 – 9, unchanged and unedited, of nine takes total – every note I played is presented in these two themes, as they were played. so in this case, movements four and five are live recordings of theme four, and in fact, they represent every one of the nine existing takes of theme four, as they happened.

by that criteria, in actual fact, movements four and five are completely and totally “live to digital”, while the other themes underwent very minor editing (with the exception of “providence” which did have to be edited more severely) so these two live “ebow ensemble” pieces give you an idea what it was like for me, sitting there at my keyboard, hearing what would become “movement no. 4 – atonement” and “movement no. 5 – purity” come out of the mellotron – an unbelievably beautiful sound, which was utterly inspirational, and I hope you can hear by the soaring theme four, just how exciting this last session was – unforgettable.  I had never recorded using just the ebow ensemble voice (no piano) and it just sounded amazing to my ears – a remarkable experience.  when you press down the keys and that sound comes out, it’s just breathtaking and extremely inspirational.

I should take a moment and talk about the missing piece (my apologies, I am listening to gentle giant as I type this blog entry) ; during the march 4th session, I did record some guitar synthesizer pieces for the “providence” project (before I began this keyboard-based work); these were mostly unsuccessful, requiring a lot of time and effort to make them useful, however, there is one very simple and overriding reason why they are not included here: they are not really classical music – and while I can play classical music on the guitar synth, the pieces I recorded on guitar as demos from providence, were simply not the right material to be added directly to “providence suite” – they were going somewhere else musically – so if and when they are released, it will be…somewhere else :-).

if time permits, I do intend to sit down with these guitar themes (including the unreleased theme “intransigence”) and see if I can create something to listen to, although it may be more in demo form than in completely mixed and mastered form as “providence suite” has ended up – there is not a lot of the guitar material, certainly not enough for an album or possibly even an EP, but if I can master any tracks from that part of the session, of course, I will – but that’s something I plan to look at later on in the new year.

once I set the guitar aside, and sat down at the piano, where I proceeded to play the “grace” theme pretty much as you hear it here…everything started to go right in an incredible way.  I can remember feeling so excited about these pieces, and I burned all of the tracks (which were quite substantial) to disc and mailed them away to John for his comments…which came back very positive, he seemed happy with the material, and I was looking forward to hearing his sketches.  that never came to pass, so my “half” of the music of providence, now released under my own name, is all there is of the band that was-to-be-known-as “providence”.

life is a funny thing, it never goes as you plan it, as john lennon once said, “life is what happens while you are busy making plans” and that could not be a more true statement for this project – I am amazed, though, that some 22 months after it was recorded, that this piece of music would be so epic, so challenging, so dramatic and so clearly filled with emotion.  I tend to pour emotion into the music I write; the chords, melodies and harmonies I choose (minor motifs are common) reflect this, but in this case, it was if these pieces were already present inside me, in the memory of my hands and mind, and the act of sitting down at the keyboard released them into the world.

and here they are – the seven movements of “providence suite”:

grace – 18:54

redemption – 19:46

providence – 20:34

atonement – 10:40

purity – 6:22

perfection – 10:38

transcendence – 6:22

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for John, without whom, this music would not exist

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www.overflower.com the music of john orsi

www.pureambient.com the music of dave stafford

POSTSCRIPT:

I recommend that if possible, to listen to the entire suite as a single work – that’s how it’s intended, of course, you can listen to any of the movements in isolation, but playing the seven movements in sequence gives you the music in the way John and I discussed and intended it to be, as an “album” – and given that John was not able to actually contribute any recorded music, I still very much valued his input, I valued our collaboration, and the ideas we exchanged, and his intentions are as well-reflected as they can be in these pieces – I have worked very hard to do justice to his memory, by assembling this plaintive,  sometimes sombre set of musical movements, made up of the raw material that was originally meant for the first “providence” album – the album that was not to be.

“providence”, as a band, never completed or released any actual music, which is why I have taken the time to mix and master “providence suite” now, at the end of december 2013, and to release it with my best wishes, sending my positive thoughts with it into the new year 2014.  reluctantly, I release it under my own name, rather than under the name “providence” – but that’s not a problem, it’s just an unavoidable issue – this is the way I can release this work, which features only myself performing, unfortunately.  if John had had time to send me his parts (it is actually unclear if he ever was able to actually record any parts, or if they were recorded, he never sent anything to me beyond letters), it would be a very different story…and a very different album, too.  so what was to be a collaboration of many instruments with ambient and active percussion, with ebow loops and solos, with collaborations…instead, I am presenting these “solo” versions of the seven movements, taken from the original master recordings made in march, 2012 – because that is the only option.

“providence suite” was conceived to honour the memory and intention of the band “providence”, and to honour the input of John as much as is humanly possible when the music presented does not contain any of his recorded sound – but his heart is in it (as is mine), and when I hear this music, I think of the music of  “providence” – not of “dave stafford solo recording” – that’s a choice that was made for me, I am very happy indeed, but at the same time, it is with a heavy heart, because John isn’t here to see it happen (and more importantly, he is not present to hear the music inspired by the band – beyond in demo form – and from our collaborative thoughts and communications) – I am most happy to release these pieces now, comprising “my half” of the work, in John’s honour and in his memory.

I never met John “in the real world” but from his letters and other communications, I felt a kindred musical spirit, we shared a vision of a new kind of collaborative effort, across an ocean, from providence, rhode island to the wilds of central scotland –  we…stood poised…to set the world on fire with our music – and in hearing “my half” of what the band would have eventually released, I’d like to think that we actually would have :-).

this one is for you, John, wherever you are.