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.

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back to the beginning …again

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what I want to accomplish in this new year, 2015, and I think one of the most significant objectives I have in mind, is to create “songs” in the old-fashioned way – using some new-fashioned tools to do so.

My last CD, “gone native”, from 2012, was a very, very enjoyable experience because it took me back to the idea of creating “songs” – I’d been so used to improvising, I’ve been playing largely improvised music since about 1995 when Bindlestiff disbanded amicably – once I became a “solo artist” again – and you really get into that “live” mindset – you have a guitar; a looper, a nice reverb – and your ebow – and you hit record, and you play.

If you are fortunate – music comes out.  Often – it did.  Sometimes, I am not quite sure what it WAS that came out – but, it was something, and, it’s a very, very enjoyable process.

Come 2012, and I challenged myself to make an album that is mostly “rock” oriented (which is about as far away from ambient loop guitar as you can get, really) and I believe that with “gone native”, I really succeeded quite well – the first ten tracks on the album were the core of my “band” or “rock” pieces, and some of them, were quite intense (such as “Wettonizer” which at one point, was as large as a 53-track multitrack master – which was toned down to about 35 tracks for the final mix!) others, such as “This Is A Test” came together very quickly, using existing elements (in that case, a guitar solo – around which I built a backing track by adding drums, bass and guitar synths) – but in every case, they were identifiable as “songs” – because for one thing, they all have rhythm sections – bass and drums – and also, some form of song structure, like repeating choruses or whatever – despite the fact that the album is, as most of my records are, entirely instrumental.

So composing the songs for “gone native” was a great experience, and as another example, the title track “gone native”, was fantastic fun to create, and I got to play a LOT of guitar, with a lot of nice guitar sounds – including once again, that wonderful roland gr-55 guitar synth, which can provide anything from a rainstorm in a teacup to a poly sitar in space – a fabulous instrument for adding colour, and with the track “gone native” I used it for several good effects, including the introductory cello which was just played over the existing intro – wham, there it was – it just happened one day.

I learned a lot during that experience, and, it was probably my last major work involving SONAR 8.5, sure, I’d used it since then for the “scorched by the sun” album for example, and for various improv loops or video music, but eventually, I upgraded to SONAR X3, which is a far better product – and now that I am running X3, I am truly set to record “songs” in multitrack – but with all mod cons – I have at my fingertips Guitar Rig Pro, and now, also, from Waves, I have GTR3 – which I can use instead of or in addition to my hardware effects pedals, I also have the rest of Komplete, which gives me an entire range of orchestral, African or other bizarre sampled and synthesized sounds – just about anything you can imagine, is probably available with Komplete – and of course, my beloved gr-55 is still there for a bit of that wonderful guitar synth colour.

On top of all that, though, I do have other new musical weapons in my arsenal, including the fabulous Kaoss Guitar, the Ibanez RGKP6 – which I absolutely plan to incorporate into my songs, not to mention, my original kaossilator, as well as my new Korg Monotron, a wonderful mini-analog synth – so sound colouration will not be an issue – I can knock out the basics using real guitars – my drums will still be virtual, but will be a vast upgrade from BFD2 (which is what I was using at the time of “gone native”, that and the stock SONAR drum kit) – I have all of the Abbey Road kits in Komplete, as well as Studio Drummer plus a host of electronic percussion available in various packages such as Evolve (by Heaviocity) or Evolve Mutations…

So I can have a complex drum track using additional electronic percussion, or even african percussion if I want to break out the West Africa module…then, I can either play my real bass, or, design a Komplete bass part using a Rickenbacker 4003 or a Fender Precision or even a disco funk bass clone sample – just to get those amazing tones, I would happily give up the sheer fun of playing the bass part – or rather, I might play the bass part, and then REPLACE  it with a Rickenbacker or Fender !  That would be fun.

 

Then it comes to guitars – well, I would insist that these be real – but of course, with all the processing at my fingertips, from the remarkable and complex Guitar Rig Pro, to various hardware stomp boxes and other effects processors – and the amount of possibility I have in re-amping and post-processing of guitar signals is now approaching the ridiculous – guitar tone is not an issue any more, I can take even just a clean guitar signal and re-amp it into the most beautiful overdriven Mesa Boogie tone you ever heard, and then run it through the amazing Guitar Rig jet phasers so that I end up sounding like a latter-day Todd from the Nazz, circa 2015, with my distorted, swooshing jet aeroplane guitars…

Of course, I now also have ipad apps aplenty, including one game-changing ipad app for the guitar – the absolutely stunning FLUX:FX from Adrian Belew, mobgen and elephant candy.  I’ve been using FLUX since it finally arrived this past December (2014) and I am in love – it’s a dream to work with, it’s hands-down the best guitar effects processor for ipad, it surpasses by far even my very favourite apps, which would be Bias and AmpKitPlus from Peavey – both great apps, but what Adrian Belew has helped to design in FLUX:FX, just wipes the floor with ALL of the other guitar apps – they will be hard put to catch up with what FLUX is capable of.  It’s built for live performance, and I will absolutely play with it in my own version of a live setting – the live music video – but it will also work admirably as a very quickly configurable guitar effects processor in the studio, but, it has one amazing advantage over most effects boxes – it has the ability to run sequences of effects, so you can run a complex pattern of effects changes, where your guitar sound mutates WILDLY every few seconds – and you just play – and let the sequencer take care of all the wonderful morphing.

It’s fantastic to use, and it sounds so, so good – I love this idea, the idea of applying different effects over time, using a sequencer type arrangement – and it’s so easy to use, for any effect you are using, there is a default set up, so you can literally just hit the “sequencer” on button, and your “static” effect – suddenly becomes a moving target, a living, breathing, ever-changing, morphing kaleidoscope of sound – you have to hear it to believe it.

Belew has always been the king of strange guitar sounds, and FLUX:FX has some of those, too, in fact, there is an entire section of presets devoted to animal sounds – something Adrian Belew knows all about (The Lone Rhino, anyone? – Elephant Talk? – Ballet For A Blue Whale?) – and speaking of presets, never in my life have I ever seen or heard such an amazing collection of truly unique, unusual and eminently USABLE presets on any such device – it’s fantabulous, there are so many, it takes a long, long time to preview them all, but it’s worth it just to hear what is possible – and the answer to that is “just about anything”.   There are THIRTY basic effect algorithms, and you can have five (or is it six – I can’t recall) going at any one time.  And – they are very, very editable – each one has a deep edit screen, where you can edit and save your sounds endlessly – a lot of editing capability.

 

So FLUX:FX gives me an entirely new palette of guitar effects sounds and sequences (what a strange thing to be saying “effects sequences” – that is just weird!) and in combination with Guitar Rig Pro (and/or GTR3 from Waves), and my hardware devices, my guitar tone, in 2015, is going to sound like nothing you’ve ever heard before.  If I drive that with the Ibanez Kaoss Guitar– well, then, I am throwing synthesized real-time guitar effecting into the mix, so between using the Kaoss pad on the guitar, at the same time, FLUX:FX could be running an exotic effects sequence that I am playing the Kaoss pad “against” – and that could just go into the worlds of sonic wildness such as we’ve never heard before.  Re-processing that whole thing on the fly in Guitar Rig Pro, of course! – Why not?

I have then, a lot of sonic possibilities that I did not have when I made “gone native”, which in fact, I did not have last year – so having all of these new possibilities, means that the kind of songs I create, can be something new as well – sure, they will have a rhythm section – which will be played on drums recorded at Abbey Road, on a beautiful Fender Precision bass or on a nicely distorting Rickenbacker 4003 bass… and guitars – but those instruments will be processed and tweaked like never before.

And then – there is the keyboard section.  I wouldn’t even know where to begin with that, I really wouldn’t.  Within Komplete, I have many, many choices of keyboard – every vintage organ, clavinet, harpsichord, fender Rhodes, grand piano, etc. that you can imagine – and again, on the ipad, I also have an extremely large collection of keyboards, keyboard samples, and so on – so between those two, I have worlds of possibility – and I really want to incorporate more keyboards into my work, yes, I am primarily a guitarist, but I love to play piano, I love to play Hammond organ, I love to play the synthesizer – and God only knows how many of those I have now – between Komplete and the iPad – an incalculable number of synths are available to me in 2015.  I can’t wait – so many amazing sounds, so many vintage and even ancient sounds – which will sound fantastic in new songs.

This will allow me to make some of the most curious juxtapositions of sounds imaginable – say a solo section that rotates between a hurdy-gurdy drone/solo, an electric guitar synth raga/solo, and a distorted, leslie’d Hammond solo – why not?  In my latest classical piece, I am even experimenting with the idea of doing circulations using keyboards, and in that piece, I have a section where an entire section of keyboards is played note by note, first the harpsichord, then the piano, then the celeste, then back to the harpsichord, then piano, then celeste…this circulation goes on for a couple of minutes, and since one of those is in the centre of the mix, and one is full left, and one is full right, you can “hear” the circulation effect thanks to the stereo positioning of those particular instruments…

Since I now know that a keyboard circulation works effectively, I plan to use them in my rock compositions – why not, again, I think it’s a great way to play a melody – sharing it between instruments, and letting perhaps five or six different instruments “play” a melody, each one taking it’s turn, moving across and back and forth across the stereo field as it does so.

There are so many techniques and possibilities available to me, but, I also plan to stand on tradition:  I plan on, in most cases, starting with a drum track.

Then, once I am happy with the drum track, I would turn to the bass guitar – mostly likely using one of the remarkably high quality Scar-bee instruments, or possibly, playing the part on my bass – or maybe, doubling it up so that both are present – real and Komplete – that might be interesting!

Then, once I have bass and drums complete…then I start overdubbing guitars and ebow guitars and guitar synth and Kaoss Guitar.  For days and days.  And with all the sonic possibilities, this should be a hugely fun and exciting process – what sound to use today?  The choice is nearly infinite already, it really is…incredibly huge number of possible sounds given the effects I can bring to bear on a poor, lonely guitar signal 🙂

Then – keyboards, if desired, same thing – too much choice, amazing choice, so as long as I’ve left “space” for it – or for them – I can add in one or more keyboards to this emerging “song”.

 

Finally – does it want percussion?  More synth flourishes?  Special effects courtesy of Komplete or the roland gr-55 guitar synth?  A Korg Monotron solo?  Live percussion?

It’s all possible.  At some point, I will have a song on my hands, and if I spend the time, and tweak the mix until you can hear every instrument well but at the same time, they are nicely blended for smooth, clear listening…then I will know that the first piece of my 2015-initiated album is nearly done, and I can start thinking about the SECOND piece for the album…something totally different, probably.

Why not?  The amount of sonic choice available to us now, as technology finally catches up with music and musicians – it’s simply astounding, and I plan to take full advantage – it’s there, so I will use it, and I hope that my 2015 “songs” come out even better than my 2012 “songs” did – I am absolutely certain that they will.

Update: yesterday, January 10, 2015, I began work on the first song – working title “return of the native” – for the new as-yet-untitled rock album circa 2015 – a seven hour session has resulted in a very interesting 7:36 drum track, which is the start of…something.  we shall see what happens next…

 

To be honest, sometimes, when I am working on improvs, when I am looping, or playing apps in a solo or duet setting, or whatever I am working on – I really, really miss the “song” form – so that’s why I want to make an album of songs, or at least, start making an album of songs, this year.

I started out as a “rock” musician, playing in bands, now, I am my own band, I play all of the instruments, and I can create songs of a complexity and subtlety that I could not have even imagined in the bands I was in when I was 15, 16, 17 years old – it would be beyond our comprehension, back then, the idea that I could “play” an Abbey Road drum kit on the keys of a keyboard, the idea that I can choose between a Fender or a Rickenbacker bass guitar, again, played on the keys of a MIDI keyboard…unthinkable!  Not POSSIBLE!  Insane idea…how could that ever be?  I really wish I could go back, and show 15 year old Clapton- Hendrix- Gibbons- Steely Dan-loving rock guitarist Dave Stafford just what 2015 technology looks like – just to see the look on his face!

So – technology has really, truly changed everything, and the fact that I have both a powerful music computer with one set of amazing music tools, and, a portable, adaptable tablet device with an entirely different but equally wonderful set of amazing music tools – that is just astonishing, and it seems impossible to me even now, even though I know it’s not only possible, but, it’s up and running – and I can access it at any time, night or day.

Fantastic Technology – maybe that’s what I should call the album, if Reeves Gabrels and Bill Nelson can call their album “Fantastic Guitars” then I can call mine “Fantastic Technology” – I suppose.  I think I like their title better to be honest!!  By the way – that is a fantastic album that you really should hear – if you like Reeves Gabrels, if you like Tin Machine (featuring Reeves Gabrels and that other guy, oh – uh, David Bowie), if you like Bill Nelson, if you like The Cure (featuring Reeves Gabrels) – then you WILL like “Fantastic Guitars” – available via Bill Nelson’s web site.

 

Of course, this does not mean that I will stop doing improvised sessions – I absolutely will continue with those.  Some of the sessions pioneered during 2012 – 2014 were truly inspirational to me, such as, playing two instances of the TC-11 touch controlled synthesizer application on two different ipads, doing a “live duet” using two tablet devices – was huge fun, and I hope I can work out many other interesting ipad duets during 2015.

The recent series of “Kaoss Guitar” videos is also very enjoyable, and I want to hook up a looper next time, so I can really layer some awesome kaoss/guitar sounds in a live setting – and then be able to solo on top, too, with those fantastic harmonisers, decimators and other kaotic sonic madness that the Ibanez RGKP6 makes possible – a very interesting instrument, so I hope to work a lot more with the Ibanez during 2015, too.

 

Vintage and even ancient instruments, I’ve become very interested in these, as well as things like “glassworks” which features glass instruments designed by people like Harry Partch and Ben Franklin – fantastic instruments, and also, things like the “EP 73 Deconstructed” which is a 1973 Fender Rhodes Stage piano taken down to it’s component level, with five different basic sounds, key, pluck, mallet, bowed and FX – and this sound, the way this thing sounds, is nothing short of extraordinary, it takes me right back to my pal Ted’s home studio, in the early 70s, and playing his Rhodes and listening to him play it – a great instrument, and now, for the price of software, I have one too!

So I will be working with the Rhodes (which I have actually, a number of different sample sets for) as well as a number of other ancient and vintage instruments, including such rarities as the Ondes, and the Novachord, amazing early keyboards with extraordinary sound palettes (both from the wonderful Soniccouture – makers of the most amazing software instruments in the universe) – some of these early synthesizers were truly out of this world.

From the Conservatoire Collection, another Soniccouture act of genius, I have the beautiful beautiful baroque guitar, the amazing hurdy-gurdy, some lovely Flemish harpsichords, and some truly remarkable baroque timpani – which sound like no timpani I have ever heard – an astonishing sample set there.

Of course, there is always my familiar ambient loop guitar set up, with its counterpart, the “all instruments” set up, which includes a whole bunch of live instruments that I try to use in the loop or the solos over the loop, all in the space of one performance – it’s quite a challenge.  Ambient loop guitar should be better than ever, I have the best looper, the best reverbs possible, and a small but wonderful collection of ebows – and there is nothing quite like the energy bow out there, it’s a one of a kind sound source, and I also look forward to playing some ebow Kaoss Guitar – early tests proved very successful.

 

Right there then, are a series of possible live improvs or duets, using a broad range of current, vintage or ancient sounds – what a range of sounds it is – and I am so fortunate as to be here to bear witness to it all.  What a remarkable product Komplete is, and I really enjoy using it, and hearing the sounds of yesteryear brought to life as if it were yesterday – the Ondes and the Novachord in particular, are both astonishingly beautiful sample sets, and I can’t wait to do more work with both instruments – or maybe, both together, who knows?

 

Beyond all that, I am sure as the year goes on, that I will be able to add new “eternal albums” to the ever growing library of “music for apps” or “music for pcs” or other music data sets, and that I will be able to add more content to the existing albums, too.  Most recently, I’ve been adding several tracks to the “music for pcs: komplete samples” eternal album, tracks that I had completed but never had a chance to upload – I’ve been trying to get caught up, and slowly, I am…

Addressing the video backlog – well, during 2014 – I finally had to just give up, in one sense, and I have started publishing videos that were recorded recently, in some cases, very recently, and I have back-burnered the older videos that should have gone up to maintain the chronology.  I decided in the end, that I can easily control chronology by providing you with dated sessions, so that you can view the sessions by date, so as I am able to backfill the older videos, that you can still experience the live videos in chronological order, while at the same time, we can start to feature what is really happening NOW in the studio – rather than videos that were made two years ago!

I want to put up those older videos – in some cases, they contain truly ground-breaking footage, and they do deserve a spot up there, but – time is of the essence.  I’ve also reluctantly undertaken the decision to reduce the number of takes-per-session that get built and uploaded, so, if a session has say, nine good takes, in the past, I would have produced all nine as videos, and uploaded all nine tracks.  Now – instead – I will re-assess the nine tracks, and attempt to pick out the “best four” or “best five” and I will build and upload those, instead of all nine.  Depending on the session, this number (actually uploaded) may vary wildly from 1 or 2 to 9 or 10 (if there are 30 takes, then 10 isn’t very many takes, percentage-wise!!).

I hate to do that, but I truly do not have the hours in the day available to do all nine or all 12 or all 30 tracks – make a master audio mix and then make a video for each track – any more – in fact, because I was being so completest, and so chronological – that’s what got me to where I am – hopelessly behind – so I need to break the cycle, produce recent videos so you can see and hear what we are doing now, in early 2015 – and as time becomes available, I will backfill the missing videos from 2012, 2013 and 2014 until they ARE caught up.

By reducing the “upload-per-session” count to half or less, this will allow me to work through the backlog more quickly, which in turn, will allow me to get “caught up” sooner – which will be good when it eventually happens.  Once I am there – I won’t get out of sync again, I will just keep up!!  I promise!

If I post a truncated session, where I have made videos for just three or four of nine or ten good takes, if there is enough of a public outcry, i.e. “Dave, please let us see the other 7 videos from this session, please please” I will absolutely consider going back and filling in the blanks later.

 

In the meantime, those four or five videos will at least represent the spirit of the day’s or evening’s session, and will give a good idea of what happened during those sessions.  I will absolutely check and ensure that I select the very, very best of the tracks, so that the tracks with the highest quality, the most beautiful, the best improvs, are the ones that get their videos made, while less interesting takes do not have a video produced – that’s about all I can do, really.

All of these changes and adjustments are designed to gradually move the focus of studio events from a backwards-looking backlog view, to a view of current activities with occasional blasts from the past as time permits – hopefully, bringing everything up to date in a more “current” way, while still addressing the backlog as best as I am able given the circumstances.

 

Theoretically, at least, this will also leave me with MORE TIME to work on a number of the newer initiatives I’ve been talking about here, from more Kaoss Guitar work to more ipad duets to more applications videos to more new and unusual forms of ambient and looped, and, ambient looped, guitar and other instruments.  The more time I have for experimenting, for exploring new instruments, for improvising new music for new instruments – the better – I’d always rather be looking forward, then looking backwards – always.

I am definitely looking forward to a 2015 full of music from past, present and future – and hopefully, hit upon some new ideas, musical forms, formats and instrument combinations, that will enhance what we do here and bring some new and innovative joys of music to your ears.

And – also – the follow-up to “gone native” shall be begun in this New Year (note: was begun on January 10, 2015) – I am really looking forward to that, and with all of the new instruments, new technologies, new effects, new processing possibilities – I can extend the “guitar album” into the realms of the “amazing, extended, expanded guitar+++++ album” – 2015 style.

studio diary 20141230 – year’s end – the view to 2015 from here…

as the year end approaches, we are wrapping up a number of small projects, continuing work on others, and preparing for a very, very musical 2015 indeed,  the last few months have seen a lot of change, a lot of good change, and we are now more fully equipped to make music – a lot of music – on the fly, or with meticulous planning and execution, or maybe even, singing Todd Rundgren ballads at the piano, who knows?? – a little bit of everything, no doubt.

 

GLASSWORKS by Soniccouture

 

before we talk more about what is to come, we wanted to catch up with recent musical events, of which there are many.  on the mind at the moment, are the “Glassworks” instruments, there was a session recorded on December 6, 2014, using two different sampled glass instruments, one an emulation of an instrument invented by Harry Partch, the first track using the instrument called “cloud chamber bowls” the second one,  “armonica”, invented by none other than Ben Franklin (yes, the guy on those bills you never see any more) – we managed to upload the first track from the session, which was simply titled “cloud chamber” in honour of the “cloud chamber bowls” Harry Partch-based patch used to create the track – and it was at that point in time that events just caught up with me, and I did not, at that time, complete two other mixes from the session, both of which were made with the “armonica” tool.

 

I’ve now dealt with that issue, I’ve spent this entire morning – December 29th, 2014 – mastering these two remarkable and remarkably delicate recordings, I’ve been working very, very hard to retain the eerie beauty of the “armonica” instrument, it’s a very ghostly, ethereal sound to begin with, sort of like a floating pipe organ from heaven.  words are not really very useful when it comes to trying to describe Harry Partch‘s instruments, really the best way is to hear them – they are utterly unique, and in the case of the glass Partch instrument included in Soniccouture‘s “Glassworks” offering, they are also uncannily beautiful, fragile and other-worldy, ancient and somehow, because they are so ahead of their time, literally, they represent the future, too, Soniccouture have truly surpassed themselves with the “Glassworks” package, and I can easily see myself, and hear these instruments, making their way into future compositions – easily.

 

all three tracks from the December 6th “Glassworks” session are now up and loaded onto the “music for pcs: komplete samples” eternal album, the track listing for the three tracks is as follows:

 

21 glassworks – cloud chamber – recorded using the “cloud chamber bowls” instrument  2:07

22 glassworks – quiet grace – recorded using the “armonica” instrument  2:51

23 glassworks – quiet passion– recorded using the “armonica” instrument  3:00

 

these have subsequently been uploaded to the appropriate “eternal album” on bandcamp, which in this case is SSDL1751 “music for pcs: komplete samples”

 

all tracks recorded 20141206 by dave stafford for pureambient records

all rights reserved © & ℗ 2014 / 2015

 

 

 

REV by Output

 

and then there was REV.  I am very, very excited by the sonic possibilities that rev offers, I am still very much a new user, but I have indeed, set aside some time to work with rev, and I was not in any way disappointed.  on December 27, 2014 I sat down and recorded a few pieces using just multiple instances of rev, which is clearly one of the most innovative of all sample based instruments.  I actually agree with their marketing information, which states that this is not the sound of a few guitars going backwards, it has been designed from the ground up to be a playable instrument, with the option in every case, of using the reversed or the forward sample – it is left up to the user.

 

the reversed samples that have been utilised, are simply beautiful to listen to; and I can tell this because if you just sit and “trial” the voices, it sounds utterly amazing, almost like a beautiful song.  so they are right, this thing is way beyond a few reversed samples, it is a unique and beautiful instrument in it’s own right.

 

as with soniccouture’s “glassworks”, I can see myself using the rev library and instruments for many, many years in compositions and in on-the-fly improvs like these tracks.  I set up two instruments, one loop, and one “rise” and at first, I was so blown away by the sounds, I just sat there playing, drifting away on ambient clouds of reverse acoustic and electric guitars.

 

my first test of most new music software or sample instruments is usually ambient in nature, basically, I want to know if this sample set, or this synthesizer, or this generative device, is capable of producing beautiful, calming ambient music ?  happily, in the case of rev, the answer is a resounding “yes” – it did beautifully, and I feel that the two ambient tracks I produced using it were excellent – totally down to the instrument, not the player!!  rev is awesome for ambient music, but I can also already tell, it will rock in active music, too – it’s just a brilliant sounding instrument, and I cannot recommend it highly enough – it’s a fantastic and very musical instrument!!

 

on the day, I actually recorded at least three tracks, two ambient, and one active, which I have just now mixed and am in the process of uploading – it’s called “perpetual grunge” and it could not be more different to tracks 24 and 25 – hold onto your hats…

 

 

24 rev – time waits for no woman – recorded using the rev “instrument”, category: complex pad, patch: “beautiful”  2:50

 

25 rev – timeless – recorded using the rev “instrument” including  cctwo patches: both category: simple pads, first patch “electric guitar harmonics” and second patch: “acoustic guitar harmonics”  2:40

 

26 rev – perpetual grunge – recorded using two patches: first, a loop from the factory category called “pulses mid” run through effect “filter gate 1”; second, a rise from the factory category called “4 Bars + Tail” run through effect “rewind”  1:50

 

these have subsequently been uploaded to the appropriate “eternal album” on bandcamp, which in this case is SSDL1751 “music for pcs: komplete samples”

 

all tracks recorded 20141227 by dave stafford for pureambient records

all rights reserved © & ℗ 2014 / 2015

 

 

 THE IBANEZ RGKP6 KAOSSILATOR GUITAR

 

our other new star is this remarkable new instrument, that combines a normal electric guitar with the synth / effects processing power of a korg mini-kaoss pad, the mini-kaoss 2s – which, when used on the guitar, gives guitarists (in this case, me!) unparalleled ability to manipulate the sound of their guitar in realtime and in near-realtime, meaning, as you play, or, directly after you play when effecting notes or chords that are still “ringing”.

 

Either way, it’s an absolute joy, pure dead good fun to play, as I hope the videos demonstrate.  While I initially put it to the test with a fairly ambient guitar improv, as soon as I switched on the built-in distortion circuit…that’s when the real fun begins.  With a more sustained signal, the mini-kaoss 2s really comes into it’s own…it does WILD things to your guitar sound.

 

With 100 basic patches available, the pad allows you to slice and dice and squash and decimate and rip apart your normal guitar sound in more than 100 ways. Each patch can be tweaked by the user, and of course your technique also has a huge effect on “what come out”.  It’s such a simple but genius arrangement, only really made possible by the fact that korg decided to create “Effects” style kaossilators like the mini-kaoss 2s to complement their existing range of “synthesizer” kaoss pads…so the original idea was, you buy a normal kaoss pad, which is a mini-synthesizer with an xy input pad (instead of keys or strings) and then, you buy an “effects” kaoss pad and you plug the two together, running the synth thru the effects, to get the best of both worlds……

 

Ibanez simply replaced the mini synth in the above set up, with an electric guitar!! So instead of a synth, you get the guitar, which is your input / sound source, and it runs thru the “effects” kaoss pad which is of course, embedded physically on the guitars where your pick guard would normally be 🙂

 

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

 

not forgetting the enormous amount of work done over in the arena of APPLICATIONS, we’ve worked on a huge range of projects from sample based PC apps like Komplete ultimate, to performing live duets using two instances of tc-11, a touch controlled app for the ipad.

 

THE FUTURE AND BEYOND…

 

So – what is to come in 2015?

 

refining and improving what i’ve learned in 2014 (and, a few of the years just before 2014!!) so I will be working in all of the arenas we’ve been looking at the recent history of:

 

1) More Kaoss Guitar videos, plus, the use of Kaoss Guitar in other compositions providing unusual textural guitar for solos or backings…long live the Kaoss Guitar !!

 

2) More work, both solo and combining sampled instruments, basically, diving deep behind the covers of komplete 9, native instruments effects, native instruments sample instruments, soniccouture instruments, waves audio effects, scar-bee sample instruments and anything we can get our happy sampling hands on, basically – a massive world of very, very real sounds – because – they ARE real – they are samples!

 

3) Much more visibility for the native instruments synthesizers, of which I have done so little with – there is a huge, beautiful, terrifying sound world there – that I plan on visiting soon…

 

4) Much more use of Guitar Rig 5, one of or possibly the best of the software guitar system emulators, I used Guitar Rig on the sessions for the Ibanez RGKP6 Kaoss Guitar; and it sounded great – more work with that, for sure.

 

5) Working with applications – a whole phalanx of them, existing, new and future – if it makes sound, I want to hear it, if it sounds good, I want to record it.  At the moment, I have planned a few sessions involving newer apps, probably starting with the mysterious and ambient “VOSIS” application, which I very much want to do more tracks with.  Also, I want to explore the relatively new world of the Korg Module iPad application, and how it is realised through their existing iPad music app “Gadget” – Korg Module features world class samples, available through Module or in limited form, thru “Gadget” – so I have sessions planned for Module and “Gadget”, too.

 

6) Nearest and perhaps dearest to my heart – with all of the exciting new technologies I’ve been trying to absorb (with “trying” being the very most appropriate verb in this case) I feel that 2015 is the year to take all of those technologies, and use them to build an old-style, non-eternal dave stafford guitar album made mostly with real guitars, real basses, real keyboards, real kaoss pads, and so on…a normal album, in the style of “gone native” perhaps, or maybe one active album and one ambient album – I am not quite sure yet, and, it would be a case of starting such a venture 2015, but it might not be completed for quite a while…well, we shall see.  But – definitely – guitar based songs, and ambient dreaming music – will be here beginning in 2015.

 

7) Finally…both Bryan Helm and myself have made the commitment in time to begin work on the second “scorched by the sun” album – in our discussion so far, we are thinking we might do a “loud” or active album, instead of ambient, or maybe, as we sometimes used to do, one that starts out loud, and then gets gradually more ambient, with the final track being full on ambient.  The content is up in the air, and again, it will just be a beginning in 2015, it might take time to complete, but – we really want to work together more, we really enjoyed the process of making the first album, “dreamtime” – so it follows that it’s time for “scorched by the sun” to make their second record!  It is time.

 

 

 

 

So the new year looks to be our most active and intense to date, but we are gonna give it our best shot.  Meanwhile…have a safe and prosperous and happy, happy New Year – see you on the other side…

 

 

Peace And Love To All

 

D. 🙂