a short session with the “shredder synth”…

I recently mixed a really interesting session from june 16, 2012, where I did my first ever testing of and recording with an app I had just recently acquired, which is called “shredder synth” – a bit of a misleading name, because it neither shreds (well, it probably can, if you work at it) nor is it a synth – at least, not a normal synth – but nonetheless, it’s a truly remarkable app, and I wanted to share my experience with it with you…

first of all, I cannot for the life of me imagine how the developers of this app even got it to work, because, somehow, from a normal analogue guitar input, they have made a fairly flawless translation to a full on guitar synthesizer – an amazing acheivement for a tablet-based device!

so all you need is an input for guitar (any will work, I happen to use the “apogee jam”, which has worked flawlessly with every app I’ve ever tried it with – and that is several now) and that is all: ”shredder synth”does the rest – it detects the input, and somehow translates audio into MIDI to drive the synth.  god, and the developers, know – I do not 🙂  and I don’t actually care, all I care about is how it sounds – and that is wonderful.

the sounds – are beautiful.  that’s why I say the name of the app is misleading, OK, sure, you can get some heavy/metallic sounds with it, but it’s mostly capable of very, very beautiful sounds, very subtle, or very strange sounds.  the only negative comment I might make is that there are not very many “presets” – but, that’s not really a negative – I just happen to like apps that give me many presets, because that gives me that many more “starting  points” to modify from…but either way, presets or no, this is an excellent application with enormous creative potential.

I find the interface to be really easy to use and understand, it’s very, very simple to edit a voice, and on my very first day with it, I took a standard voice, modified it to my liking, gave it a name, and saved it for future use – a beautiful, beautiful sound, which I then, two days later, recorded two really lovely improvs with. one of those improvs, entitled “a string of islands“, can be found on soundcloud – I am so pleased with this simple but effective piece of guitar – but guitar played through a tablet guitar synth – remarkable!

some of the stock voices are really, really beautiful – one in particular caught my ear, “appalachian” – which is a very pure sine wave sound, with a serious hint of slow attack that gives it a quasi-reverse sound – so it’s sort of halfway between a forwards and backwards guitar sound, but a very, very pure tone indeed, and really works beautifully in any improv or piece that I’ve used it in – a definite “go-to” tone.

I really, really hope that this app does well, because I already like it in it’s current state, but I could imagine, with more features, more presets, and more functions, that over time, it might become one of the most amazing and capable guitar apps anywhere.  I hope the developers will really put some thought into improving this app, and making it truly world class – it’s well on it’s way already

I only have a handful of guitar apps (compared to a ridiculously large number of keyboard based apps I own) and”shredder synth”is utterly unique among them – three of the main guitar apps I use,  are guitar amp/cabinet emulation / effects multi-purpose apps (“stompbox”, “ampkit +”, and “jam up pro xt”), basically, different versions of the more familiar “guitar rig” that appeared some time back: devices to run your guitar through.  and I’ve been astonished at how good some of them sound, right out of the box – replacing thousands of dollars worth of gear with a 20.00 dollar application – that’s astonishing.

I have a couple of other guitar rig type of apps that I don’t really use, like “amplitube” and so on, because the main three I have are so, so capable – really powerful guitar processing devices, particularly peavey’s “ampkit +”, which I absolutely love.  I have high hopes for the newly acquired “jam up pro xt” but it’s a bit underpowered right now – ampkit plus is miles beyond it in terms of devices available and presets available – miles ahead – so I hope “jam up” will catch up 🙂

but, so far, ”shredder synth”is the only guitar synthesizer in the bunch, and it’s a beauty.  what I realised during this session was, that along with all the processing I can do to a guitar signal, using ”shredder synth”means that now…I can drive those processors with two unique guitar synths – the roland gr-55, and, “shredder synth“.

and actually, of course, since the roland is capable of two simultaneous synth voices (and, one modelled guitar voice) that actually means I can have three guitar synths (and one modelled guitar, too!) running simultaneously. 

so I can imagine producing some very, very complex waveforms, with one stereo pair of guitar running from the roland gr-55, and another stereo pair running through ”shredder synth” – and then of course, taking those strange “triple guitar synth” constructions, and then running them through the many processing options…my guitar continues to mutate further and further away from sounding like a guitar – which to me, is usually a good thing!

some of the pieces I recorded in this session from june 16^th, 2012, demonstrate this beautifully, and even when there are just two synths running – say, poly sitar from the roland, and digi-lead from the shredder –  it’s uncanny to hear a melody played by two completely different synth voices – especially since in some cases, the differences in adsr, particularly, differences in the attack, mean that the melodies seem to interweave, since one synth voice might “start” it’s phrase many milliseconds before or after the other – a great effect, because even though there is only one note playing, one melody, the aural illusion is of multiple melodies – because the voicings are so very different in their sonic characteristics.

I was astonished to realise that suddenly, I now have an extra guitar synth added to my main guitar sounds – so going from the already very lush combination of two synths and one modelled guitar, to now three synths and one modelled guitar – which while it may not sound like much on paper, in terms of my guitar sound – it’s huge.

given my now-very-flexible routings situation, it will also be possible to route one synth through one set of processors, and the other, through another, and, sending separate stereo pairs to the recorder, as well – allowing me to record the output of the roland on one pair, via one set of processing devices, and the output of the shredder on another, via another set of processors – giving me maximum mixdown flexibility, plus the ability to level match precisely between the two after recording.

one of the test pieces utilised a second app, so as well as”shredder synth”and the roland, I was running a tabla/tanpura drone as a backing track, using my favourite “itabla” application, and that piece, even though just a rough run through, really gave me the flavour of just how good this “two guitar synths” set up is going to be going forward when combined with other applications like “itabla”.

other “shredder synth” presets that merit special mention are “hidden talons” which is almost impossible to describe in words, running a “glass cello” on the roland into the “hidden talons” patch on the shredder, created a complex and beautiful stereo output, with oddly-moving-from-major-to-minor organ chords – plus, strange bubbling sounds, a beautiful drone-like sine wave output – and the constant, gorgeous glass cello driving the whole thing – a really lovely sound (if a bit out of control at times!).

I also am quite partial to the preset “keep your ears” – a sort of oddly-arpeggiated sine wave synth – again, when coupled with a more constant roland voice – the glass cello again – it works really well because the two voices are so very, very different – great sonic contrast.

glitchiness? – well, I’d say, all in all, that the “shredder synth” is about the same as the roland. let’s face it – all guitar synths suffer from this – if you do not hit that note precisely, perfectly, carefully – you get little glitchy sounds sometimes, depending on which voice, and which fingering, and how much care you take in the accuracy of your fingering.  this can be controlled via the application of very precise technique.  sloppy, random playing generally results in a rapid increase in “glitchiness”.

this applies equally to the roland gr-55 and to “shredder synth” – it’s part of the slightly glitchy technology of input tracking – whether that be the roland’s special GK pickup, or. the way the shredder synth’s developers have captured the guitar’s input to use to drive the synth – sometimes, I love those glitchy, weird extra “sounds”, their randomness and sudden appearance can add character and excitement to a piece.  other times, they can and do sometimes annoy me, because sometimes, I really want the pure sound of the patch.  but the “shredder synth” is truly no better and no worse then the gr-55 – it tends toward glitchiness on some voices more than others – as does the roland.

this is something that can probably be improved over time by the developers, but, to be honest – a big part of it is the player’s style – when you start out playing guitar synth, you quickly learn that it’s not “just like playing guitar” – in fact, you actually have to spend time and make a deliberate effort to develop a specific picking style for each synth voice, that works with that particular sound – and every voice has it’s idiosyncrasies, that you have to allow for – and great care must be taken to perform each note so that the device doesn’t glitch.  but – with practice – you learn , and it sounds better and better as you learn more precise fingering which translates directly into better tracking and fewer glitches – usually 🙂  it’s not an exact science, but to me, it’s miraculous that guitar synthesizers, of any description, exist at all…they are an astonishing thing.

hearing this session now, there are maybe only a few viable takes from the session, because the whole idea of playing with two guitar synths at once was new to me, and I just didn’t do that well – I was still adjusting to the double-synth concept – but when I hear the tracks, including imperfections and my own learning curve – I can hear great potential here.  particularly the track I recorded using itabla pro, could easily lead to a whole new kind of guitar-synth-based “synthraga orchestra” piece – using not a keyboard synth, but perhaps the roland gr-55 driving “shredder synth” atop itabla – the potential that these test recordings reveals is really encouraging – and I love the sounds that this unique and interesting application makes.

but the jewel in the crown from this session, are the last two tracks, which were both recorded using the first custom guitar synth voice that I created – so I had tailored an already-beautiful sound to my own ear – it sounded just like I wanted it to – and I was good and warmed up, so, I sat down and did two very, very satisfying and quite beautiful pieces using this custom sound.

that is possibly the most attractive feature of the “shredder synth” though, the ability to create your own synth voices, either from scratch, or by modifying existing presets – and there you have an almost unlimited palette to work from – and I am looking forward to getting creative in this area, creating a number of patches of my own to use in ambient and active pieces of music…particularly ambient, and the custom sound I created is in that category – which is why the last two ambient pieces in the session are so, so successful.

“shredder synth” is another real winner in my book, and one of my very favourite guitar apps to date – highly recommended if you want something a bit “different” – and, if you have no guitar synthesizer at all in your set-up – well, if you have an ipad, you can now have a guitar synth for an extremely reasonable price.  it’s not perfect, it’s not as capable as  the roland gr-55, but for the money, it does do an awful lot, and it does give you a lot of really interesting and unusual and also, frankly strange! new sounds for your guitar – you can’t really go wrong!! 🙂

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the new korg ipolysix application – a first look & listen

last night’s project was to create a second piece using the brand new korg ipolysix application, and I am pleased to say that I came up with something quite unique, again (entitled “a warp in time”), like my first effort of a couple days ago (“polysix 17”), again, the track is drumless; this time, using a long delay to create the illusion of looping…I took a stock voice and made some modifications to it, and saved it as a new voice, and then I created five different “dual sequences”, i.e. where I have two sequences playing using the same voice, and then I ordered those five “dual sequences” into a song –  “a warp of time”.

because I smoothed out the sound significantly, by lowering the attack, it creates a sort of cloudy, amorphous mass of notes, that shimmer and fade, rise and fall in a very “loop-like” way – and this reminded me too of another instance where I emulated the sound of looping – in the run up to the central bass solo in the song “wettonizer” from “gone native”, I used faded in guitars to emulate a frippertronics style on-the-fly loop – I’ve now done a very similar thing with the korg.

this piece, “a warp in time”, is very exciting for me, because the presets on the korg are a bit…olde world, you don’t realise immediately what beauty and subtlety it’s capable of – and it did not take much to make a good sounding preset sound really, really, REALLY good – even just subtle changes to attack / decay / sustain / release can make the difference.

having high-quality effects on the device helps, and it has a nice sounding hall reverb that I use generously on this piece.  korg has done a great job on the ipolysix, which goes way beyond what the iMS-2o does – but with similar attention to detail and excellent sound quality.

so a few days in, two pieces done, I’ve learned the basic operation of the ipolysix – and I can heartily recommend it.  like it’s predecessor, the iMS-20, you won’t get drum sounds that will knock you out, however, the way they have emulated the controls of the synth voices, you can create an amazing array of sounds just by adjusting those controls.

my first effort, “polysix 17” was just that, a first effort, I like it well enough, it’s fairly simple, it runs at a very, very slow tempo of 20 (most unusually) but this new piece, “a warp in time”, is already a cut above, a huge improvement over the first piece, because I took the time to really tailor my customised voice to what I needed, and it just works a lot better – whereas the first piece is good, the second piece is quite extraordinary.
I really like having the two sequencers available, too, that’s really useful, because you can quickly “layer” two keyboard parts, so in “polysix 17” one sequence played a “chord”, the other, a “note” using a different voice, combined, they create a certain mood that works nicely.  I then created four variants, each with a different note – incredibly simplistic – so, a minor chord with first an a note, then a g, then an f, then an e – how simple is that – and used those to build up my sequence, along with a couple of other patterns that were created by recording live improvs on the keyboard, first on sequencer a, then on sequencer b, and maybe then doing a little bit of editing in the sequence screens to clean those up – but those parts, which are a bit more “free”, become the middle section of the song.

the onboard mixer with effects is useful too – and as others have noted, the ONLY place where this synth falls down is in the drum sounds, but, that’s actually NOT a valid complaint for this reason: korg is being true to the design, the intent of a synth like this is to NOT use samples, but instead, to create drum sounds using the synthesizer – which of course, only works to a certain degree.  so they have done the right thing, technically, in creating the drum sounds using the synth itself – but, practically speaking, moving away from a purist view – I still wish for beautiful sampled drums as I have in nanostudio etc.  but – y0u can’t really have both – either you stick with the pure concept of creating using “synthesis” – or you don’t, and I do respect korg for taking the synthesizer “purist” stance.

I love the synths themselves; I love the adaptability of the synth voices; the controls are 10000% authentic and give you a HUGE range of control over every sound parameter; I like having two sequencers instead of one, and I love having a mixer with effects – I will be able to do a lot with this app, and never need to leave it to do what I need to do.

having synthesized rather than sampled drums is a very small price to pay for getting such a great sounding, and authentically designed, synthesizer – and, at a fraction of the cost of the original polysix – that is one thing that cannot be disputed !

happy synthesizing….

new: we’ve created two new dedicated application channels on sound cloud, “purenanostudio” which will [eventually] feature dave stafford compositions created using the nanostudio app, and “pureipolysix” featuring dave stafford compositions created using the korg ipolysix application – and, “a warp in time” is the first piece that’s been uploaded to the new “pureipolysix” sound cloud page.

update: synthraga orchestra…continued

I am writing once again about the “synthraga orchestra” process, this is an update to my last post…because I’ve just set up the fifth video in the series, which bears the somewhat unlikely title of “thousands of leaves fly into the air borne upwards on rising thermals”, which is rendering as we speak…and hearing the audio for the track, well, I am just feeling excited all over again about this remarkable music, how the unlikely trio of itabla pro + n log synth pro + mini synth pro could create this strange, beautiful music.

I rendered the fourth piece, “rustling of leaves, turns to rattling, back to rustling, then silence”, a few days ago as I am desperately trying to break through the bottleneck of unfinished video caused by the delays of “gone native” and take four is very interesting, but I could see and hear myself still struggling with both the technology and the performance.

bearing in mind this was the first time I had ever stacked that many synths, and take four was only the second time I’d added a second melody synth to the mix, so there were bound to be some very minor teething glitches…

not so take five – I can remember, I readjusted the levels, trying to make the entrance and exit of the second synth app, the mini-synth pro,  a bit less jarring than it had seemed during takes three and four – so this version is…right…it is evened out, and that also helped my confidence in the performance – I can tell I am more relaxed, I am into what is being played, I am fully engaged with the piece rather than, as on take four (not yet released), mostly engaged with the piece and partially engaged with trying to remember what buttons to push and when!  this time, on take five, penultimate take…it just flows.

I could not be more pleased with this series of pieces, and take five ticks all the boxes for me, so far, anyway, because it’s been many, many months since I played these pieces, and an equally long time since I first mixed the audio tracks, so really, when I go to put together the video (six months later in this case, to the day) it’s like the first time I’ve heard the audio track, and this one was a really pleasant surprise – I knew there were some pretty acceptable takes here, but this is better than acceptable.

so while setting the video up, I watched the performance and listened to the audio for the first time in six months – and I was so, so surprised – whereas in take four, I saw a musician struggling and winning, but in take five, suddenly, all the pieces fall into place: I am calm, I know exactly which buttons to push when, so this leaves me completely free to just…improvise a melody.  now, I am a guitarist, who happens to have played piano and then keyboards for many many years…but I am not accustomed to the idea of being able to play just a melody – that’s a new experience.  I’ve always had to play two handed, never as a soloist using just one hand.

itabla takes the place of me needing to use both hands when playing the piano, leaving me completely free to concentrate on melody – a melody that works appropriately with the beautiful tabla and drone tanpura produced by itabla.  so for the first time in my life, I can solo with complete and utter freedom with my right hand only, using the left hand sparingly to play the odd bass notes, or, bend my lonely eastern melody in the strangest ways possible using the pitch bend wheel…and when I watched the film, what I saw was a melody being created, from a quiet but creative  place, in a wholly unplanned and unscripted way – it just happened, and I was the guy who happened to be sitting there in front of the keyboard when it appeared.

I start the piece, with the perfectly timed simultaneous entry of the tanpura and the first note of my melody…from that moment, the piece flies by, and I very, very nearly catch it as it does.  I watch in amazement as I tackle the “central solo” the one where the second synth comes in – I dive in as if I had it planned, and my inner roger powell just takes over – I play the solo, and then, even more surprising, at the end of the solo, I then take it down to a super low note, hold it “just so”, so that the arpeggiator pattern can cycle through a couple times, then hit the stop button (going back from two synths to one at this point) with perfect precision…and then carried on with the rest of the piece  as if nothing had happened.

OK, so I got lucky – the middle section came out pretty well.  surely, I will mess up the ending…but no; once again, things go surprisingly well; I play the outro of the piece, and come to a conclusion – I stop the tabla, I stop playing my melody, letting off that same very low note – leaving the tanpura running.  I sit for a moment, listening to the tanpura drone for a couple of moments…then suddenly, I reach up, play three notes, pause, play three more notes, then simultaneously hit a single, very high note and stop the drone on a dime – all is if rehearsed.  which is it absolutely was not.

in a way, I don’t mind if this is the best piece of the six, or if takes five and six are even better than take five – I’ve been pleased with all the tracks, even the slightly unsteady take three, but take five is the kind of take that makes it all worthwhile, the one that didn’t get away…the one that worked!

I can’t remember a time when I enjoyed making half a dozen videos as much as I’ve enjoyed making the “synthraga” series of videos, with just one more to go…and at the same time, I’ve had ongoing, the remarkable experience of creating videos for scapes 16, 17 and 18 (not yet released), in between the synthraga recordings – and that has been a really interesting experience as well, particularly because those videos, actually, all 18 of the scape videos, have the remarkable attribute of having for their “video master” be a single still image – with the challenge for me, to try to animate and bring that still image to life…I’ve now done this 18 times, I’ve taken a still screenshot of each scape, and made it into a video…somehow.  I’m getting the hang of this video thing.

but it’s also nice to have a straightforward video to work on, and this new track has been a really exciting experience, I can’t wait to upload this (it will be going up sometime in the next week or so) but even more exciting, I still have take 6 to look forward to…as well as about 982 scapes requiring…animation.

guess I better get back to work then.

a milestone is reached – videos past, present, and future

on may 29^th, a personal milestone passed, which I noted in passing – this was the one year anniversary of my very first music video – where I recorded an unaccompanied guitar-synth “oboe” solo – “st. alia of the knife”.

 

I then spent a couple of months fighting with the technology of youtube (who are NOT ready for 1080 50i/50p video) and learning my video craft, and eventually, two months after it was filmed, in july, 2011 – that first video, made on may 29th, a year ago as close as dammit, was posted onto the pureambientHD channel.

if you had told me then that in one year, I would have six channels and close to a hundred videos I would have laughed and said “yeah, right” – but, one year has passed, and I do have six channels and around one hundred videos:

pureambientHD – featuring my main ambient music work, plus active music as well

applicationHD – featuring music created with applications on the ipad

synthesizerHD – featuring music created on a full-sized, 88-key synthesizer, playing either MIDI synths (software synths – “softsynths” or VSTs); or driving applications on the ipad; or, using the voices of the actual keyboard – or, combinations thereof

kaossilatorHD – featuring works on the amazing X-Y pad synth, the korg kaossilator – a handheld looping synthesizer

ablackboxHD – the “anything goes” channel – for piano and vocal work, normal songs, strumming the acoustic guitar, covers of songs by the bands I love performed on piano and vocal (including peter hammill, todd rundgren and others), or, performed on electric guitar/guitar synth (some jimi hendrix covers are in the planning stages) – anything and everything that is unsuitable for one of the “official” dave stafford music channels – you will find it here on ablackboxHD – named in honour of the tenth peter hammill solo album (opening June 2012  – any minute now!)

bindlestiffHD – featuring the work of my ambient looping duo (1991 – 1997), “bindlestiff”, bryan helm / dave stafford

at the same time, today, june 2, 2012 – marks my 50th blog post – something else I would not have believed a year ago!!

when I began making music videos in may 2011, I was simply interested in capturing live performances that demonstrate the kind of music that I enjoy producing – so, that’s mostly completely live, using the looper to provide counterpoint, which of course gives me the ability to “play” several guitars or synths at once.  very, very occasionally, I produce a video for a pre-recorded song, but probably well over 95% of the time – what I play is completely, 100% live.

of course, over time, the pureambientHD channel in particular has expanded to include a broad range of music videos, from straightforward live performances such as “st. alia of the knife” ranging on up to old-style loop pieces, or energy-bow loop pieces, or in one case, I actually performed an entire album, “the haunting”, on video, before the album was released late in 2011.

I’ve gone on to make a wide range of videos, most of which are of live performances – of ambient works, animoog and guitar synth duets, active pieces looped using the guitar synth – an endless variety of musical approaches, which will only diversify further as time goes on…

so the original idea of putting up a few music videos has changed, and over time, what I have realised is that, due to some personal, physical limitations that make performing live quite difficult for me – because of that, I’ve only played three gigs in the last 8 years – that I can use youtube as a replacement for live performances – which would allow a broader audience to hear and see me perform my music, while making it possible for me to continue to perform “live”.

this was really a fortuitous accident then, a method whereby I could still bring live performance to an audience, but where I didn’t have to undergo the rigours of the road, travel, equipment setup and teardown, that my physical body struggles with – being free of that – I now have a world stage to work on, so I hope that I will be able to provide a lot of great live performances over the coming years for people to hopefully enjoy.

the other channels evolved out of new instruments and new ways of working that emerged beginning in december, 2011, when both the korg kaossilator and the ipad with it’s endless, amazing music applications, both arrived, and, both soon become part of my sonic arsenal – that then demanded new channels be created to accommodate this new content.  so “kaossilatorHD” and “applicationHD” came into being.

finally, in february, 2012, I replaced my 35 year old yamaha synthesizer with a modern, 88-key m-audio keyboard, and I very quickly realised that I can control my amazing ipad synthesizer apps from the 88-key controller – meaning I can play the larger keyboard, but make sound changes and utilise the mind-warping capabilities of the X-Y pad within each of the synth apps (most of them feature an X-Y pad). this meant then that “synthesizerHD” had to come into being to present these pieces.

the arrival of the full sized keyboard also means that I can resume playing the piano “songs” that I’ve played all of my adult life, so I am currently re-learning (slowly, painfully in some cases) much of my old repertoire, which includes extensive numbers of songs by peter hammill, both solo and his work with van der graaf generator; as well as songs by genesis, daryl hall, steely dan, split enz, king crimson, and, dave stafford – all of this material, once recorded, will go on the new “ablackboxHD” channel.

this really neatly solves a long-standing problem, OK, primarily, I am an ambient looping guitarist.  so, I have a pureambient channel, “pureambientHD” to present that music – that’s fine.  but what happens when I want to perform a live version of a jimi hendrix song, or sing a peter hammil song sat at the piano, or play a wild synth solo on my korg kaossilator or on the 88-key synth – so these additional channels allow me to perform ALL of the different kinds of music that I perform, not just the most well known, ambient one – so that’s definitely a win-win situation…prior to this, I had no place to go to play hendrix, hammill or rundgren, or any of my non-ambient works.

I think that the next couple of years we will see all of these channels mature, as more content is added to each one, and hopefully, eventually, this will truly represent the many, many styles of music that I can and do play, and hopefully, it will begin to demonstrate the broad range of performance styles I can and do embrace – I don’t know yet, but I am very encouraged by all the positive responses and comments from everyone, and I am looking forward to producing more, not fewer, videos, as time goes on, for your listening and viewing pleasure.

not saying I can absolutely do them, I will try if it’s possible – so – are there any requests?

also on the table – as an adjunct to the broad range of live performance videos on the six dave stafford content channels – inspired by my friend har’s live broadcasts on stillstream, I am considering the idea for myself – starting off slowly, perhaps, a live show once a quarter; if they go well, then I would consider to moving them to something like monthly – I do like the idea of a live streaming show, because while I am very, very happy indeed to create and present all of these live music videos, I do miss the audience, and even if I can’t “see” them, having an audience to work with again would be great, I would really enjoy it.

so – live videos will absolutely continue – possibly, with the added feature of live streaming ambient concerts on something like a quarterly basis.

I think that video is a great medium for live music, because it allows me to present the performance, sure, that’s one aspect, but I can also add in a creative aspect, by making films and integrating not just other footage (usually, that I have filmed myself) but pertinent transitions and effects, I can take an 8 minute music video and (try to, at least!) make it into a piece of art, with both a performance and the ability to tell a visual story to go with it, so I am developing as a filmmaker as well as a musician.

during the last year and a half, an enormous amount of technology has emerged that has really, really changed the way I record, perform and present my music. I am so excited about this, and I am really looking forward to what the next several years has to offer – right now, I am blown away by what is possible, I am barely scratching the surface in terms of really using my tools and applications to their utmost, but – I am learning, and as I learn, I will share the successful experiments here on one of the six dave stafford channels.

at the same time, audio recording continues on several fronts, and we will also of course continue to offer normal albums and tracks at the pureambient store, at the moment, we are featuring a sale on the two newest dave stafford albums, “the haunting” and “sky full of stars” which are normally £5.99, they are on sale until the end of June for just £3.99, so this is your chance to pick up two great ambient albums at a special reduced price.

if you are not sure you are ready to “take the plunge”, you can always check out our two free album downloads; in either ambient or active “flavour” – download either or both completely free, in high quality 320 kbps MP3 format. (please note, to download either or both of these, you do need to enter your details, but they are absolutely not shared with any third party whatsoever, they are strictly kept to identify our customers and for statistical analysis of the store’s performance only – your details will NOT be sold, given away, loaned or otherwise – under any circumstances at any time).

 

meanwhile, I am off to compose post 51 🙂      and play some guitar !

applications-based music – the allguitar / oneguitar / dreamguitar app – cantor is the beginning…

well, last night, I bought an application for £1.49 that I think is a bit of a game-changer; I really like micro-tonal synthesis anyway, and this is from the same developer who created “mugician” – which is a great app to emulate indian music on, and since I really liked “mugician” a lot – when I saw this brand new app, released to the store on may 26^th, I did not hesitate – “cantor” was downloaded and installed.

“cantor” is to electric guitar what “mugician” was to mock sitar – so this is an ipad tool for guitarists – and having just had a brief try of it last night, I think it’s going to be fantastic for live performance, useful in the same way mugician is useful when you want to play something microtonal on your ipad, but now, purpose-built for guitarists.

at first look, it’s a fantastic app, you have control over everything: the tone of the instrument, reverb, distortion, etc. as well as being able to configure the playing area (the “strings” as it were) in a number of ways, it even has a looper which I found a bit tricky, but I did get it to work in the end – plus, audio copy and paste (which I couldn’t quite get to work, but never mind, the app is only four days old!).

but for sheer “fun factor” – it’s fabulous, and I think it will rapidly become one of my most loved and most used apps, because while it’s not exactly a guitar, it’s damnably close in terms of it’s sound, it’s playability – I found that you can even press down three or four notes at once and get a pretty convincing “power chord”…brilliant!

the developer has placed a link to a site where you can look at tutorials, and has provided his contact details (this always impresses me) and he seems devoted to making the product be all that it can be – and I really hope he keeps developing this one, and gives it more functionality, more features (MORE distortion please, different distortions – please!) – but, out of the box, I already love it, it’s truly fun to play and I think it could turn out to be an awesome musical tool for myself and many other musicians needing a guitar-like tool on the ipad.

I could dream this thing into something really amazing – now he’s already got the basic guitar functionality (and I could do trills, I could do “tapping”, it works really well!) going, I would really love to see some enhancements – such as, what if…I think it would be fantastic if you could run this thing in tandem with one of the better guitar effects apps, such as ampkit+ – so we would need a way to feed the audio output of cantor to the input of ampkit+.

or – conversely, build a “better ampkit” – guitar effects, and lots of them – and none of this “you have to buy this pedal, then this pedal, then this pedal” crap – that’s nonsense – charge more for the app, sure, but don’t rape the customer once he’s bought it) – just one massive playground of effects boxes. and later, a rack mount section too.

it’s strange, we’ve had a lot of effect-based apps, but not too much in the way of input devices except for plugging a real guitar into these effects.  now that cantor gives us, effectively, “a virtual guitar”, I’d love to see it coupled with the effects apps somehow – either externally by being able to route the output of cantor to the input of ampkit+ – or by building an entire effects module right into it…one way or the other. after some initial discussions with the developer, I think this needs to be more about apps working together rather than building one giant guitar app that does it all – but either way – I can still dream, right??

once I’ve played with the app for a couple weeks I am sure I will have some SENSIBLE suggestions, but right  now, I am more excited about this app than I’ve been excited about any app since fairlight pro.

I would say, even some simple effects, chorus, flanger, phaser, wah, would be a good place to start – they don’t have to be super fancy, but just so we can alter the tone quite a bit more – nothing like a bit of chorus on a clean sine wave guitar; or a bit of flanger on a very distorted rhythm guitar…

or you could just go insane and build in a complete guitar synthesizer, something like my roland gr-55 but for the ipad – call it my dream cantor-55. please do!!

OK, I have to go there: here is what I would absolutely dream it would do:  full on guitar synth, with as many presets as possible (and configurable sounds), including all of the “classical” instruments; full on guitar modelling so your basic guitar can be a strat or a les paul or a 12-string (plus the ability to blend/combine/shut off synth/guitar models/amp models); full on amp modelling so you can have a fender twin or a marshall or a line 6 or whatever; and finally, a complete effects family, in two sections; one, a full on stomp box (similar to ampkit+) and two, a rack mount as well, with more complex effects devices, especially a big, beautiful reverb with some massive rooms in it – no one builds decent reverbs!

call it “allguitar” or something like that – everything you need, no actual guitar required (although it would be good if you COULD play your real guitar through the synth, guitar models, amp models, and stomp box/rack mounts too) – that would be way cool.  you would never need another app – everything could be done with the one app.  maybe “oneguitar” is better, I don’t know – don’t care about the name, just want the app that does it all….

so I see it sort of like this:

cantor (or, real guitar or synth, plugged in to input)> imaginary cantor added-in guitar synth > imaginary cantor guitar modelling > imaginary cantor amplifier modelling>

note – all are switch-able, so you can have:

guitar synth only

guitar modeller only

cantor unprocessed

any 2 of the above

all 3 of the above

then, from any of these stereo chains into…

two parallel effects chains

imaginary cantor stomp box wonderland, like ampkit+ but better and NO “in-app” purchases please! >

imaginary cantor rack mount wonderland, like guitar rig for ipad, but better and NO “in-app purchases please!>

note – these are switch-able, so you can have:

stomp box effects only

rack mount effects only

both

none

then, from any of these three stereo chains > summed back into one rich stereo output > noise gate + reverbs **

** all stomps and rack effects can be “pre”, “mid” or “post” – so:

immediately after cantor (or real guitar or synth input)

immediately after the guitar synth but before the guitar models

immediately after the guitar models but before the guitar synth

immediately after the guitar models but before the amp models

immediately after the guitar synth but before the amp models

immediately after the amp models

immediately after the final output of stomp box or rack mount or both

you know, I don’t have the time to ever do or learn something like developing apps, I also don’t have the patience or the temperament unfortunately, but sometimes, I wish I were a developer. I would love to design apps (but not have to build or maintain them!) – all the glory, none of the pain!  of course, I realise that what I’ve just described would probably be far too large and clunky for one app, and it would probably be best to do this with two or more apps, but hey – I can dream (and I am dreaming, with THIS description….).

maybe it should be called “dreamguitar”…but whatever they call it, I want someone to build it, so that ***I*** can play it…sigh.

note to all developers: please ignore this, I realise that it’s absolute fantasy but who knows, maybe some day…

🙂

the music of the moment (and the music of the past)

work on the backlog of audio continues, I’ve actually made some pretty good progress on several different fronts, unfortunately, not so much progress on others, but there is a lot of music beginning to emerge:

from january 2nd, 2012 session, I’ve now mastered the final version of “signs of winter” and after a lot of trials and tribulations, the video has been rendered and uploaded and is available for your watching/listening pleasure now.  this is one of the longest version of this improv, and it’s really a good one, it has a really long and very cool animoog intro, and a great looped and live strings session following – this might be my favourite of all the versions of this song so far.  I’m also happy that this session is now complete, because that means I can move on to assessing newer sessions – so that is exciting, too!

I am continuing to work on recovering a set of animoog audio-only recordings that fell prey to the overloaded IRQ-created pops and clicks, and I de-clicked and de-popped the first seven of twenty tracks, and it looks like at least two of those seven are “takes” – and just hearing these again, and hearing them without pops, the animoog is a very, very capable synth with some great, great presets, but it’s ability to customise that I am looking forward to – creating variants of presets that sound even better/stranger, it’s hugely fun to play with, and then of course full x-y pad capability, so I can alter as I play too…love that instrument!  so – fourteen more to clean up, using adobe audition, I don’t quite know what I am going to “do” with these tracks, perhaps some of them might be suitable for the orsi-stafford album, and/or, part of yet-another-unplanned-but-there-it-is album of synth music by yours truly.  the last track I did, which happened to be track 19, had the most amazing tone, it sounded kind of like a modified, textured motorcycle, but the resulting track just sounds fantastic – I love the sound of the animoog, it’s such a nice synth!

I also mastered a 45-minute session by holding stafford & corriere, from 1977, and it was fascinating to look back at this session, made when prog rock was at it’s height, and hearing myself as a 19-year old prog guitarist wannabe is a strange experience now.  when I hear those three 19 year old men play, I see a big prog future for them, but the reality was even stranger, ted holding went on to play in pop / top 40 bands, I went into prog briefly but then took a sharp detour to crafty acoustic/ambient/ebow/looping and never really got back into prog until the last ten years or so… and I have no idea where our drummer, rick, ended up – the last time I saw him was at an allan holdsworth concert in san diego.

it’s exciting hearing these improvised pieces again, I really enjoyed mastering this tape, especially because I had the very powerful hum, hiss and noise reduction capabilities of adobe audition to help me – something you will always need with a tape of this age.  I was able to make the performances sound as good as they can, I am very thankful indeed that ted holding did such a great job of miking up the session, with his carefully-placed stereo drum mikes on rick’s kit – everything sounded great, but with the help of the clean up audio tools in audition, and the mixing tools in SONAR, I think this is one of the best efforts so far as far as cleaning audio for the pureambient blog audio companion page.

the tracks went up this past saturday, a week ago today, so I hope you’ll have a chance to download and listen to this improvised session, it’s forty minutes plus of great prog rock, performed live in the studio by yours truly and my two best junior high school pals – it’s a fun session, but it’s also a serious stab at playing in the style of the day – and it succeeds on a number of levels – including a 17-minute plus prog opus that I really enjoy, complete with almost ambient creepy organ break and tony banks-style warped organ sound at the beginning, entitled “resolution” – not to be missed.

there are four songs, six tracks: three takes of the first piece, “propulsion”, each of which has improvements and alterations over the previous one, we are clearly trying to work out the piece – and by take three (which interestingly, is twice as long as take 1 or 2 – they are about 3 minutes plus each, while take 3 runs a full seven and a half minutes), it has taken a pretty decent form; then there are three unique tracks: “revolution” – which has a kind of heavy guitar bit in it that I quite like, it’s a nice little jam – followed by the remaining two pieces…

“resolution” is the aforementioned super-long prog rock extravaganza, and for my money, it’s the most interesting thing here musically.  it begins with something planned, and then the rest is just made up – but that start – I have something really detuned going on (despite the absence of a whammy bar, somehow I do this) while ted is turning the power of the hammond off and on to get this weird, warped sound (and what a sound it is!!) that hammmonds famously make when you shut them off and on while playing – and it sounds amazing, a totally beautiful effect from the organ and guitar, and rick is furiously playing something akin to freestyle jazz on the drums, which gradually resolves into a rock beat – so the song starts like a staggering drunk man, who gradually gets up and starts to walk a nearly straight line. I can say without reserve that this is probably the best single “beginning” of a song that I’ve ever been involved in, I remember cooking it up with ted, and it just worked phenomenally well – excellent work.

I think it’s remarkable to realise that, the beginning of this song was “planned” literally seconds before we did it, we would discuss the upcoming piece just prior to starting it, and I can remember this surreal conversation – “let’s start this one out really strangely and then move into the piece…” – and that is exactly what we did!  but then – how did it evolve into a more than seventeen minute long prog masterpiece?  that was not planned – but, we just kept playing.

it then transforms from that strange, detuned beginning into a really nice long jam – with lots and lots and LOTS of guitar solos and organ solos, and a beautiful “quiet” section from ted too, that I really like – just a nice piece of work, considering that only the beginning is planned, and the next 16 minutes are totally conjured up out of nothing, on the spot, by the band!

to close the set, the final piece “evolution”, is quite unique in that it was built to a strange concept that I came up with:  I could see that the cassette was nearly full, with just a few minutes left, so I said “ok guys, let’s play in E major just as FAST as we possibly can” – so we start off at a furious pace, and indeed, play until (and beyond, no doubt) the tape runs out – and we manage, somehow, to keep that relentless pace (I can audibly hear rick struggling to keep the drum beat going at this tempo!) up for a full three minutes – a really nice way to end the set I think.

so much more music is appearing that I find that I don’t have time to document it all, however, suffice to say that I did four different recording sessions today, that went something like this: five experiments involving running soundprism pro from the sono 88; eight tracks working with the itabla pro application and one or more application synths playing along with it; nine tracks involving the korg electribe drum machine (this thing is genius!) and various other synth apps; and finally, ten tracks made using “pinkie” – the original korg kaossilator.  That was a good day of recording, and I look forward to hearing some of this material back…especially the kaossilator session, which was completely unplanned, and an enormous amount of fun – what a brilliant device!!!

I learned a lot about just how much you can get away with in layering synth apps and drum apps when triggering from the 88 key keyboard, and I think that among all that was recorded today, that there will be a number of releasable items – I am sure of it.

I now return to the land of removing clicks and pops…

the music of the moment – application-based music

because I have currently have a large backlog of audio and video that was recorded / captured, but never mixed or mastered, my work habits have altered to accommodate this – when I am in the studio, I work exclusively on the backlog (occasionally on the new orsi-stafford album as well) so making new music has temporarily moved exclusively to the more portable ipad.

 

it seems that each week, somehow, I manage to write and sequence yet another piece for my ever-growing library of unusual music that is the fairlight pro collection – in other words, the tracks that will become “fairlight fifty” – at least once a week, other times, maybe even twice a week, and the past week was no exception.

 

the current fairlight pro piece is as usual, quite different from all previous fairlight pro pieces – this time, featuring a strange, almost creepy accordion as the lead instrument, utilising a sound call “submarine” as my rhythm keeper, along with the odd pitched-up or pitched-down (never normal pitch) crash cymbals – the instrument I built is part drone machine part melodic accordion and percussion, and I so, so pleased with the outcome – the piece is currently titled “seagulls” and it has two sections – the original creepy accordion melody (recently improved) and a second section that has a strangely-altered rhythm from the first section, so even though the instrumentation is the same, the second section has a completely different rhythmic “feel” to it so it sounds like a big change – but it isn’t really!

 

it also features a different melodic voice, with a beautiful “humans” voice, voxfemme11, which was previously part of the drone accompanying the accordion section, taking over from the fairground/horror accordion in part two, and it’s even creepier when the accordion returns briefly…

 

so “seagulls” has been my lunchtime project this week (and part of last, it was actually begun then) it’s taken a little bit longer to get this one to fruition, but, well worth the extra work I’ve done on it the past few days – because I believe it’s finished now.  today’s addition was a brand new “middle section” – featuring the bass being removed, and the lead now taken over by a sped-up high-pitched talking drum, which give this third section a completely unique character of it’s own – so now I have three distinct sections, each characterised by a different melodic lead instrument: accordion, female voice, talking drum.

 

it sounds strange on paper, but it’s working really well on the fairlight, and that’s all that matters!

 

 

I am creating so many of these pieces that if I keep going at this rate, “fairlight fifty” will be done in no time.

 

the only slightly frustrating aspect of this is that I am not moving forward on all fronts, because all of my studio time has to be dedicated to clearing the backlog, which means, mix, mix, master,  then, mix and master – and if I am not mixing or mastering, I had better be fixing clicks and pops in recorded pieces and then get on with … mixing and mastering, so this means that I simply do not have any time available for guitar synthesizer, working on album tracks for any of the albums in progress- including collaborations, doing more sessions with the kaoss pad, doing new sono 88 synth sessions (although I have managed a few of those, since the setup is very easy).  there is just no time!

 

don’t get me wrong, there is almost nothing I love more than working with apps on the ipad at the moment, it’s absolutely fascinating to me to be able to make good music on a very portable device, and in learning all these apps and making recordings in several different apps – I have many, but am recording seriously with about 8 or 9 of them at the moment – maybe more – and new ones about to be added – it’s absolutely great fun and I am compiling a lot of good music for future use – including the fairlight fifty album.

 

there will also absolutely be at least one other application-based album, and that will be pieces made in nanostudio – which could not be more different than the fairlight pieces if they tried – two completely different instruments means two completely different sound palettes – and the pieces are distinctive to “their” synth – and, eden synth in nanostudio is a very different beast to fairlight samples.

 

nanostudio itself – that’s just a great tool, so easy to learn, great drum sequencer, super high quality drum sounds, great synth – I have created some really good pieces in nanostudio, so I will actually need to get those mixed and mastered along with the fairlight fifty, so there will eventually be large number of app-based pieces presented in at least two albums, if not more – including a few very ambient pieces as well as more active drum-based pieces.

 

 

speaking of that backlog, my business partner ken mistove found me a viable solution for removing pops and clicks, adobe audition, most distressingly; a set of carefully-prepared synth pieces that were intended to be the first tracks presented on the new video channel on youtube, synthesizerHD – all ended up quite damaged due to clicks and pops, so the opening was delayed until the first pieces could be repaired – thankfully, that is now all OK, and the new channel is up and running with the first two tracks now up.

 

so as well as trying to save those tracks (and others damaged by pops and clicks earlier on, as well) I have begun working through the other tracks from the same sessions (in this case, an ipad synth session from april 7^th with nine tracks on it and a sono 88 keyboard/ipad synth session from april 9^th with 15 tracks on it) – both, with pops and clicks, but a few of the tracks have escaped totally unscathed – so I am mastering those now.

 

I made a start last night, selecting tracks 8 and 9 from the april 9^th session to start with, and those two tracks bear startling witness to the quality of one app in particular, a synthesizer app that is fast becoming one of my very, very favourites – addicitive synth – I love the sounds this thing makes, and playing it from the full size keyboard is the icing on the cake.  it has many, many amazing voices, but it’s best feature is a truly astounding set of preset arpeggiators, some of the most intricate, clever and creative I’ve ever heard – not to mention the facility to create your own arpeggiators – something I can’t wait to try!

 

It was a lot of fun play synth with arpeggiators again, it’s been a long, long time since I’ve done that, but what I try to do with them is hopefully atypical, most people use them to play really fast parts that they can’t actually play with their fingers, usually accomplished by holding down one note, then another, then another, and letting the arpeggiator do all the work.  I don’t go that way – I just play normally, or, rather, I adapt my normal playing style – and I play a combination of notes, chords, bass notes, and mixtures of the same – to try and get the arpeggiator to create unique music.

 

I like to fool the arpeggiator, by not allowing it to fully trigger, by playing short notes or chords that only fire off part of the arpeggiation, and I am already re-triggering it before it finishes – I try to use it as a musical tool, instead of leaning on it because of a lack of actual playing skill.

 

I think I succeed with this, I really don’t want to use arpeggiators as a gimmick, at the same time, I think some of the very creatively-programmed arpeggiators in addictive synth are extremely musical, and they allow me to play challenging pieces with unexpected and wonderful results…I haven’t yet watched the footage yet, so I am actually not 100 percent certain how I made these tracks, but, that will become clearer in time – I just know that in mastering the audio, the result I got for tracks 8 and 9 at least, and a few others I know, is very musical indeed and I hope is a valid way of using the device to make music, not letting the device control me.  I hope!

 

I finished track 8 last night (working title “externalisation”), creating mixes for audio and for video (all video mixes now get a standard six seconds of silence added at the start, and 21 seconds of silence added at the end, for ending reverb, titles and so on) – I just find that makes things much simpler, instead of customising each one – I always target six seconds pre- and twenty-one seconds post-audio when creating audio for video use – and of course I usually edit that 21 seconds down to something shorter, depending on the configuration of the end section of the video.

we always want to be in charge of our machines, rather than the other way around, but on some days I do feel like technology in general gets on top of me, and sometimes the machines win – and it’s then that I remember the phrase “watched over by machines of loving grace” – maybe that’s another album title – I don’t know!

the music of the moment – fairlight fifty

this is just to say, that the first of a number of applications-based albums is well underway, it now has a title “fairlight fifty” (many thanks to colin bathgate for that title), and there are a number of completed compositions now ready to go on to the mix/mastering stage, and more new tracks are appearing all the time….

three things have spurred me on to commit totally to this project:

1)       the bizarre and unique nature of the compositions I am doing on the fairlight pro is an absolute inspiration, the tracks are utterly unique; like nothing I’ve ever done before and like nothing on earth that I’ve ever heard before

2)       I accidentally filmed some birds the other morning, including crows and jackdaws, which became my latest video and the newest upload on the new applicationHD channel, presenting the first single from the record, “feast for crow”

3)       I realised that for some strange reason, the average length of an average dave stafford fairlight pro track is about two minutes or less (one or two tracks stretch out to a lengthy three or even four minutes long, but in the main, they all seem to be right around the two minute mark); originally, I jokingly said “I will just wait until I have fifty and then I will release them” but now – I take that completely seriously, because if the most recent tracks are anything to go by, when I reach fifty, there will be then be fifty of the most bizarre and unique tracks I’ve ever recorded…

why not?  at the moment, I am planning on an early 2013 release, as only about a dozen of the required fifty tracks even exist, and I have several other projects that I really want to complete and get under my belt this year – so I can have the freedom to then turn to the fairlight pro project and complete it hopefully in time.

during the mastering of the audio for the “feast for crow” video, I also re-assessed the last few pieces that I have recorded, “unwinding prophecy”, “guitarilla”, “fun with cardboard”,  “petroglyph”, and a brand new, partially completed piece entitled “seagulls” – I realised that these pieces are even more unusual, unique, strange, weird and bizarre than my usual fare, and frankly – thanks to the amazing design of the fairlight pro application, with it’s strange approach of triggering real samples of real instruments and controlling note pitch, volume, duration, pan, etc. as you sequence the samples – that  these pieces of music make up a very special group of songs, each one made with a different customised eight part instrument – and that to gather up fifty of them as an album would be a very, very interesting sonic experience indeed, I hope, ending up as utterly unique as the dozen existing tracks sound now…I just can’t resist the temptation – so, an album there shall be!

fairlight fifty – I like it! (and so – the fairlight fifty album project is officially born…).

on monday night, after having mastered the audio for “feast for crow” on sunday, I assembled the video using the footage that I had taken just a few mornings previously at the end of april.  the video was a lot of fun to make, demonstrating an epic struggle of nature, with the more intelligent crows ending up in possession of the prize – the feast – and the dullard seagulls were defeated once again due to their overwhelming desire to posture and flap their wings and fight and chase each other off – while the crows patiently wait, eat what they can, and end up with the food anyway because the gulls had basically all chased each other completely away – a really cool avian slice of life/real-life bird video to accompany this most peculiar of songs.

best of all, the “lead crow” then does a victorious hopping exit stage left at the end of the video, which I just loved – you would almost believe that they knew I was filming, the way they behaved…

“feast for crow” is one of the very, very first songs I created with the fairlight pro app, and given that I didn’t really know or quite understand what I was doing at the time, it came out quite, quite well all things considered.  I believe that for the album, I am going to record these pieces utterly flat, with no EQ or reverb or any alterations except to match levels – because I love the way they sound flat!  I experimented with adding reverb, EQ and other effects when working on “feast for crow” but in the end, decided against anything, so I reverted it back to the basic captured track and mastered from that.

I am seriously thinking I will do the whole album that way – but, possibly, with a twist – once completed in it’s “plain vanilla” version, I might then take “breeze” or other effects, and really go wild on copies of all fifty tracks – reverb them, flange them, chorus them, delay them, echo them, because while I love them plain – I am also sure that some of them at least, would really, really benefit from some serious “treatments” – I can’t wait!

another possibility is doing a single energy-bow guitar overdub of each track, which might be a very interesting musical experiment indeed – but we will see – I really feel that these unusual tracks have so much potential, so I do plan on spending a lot of quality time in the studio with them, to see what is…possible.

that would mean producing two masters of each track, but the tracks are so short, it will be easy to do that – so I think I will move forward on that basis.

I guess that means then that we will have both “fairlight fifty” and “fairlight fifty (enhanced)” – and maybe – “fairlight fifty (energy bow jam version)” too –  to look forward to next year.  I can’t wait!!!

the music of the moment – application-based music

the music of the moment – application-based music

another really unusual piece has appeared on the fairlight pro, this time, an oddly cheerful little ditty called “fun with cardboard” – which I am actually thinking might end up becoming the title track of my proposed/future fairlight pro composition album.

 

strange though it might seem, the title appeared to me sometime last weekend as a possible album title, but then when I sat down to compose on the ipad, specifically, to work on a new fairlight piece, it just hit me, this piece must be “fun with cardboard”. and then the track appeared with frightening speed, practically writing itself – it was done very quickly, with just a few tweaks to the sequence the following day – clearly, it was meant to be, and – this will sound very unusual – it actually sounds like “fun with cardboard” – if you were, somehow…having fun with cardboard…this is what it would sound like!  really.

 

I still cannot get over the weird and wonderful process that occurs each time I begin composing with fairlight pro, it’s just pure strangeness – I never have any idea what I am writing, I just try melodies and harmony, and if it works; fine, if not, I delete the offending bars and try to find something better.

 

if it sounds good, then I keep it; if it doesn’t, or it seems boring; I dump it, and I just keep replacing any bad bars with good until all the bars are good – simple!

 

sometimes, it’s just not selecting the right notes – and, it can be tricky, because most melodies actually stretch across two or more patterns; or, sometimes, the instrument you chose for instrument 3 is just no good; so you have to stop and find something more suitable.  once the instruments are right, then you can carry on creating.  but this time – the instrument was fine, it required no changes, and I was able to work very quickly indeed.

 

I found in this case, I could create a really fulfilling sequence using very, very few individual measures, it has more repetition, and fewer “unique” bars – normally, the ending and the measure or measures leading up to it tend to be unique, but otherwise, compositional fragments get re-used a lot during this particular track.

 

even stranger, writing intentionally in a minor key – e minor, with one brief excursion to a minor – you would think that the piece would take on the normally-perceived characteristic of the minor keys, and sound “sad” – but for whatever reasons, the reverse is actually true, and this piece oozes happiness and joy, it’s decidedly, almost annoyingly, cheerful. which I think is great, usually when I record in e minor, I want a dark mood; a not-cheerful mood – but this time, it backfired, and due to a combination of tempo, instrumentation, and the random process of dave’s haphazard “compositional technique”…it came out sounding really happy. and, with a sudden, snappy, unexpected ending too – which is a real bonus.

 

of course, that makes me happy too, because I have lots of dark, creepy, strange/soundtrack music already recorded with the fairlight, so there need to be some more melodic, cheery pieces to counteract that.  but – not too many – because we love our dark atmospheres, don’t we?

 

I actually don’t know if I have spoken about the piece before this, written a couple weeks back (it’s been so, so busy!) entitled “guitarilla” – a track that really has got me thinking about the true potential of fairlight pro.  the fairlight has a lot of great guitar samples in it, so I use them – and in this case, I developed some riffs that eventually, I turned into a song.

 

it took some doing, but I now have it sorted out, the whole piece is based on riffs, but some sections have a series of chords that plays out behind some of  the riffs– but, the overall effect is of a clear sketch, or prototype, of a fairly heavy guitar piece.

 

after thinking about this piece for some time, I realise that I could actually design riff-based guitar songs on the ipad, with fairlight pro, rather than on guitar – and then just learn them; or even overdub the fairlight track with real guitars (which is my plan for “guitarilla”).  however, I always have the option; once I have a good recording on “real” guitars – of just erasing the Fairlight track – use it like a disposable template.

 

I’ve never been great at writing on guitar, I do not know why – most of what I write is on keyboard or on piano.  I can improvise on guitar all day and night, but, I don’t sit down and work on riffs, or riff-based songs, like I might have when I was 22.  having the fairlight now, though, with it’s awesome selection of heavy, heavy guitar sounds, will allow me to compose in riff mode once again.

 

I doubt that’s what the designers had in mind, but I really think this will become a great tool for doing quick sketches, for working out my riffs and ideas and even chord changes – and then taking that to the daw and fleshing it out with real guitars – possibly then discarding the entire original fairlight template piece in the process.  or keeping it – whatever sounds the best.

 

I’ve only had this tool now for about four months, but as with so many of these synthesizer/recording apps, I really can’t imagine myself being without it, it’s so flexible, it’s so fun to create with, and some truly unusual pieces have appeared out of nowhere using the fairlight pro. some of that is down to the samples, which are mostly really quality, but some of it is down to knowing how to best concoct a good instrument (8 voices) to use for your creation, and some of it is down to the actual bar-by-bar compositional approach – all of that combines, somehow, into creating an atmosphere where the unusual can happen – and it usually does.

the future of pureambient – two modes, two paths: one musician

I’m a guitarist, first and foremost – except, really, that’s not quite accurate; I was playing the piano ten years or more before I ever picked up a guitar.  it’s just that guitar, and guitar synth, are my instruments of choice, it’s what I love to do the most – especially if it involves looping, creating on the fly – or using the energy bow – I love doing live looping with the ebow.  but years ago, there was a time when I played piano as much as guitar (or more, for a short period of time).  and over the years, the piano gave way to the synthesizer.  until very recently, I had a fairly limited set up – a 77-key keyboard with plastic keys, the soft synths within sonar, and my trusty mellotron – m-tron pro.  but now – that has totally expanded, and I mean really expanded, to the point where I have so much amazing possibility – so I do want to take advantage of that.

now that the pop and click problem is solved, to try to equal out the “guitar to keyboard” session ratio, I suppose! – I can foresee doing a lot more synthesizer sessions, using the 88-key keyboard in particular (either on it’s own; driving soft synths in sonar; or driving app synths on the ipad) – it really opens things up in terms of possibilities.  I am really pleased with how well the midi is integrated on most of these apps, I have full control of the app from the remote keyboard, and that’s a true joy – I can now run any soft synth in the world from sonar, and/or, from the ipad – thousands and thousands of synth voices available at the push of a button – it’s heaven for the dedicated synthesist. 🙂

but now, now that I finally have a full-size keyboard again, for the first time in over 35 years (I know, that is really hard to believe) I am finding that I really, really enjoy playing synthesizer.  I feel that it’s a completely different effort and oeuvre than my main body of work, it’s almost like a “different” dave stafford is the guy that plays these mad,  inspired pieces on addictive synth (and – the name is apt, once I start playing on this synth, I just can’t stop – the arpeggiators in particular fascinate me, the musical possibilities that they open up…). and more recently, I’ve been using some of the free synth apps I’ve got – one of which, alchemy, is a monstrously cool app – it has two x-y pads, and the way they have been programmed is just stunning – to be able to control not just the usual parameters, but now, they are giving me panning, so I can create my own custom stereo image as I play the track, or reverb room size or level, or effects panning – so you can play the keyboard with your right hand, and with your left, simultaneously effect two different parameters on the two x-y pads in real time – how excellent is that????  so maybe I could be changing the low frequency oscillator with one finger, while changing the reverb level with the other, while my right hand plays the piece.  alchemy is a blast – I love it.  that’s one where I might well spring for the full version.

I am finding more and more synth apps, and a good percentage of them have unique features that set them apart from the others, in some, like alchemy, it might be particularly good x-y pad control – in others, such as addictive synth – it might be a lot of really well-programmed arpeggiators.

I would hasten to add…I don’t use arpeggiators to “cheat” – I try to use them in a more creative way – as we were recently discussing over on the pureambient group, but to create music that my fingers could not possibly play – using the machine to create music, rather than trying to pretend it’s me doing it myself – the camera won’t lie, you will see what my fingers do, and I think it’s fascinating to see how playing an arpeggio, or a chord, or running 3 notes continuously, to see, and much more importantly, hear, how that triggers and changes what the arpeggiator is doing at any given moment during a performance…it’s absolutely cool what you can cause an arpeggiator to do if you really work at it.  you have to play it, not let it play the song for you.  the human is the boss; the machine does the processing…

so over the coming months, I see two different, separate bodies of work evolving: one, the continued work with guitar and guitar synth, in the pureambient vein – meaning both ambient and active work, of course, which I will continue to present on the pureambienthd channel on youtube.  that will involve continuing the explorations with the guitar synth, which, after a year and a month, I still feel I am only just beginning with – it’s such a complex and wonderful instrument, and when I think how many sounds I can get with the roland gr-55 guitar synth, and then I think about the soft synths in sonar, and then I think of all the synths I now have on the ipad – well, my head spins.  musically, I can get just about any sound in existence, and if I don’t have it, I can sample it 🙂

then there is this new body of synthesizer work, completely different in nature, it’s as if I can express something completely different to what I am trying to do with my guitar work – and there is a two-pronged approach to this, one, the work with the kaossilator, which I really want to develop and enhance; and two, this new line of synthesizer pieces – those two forming a whole new branch of music that I can work on in the future.

I already set up the kaossilatorhd channel to accommodate the korg kaossilator pieces I’ve recorded, but a few days ago, I set up a brand new channel (which isn’t available just yet) called synthesizerhd, which will feature video of some of the new synth pieces I’ve been recording.  so pureambienthd will handle all of my ambient work, and all of my guitar synth and active guitar work – it’s all about the guitar.  while kaossilatorhd and synthesizerhd will handle the kaoss pad and synth work respectively. I thought about putting all of it onto pureambient, but I think that would make for a very confusing video channel – one minute, totally ambient loop guitar, the next, mad loud synthesizer work – no!

I’m using a new video framing technique for synthesizerhd, too: instead of the typical room shot I use when playing guitar, which is an act really involving the whole body anyway, since playing keyboard is possibly a bit more about the hands, I have set up the video to film my hands playing the keys, a lovely long shot down the entire length of the keyboard – so you will be able to see how the music is created – I rather like this new approach for the synthesizerhd channel.  over on the pureambient channel, the format won’t change, I will still do the set as whole room, but I like the idea of having a fundamentally different format for the two channels – or rather, to be precise, it will be full room for pureambienthd and kaossilatorhd, hands on the keys for synthesizerhd.

and on my other as-yet-unpublished channel, ablackboxhd – well, there is no format decided ahead of time, because on that channel – anything goes.  so – any format goes 🙂  it will mostly end up being about normal songs, covers of work I admire, that sort of thing.  so now, I have two unopened, unpublished youtube channels, that I am working on getting set up –please be patient, but, ablackboxhd and synthesizerhd will exist this year!

this past weekend, I have recorded yet another set of synthesizer videos, this time featuring clickless, popless audio, so I have quite a lot of video review to do now – and a lot of tracks to choose from with which to populate my two new youtube channels.

I am committed to doing this, of course, my main commitment is to ambient, and to continue the work done with the 50 videos now sitting on the pureambienthd channel – I see no reason to stop – now that I have a process going!

the ongoing work of music – application-based music

even though I hadn’t then solved my pops & clicks problems (I have now) – recording continued – even in the face of adversity.  ken and I eventually eliminated possibilities for what was causing the pops, until we found the problem – so hopefully I  now emerge with a less buggy process, and I won’t end up with so very many, many damaged tracks to repair 😦 – or abandon 😦 :-(.

on april 7^th, I recorded 9 pieces direct from the ipad to sonar, then, on april 9^th, I recorded an additional 15 pieces using the 88-key m-audio keyboard to drive the ipad – and thence to sonar.

the good news is, having all of the amazing voices of all the synth apps on the ipad available to use, from an 88-key keyboard…is fantastic, I’ve literally doubled or tripled or quadrupled the number of individual synth voices I have available with which to make music. with sonar, you get a large number of synthesizers, everything from true piano onto some of the strangest and most wonderful patches imaginable. adding in 8 or 10 full-bodied apps from the ipad – just increases that number to what feels like almost infinite possibility.

the bad news is – all 24 of these pieces (plus, an earlier batch of songs made with the animoog) – all have clicks and pops that will have to be removed.  in a few cases, those may be so severe that a perfectly good ambient track may not end up presentable.  that is upsetting and frustrating in this case, because the worst possible scenario has come true: damaged recordings, when I actually played very well, performance-wise. every musician’s nightmare: you finally get it right – and… there’s something wrong with the tape???????????  or the more up to date version – there’s something wrong with the files?????????

so I am trying to get past the damage, but it’s not pretty, and the amount of extra time and effort it might take to “save” these tracks – may just not be worth it. that is a huge, huge shame, because for whatever reason, this batch of songs is truly unique, I think that having the new keyboard now for a couple of months, and doing quite a bit of playing, including the sketches for the new orsi-stafford album project – well, that just prepared me to sit down and play something really good. and that’s what I did.

let’s then get to those performances…first things first, the ambient ones – whether I can save these (because of course, the quietest tracks have the most damage) or not, what I have learned is that in two of the ipad apps in particular, I have musical tools of great, great beauty – specifically, addictive synth and animoog – between these two synths alone, even if I just ignored all the rest, I could coax sounds of both great beauty, atmosphere and ambience out of them, as well as the less ambient voices, which are suitable for a whole range of active work.

these recordings favour the addictive synth – one, because it’s new to me, sure, but it’s fast becoming one of my very favourite synths in the whole world, for two reasons: great sounds, and, the single most amazing arpeggiator I have ever worked with.  whoever programmed this arpeggiator – I take my hat off to you, you can select from a broad range of incredibly musical, complex preset arpeggios, as well as totally controlling them manually – make your own. it is fantastic!  the animoog is, however, running a close second, because it has some stock voices of absolutely compelling beauty. and lately, I would now add in mini synth pro as a close third – a really beautiful and adaptable synth…

 

all three of these synths allow you to use an x-y pad to modify sound on the fly, so they are equal in that regard.  for the first session, I did a number of addictive synth and animoog takes, playing directly on the ipad.  for the second, using the 88-key m-audio keyboard, I worked with more synths: starting with addictive synth, then animoog (trying out some of the new patches there), then, curiously, I did a few takes with the dm-1 app, which is a drum machine, but it’s got an enormous number of really unique kits with some amazing sounds, and finally, I did one take with minisynth pro, using a really lovely sine patch reminiscent of the sound used in the beatles’ “here comes the sun”.

 

starting with the april 7^th session then:

I began with an ambient piece in the key of e minor, using one of my instant favourite voices from the addictive synth, “mare tranquilitatis” – it’s difficult to describe, it’s sine based, but also, complex, the longer you hold down a key, the more that happens – from subtle white noise whooshing in to strange, quasi-distorted and strangely detuned events – a really beautiful, subtle and complex patch, and perfect for playing ambient music.  it really does sound like the music you would hear while visiting the sea of tranquility.

while the piece is supposed to be ambient, I kinda push the envelope, playing some very fast parts in the later parts of the song, so it moves from very ambient to semiambient, but the overall effect is lovely, and this is one of those patches where you could play just about anything, and the sound of the patch is so beautiful, that you can’t go wrong.  play well – and it ends up really enhancing your performance. I love this patch, and that becomes obvious, because I do one of the nine takes here using it, and three of the fifteen from the later session using it 🙂 – so four out of 24 takes using just one patch – I must like it. 🙂

then, I select a few voices from the addictive synths choices: sponky, terry reilly, tonka, siderial 2 – and I decide to play a piece where I am changing the arpeggiation fairly constantly, while I move through the four chosen voices.  it’s not entirely successful, there are some awkward transitions particularly moving in and out of the siderial2 voice, but mostly, it’s fantastic – because these voices are brazen, loud, and top notch in terms of the way they’ve been set up.  I can say without hesitation that out of all the synth apps I’ve got, out of the box, as-is, the presets in addictive synth are the best presets of any device so far – and, there are 160 of them!  I can’t wait to see what I can do when I start creating my own voices using some of their best voices as a starting place…

the third piece begins with another new favourite sound from the addictive: resozz. it’s just such a visceral, wonderful sound that grabs you hard, and you can’t stop it – it’s relentless. again, this piece is a mixture of different voices and therefore moods, starting with a very active sequence from resozz, then, moving to a voice called water flute, it takes a left turn into a strange, disquieting land of ambient…then back to the mad patterns of arpeggiation again, but this time, driven by a patch called constant change – a wonderful and unique musical journey – unlikely, but it works.

piece four using yet another set of pre-chosen voices, beginning with repercussions, then moving on through resozz; dank; crunk; dropsy; bepu-bepu; and others, and this journey is simply mind-blowing, the texture, this synth oozes texture, and pushing that key and hearing all of these patches in one song, each with it’s own special arpeggiation pre-programmed – you cannot fail – it’s just a thunderingly cool set of sounds. this is one of the most well developed of the pieces, it’s also 4:25 in length, and it changes voice every 30 seconds or so, so it’s a mad, arpeggiator-ruled trip to synthesizer texture heaven – some of these sounds should be locked up for sounding too damn good, this is seriously an amazing synth!  and, it’s addictive – literally.

I could see taking a complex piece like this, and either playing live drums to it, or programming a drum track to “fit” it – despite some very odd tempo changes – and turning what is currently a solo, into a full song with drums, bass and possibly even guitars.  again, it would be reverse engineering, because essentially, this piece is a four minute twenty five second long synth solo..but it’s also like a mini-suite of different moods, rhythms, and textures – all accidental, all unplanned, but really sounding intriguing and full of possibility.

and the most remarkable thing about track four is this: it was played from the ipad itself – no external midi keyboard – and to me, to be able to get a piece this diverse, with this much melodic, harmonic, and textural variance, without a real keyboard – it just doesn’t seem possible.  an amazing accident, dave stafford just moving from sound to sound, and playing whatever he felt was appropriate – and finding that, on this day at least, the stars all lined up, the gods smiled – and music appeared.

for track five, I decided to have another go with a modified version of track 2, at least in terms of instrument choices, so I expanded the original selection – which was sponky, terry reilly, tonka, siderial2, and I added in other instruments as well; another long piece, over four minutes again, and, because it uses different voices than track four, a completely different journey through a completely different set of moods, rhythms, textures – a weirder, quirkier still journey, but, just when it starts to get really strange, I begin to manipulate the x-y pad, and that takes a normal arpeggiating pattern, and warps it in wonderful sonic ways – the pad is a fantastic tool, and really allows you to do some strange things to the music as you are playing…and it’s a lot of fun to warp those sound bryan helm-style (if you’ve heard “loud” by bindlestiff, you will know what I am talking about).

track six is all change.  I move now to the animoog, my other top favourite app for making synthetic noise. moog just recently released a new set of voices, which I had loaded but not tried out, so I took this opportunity to test them out.  they are some what…gaseous in nature (no other way to describe them, it’s intentional on their part, as you will see) – and on this first animoog take, I just move through a series of these new sounds, and play for a minute with each different voice.  it’s not quite the same journey as the ones taken with the addictive synth, it’s darker, moodier, no arpeggiation – but, just as much mystery, and some of the new sounds are very sinister, dark and wonderful.  these pieces are shorter, this one ends up being under two minutes, but, a lot of phat moog texture and synth attitude is displayed in that short time.

piece number seven, and I’ve chosen a new favourite – a single voice used as part of take 6, a patch called “industrial gases”.   it is very very creepy, a really beautiful texture, really difficult to explain in words! – lovely delay, the low notes are totally frightening and very sinister indeed, and there are shuddering noises, whistling feedback, a cornucopia of intense, synthetic sound all emanating from one voice.  this piece is superb: my only complaint is how short it is – again, just over two minutes…I wish is were ten – this is a great patch, and I plan to do some longer form pieces with it.

eight is a longer piece, clocking in at 3:45, this uses just two voices, “carbonated frog” (and I swear, that is exactly what it sounds like, believe it or not) and my old favourite “industrial gases”.  using these two voices in tandem, this longer piece has a great mood to it, during the course of these last few pieces I had developed a sort of very creepy bass line, and by repeating that theme, I actually sort of created an intentional piece of music.  I use the carbonated frog voice for the first part, establishing my theme, then move to the more complex industrial gases voice, with the feedback squealing and all those strange sci-fI sounds going on – and I re-itereate that bass line…but a lot of this “song” is just me holding down one low note, and then altering the sound with the x-y pad and the keys themselves – again, all on the ipad itself in this instance.  this is a truly superior piece or music, it resolves really nicely, as if it were planned – which it truly was not – I picked the two voices, and pressed record – and then what came out, came out…that was the take.

the ninth and final piece is the longest, and the best, of the nine – well of the eight active takes I should say – but to me, I think this is my favourite.  I move away from the new voices, and go back to the tried and true voices already on the animoog, and the result is stunning – I use several patches on this piece: evading question; phase inverter; lightcycles; fireflies; and a number of others, resulting in a mesmerising, ever-changing song full of beautiful moods and textures, and that’s really down to the astonishing job moog has done with this synth – this is another one, that right out of the box, the presets are remarkable.  and the ability to alter parameters both on the keypads and on the x-y pad, gives you so much flexibility.  I can’t wait to take this piece into sonar and see if I can develop it into a full on song, it’s just so full of unexpected twists and turns…an amazing trip through a sonic forest of previously unexplored sound – I was so lucky, changing randomly, between voices I didn’t know that well – but the resulting 5:17 song is one of the most beautiful accidents I’ve ever had. I love this synth – both of these synths – ALL of these synths!

 

moving on to the april 9^th session now:

 

(note: the first eleven of the fifteen tracks in this session were all made with addictive synth.)

 

because I had such a remarkable success with the track created using the patch “mare tranquilitatis” on the addictive synth two days previously, the first thing I did at this new session (now armed with a full 88 key keyboard, mind you) was do three takes using it.  all three came out quite, quite well, each is subtly different from the other – all are infused with a quiet, peaceful ambience that just drips from this particular preset – what a sound.  if they were not marred by pops and crackles, I wouldn’t hesitate to release them immediately in some form.  they have everything you want from a live performance: mood, ambience, feeling, mystery – this patch is so, so beautiful and subtle, you really could play almost anything and it would make you sound good.  so by playing very carefully, with real intent, I was able to use that quality, and it turned my careful ambient key pushes into something very, very beautiful indeed.

 

track four moves back from the quiet, the peaceful, the totally ambient, into the land of wild arpeggiation, and again, I go back to a new favourite voice discovered during the april 7^th session: terry reilly, creating a piece just over three minutes long using just this single voice, and the result is really delightful, the arpeggiated rhythm gets in your brain, and having the 88 keys makes it possible to really push the arpeggiator to do some very unusual sequences, all manipulated by the way I am playing.  I really like this little piece, it came out really well – and it has a fabulous long fade out, too.

 

number five then carries on this new idea of using just one voice, in this case “tonka”, concentrating on one texture, which gives me more chance to learn how to manipulate it: by changing the way I play to force the arpeggiator to do what I want; by using the x-y pad to totally alter the sound of the chosen voice as I am playing – this is a shorter piece, just over two minutes, but I love this sound almost as much as the terry reilly sound, it works really well for an active piece like this.

 

track six, same concept, single voice for the whole track, this time, it’s my other favourite for active arpeggiation: sponky. another short piece, under two minutes, this one has a great little low, low bass section that sounds so totally tribal, followed by some very odd forcing-the-arpeggiator-to-respond-a-certain-way synth riffs – very off the wall, but I really like this one too – another great voice from the addictive synth.

 

for number seven, I return to the “many voices” approach, in this case, three great patches, each with it’s own amazing, customised arpeggiator: repercussions, dank and resozz. then, two minutes ten of fantastic, bouncing, melodic synth madness follows, and I found as I played, that I was actually developing some technique for getting the arpeggiators to do what I wanted – I learned the effect of playing chords, or arpeggios, or single notes – what effect that had on the output, so I could influence the way the song went.  this one is a corker, great textures, including some fantastic x-y pad manipulations, I really like this particular track, it’s very unique, and the addition of the warping x-y pad work really adds to that uniqueness.

 

track eight is another “multi-voice” track, I discovered another great preset that I hadn’t used previously, and, it does exactly what it says on the tin: oriental techno.  to this amazing voice, I also added a dose of crunk, some bepu bepu (one of my favourite new ingredients) and stirred gently until another fantastic synthetic mixture took place.  the textures in this one, and the changes from sound to sound, really work well for me, it’s quite mad, a bit over the top, but a lot of fun, and again, just when things are about to get predictable, I use the x-y pad to alter events to an alternate sonic universe for a while…and then back to our visceral, resonant one…this is another hugely successful piece, with a really snappy ending, too.

 

no. 9 is back to the “single voice” concept, 2:14 of yet another huge favourite voice – bepu bepu.  a lovely, detuned, strange waveform, I just push it through an enormous number of pitch changes, and here, the 88 key keyboard really comes into play, and the x-y pad, and the amazing manipulations possible give me the gift of something that sounds like a cross between george duke’s classic synth solo in frank zappa’s “st. alfonso’s pancake breakfast” and something roger powell or m. frog labat did with arpeggiators during live utopia prog jams – like “utopia theme” or “the ikon”.  powell meets duke, rundgren meets zappa, stafford channels them all – and, another perfect ending just leaves my jaw hanging open – I am starting to “get” this process.

 

suddenly – number 10, and number 11, take us back to a completely different world.  time stops.  quiet, peace, slowly, slowly – these two tracks both us an even more beautiful addictive synth voice “ethereal” – and that is exactly what it is, a gentle, reverberant pad that I fell instantly in love with.  again, if these two tracks were not marred with clicks and pops, I would put them up immediately, but, they will require repair and loving care and attention if they are to make it.  sigh.

 

track 12 now takes us in a completely different direction, on a whim, I wanted to see how the dm-1 drum machine would respond to midi control, and, it worked beautifully – tracks 12 through 14 use the dm-1, and I switched between many, many unique and wonderful “kits” – it’s so odd, I just cannot get used to playing drums on a keyboard, so musically, these three tracks are maybe not quite up to scratch, but sonically – there are some absolutely wonderful sounds in these kits, especially the dm-1’s own set of kits, really retro, really unusual “drum” sounds – anything from a bit of reverse percussion to some of the oddest percussive timbres you can imagine.  great sounds – I just need to learn how to “play” them better.  but – I will get there.

 

that leads us to the final track, number 15, using another new synth that I have not had much time to work with yet, the mini synth pro.  I chose a lovely, “here comes the sun” like sine patch, called ohsine, and played a really nice, melodic piece of music – unfortunately, again, pops and clicks have damaged this – which is why I stopped at 15, else, I would have gone on to develop this piece in particular. the patch inspired me to play something really melodic and lovely, and though imperfect and undeveloped, there is a great seed here, for a really beautiful piece of music.  so once I have resolved the problem, I am going to return to this synth, this patch, and the song that began to appear just as I detected that I was still getting pops and clicks – so, stay tuned – this isn’t over yet!

 

 

today’s listening – after I assessed these sessions again, I then fired up “bloom”, brian eno’s ambient music app, and I’ve been listening to the “neroli” patch all afternoon long.  very, very peaceful, very calm – I love it, it’s different from the album, but very similar in it’s effect – relaxation, calm, peace…

application-based music – day of reckoning

I decided to capture and copy everything that I’ve done with the fairlight pro application into sonar, and create a full set of 24-bit master mixes, so I could assess what I’ve achieved with this particular instrument since mid to late December.

in just three short months, I’ve created 17 (naturally) sessions in fairlight pro, containing 10 unique songs.  one of those “songs” was my first ever test piece, which is not quite music – it’s listen-able, but not particularly wonderful, so it doesn’t really “count” – I used it to figure out how the app worked.

that then leaves nine, but one of the pieces, “resolve” is so far, unresolved 🙂 …

so that means I have eight pieces that could be considered to be finished, they are all final mixes, although I’ve basically just copied them without doing anything else to them – just a basic capture, but even in this utterly raw form, with no reverb or any overdubs or any processing of any kind – the tracks really are very, very unique, and I think that’s down to two things, basically: one, the unique and strange samples that come with the fairlight – so many unusual instruments and non-instruments to choose from, and two, the actual creation method – bar by bar, using your “eight-instrument virtual-instrument” to compose very, very slowly and methodically, measure by measure.

 

the latest and newest fairlight piece, recorded over the last two days, is entitled “unwinding prophecy” and it features yet another unique, new virtual “instrument” – this time, consisting of the later fairlight samples (from the “III” library, a library I haven’t used much before, most of my pieces to date have been done with the standard sample library) so that alone gave this piece a unique sound:

 

prophecy10

prophecy_3

prophecy_4

prophecy_8

cymbals02

choir03_012

bellfinger11

pianothumb12

 

(so, visual evidence of part of the inspiration for the piece’s title – the other part, “unwinding”, comes from the lyrics of “emergency splashdown” – a song from a roger powell solo album that was performed live by todd rundgren’s utopia – the line in question is “life chain unwinding…I’ve got split-second timing…” and curiously, the powell album also has on it, a song called “prophecy” – but really, I have NO idea how I reached this title – the prophecy part obviously came from the instrument names, but how I arrived at “unwinding prophecy” and the whole roger powell connection – well, all I can say is, the human brain works in strange, strange ways…)

 

speaking of humans, I don’t think I have ever used the “humans” bank of instruments before working on “unwinding prophecy”, and the samples of choirs are excellent indeed, really nice sounding, so having a sort of “thumb piano / bell / choir” approach worked very well for this new piece.  based on this experience, I am absolutely going to use the “III” bank of samples much more in future, and of course, mix up the originals with them too – why not?

 

in fact, I do have at least one existing piece that uses voices from both the original and the later sample banks.

the new piece, “unwinding prophecy” has a really interesting, alternating-between-two-main-lead-instruments sound, where the bell finger sound carries most of the melody, but it’s coupled with, and occasionally replaced by, the thumb piano sound, and it’s an unlikely yet highly successful pairing.  and I never dreamed I would “write” a thumb piano solo, but the middle section of the song is basically an accompanied thumb piano solo – a very strange little piece of music in the middle of a very strange medium sized piece of music 🙂

 

 

so I set out last night to capture every single fairlight pro track I’ve created to date; including all of the early mixes, prototypes, and alternate mixes.  obviously, most of those will end up as curiosities, some of them are quite different from the “finished” versions, others are just early fragments and so on – but I find those to be almost as satisfying as the “real” versions.

 

what struck me most, immediately, is how short in duration most of the pieces are – a few of them, seem to end up around the one minute mark, others, maybe two minutes, and I think in the end, that only two tracks ended up being longer – “president evil” which is the longest of all the tracks, clocking in at around four and a half minutes; and, I’m not sure…I think perhaps the final mix of “the instruments of death” might be over three minutes.

 

otherwise, most of the pieces are surprisingly short (note to fairlight pro programmers: having a small timer display somewhere would be a helpful addition to the app!) but to my ear, that actually makes sense – these pieces are full of mood, strange, strange sampled sounds, arranged almost mathematically in some cases (such as “president evil” with it’s nearly symmetrical structure) but for some reason, tracks made with fairlight pro…sound like nothing else on this earth.  they pack a lot of musical information into a small space, so you can “say” a lot in one minute – because of the powerful, unique, and very “real” sound of the fairlight sample library. so you can “say” in a minute with the fairlight sounds, what it might take you two or three minutes to “say” with a more traditional instrument – if that makes any sense to you!

 

it’s very odd, but they really are in a sort of “sound area” all their own.  once you hear a piece made with the fairlight pro app, you will know what I am talking about (and yes, I do want to find a way to publish or otherwise make these tracks available, but – there is not enough material for an album yet – so it’s going to have to wait I am afraid…) – they just “sound” a certain way, very moody, very much like movie soundtrack music – for which they have not yet invented a cool enough movie.

 

I am loving working with this app, for one thing, it taught me to sequence, a skill I never really learned in all those years – up until last december, I always “played” music – but now, I can compose either way, by playing and or by sequencing – and I think that’s a useful skill.  learning and understanding the composition process in fairlight pro, is what then consequently made it much easier to learn the sequencing part of the korg ims-20.  speaking of the ims-20, I’ve been doing some work on a new dave stafford template there, so hopefully, that will become a backing track for a completed piece of music – eventually.  it takes me longer to work on ims-20 pieces, but it will be worth the wait, I promise – I love that synth!

 

so I have become a huge fan of the fairlight pro app, and even though, for example, something like nanostudio is a fantastic place to compose using drum pads or a synthesizer keyboard (where of course, you “play” the parts), where you can just play parts with really high quality sounds, and get instant gratification – what you play is what you get – but…more and more, I continually find myself turning back to the fairlight pro, and find myself wanting to compose bar by bar using the fairlight. 🙂

 

In the end, of course, I am sure I will use both equally, but lately, I’ve tended to favour the fairlight pro over nanostudio (something if you asked me two months ago, I would have said – no way, nanostudio is the best – and it is – it’s a fantastic app, like the sonar of the ipad at the moment – if only you could add audio tracks, it would be the very best, but that will come I am sure) – but, I just love working with nanostudio and with the fairlight pro app.

 

 

when I did the initial capture of the tracks last night, this is what I ended up with:

 

davetest1 (test)              my original app test piece from december, kept for posterity

feast for crow (three versions)

happy bird orchestra (two versions)

vainglorious (two versions)

resolve (incomplete)

leap day (two versions)

president evil

the instruments of death (three versions)

nefertiti

unwinding prophecy

 

 

so when I remove the test piece and the incomplete piece, for the moment, that leaves me with these eight final mixes:

 

feast for crow

happy bird orchestra

vainglorious

leap day

president evil

the instruments of death

nefertiti

unwinding prophecy

 

which to me, if albums were, you know, 20 minutes long, then this would be my new album!! all of these are basically complete, they are final mixes – so really, they are ready to go.

 

I think that since this process is working so well (and hearing all seventeen takes last night confirms and validates this for me), that I will just continue to create new pieces until I have enough for an album – and because many of the pieces are by nature quite brief, I think that may end up being a 25 or 30 track album – which I think would be fantastic. these eight pieces are among the most unique I have ever composed, I really can’t express in words what they sound like, all I can say is, I can’t wait to hear the eventual album! I am assuming from the success of these first eight tracks, that if I continue to compose in a similar way, that I will end up with 25 or 30 very unique / interesting “soundtrack tracks with no movie” as it were.

 

in fact, I’d venture to say, that the piece I just finished yesterday, “unwinding prophecy”, is in some ways the best piece so far – with it’s alternating bell finger and thumb piano lead, and a couple of very strange turns of time, where I put the fairlight to the test (and it passed with flying colours), this song is so, so strange – some of the odd melodies and even odder timings that you can create when you sequence instead of “play” a melody – that’s the beauty of the sequencer, because of course, it is like slowing down time – so a very quick melody with odd timing might be very difficult to “play” with your hands, but it’s very easy to sequence – because you can “play” that melody very slowly and then it do the playback “at speed”.

 

 

I’ve been giving a lot of thought as to whether I should add other instruments to these finished fairlight tracks, and after thinking about it, I’ve decided that doing so is mostly, not a good idea.  the charm of these tracks really lay in the unique “set” of instruments chosen in your “virtual instrument”, so to add to that with other, non-fairlight instruments – would probably spoil it, and the mood created by the “all sample, all sequenced” approach would be ruined.

 

having said that, there are one or two pieces that use sampled guitars, and I think for those, I might create alternate, “hybrid”, versions and just add in some “real” rhythm guitars, just to augment those awesome power chords with some real guitar sound.  so maybe, one or two pieces, some slight augmentation – I don’t know.  I do know that most of these tracks are perfect as they are, they are “done” and I know better than to mess with them – they won’t get better than they are!  I just need to trust my original decision, when I reached that point where I say to myself “this is the final version” – “that’s it.”  You just know when that moment arrives…

 

later this week, I plan to do a similar exercise with all tracks recorded in nanostudio, there are perhaps, fewer tracks overall done in nanostudio, but, they are more elaborate, most have a constructed drum track and several synthesizer overdubs, and of course nanostudio has a mixer where you can add in individual or overall effects chains, so you can create a very sophisticated, high quality mix without moving the tracks to sonar.  if you want to move the tracks and use the power of sonar, of course, you can…

 

again, though, most of these feel “finished” to me, and I believe that I may be developing a sort of “policy” with app-based music – originally, I had thought I would develop a piece in nanostudio or the fairlight, then, take it to sonar, add to it, enhance it, and that I would then have many pieces that are hybrid “app-based” and “daw-based”.  the more I listen, though, to completed tracks made in the fairlight or in nanostudio, the more I feel they are “done”, they are fine as-is, and there is little or nothing I could do in sonar, beyond adding reverb using the “breeze” plug-in – so it may be, that my basic policy is that music made in applications, gets finished and final mixed in applications, and there is no need to create hybrids – and, music created in the DAW, probably doesn’t need anything brought in from the world of apps.

 

there will be exceptions – absolutely.  I can already imagine it – if I have a rock track in sonar, and I need a hammond organ solo – well, why wouldn’t I dial up one of those amazing hammond sounds in garage band, hook up my 88-key keyboard to garage band, and have at it?

 

so for things like that, sure, hybrid “app-daw” tracks will absolutely have to happen (with this app on a tablet technology, all lines are beginning to blur – and really, almost anything is possible!).  but I also tend to believe that for most tracks, they will remain separate (at least, for me, that’s my preference at the moment, anyway) – which is really testament for how complete the app-based music making experience is – you can create, mix and finish tracks without moving to you daw.

 

at the moment, the only reason I see to even move app-produced tracks to sonar is to allow me to add reverb/atmosphere to them – that’s about it.  and to create the 24-bit master wav file too, I guess.