mobile universe of sound (the ios world)

the ios universe of applications…is heaven for synthesists and musicians alike.  as a guitarist, I appreciate guitar applications, but my passion is collecting synthesizers…also, real synthesizers were always big ticket items, and I couldn’t afford the nice ones.

for me, ios, and the availability of inexpensive apps that emulate great synths old and new, changed everything.

pre-ios, I had a limited number of hardware and software synths, and the soft synths mostly had to be run inside my DAW, or in some cases, as a standalone application on the PC, but still, I had no access to an almost limitless array of synthesizers – and now, with ios and the amazing developers who populate it, I have more choice than I can deal with!!

HARDWARE SYNTHS

or, how it all started…

imagine if you will, then, a guitarist who has been working on music for many, many years, and during that time, dabbled in synthesizers – in the early days, I had an arp odyssey (a mark I, no less!), surely one of the most difficult to tune synths of all time; I had a wonderful serge modular system, and to my everlasting horror, I foolishly sold them off many years ago…

then, by chance almost, I picked up a couple of classic yamaha hardware synths: a dx7s, and a dx11s, and the dx7 saw service in the live set up of the band bindlestiff, where I played synth on stage as well as ambient loop ebow guitar – and my partner played a korg, so that was a great contrast of two fantastic synths – and if you listen to some of the pieces we did with that combination, yamaha and korg, such as “the wall of ninths” or “pacific gravity” you can hear what two classic synths can do in live performance.

so – during the first thirty five or forty years of my career, I owned at most, five hardware synths, and now, I am down to three – and that was it.  then came pro tools and sonar and soft synths in general, and I have a reasonable selection of those, which made recording much easier – in particular, having a decent grand piano, “true pianos”, was very useful, and I’ve used “true pianos” for a lot of projects, from my own songs to covers of peter hammill and van der graaf generator.  I picked up the wonderful “m-tron pro” mellotron software, which inspired one of my best solo albums, “sky full of stars”, and I also have “BFD2” a dedicated drum program, which allowed me to have professional sounding drum tracks when making the rock / prog / ambient album “gone native” – and if you take your time with it, you can make really great drum tracks with, such as this one, “wettonizer”, from the “gone native” record.

LEARNING SYNTHESIS, ARPEGGIATORS & SEQUENCING

having owned such a limited range of hardware synths, I never really got the chance to expand my knowledge of synthesis by owning and playing a variety of synths, and I certainly never would have been able to afford most of the desirable synths (I remember playing a korg M1 when they came out, and just practically drooling with desire – but I simply could not afford it) – so I never bought a modern synth.  I do love my yamaha dx7s, as eno has noted, it has a few really great sounds, it does certain things very, very well, and there’s nothing quite like it.

but overall, besides a modest collection of standalone and DAW-based soft synths, I really felt like I didn’t have much chance to understand, for example, the differences between additive synthesis and subtractive synthesis, I never really felt like I totally understood the magical relationships between oscillators, filters, modulators, and amplifiers, because I didn’t have examples of the many, many various hardware devices with their wildly differing approaches to synthesis.  arpeggiators and sequencers were largely mysterious to me, but after working with the fairlight app (now called peter vogel cmi) for a year or so, I really “got” how sequencers work – which then meant I could use them with better clarity in many, many other synths that feature them.

THE ARRIVAL

then came ios.  the apple platform, and, when you look at what is available for music – well, that’s what made me decide which tablet to get, when I saw what I could get on ios, at the time, compared to the relatively modest selection of apps on android – it seemed a no-brainer.  I realise that over time, android is catching up, but I still don’t know if they will ever match the range, scope and incredible diversity of synths and near-synths that the apple store boasts – it’s astonishing what is available, and it’s astonishing that you can buy a massive collection of the world’s best synthesizers for a fraction of what the hardware versions cost – a tiny, tiny fraction.

FIRST GENERATION SYNTHS & THE FAIRLIGHT

so I went for the ipad/ios combination (despite not being a huge fan of apple in general!) and it was the wisest choice I ever made.  within minutes, I was beginning to collect that massive set of synths that I could never in a million years have afforded in the hardware world – I started out by buying something that would have normally cost me about 20 grand, the great 80s sampler, the fairlight – and I spent about a year and a half, learning how to build sequences the slow way – and it was a fabulous learning experience, and I came to understand how the fairlight works, and how to arrange the instruments into sets, and create music in a way I never had done before (step by step) – quite inspiring, and very educational – and as I said, I could then transfer my new sequencing skills, to many, many other devices that support sequencing and sequences.

MOOGS & KORGS – GREAT EMULATIONS

another early purchase was moog’s “animoog”, and even now, when I have more app synths than I know what to do with, I am constantly returning to this synth, with it’s ever-expanding library of great sounds.  the korg “iMS-20” soon followed, and that was probably the synth that I truly started to learn from, because it’s so visceral, and so visual, with it’s bright yellow cables in the patch bay, and it’s utterly faithful graphics…  the first generation synthesizers that were first available on ios were already excellent, emulating hardware synths that would have cost me thousands, now mine just for a few quid on ios.  unbelievable – because I never would have owned any of those in my real life, because the hardware versions are so incredibly expensive – well beyond my means.  for example – the fairlight cost about ten thousand dollars more than my annual salary the year it came out.  now – it’s mine for a pittance…

AND ARTURIA TOO…

other early device purchases were my beloved “addictive synth”, the very, very capable “n log pro” – a great sounding little device;  “mini synth pro”, and another real favourite, the arturia “imini” – a mini-moog style synth on an ipad !!

between arturia’s “imini” and moog’s “animoog”, I was set to go for that style of synth. also, synths like the great bismarck “bs-161”, the very capable “sunrizer”, “cassini”, the amazing “alchemy” synth; the list goes on and on and on….

TOUCH CONTROL – THE REMARKABLE TC-11 SYNTH

then you get unique and amazing synthesizers like the touch control “tc-11” synthesizer, which takes real advantage of the ipad’s large screen, and delivers a synthesizer-playing experience that is unmatchable – you place your hand or hands on the screen, and by moving your fingers and hands in various ways, you “play” the synth – there’s no keyboard, but this shows you that you don’t necessarily need a keyboard to make beautiful synthesizer music (something I’d learned once before, when I got my first korg kaossilator – amazing hardware device!) – and you can produce truly beautiful music using a non-traditional interface like this – “tc-11” is simply, one of the highest quality, most remarkable devices that’s ever appeared on iosios – I absolutely love it.  one of my very favourites, I do like synths that don’t have keyboards, but out of all of them, this is the most fun, and most creative, to work with and use to produce  startlingly different synth music, often of great beauty – the remarkable “tc-11”.

SECOND GENERATION AND MISCELLANEOUS SYNTHS:

very quickly, I became a true collector of synth applications, and guitar applications, too – but it’s those synths that I keep going back to – and now, the second generation of application-based synthesizers are here, and they are beyond fantastic, with features and sounds that are incredibly complex, mature and amazing: the mighty “thor”; the incredible “nave”, “magellan”, the korg “ipolysix”, arturia’s amazing “isem” – the list just goes on and on and on.

the “dxi”, “epic synth” (1980s style synth), “launchkey” plus “launchpad”, “modular” (similar to my lost serge system, but reliant on in-app purchases to make it truly useful), “performance synth”, “sample tank” (the free version only so far), “spacelab”, “synth”, “synthophone”, “xenon”, “xmod”, and “zmors synth”….the list goes on still…

GENERATIVE DEVICES

then there were the generatives…mostly ambient in nature, and therefore, extremely well suited to the type of music that I generally make, so I happily adopted and became an adherent of “scape”, “mixtikl”, “drone fx”, circuli and so on…I worked with and continue to work with generative synthesis, which is a fascinating branch of synthesis, with it’s own quirks and interesting ways of working.  mixtikl in particular holds my interest very well, sure, anyone can make sounds on it, but if you get into it deeply, you really have an enormous amount of control of how it generates the finished product…which is endlessly changing, never the same, constantly mutating according to the rules and conditions that you control…

“scape” is just purely beautiful, the sounds, courtesy of brian eno and peter chilvers, are simply top-notch, and using art works to create your generative pieces is a stroke of genius – and it’s very simple, just…drag geometric and other shapes onto a canvas, and see and hear your generative piece grow.  more recently, I’ve picked up “drone fx”, which to my mind, is very nearly in the same class as “scape” and “mixtikl” given that you can set it up to create generative pieces, and the results are excellent – it’s a very ambient flavour, which suits me just fine, so I am very happy to add “drone fx” to my arsenal of generative music applications!

then there is “noatikl” (obviously, a spin-off or product related to the great “mixtikl”) – I don’t have much experience with this tool, I would call it a “sound design”-based generative music app, where you create loop-like pieces by connecting different sound generating nodes together – it’s quite odd, but it makes lovely music, and I hope to learn more about it and gain some skill in using it in the future.

THE LAND OF AMBIENT

this category includes most of the generatives, so please see “GENERATIVE DEVICES” above, for details on “scape”, “mixtikl”, “noatikl”, “drone fx”, and “circuli”.  there are other really, truly important synths in this category, in particular, the brian eno-designed “bloom”, which was the predecessor to “scape” – “bloom” is a generative player, you select wonderfully named style and “bloom” then creates them on a grand piano for you – it’s really lovely, I can sit and listen to it for hours.

then there is another from the “mixtikl” family, the lovely ambient music player “tiklbox” – this one is really simple, it has a die in the middle, and you roll the die, and it then randomly selects or creates a piece of music based on the number you roll.  It’s mostly very pleasant, I like the music it makes, but there is very little user interaction possible, you just turn it on, roll the die, and…listen.  but – that’s cool, too.

PHYSICS-BASED SYNTHS

then you have the slightly strange synths, two more in the semi-ambient category being “circuli”, which is literally, circles that grow and collide, and those collisions produce music, and the somewhat similar “musyc” that makes it’s music with bouncing objects – again, virtual objects collide to produce notes, chords or percussion sounds.  “orphinio” presents varying sets of intersecting circles, each set to a different tuning or modality.  both of these “shape-based” synths have truly great potential, but you have to be patient to get the kind of sounds you want out of them.

GRID-BASED SYNTHS

then there are the “grid” devices – visual sequencers with massive grids that scroll past, and you merely “click on” some of the buttons as they pass, and note events begin.  one of the best of these is an old favourite of mine, “beatwave”, which I have used as a background for guitar improvs, because you can very quickly “build” a good quality backing track (it’s very similar to looping, really) and then just let it run, and solo over the top of it for live performance purposes.  a similar and also very enjoyable device, “nodebeat HD”, works in a very similar way, and in fact, there are a good number of these “grid” types of synths out there, most of which sound very good.

MICROTONAL GRID SYNTHS

then…again…you have the static grid types, such as the classic “mugician” and “cantor”, which use a static grid that you play by putting your finger on the notes you want to play, and “cantor” in particular, has a great “auto octave” function which means that if you want to go up very high, you just swipe a big diagonal line upward – and the device leaps up through four or five octaves – and a reverse diagonal, takes you back down to the lower notes.  “cantor” is more note based, although it does have microtonal attributes, you mostly use real notes, whereas “mugician”  is totally and utterly microtonal, you can “hit” notes, but it’s more about being able to play in a microtonal fashion – something that takes practice to get good at.

early on, I used “mugician”  to play microtonal indian-style melodies over the remarkable “itabla pro” (one of my very, very favourite music apps of all time – I could write an entire blog about “itabla pro”; how good it is; and how much I LOVE it!) and that was great fun – it works really well as a lead instrument in that kind of musical situation.

slightly different in design to the “mugicians” and “cantors” (which while sounding very different, do have very similar interfaces visually at least) is the most excellent “sound prism pro” which features it’s own unique grid design, that is similar but different from the other two apps mentioned.  “sound prism pro” has it’s own unique musical vocabulary, and is a bit more melodic / harmonic, whereas “mugician” and “cantor” are essentially solo instruments – melody only.

VOCAL SYNTHS

then there is the “vocal section”, which on my pad, share a special page with my audio utilities – in this category, we have some great tools for creating vocal harmonies and effects: “harmony voice”, “improvox”, “vio” and “voice synth” – each boasting it’s own slightly different way of achieving vocal harmonies – some very innovative and good sounding tools in this category, a lot of fun to sing into, too.

RECORDING STUDIOS – AUDIO, MIDI, HYBRID

just outside of the land of synthesizers, there are also a broad spectrum of recording studio applications, such as “auria” (professional audio multitrack studio), “cubasis” – professional AUDIO + MIDI studio, “nanostudio” one of the oldest and most respected MIDI studios, and a personal favourite (and it does qualify, because it has a synth in it – a GREAT synth, called “eden synth”, which I absolutely love), “isequence”, “isynpoly” and “synergy studio”, midi studios all; and the unique yamaha “synth and drum pad” which is a bit different from the rest and is a lot of fun to experiment with – some unique sounds there, too.

the most recent entrant to this category is korg’s groundbreaking “gadget” – an incredible studio with fifteen unique korg synthesizers, bass synths and drum synths (yes, fifteen) that you can combine in endless variations to produce some amazing music.  I’m currently working on my first three pieces with gadget – and of course, I feel another eternal album coming on…

STANDALONE ARPEGGIATORS

on the same page as the studios, I also have a couple of standalone arpeggiators, “arpeggiognome pro” and “arpeggio”, which are very useful for driving your other synths, and unusual apps like “lemur”, which I purchased at half price for future development projects.

DIY SAMPLE PLAYERS – NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY

I also have a few of what I term “idiot synths” (no offense to anyone) because you need know absolutely nothing to run them, they are really just sample players with controls to modify many samples running in parallel.  the “groove maker” series are really quite good, I love the “groove maker rock” version especially.  I also have “session band rock” which is similar, I’ve made a couple of nice “metal” backing tracks with “session band” – the “rock” version, of course!

PIANOS, ELECTRIC PIANOS, ORGANS, MELLOTRONS

then there is the more traditional section of keyboards, which features a variety of grand pianos, regular pianos, upright pianos, electric pianos (“iGrandPiano”, “iElectric Piano”, “EPS”, mellotrons, and a couple of really, really great emulations of organs – “galileo”, “organ+”, and “pocket organ c3b3” – I love all three of these!  I am really pleased in particular to have the organs available, and the work that’s gone into them, right down to the quality of that leslie speaker emulation – I love the “slow to fast” sound and vice versa, and all of these do a good job of that.  the sounds are simply beautiful, and, they are a lot smaller, lighter, and cheaper than real organs 🙂

DRUMS & BASS – AND PERCUSSION, TOO

this section of my ipad has really expanded of late, and there are a lot of great apps available for very little cost.  starting with the basses; we have a large variety of very innovative and interesting-sounding devices, from oddities like “amen break” to more practical devices such as “bass drop hd” and”bassline”. the drums section, by comparison, is massive – old faithful “korg ielectribe”, “dm-1”, “drumatron”, “easybeats”, the unique “impaktor” (which makes a drum kit out of any ordinary surface), propellerhead’s quintessential “rebirth” which of course, handles bass and drums, and is enormous fun just to play…”synth drum”, “virtual drums”, and a million other drum kits and machines too numerous to mention…

my absolute, all time favourite drum app, however, is not any ordinary drum machine or drum kit, rather, it’s the extraordinary “itabla pro” – one of the most excellent applications I own.  full on tabla samples, with several playing styles for each template; and an extremely large range of templates in all time signatures, it’s as much an education as it is a drummer. also featuring tanpura and other supporting instruments, it has two completely tunable tanpuras, the tablas and the two tanpuras are all tuneable within an inch of their life, and it makes outstanding music for interacting with other ipad instruments.  I’ve been working for some time using synthesizers with “itabla pro” as accompaniment, and it works equally well with microtonal synths such as “mugician”, as well as ordinary “western” synths such as animoog – on my ipad right now, I am working on a new piece that features two animoog solo melodies over a tanpura and tabla backing – and it’s sounding very, very good so far.

notably, while not a percussion instrument, there is also an excellent free app, called “samvada” that does tanpura only, it’s beautifully made, sounds great, and is excellent for use either in conjunction with “itabla pro”; or, for situations where you want a tanpura drone but you don’t need tablas.  sometimes, I just gang up the tanpuras on “itabla pro” with “samvada”, for the ultimate in rich, deep drones – fantastic.

ODDS AND SODS SYNTHS

other oddities include “tabletop” which is a sort of…table top, where you can arrange midi synths and drum modules to make music with, with a lot of in-app purchases if you want the really nice tools.  it is possible to make decent music with the free supplied tools, but it is limited unless you are willing to spend a lot on IAPs.

there are so many in this “category” that I cannot possibly list them all: “76 synthesizer”, “moog filtatron”, “catalyst”, “cascadr”, “dr. om”, “noisemusick”, “figure”, “lasertron ultimate”, “samplr”, the list just goes on and on and on…

IN CONCLUSION…

and as time passes, more and more synthesizers will arrive on ios, each more powerful than the last, it just seems like a never-ending process, there are so many excellent developers out there, as well as such a hunger from musicians (myself included, I am not ashamed to admit) for these synths – especially the vintage ones, the ones that emulate the classic keyboards that we all lusted after, but most of us simply could never afford.  ios, and the availability of cheap synth apps – gives us what we could never, ever have in the real world.

armed with this vast array of synthesizing power, I feel like there is no sound that I can’t make, and no requirement I can’t meet – if I need a sound for a project I am building on my ipad – I will, absolutely will, already have a synth – or two – that can make that sound.

I am utterly in my element here, I hope the synths never stop arriving, and as long as developers keep creating them, I will absolutely, absolutely – keep playing them.  rock on.

I will leave guitar applications for another day – suffice to say, they are equally diverse and fascinating, and several of them are putting serious challenges to existing stomp box and other guitar processing hardware items.  I love my guitar apps, and it’s a whole new world of guitar playing – instead of my traditional set up; instead, I have a guitar to ipad to sound card set up – and I can get a whole world of excellent tone just using ios ipad guitar applications…

in the meantime, synthesists unite, and developers, please do not stop working on new and better and more innovative synthesizer apps.   something needs to feed this addiction, and that’s truly what it has become – but in the best possible way, and I get so much enjoyment, hours and hours and hours of enjoyment, from just playing the various synths, to making various recordings using them – it’s created an entirely new application-based world of music that I did not realise I had in myself – and it’s an absolute joy to play these innovative instruments, and to try out new combinations of devices either by using them in a multi-track environment such as “auria”, or, for simpler set ups, the very practical “audiobus” (another game-changing device) and now, we have the new inter-app audio as well, so options for tying synths together via MIDI, or for triggering other devices from within one device, just grow and grow – it is truly amazing.  I feel truly blessed to live in such times, technology at work for good, for the sake of sound, and the sound quality of most of these apps far exceeds expectations.

for that, and for the massive number of free, inexpensive or even expensive synthesizer applications, I am truly grateful, and truly happy, that these exist for me to collect 🙂

happy synth-ing!

generative music applications – mixtikl and scape

today I am giving some thought to generative music, which is a kind of music that I don’t have enormous personal experience with (save, perhaps, with “scape”), but at the same time, I feel a close affinity to generative music because it seems to resonate with me in a similar way to the way that looping and ambient do.

a lot of generative music is ambient, so that may be why, but it can also be quite active, so that can’t really be it.  maybe it’s the fact that you have limited control over the elements – well, depending on what you are using I suppose.

ABOUT KOAN

the first generative app I used, was an early version of koan, that I must have had in sometime in the mid to late 1990s, and I remember finding it to be most strange, but also, quite wonderful, because you could literally set off several odd sounding music generators and the pieces would “make themselves”.  I did create a few pieces using koan, but I am not aware of any that ever got mastered, released or even survive.  I may eventually find some of my koan pieces somewhere, when I finally sit down to go through all of my reels and cassettes (when I retire!) – maybe.  of course, it might also be better if I don’t find them, because I doubt they could compete with the generative music apps of the present!

ABOUT MIXTIKL

starting with the one I am least familiar with, “mixtikl” – I had long wanted to purchase this, and when the price was lowered recently, I did.  I immediately kicked myself for not buying it sooner, despite some vaguely negative feedback I’d heard and read, I personally find mixtikl quite easy to use, and the quality of the sounds is extremely high – a lot of great, great sounds, which of course makes it very easy to make some great sounding music.  in fact, just a couple of days ago, mixtikl put three of it’s sound packs up for free download, so I absolutely took advantage of that.

the addition of that rather massive library of super high quality sounds put “mixtikl” into a realm of it’s own, I was trialling some of the sounds and I found them to be exquisitely beautiful, or odd, or weird – which suits me just fine – and I feel very impressed by mixtikl – they have worked very, very hard to make an app that just lets you create.

I’ve completed a few tracks in “mixtikl” (see below), but have yet to publish any – that’s simply down to my schedule.  I have two or three that are probably in their final mix state, so I do need to try and finish up some of those tracks so I can publish them.  tracks completed so far are:

 

20121217 almost waking – a super ambient, shivering bundle of ambient nervousness (two versions, the completed one, and a prototype)

20121218 embellishment – very, very ambient piece made with modified bells (hence the title – get it?)

20121220 pulsating – a slightly more active piece, waves of ambient sound crashing on an ambient beach…

20121220 pulsating wisdom – an active track in the style of bill nelson, built on the ashes of “pulsating” (and sounding nothing like it – so titles will change)

20121220 pulsating wisdom – drum version – same as above, but with a drum track added – making it even more in the style of bill nelson

 

ABOUT THE NEW VIRTUAL ALBUMS (FORTHCOMING 2013 – 2015) – MUSIC FOR APPS series:

speaking of publishing music made with applications, I am planning on setting up a number of new “ongoing” albums up on my bandcamp account, to contain tracks made with mixtikl, scape, fairlight, nanostudio, korg ipolysix, korg iMS-20, animoog, iMini, and so on.  so once mixed, the tracks above would be added to the never-ending-ongoing-mixtikl- virtual album, and then, as I create, I will upload more and more tracks, until eventually, these albums become large free-form bodies of dave stafford application-based music.

for my normal guitar based music, I will probably continue to record and release “albums” in the normal way.  but I am finding that making music with apps, it’s so prolific, and at any time, I have a number of tracks “on the go” in many, many different apps – that the idea of gathering them together into “albums” just doesn’t make sense any more.

so I’ve designed this new, virtual album – it won’t have an album “price”, because the tracks will be added over time, ad infinitum.  in this way, too, customers can pick and choose – they can listen to each track, and only buy the tracks they like, instead of having to buy an entire album, it will just be an endless series of tracks…

so, if over time, say that over the next 20 years, I end up making…245 tracks using “mixtikl“, then, the virtual mixtikl album will start out in 2013 with one track, and end up in 2033 with 245 tracks.

one virtual album per application.

MORE ABOUT MIXTIKL

but I digress.  getting back to mixtikl for a moment, I find the way you construct your pieces to be quite excellent, it’s so easy to add content into your composition, and the mix tools are excellent as well, I think that given the complexity available, they have done a great job with the GUI, I love that you can have track effects OR cell effects, I love how easy it is to insert sounds (and now that I have those three new, free sound packs (or tiklpaks as they are called)…my hardest decision will be WHICH of these amazing sounds to use…) it’s a really well thought out tool.

I believe that one of the main reasons that mixtikl appeals to me is…that in mixtikl, unlike in scape, you have a modicum of control.  you have control over what sound sources you select, what level they play at, what effects they have, you have control over tempo, key and EQ.  there are global effects as well – which is important to me, because often with ambient music, you may wish to drop the entire track into a bit of reverb, to further the ambient feel of a piece.

it’s interesting, because I bought scape first, and used that for many months, and then when I finally picked up mixtikl, it was such a shock – the level of  control you have in “mixtikl” is really freeing, you can take any number of sound sources, drop them into your mix, and adjust the level, eq, and effects of each one – treat the whole piece with effects, make alternate copies and add or subtract sounds (as I did with “pulsating wisdom” last december) – so much control !!  so with mixtikl, I can make a lot of decisions that I cannot in scape, I can decide if a piece will be very, very ambient or very, very active – I can decide if it will be very present, or drenched in reverb.

and with the number of awesome sounds now available to me, that means an endless variety of percussive, keyboard, sound effects, bells, god only knows what, is available as sonic building blocks to build generative masterpieces.  I hope to find time in the near future to create new works of generative music, using this most excellent of tools, the mixtikl application.

and lest I forget, it also comes with a really well thought out visualiser, that creates truly beautiful graphics to accompany your mixtikl compositions, including a word generator that you can put your own words into (or use the default sets).  even though it serves no real purpose, it’s inclusion I think is excellent, because it provides a beautiful visual representation of the music that you have created.  an excellent visual addition to an excellent music creation tool.

ABOUT SCAPE

…and then there was scape.

scape is…the odd man out of generative music.  unlike mixtikl, in scape, you have almost NO control.  yes, you can select sound generating objects and add them to a mix that is purely visual…yes, you can pick a filter to run the track through…yes, you can add different background tracks to provide different ambient backings to your pieces.

but that’s about it – you don’t have any control over the parameters that you do have control over in mixtikl, so the design of scape is so, so different.

it’s almost ridiculously easy to use.  basically, there are menus of sounds represented by shapes, which you drag onto a palette that “is” your scape.   there are several different categories of sound generators: backgrounds, bass parts, synth parts, sound effects, and other quite difficult to explain sounds.  since the entire tool is visual, as you use it, you begin to make up names for the different elements, like the blue spikey shapes, which sound like nothing on earth, very odd and atonal, or the pyramids which  are like keyboards, descending luminous arrowheads make a beautiful, swooshing synth sound, bass parts are represented by squares turned on their sides and so on.

so learning scape is very easy, you just drag out backgrounds or objects onto the palette, and listen.  if you don’t like the sound of the element you brought out, you can just drag it back off the palette and try another element.  the placement on the palette also makes a difference, and the objects change size depending on the position they are placed in on the palette.  you can lay objects on top of each other, but they will change size as you do – it’s very odd.

you might add four bass parts in, three of them would be pretty large, but if you place your fourth bass part on top of a pyramid, the bass part will shrink to a tiny size depending on how much it overlaps another object.   there is also a feature that prevents you from adding too many objects to any one scape…if you reach the maximum number of objects (I don’t know exactly what number that is, perhaps 50 or 60 objects in total) – something very odd happens – you add an object – and scape removes a DIFFERENT object! I assume that feature has been built in to prevent scape from clipping, so it does make sense.

but this is the first instrument I’ve ever used where you, as the “player” of the scape, really cannot control anything except the background, the elements, and the filter that the track runs through  – and that is about it.  you can’t name your tracks, they are auto-numbered for you.  you can play back any scape, you can also make “playlists” allowing you to play back several scapes in a row.

at first, I really had quite a time adjusting to scape, and how very, very much it’s a closed system, and how very little actual control you have over the music – you can drag shapes onto the palette, you can drag shapes off of the palette, and you can move existing shapes around on the palette to effect change, but that is it – there is not a dial in sight, volume, tone, eq, reverb – nothing.  it bothered me that I couldn’t name the pieces, I couldn’t do anything to them – except change backgrounds, elements, filters.

so, the totality of your control over scape:

three actions; change backgrounds, elements, filters.

plus three  sliders marked “density”, “complexity” and “mystery”.

 

ABOUT MIXTIKL & SCAPE

so scape really is the odd man out, a totally different animal when compared to mixtikl, the design approach almost polar opposite: scape, where the magic rules are hidden, in fact, almost everything is hidden, versus mixtikl where almost everything is exposed to the operator.

because scape is so very easy to learn, I found that I could create many, many very different and very wonderful pieces of ambient music with it.  mixtikl is still new to me, but I know that over time, I will be using it more and more, for the simple reason that I want a generative music tool that I control, as well as the sort of “eno preset magic” that scape offers.

it is interesting too, the difference in output – scapes tend to sound a certain way, because of the backgrounds, elements, and filters chosen by brian eno and peter chilvers, plus the hidden “rules” – whereas the output of mixtikl, because you can add any number of randomly selected elements into any mix – sounds widely varied and wildly different from track to track.

CONCLUSION

while I have recorded well over one thousand scapes to date, I am only just beginning to work with mixtikl, so I have a long way to go there…hopefully, over the next year, I will find more time to create with mixtikl, and I look forward to releasing mixtikl tracks as they are created, alongside the scapes which already exist – those will also be released over time.  but I must say – I am more than pleased with both tools; despite their polar opposite design philosophies, I am equally happy creating with either, because generative music is still an under-explored area of music – and I hope to change that 🙂

 

 

to hear the existing collection of dave stafford scapes, please visit the purescapes channel on YouTube.

audio only versions of the first 17 scapes also available on soundcloud.

animoog – jam up pro – loopy hd – riding the audiobus :-)

well, I finally had a chance to do a “proper recording” using audiobus – and I am not disappointed in any way.

I made it simple – I just used one synth, albeit a synth with a huge vocabulary of amazing sounds – the recently expanded animoog.

I quickly gave myself a refresher in loopy hd, I re-taught myself how to use it, because I hadn’t really “got it” before (I had used it exactly once, a couple weeks back), and now have a degree of competence in it’s use. 

then…I fired up audiobus, loaded and “woke up” my input (animoog) my effects (jam up pro xt) and my output (loopyhd) – and then, switching to animoog, recorded my first loop in no time. elapsed time: less than two minutes.

then I began to record overdubs on other loop channels in loopy hd, and within perhaps seven or eight minutes, I had all six loops populated and playing a very jolly little tune in the key of c major – bright and beautiful.  five melodies, and one sort-of bass part/slidy thing.

I used five or six different voices from animoog, some from the standard menu, some from the metallic set, some from the richard devine library – all, very, very beautiful indeed – animoog is the secret synth weapon on my ipad, without a doubt.

another minute adjusting final volume levels.

another minute adjusting pan to get some nice stereo going on.

result, in less than 10 minutes, a beautiful stereo multi-track loop of the highest quality.

a final mix in audition, adjust it’s levels, and maybe a tiny spot of reverb (it already has some nice reverb and delay courtesy of the jam up pro xt, but maybe it would like a tiny bit of reverb – maybe).  it’s quite, quite lovely the way it is, to be honest, so I may just leave it as is.

(note: in the end, I left it as-is – nothing added – no additives or preservatives used 🙂

based on my experience here, and thinking about all those inputs that are already compatible with audiobus, I am imagining using six different input devices, and recording six loops – each totally different, one with a bass line, one with a drum machine, and then four different synthesizers – to get four utterly distinctive melodic sounds…but that’s just in the world of loopy.  when auria comes on line (note – it since has!)….then the sky’s the limit.

or, of course, guitar could be one or two of them, so maybe…bassline, drum machine, synth 1, synth 2, guitar 1, guitar 2.  and of course, you can have more than six loops in loopy, so there is no limit – and the quality recording that came together so quickly by just using one synth…is brilliant, so I can see almost no limits to what can be done with this device.

the beauty of using loopy hd is that in this case, it actually brings the record button from loopy onto the animoog page, so I never had to leave animoog – I could trigger, stop and start loops without ever going to loopy !!.  I did go there – to clear loops and try again, but mostly, I just stayed in animoog; trialled different sounds, found the one I wanted, hit record, recorded another good loop…what a great experience, and such a different experience to the last time I tried recording with several different apps (the synthraga orchestra sessions).  much simpler, much easier, and – it just WORKS!  brilliant.

in fact, I am kinda…stunned by how well it does work, and how quickly I adapt to using it – as if I’d had it all along.  it just becomes natural – switch to the looper.  do what you need to do.  now back to the synth.  play another melody.  now play a harmonising part.  back to the looper, adjust the levels.  back to the synth – new voice, new part – and so on.  smooth, beautiful, easy – and the results are stunning – a really, really nice piece came out of my ten minute six loop audiobus experiment – and that is perhaps, the most impressive thing of all – from this new technology – music has emerged.

and – even better – it’s quite beautiful music, too – always a plus.  I have posted the piece on sound cloud just now, it’s entitled “the sixth sense” – six animoog loops working together to create a mini-symphony of looping synthesizers – all thanks to the miraculous and very, very clever idea that is audiobus.

 

creating this piece using audiobus, and realising just how quickly, easily, and painlessly I was able to build up a really nice piece of music, I feel very excited about the future – and about being able to just endlessly layer different sounds from different instruments, in such a fluid and live atmosphere – that is just brilliant.  now that auria has come on line, over the past couple of days, I’ve been working on a new multi-track master – and it’s been an even better experience than my first try with loopy HD.

using audiobus, with auria as my recording device – I was quickly able to lay down a full length drum part using korg ielectribe, and then I set out to build a bass part – but, I wanted to build it in sections, using many different sounds – so I set up several tracks in auria in my 24 track master, and then, calling up different synthesizers, one by one, and adding, bit by bit, my “composite” bass part (which for the record, is comprised of magellan, animoog and korg ims-20 synths).  a couple of hours work, at the most, over a few days, and I have now completed the bass part from end to end – and it all worked so well, so flawlessly – and now I have a great basic track, over which I can overdub guitars, synths, you name it.

I had a great time playing with loopy HD, which, after all, is a brilliant live looping device, really well designed, so there is no harm in learning the best looper I have on the ipad.  but I am even more excited after having used audiobus to create a full on proper recording session in auria – that is just brilliant.

drums, bass synths, hell, real basses via jam up pro xt, stompbox and eventually, ampkit + (once it’s compatible), real guitars via same, any number of synths and synth-like applications, you name it – kaoss pad in the form of the ikaossilator –  anything that a) makes sound and b) has been made compatible with audiobus.  and now I’m even happier, because one of my very, very favourite guitar applications, stomp box – is now audiobus compatible!  so I am looking forward now, to setting up some awesome guitar sounds in stomp box, and overdubbing my new drum and bass part with real guitars.  I am waiting for ampkit plus, to give me that third set of guitar set-up possibilities – but I am well set up now with stompbox and jam up pro – that’s a great start.

I can’t believe that in the space of 13 months (the time I’ve used ipad applications), I’ve gone from having two synths, the fairlight pro and korg ims-20, to having a full on recording studio with more instruments than I have time to learn…the growth of music apps on the ipad has to be one of the most exponentially staggering growths of technology ever to have occurred.  during this last year, we’ve been given things like ipolysix from korg; the amazing auria multi-track recorder, like jam up pro, like audiobus – and each one, in it’s own way, a game-changer…

first, it was multi-track recording.  now, it’s being able to near-seamlessly move between inputs, effects and outputs during live performance or live recording via audiobus…not to mention the two amazing generative music tools, mixtikl and scape, as well as the super educational and extremely useful and beautiful itabla pro, which gives me tablas in a large palette of very real and very realistic presets and modes – and the drones, those beautiful, beautiful tanpuras…

and then I step back and realise, this huge, huge palette of instruments, effects, processing, recording, drums, tablas, bass lines, and synthesizers galore can now be ADDED to all of the other “normal” instruments I have available, so the combinations that are available to me, as a creative musician, haven’t doubled or trebled or quadrupled or quintupled, they have…seventeenified.  I’ve seen the tip of this iceberg in my most recent studio set up, the “all instruments” set up, which demonstrated to me, during the last couple of sessions – that just about anything is possible now.

choices to the seventeenth !

or, to the thirty-fourth…

 

I used to be a bit skeptical about technology, but when I see what they have done with it at audiobus, for example, I just fall in love with it, it’s brilliant, clever, amazing. part of me thinks I am dreaming – I keep asking myself, how can a £7.99 synthesizer on a tablet sound so fucking GOOD?  the answer is: it can.  it does.  it will.

In just over a year, I’ve gone from technophobe to technophile, and there is no looking back, take no prisoners, I can play hard rock/metal detuned guitar through a tablet – I don’t need that marshall stack I could never afford anyway – I can rock with a tablet – and now that I have two guitar apps, soon to be three –stomp box and jam up pro XT, hopefully followed soon by ampkit plus, please…I know I keep saying this, but…the sky’s the limit for guitar sounds.

so the old set ups are out, the new, in, guitar to ipad to auria, via audiobus – hit record.

I am also so, so pleased to announce the return of an old, old friend, adobe recently made version 3 of adobe audition available for free on their website, so how could I say no – after all, this is the direct successor to “cool edit pro” – the first audio multi-track I ever owned, and upon which I remastered all my analogue tape albums with – so as well as having the most tricked out ipad around, I also have my favourite audio multi-track recorder back, for free – a good price.

now I will be using adobe audition for pop and click removal, and also, removal of clipped audio, and especially for it’s FFT style noise reduction, which is a beautiful and very effective “old” technology.  so – hats off to adobe for their very, very thoughtful free gift to us all.  an old adobe program is probably better than a lot of very expensive NEW products…and for me, it’s like getting back an old friend – a friend named “CoolEditPro”.

I am so, so pleased !  🙂

and recording with audiobus, using loopyHD or auria as the recorder – could not be easier or more fun – it’s absolutely brilliant.

audiobus rules, and if you haven’t tried it, I can heartily recommend it.  it’s not perfect, very occasionally, auria will stall or crash, but I am running it on an ipad2, so some exceptions have to be made – and the code will only get better – they’ve just had an upgrade giving us buffering options in case of stuttering, so they clearly care about the user experience.

it works so well already, in it’s infancy, that I really look forward to using it when it’a a mature and robust application – I cannot wait!

music making has changed forever with the ipad, but the innovation of audiobus has now propelled both live performance and on-ipad multitrack or loop recording  – into the distant future…right now.  the future of ipad music making has arrived…and it’s called “audiobus”.

or so it seems to me. 🙂

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.

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.

applications-based music

today’s lunchtime project is a brand new fairlight pro piece, entitled “president evil”. it’s built somewhat symmetrically, similar to the way I might build a loop – starting out with a somewhat creepy pattern with very few instruments, and gradually adding more and more instruments, so that it gets quite dense by the centre of the piece.

the experience of the past several weeks really paid off: I sat down, built a custom instrument, and began composing. once I had the basic “loop” idea, I just added more instruments each time, until the piece sounds very full indeed – and then I just reverse the sequence, backing it back down in reverse order…which would be the equivalent of “undoing” a loop stage by stage in reverse order of creation.

today’s custom instrument looks like this:

synbass6

beltree2

flute11

roll2

fingcym

eatbowl1

whispian1

waterphone11

so the very most basic pattern is startling in it’s simplicity: it’s a finger cymbal melody, underpinned by two long whole note ambient backing sounds: a whole note of “whispian1” and a whole note of “waterphone11”.
that became pattern one, and then all the other patterns include those instruments and patterns from then on.

pattern two then, is identical to pattern one, except for an added drum roll at the beginning of the third measure.

pattern 3 adds a bell tree to the drum roll

pattern 4 adds a bass flute note, and one eating bowl note in bar 4, to the drum roll and bell tree

pattern 5 adds a long whole note synthbass note to all that is in pattern 4, plus adds a second eating bowl note in bar 1

pattern 6 is identical to pattern 5 except the synth bass volume is increased by 2, and the bell tree volume is increased by 2, to increase the sense of the dramatic

pattern 7 contains all the elements in pattern 6, except that the flute changes to a six note melody, underpinned by a double time eating bowl, and the synthbass has been turned up by one again

pattern 9 is a variant of pattern 7, with the last two of the six note melody notes removed for both flute and eating bowl – and in the sequence, instead of pattern 7 playing four times, it alternates between pattern 7 and pattern 9 twice – creating a 6 note/4 note melodic pattern (or rather, a six note melody with a rest every other bar)

pattern 8 is the “final” build up, it’s identical to pattern 7, except now, the flute and eating bowl melody has been altered to a four-note pattern.

 

so basically, I worked my way up from pattern one to pattern eight (with a little detour at pattern 7 – where pattern 9 is added in to provide a “rest”)…

after pattern 8, I added in a section of the super quiet pattern one to provide a calm centre…and then, it just winds back down again, from loudest/busiest to quietest simplest, and just to be a bit asymmetrical, there 17 sets of pattern 1 at the end of the track while there are only 4 at the beginning 🙂

 

simples  !

 

 

the seventeen repetitions at the end really add a sense of the piece being a “loop”, and just when you are lulled into thinking it will repeat for ever, it just stops – when you least expect it to stop. 🙂
I thoroughly enjoyed working this piece out, and it came together really quickly – from initial idea to completed piece of music in probably 30 minutes – if that.

the fairlight pro is indeed, a remarkable sequencing tool and the unusual sample library provided has a wealth of very unusual sound choices that can really be effective in creating atmosphere, and lots of it, if you choose your instruments wisely…
I was very fortunate today, with “president evil” – it just worked – and, the snare drum roll is my informal nod to and acknowledgement to xtc’s “president kill” to which this song has no relationship whatsoever, except the shared title word “kill” and an ominous snare roll…

 

 
keep on sequencing!

 

…here comes president evil again 🙂

the music of the moment

there is so much news I almost don’t know where to begin…

 

of course!

first and foremost: I am very proud to announce that bryan and I have decided on a name for our new band and album!

we are very,  very proud to announce the debut album “dreamtime” from the brand new ambient band “scorched by the sun” – look for it on pureambient later this year.

sometimes it takes a while to “know” what the name of a band or an album is, and bryan and I have been discussing this, off and on, for quite some time.  the band name, “scorched by the sun”, was originally a casual remark bryan made during a conversation we were having; it caught my ear, and I suggested it for the name of the band – and he agreed.

the album’s name was also something we discussed for a long, long time – and we have always felt that this music has something to do with dreams and dreaming – since a lot of ambient music, at least in my experience, arrives when you are in a semi-conscious state, almost in a holy trance as it were, so “dreamtime” is totally appropriate since the dreamtime is the holy trance of the aboriginal peoples of australia – I really like the idea of the sun-baked australian desert, scorched by the sun, during the dreamtime…it just makes good sense to me.

so that is decided – the album, as you know, was completed a couple of months ago, and is at the mixing stage now.  we are currrently looking for a release sometime during the first half of 2012, exact date, to be announced.

so – “scorched by the sun” – that’s bryan helm: synthesizers, guitars, loops, treatments and; dave stafford: mellotron, synthesizers, loops, treatments – have arrived at last !

 

meanwhile, there is so much going on here at pureambient: the new series of “informal” music videos continues, the first four videos from the first “informal session” are all up now on the pureambientHD channel on youtube, and we are getting some nice comments from one listener in particular who has said some really good things about both “technophobe” and “ice drops / cascade” – the very latest video, uploaded just yesterday, sunday the 26th of february, 2012 for your listening pleasure.

we are really looking forward to the next videos in this series, these were shot outdoors at plean country park in central scotland, and while the january 21, 2012 session centred around the korg ims-20 application, the plean country park videos were made using nanostudio, so they are all about the eden synth – a huge favourite of mine.  there are going to be two videos from this session, takes 9 and 10 of live solos made over an existing work in progress entitled “slower”.

this to me is a fantastic way to perform, in a beautiful outdoor setting on a rare sunny winter’s day (and what a beautiful day it was!) – and since I had not prepared any material for the session, it was simplest to just select a solo voice and solo over an existing completed track using the very capable eden synth – so I chose “slower” as the track to play over (which will, of course, eventually be released in it’s pure ambient form – sans solos – as a track in it’s own right) but for now, the two videos will provide a sneak preview of the track.  playing live that day was so very enjoyable, so I am really looking forward to mixing the audio and building the videos for “slower live at plean country park take 9” and “slower live at plean country park take 10”!

there are more “informal” videos still beyond that to be processed and uploaded, but, five things at a time, we’ll wait until the plean country park videos are made and up before we move on to the next informal music videos.

from video to the world of audio, I am currently reviewing in particular all the work I’ve done with the fairlight pro over the past few weeks, and I am happy to say that this unique application has not only been a joy to work with, but I’ve produced three of the most unusual, interesting pieces of music I’ve done for a long time, because for me, it’s a whole new way of working – every sound is a sample, to start; and, you have to sequence instead of “play” which was a new idea for me – but over the past few weeks, I’ve mastered it, so I understand how it works now.  at the moment then, these three tracks are complete and ready to be mixed:

1) feast for crow – I cannot really describe this track, it’s one of the first “complete” tracks I attempted on the fairlight, it does feature a beautiful sample of a member of the crow family, not quite sure which one, letting the world know what he thinks, and to be able to include natural sounds such as birdsong (well, it’s not really “song” when a crow does it, but you know what I mean) into my compositions is something I’ve always wanted – and it sounds really natural, the music itself is gothic, creepy, dark and the crow cawing just lends even more atmosphere to this dark tune – a soundtrack to a movie that has yet to be made.

2) happy bird orchestra – as the name implies, this is a piece made up entirely of birdsong (another long-held ambition of mine realised at last) – and this piece is surprisingly musical and effective, it really doesn’t sound gimmicky at all, it sounds quite natural to me – and I hope that with the right reverb, I can make a mix that sounds natural and wonderful.  I set up a fairlight “instrument” that included 8 bird voices, originally, I had crows and rooks in the piece, but I removed them to try and keep the piece more melodic – and there is still some edge provided by the presence of doves and one lonely goose who does a great job filling that one quarter note space I wasn’t sure what to do with!  this was honestly, so much fun to make, and I will probably create more “all bird” pieces using my special “happy bird orchestra” instrument – I named the song after the instrument because it seemed like the thing to do…

3) vainglorious – this is the latest and probably most difficult piece I’ve tackled to date – I created a special instrument for this one too, which I modified once during the process, but it’s basically a mix of distorted guitar chords or distorted lead guitar and sitarlike sounds, and a couple of percussion instruments as well.  this is sort of my “breakthrough” piece in terms of really coming to grips with sequential composition, and I learned the ins and outs of specifying note duration and volume, so this piece is probably the most musically complex that I’ve done with the fairlight, and it uses some great distorted guitar samples that I plan to overdub with real guitars, I can’t really explain this song using words, it’s sort of like zappa I suppose, it has a wonderful, convoluted sitar/percussion melody that glides across a strange sonic landscape…

a fourth piece remains unfinished, not because I don’t want to finish it, but because I am unsure what to do with it! it’s entitled “resolve”, and I am resolved to finding a resolution for it compositionally :-).  it has one very strong section that I really love, that is woodwinds against chinese percussion – wonderfully early Motheresque, but another section that I am not as happy with, it needs work.  so it’s difficult to say if “resolve” will ever be finished, I need to sit down and create some copies of it, with different sequences ordered differently, to see if I can reach a state where I feel happier with it.

I am so happy though, to suddenly realise I have not one, but three complete works that only need mixing (although “vainglorious” needs to be extended – all the parts that it needs are there, I just need to make it a bit longer than it is currently) so essentially, three totally complete pieces – I have no idea where any of them came from, I really don’t!  but I am very, very glad that they arrived, as it’s some of the strangest, most utterly unique music I’ve ever had the pleasure of creating, and this tool allows a kind of creativity – bar by bar creativitiy! – that I have never, ever experienced before – a really powerful tool for composing, where you think about every note, and you build songs up slowly, bar by bar – it’s a brilliant and wonderful process, and now that I fully understand it – one I know I will happily work with for many, many years.

 

it really does look like I am going to need to dedicate an entire album to application-based music, because I’ve also done a quick review of my earliest app-based pieces – done in garage band, and, there are several really good pieces there that just need to be mixed… I am sure I already have enough material for an album if I were to combine the garage band tracks with the nanostudio tracks with the fairlight tracks (not to mention, tracks made with the animoog synthesizer – although those are just solo instrument tracks)…I would probably have enough for two or three albums…so I need to add this to my ever-growing list of “things to do…” 🙂

I am actually very, very surprised by the tracks recorded in garage band, because that was when I really had no idea what I was doing with applications – yet, I managed to record some really good songs as well as a couple of beautiful, ambient piano based pieces – very surprising – you should not underestimate the potential of garage band for recording serious music – it may not be as fancy as nanostudio or the korg ims-20, but it has plenty of beautiful sounds and you certainly can’t discount what can be done with it if you just work at it a little bit…

 

and then finally, to the world of guitar – or guitar synth to be precise – I had a very interesting session last night with the roland gr-55, this was really a session with the avowed purpose of giving the newly-reconfigured pedals and system configuration a good test, to “burn it in” as it were, and work out any bugs.  I did spend about an hour playing without recording a note, because of course, at first, no matter how well you’ve “thought out” a new set-up, it often does not work when you first try to use it properly – and true to form, when I started playing, only one of three signal paths was working (of course!).  but I very quickly worked out what needed to be done, and then started the quite tricky process of getting levels matched – not easy when you have various combinations of guitar synth, modelled guitar, plain guitar and stomp box settings to deal with.

but slowly, gradually, I achieved a balanced sound, and in fact, I am absolutely chuffed about this particular re-configuration – the pedals, for a start, are all now much more easy to access physically, yet, at the same time, I’ve (somehow) managed to make more floor space so I have more room to move.  so I was able to “match” the volumes of the guitar synth to the various “normal” guitars and get a nice balance no matter what selections I made with the a/b/c switch – I really like having that available, because I can access three very different combinations of sounds instantly – during one song.

once I had the guitar set-up properly, and the sounds and levels balanced, I then did begin recording, I created a basic idea to loop, and then used the three “preset” sounds to “solo” over the top of this loop.  in this particular case then, these are the sounds I had available and what I was able to do with them during a take:

path a: guitar synth (in this case, a TB-303 synth bass sound) and modelled guitar – semi dirty strat sound

path b: guitar synth and standard guitar through stompboxes, in this case, a beautiful stereo flanger dumped into a stereo reverb – beautiful sound

path c: guitar synth and standard guitar through a fuzz box and volume pedal – a great, standard distorted lead guitar sound – with a thick bass EQ to give me long, thick sustained notes

so regardless which of these above is selected, the guitar synth is present – except, if I want to remove it temporarily and only hear the remaining normal guitar sound (one of three!), all I have to do is briefly shut off the synth’s volume pedal – so that gives each of the three above a variant, where they have no synth voice – so that’s six voices so far…

then, for path b, I have two other options, (well more, but in this case, two) I can shut off the flanger if need be, which changes the character of the voice completely – so that makes seven sounds so far – then, I have another option, using the line 6 dl-4 delay modeler – I could add echo of course, but I tend to use the dl-4 for one thing it does really well – live reverse guitar.  so I can switch the dl-4 “on” – and I can then reverse the flanged/reverbed sound (that makes eight) or the non-flanged/reverbed sound (that makes nine).

then, for path c, of course we’ve already said we can have this fuzztone guitar alone or with the guitar synth, but of course it can be further altered by switching between the treble and bass pickups on the strat – so there is even a variant for this basic sound – two very different tones of fuzztone (that makes ten). finally, that path also contains the pitch pedal, currently set to 2 octaves up, so that bass or treble fuzztone can be instantly sent two octave up as well, either by switch, or by bending using the pitch pedal itself (that makes, uh, eleven or twelve sounds).

so – in one setup, with just one synth voice selected (which can be taken in and out at will with the gr-55’s volume pedal) there are at least a dozen possible sound combinations available – at least!!

of course, there are actually more, because any of the stompboxes could be taken in or out during the performance, but I found it daunting enough to use eight or ten different sounds during one live performance – but to prove a point, I actually managed it a few times – I probably used at least 8 of different sounds available, not sure – and at least one of the 18 takes I made last night, will eventually be released – possibly more.  it was a really interesting and informative session, I learned a lot about what is possible and what is not, when using an a/b/c switch and other pedal-based options during a live performance.

a few of those other options?  well, in path b, there is also a chorus pedal, so that could be used, in fact, any combination of chorus / flanger / reverb is available in that chain…

path b also contains a small looper, so something could be looped and stored in that as well – adding more content to the proceedings…

but overall, after playing for a few hours with the a/b/c switchable signal paths, I found it to be probably the strongest, most reliable setup I’ve ever had.  instant sound changes at the push of a button, and so much variability!  I am so, so pleased, and it all works very, very well – really solid.

now, I do still need to do the essential work on the guitar synth itself, to group like patches together so that on top of this “twelve in one” setup, I can also CHANGE the synth voice, which will give me 24, 36, 48, 96, 2048 sound combinations – I don’t know! – it quickly becomes incalculable – simply by selecting a different synth patch – while the 11 other possibilities are still there, just using the currently selected synth voice instead of the “tb-303 bass” I decided to test with last night.  and it was very effective too, being able to REMOVE the synth and just leave, for example, the thick, bassy fuzztone by itself – it sounded great when the heavy synth sound drops out, leaving just that ominous, deep buzzing sustained lead guitar – brilliant!

all in all, I am well-pleased with the new design – and the incredible flexibility I now have in my live guitar/guitar synth sound.  I’ve also arranged the mixer so that I can input all of my instruments on demand if need be – so theoretically now (and I really should try this) – I could sit down, turn the looper onto record – and input…guitar synth, guitar path a, guitar path b, guitar path c, stereo synthesizer – the new prokeys 88, mono yamaha dx7s, mono dx11s, and finally, stereo kaosillator.  if I turned all those on at once, and then set the looper onto record – I could (theoretically) create a loop using ***all*** of those instruments in one massive-live-combining of many-guitars-and-synthesizers-and-instruments…talk about input options !!! :-0

 

not currently permanently set up but always available too, is of course: the ipad itself – which adds about 20 more instruments to the list instantly! – I am still working on the best ways to record this, but once that is sorted out, it will probably become a more permanent part of the set up.  at the moment, if need be, I disconnect the stereo input cables from the kaossilator (borrow them temporarily) and replace it with the ipad – so that last input should really read  “stereo kaossilator / ipad”.

I think that problem I have now is the problem I always have – I need a spare three months just to mix, complete and organise all the music I’ve completed but never produced.  I need a big block of time to finish all these nearly-completed projects !!  I think that winning the lottery has to now become a serious priority, otherwise, a lot of this music may never see the light of day – I’ve got to sleep sometime…

 

I suppose I shouldn’t complain, it’s better to have far too much good music to deal with, than to not have enough – and I certainly have so, so much to choose from at the moment.  I am always running behind, I record audio and film video and then it just joins the queue, but I do eventually work through it all…until the cycle starts all over again 🙂

applications-based music

I am really enjoying making music in nanostudio and in the fairlight pro (while having lost a bit of interest in garage band – too simplistic, although it has the best hammond organ sounds around, so I will use it for that – definitely!), mostly during lunch time at work, strangely enough (what an odd, odd sensation to have a digital recording studio at your desk, during lunch, and to be able to sit there and create…amazing!).

I’ve started a number of new pieces, the first, a drum backing entitled “powerhouse” – this one is intended for use with lots and lots of very, very heavy guitar – so, a pounding bass drum alternating between eighth and sixteenth notes, a cracking, intermittent snare playing at odd times, and thumping toms pounding along with the bass drums…strange percussion, and I brought in cymbals from two different kits so I could have four distinct crash cymbal sounds instead of two.

I used a rock kit for the basics, and for additional sounds, a tight kit, which brought in some really lovely and strange-sounding cymbals – which I smack with precision.  So what this means is a three-minute six-second drum backing, which I think I will send straight to sonar so I can overdub it with guitar synth.  the roland gr-55 has some fantastic detuned patches, and I’ve had a hankering to create something really heavy, so maybe dave’s first metal piece is finally at hand.  I did do a couple of metal improvs of dozey lumps songs last year just to test out the detuned voices, but I haven’t made a serious recording with them yet.  so I am thinking – nanostudio drums for “powerhouse”, detuned gr-55 metal patches, and I will have me a song.  it’s very exciting…and I look forward to working on it.

I’ve also been working on two different pieces sequenced on the fairlight pro, “feast for crow”, which is creepy, creaking film music for a film that doesn’t exist, and the latest piece, “resolve”, where I used a “random instrument” with 8 voices selected by the app for me to use in the composition.  this resulted in a most unusual sounding piece that I am at a loss to describe, somewhere between chinese traditional music and a late-sixties zappa mothers woodwind arrangement.  very weird, but – very compelling, the sounds in the fairlight are just purely cool – I love it!

I think that what is happening with some of the app-based pieces that are evolving is that along with one or two other tracks that have been evolving over the past 12 months, that I probably now have completed enough songs to fully populate “gone native” – so it is getting to the point now, where, with a few overdub sessions, if I can “complete” four or five nearly-complete pieces – including 3 or 4 made in nanostudio, then I would have a finished album at the mixing stage – or rather, another finished album at the mixing stage. “caladan” is an earlier piece that is actually complete and just needs mixing, I have only just realised that it absolutely belongs on gone native, as it was part of the journey from 2008 to the present…

the interesting thing about “gone native” is the sheer diversity that is represented – starting off with a track I recorded using only the X3 live, playing live guitar on top of a live drum track I cloned from mike bowman’s excellent “fever drums” sequence – so quite primitive, live guitar on top of live-sounding drums – and then, bass added later – so a basic power trio – nothing fancy – and then, onto the future, more songs evolving, in SONAR, using more sophisticated sounds from the X3, and then, the guitar synth arrived – and began to be incorporated into the pieces, so we went from x3 live only to pieces using both the x3 live and the roland gr-55.  then, the next step in my musical evolution, making music in apps on the ipad.

so, a nearly four year journey, from a simple power trio approach right up to the very high tech approach of using nanosync to create drums, bass and synths, and then porting, via nanosync, back to SONAR to add the live guitars – unthinkable just four short years ago.  I think I would arrange the album in two parts, as well, the first part, pre-guitar synth, pre-apps-based music, the second, including all available technologies.  the modern day equivalent of a two sided concept album I suppose!  it is interesting though, because just over half the time involved pretty basic technologies, while the other “half”, or maybe it’s closer to one third, of the time was much, much more about technology – but good technology, tech that brought me a massive palette of amazing guitar sounds.

I also think that once “gone native” is complete, mixed and pressed, that I might give serious thought to making an album that is 100 percent made with the guitar synth.  I’d love to give that a try, really put it through it’s paces.  For now, though, you will still get to hear it really, really shine on tracks from gone native, including some very interesting guitar synth parts on the title track.

it’s also remarkable to me just how quickly I’ve adapted to working with nanostudio, using it’s drum sequencer is incredibly easy and intuitive, and the synth voices are heavenly, beautiful, brutal, odd, amazing – really creative sounds, really useful, and I could really just play that synth all day long.  speaking of playing that synth, last night, I organised all the “casual” cliips of me playing synth on the ipad, taken over the past couple of months, with a view to set up and publish some of them onto the pureambientHD channel, including some eden synth / nanostudio live performances from january 22, 2012 done outdoors at plean country park.

I’m excited about all of these video clips – in fact, three very different types of music being worked on – first, the korg ims-20 synth, which I do not know well, but – what a sound!  secondly, the aforementioned eden synths – really beautiful sounds there, kudos to nanostudio for putting together such a lush package of quality drum sounds and to-die for synth sounds – very impressive – and finally, more recently, a foray into microtonal synthesis, using the remarkable microtonal synthesizer “mugician” along with a tabla backing courtesy of the even ***more*** remarkable itabla which I have spoken about elsewhere in detail.  the interesting thing about all of these off-the-cuff perfomances is that in each case, I had almost zero understanding of the app or any experience at using it – yet, in all three cases, the apps worked so well and were so easy to learn – that you might never have known that I had no idea what I was doing unless I told you!

and then the utterly different experience of the fairlight pro – but once you “get it” – you fall in love with creating music a bar at a time. in fact, music happens in such a different way, that things can happen that might not when composing in “real time” – the sequencing allows you to build songs in tiny stages – something I’ve rarely done, but sometimes, you can make a strange turn – and your piece goes where you least expected it to – which to me is what it’s all about…

the “other side” of set-up: patches, sounds, programming, documenting, storing, and recalling…

of course, it’s one thing to get routing, cables, and set-up done – that’s great, but then there is the other”set-up” the one that takes even longer, which is setting up each individual tool.

so there is still an enormous amount of work to be done, particularly with the newer hardware – so that will be my next task.  I’ve been working with the roland gr-55 for almost a year now, and while I’ve done some work on customising it, I have reached a point now where I “know” what sounds I like to use, I have created a handful of “custom” patches…but I want to create many, many more (because the combining of sounds is what this device is all about!) – so I have my work cut out for me.  I need to plan out how I want the user bank to work, and “group together” voices that I use and prefer, into trios of voices that make sense for live looping.  so I need a good long session with the pedal, so I can set up several banks of sounds suited for ambient looping, which would incorporate some normal guitar patches suitable for ebow, as well as synth voices such as “rich strings” and the many, many other ambient synth voices I’ve used over the past year, so that when I do ambient looping, all those sounds are grouped together; then I would want some “loud” banks, with trios of voices that I know will work well together in a live loop situation, for the loud/active material, and so on.

there are so many programming tasks ahead it’s not funny: choosing my favourite voices, modifying them where needed, creating new voices, grouping together voices for live looping purposes, and just generally working on guitar sounds: synth sounds, normal guitar tone, and hybrid combinations thereof.

the other new device is of course the delay, which doesn’t have as much programmability, but it does have some, so again, I’ve worked with it for a number of months now, I need to identify the sets of delay settings that I use the most often and put those into the memory banks, and make sure my switching is in order.  and I also need to set up the expression pedal and test out what it is capable of with this device, I am really looking forward to that, as I don’t think I’ve ever really had an expression pedal available on a delay device before (well, I would have done so with the digitech tsr-24s continuous controllers, but it wasn’t a dedicated delay – so effectively, I’ve never had an expression pedal dedicated to a delay before), so being able to manipulate delay parameters via continuous controllers while I play will be a lot of fun.

and given how incredible the time bender sounds, use cc pedals with it should be very, very interesting indeed!

so while everything is hooked up now, physically, there is still much to be done in the setting up of individual tools, but I am confident that over the next few weeks, I will make the time to get this done, although as with everything, it will probably have to be done in stages – starting with the ambient patches and banks, of course ! 🙂  I want to create some brand new, very atmospheric and creative patches to use on the sketches for the upcoming orsi / stafford record, so I will also take time to create some patches that can be dedicated initially to the project, but then can probably also be used ongoing.

it does seem as if when I was younger, I had “more time” to prepare sounds, to tweak patches and especially, set up interesting continuous controller pedals – because I did spend what seemed like endless hours working on patches, working on tweaking sounds, working on presets – and I do find it very difficult indeed to find time to dedicate to this kind of “other” set-up work now.

instead, I think what I have tended to do lately (well, for the last several years, actually), is look at the set up of each recording session, and sort of…”on the fly”…take whatever measures I need to, even if that is creating a new hybrid voice for the synth; or working out a delay sound that suits that newly created voice; or storing three or six patches into convenient banks so that it’s easy to switch between the desired sounds during that particular session.  the latter is of course crucial when it is a live session, if it is studio work, less so – but I do really wish I could sit for about 40 or 50 hours with the roland gr-55, test each and every preset sound again, organise, modify, and save those that I intend to use, document all the best sounds and categorise them based on how they will help me achieve the best active, standard and ambient sounds possible.

I am really looking forward to doing more of this kind of advanced programming – I find that the more that is pre-prepared, the quicker I can adapt sounds for the actual requirement of the session – but strangely, on the other hand, even if I did no preparation, no customisation, I would still be able to set something up – I just might have to rely on more “stock” sounds – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

users are often quick to say “oh, this device, device x, or, device gr-55, the presets are all rubbish” – I’ve been hearing that about device after device that I’ve owned, and I must say – I disagree.  many of the presets on many devices are not just usable out of the box but sometimes, incredibly beautiful – and for me, it’s more about recognising which presets sound great (even if that is a small percentage), good, ok, and not so good…and then taking the appropriate action based on that assessment. to dismiss them out of hand as rubbish – I don’t get it, personally – I think that is probably ego-driven, “oh, I am the artist, I can make better voices than roland – or digitech – or whoever – can”.

I disagree, because the staff at these companies are often musicians themselves, and they understand just as well as you or I do “what sounds good” – so I would speak in their defense, they do the best they can, they create presets that will hopefully either be useful right out of the box, or, with a little bit of work and customisation, voices that have potential.  if you look at it that way – all the presets are “good”, because if you tweak them enough, they will be good! of course, they aren’t “presets” at that point, but, if you haven’t changed much about them, they are very close to being presets – and I often use presets without modification.  if they sound good…if the shoe fits…if it isn’t broke…don’t fix it.

in the end, it’s always back to time though – if I can figure out how and when I have the time to work on the other side of set up, customisation and programming – obviously, I will need to find a way to do this “in stages”.  I have already begun a document that categorises some of the voices I use, and describes all of the custom voices I’ve built so far,for the gr-55, but I want to take that much, much further than I have to date.