the joy of kaoss

I have to admit, of all of the few unusual instruments I have run across, the Ibanez RG Series Kaoss model guitar is one of the best in so many ways.  It’s simply fun to play, and what you can do with one electric guitar that interfaces with one set of 100 (yes, that is One HUNDRED) kaossilator effects to give you one of the most tactile and hands on guitar to synth “instant treatments” experiences since Brian Eno ‘treated’ Phil Manzanera‘s guitar on stage with Roxy Music back in the early 1970s.  No longer do you need to run your guitar through a very large and very expensive VCS3 synthesiser, but you can do the ‘treatments” by yourself, as you play – and the sounds you can get out of it are simply amazing if you just work at it….

What more could I ask for?  What more could any guitarist who also happens to be a Kaossilator Pad player, who also is a synthesist – ask for?  This is the inexpensive way into a Kaoss-pad-controlled-by-a-guitar or rather, by-a-guitarist – you.

Before I try to describe the experience of playing this unique instrument, I should probably approach the negatives – of which there are one or two – depending on your viewpoint.  The guitar is deliberately built down to a price, it’s possibly, the cheapest Kaoss guitar on the market – and that is possible the way Ibanez and Korg wanted it – who knows?  So some of the features you might expect in an expensive electric guitar simply aren’t really here in this guitar.  Like super low super easy action.  Not here – you have to work to play this guitar.  I am going to need to take it in, and see what can be done about the action – which is less than ideal.  I end up thrashing the fingers on my left hand every time I play it – but I am determined, so I don’t let something as unimportant as somewhat high action bother me – I just play anyway, and ignore it.

One alleviating factor or solution I have found, is to go to an extra light gauge of string.  This DOES help a little bit, when the guitar you are playing has action that is too high – for me, it seems to help on the higher strings, but no so much on the lower strings.  It was strange – I hadn’t tried an .009 on my high E since I was about 13!  But I find it helpful to switch from, in my case, Regular Slinky, to, Super Slinky – with a .009 top rather than the .010.

The other thing that I really miss, is a whammy bar.  I think that alongside the awesome distortion circuit built into the guitar, that a whammy bar would have been just the ticket – switch on that fuzz and start yourself a crazy whammy solo….but not this time.   So – two negatives; it’s hard to play, and, no whammy fun – but I can easily forgive both – there are actions I can take, I can get the guitar set up, I can put lighter strings on it, I can even get the neck fretted or shaved – I mean, there is room to improve the action, that is for sure – but it needs investment, and a good luthier too.

Getting over the whammy is easier, for one thing, you have 101 on board sounds to replace it with, the first being, the very usable on board distortion circuit which I really like, it isn’t the most amazing distortion box in the world, but, it gives you plenty of sustain when you want a sudden kick-ass solo – and so easy to switch it in!

So that is the 101st effect, I would say, and then what you have is 100 more on the kaoss pad, to make up for that missing whammy.  For example – may I suggest, voice 16, “vinyl break” – that gives you the ultimate dive bomb, and you can have it at any speed imaginable – very quick indeed, or, very very slow…taking a high note down to a low note that my 12 inch guitar speakers have trouble delivering it’s so lowl!

Or really, instead of thinking of it as 101 effects – the built-in distortion plus 100 Kaoss sounds, you could actually look at it as 201 sounds – the built-in distortion is 1, then you have 100 kaoss sounds with clean guitar, and, 100 kaoss sounds with heavy distortion – and some of these Korg sound respond very well to clean or distortion, and, behave differently depending on what is chosen.

So now that I have got through the tricky stuff, I can go on about how much fun it is to actually PLAY this guitar – and, you have to understand, the kaoss pad that is built into it, is not like the kaoss pad “synths” (like the little hand held pink synth kaoss pad I started out playing a few years back) you buy to play on stage – it is instead, an “effects” kaoss pad, a “Mini-Kaoss pad” – and it’s been made into part of the guitar’s circuitry – it has actually been embedded into the guitar’s DNA – being at the end of the guitar’s audio output.

I think that learning how to play this guitar effectively is something that has to be learned over time, and each time I pick up the Kaoss guitar, I learn a little bit more about what is best in terms of technique – and a lot of the sounds aren’t totally suited to using them like a normal effect, they actually seem to work the best as sudden events in between notes, or, at the end of phrases.

Vinyl Break, good old number 16, is suitable for either, and I had a blast just suddenly DROPPING a note, a millisecond after playing it, down a few octaves, and the real beautiful of the Kaoss pad becomes apparent in the amount of control you have over the timing of that event, of that note drop – if you do it at the “top” of the pad (i.e. the edge nearest the strings, rather than the edge near the edge of the guitar’s body) the drop is incredibly fast, and you are at that low, low tone so fast you can hardly believe it.

If you drop it in the centre of the pad, it drops substantially more slowly, but still at a pretty good speed, and you can learn to “time” these smoother, more elegant drop curves to suit your musical taste…it becomes quite an art, can I make this note drop really smoothly down to it’s lowest tone and then still hit the next note in my solo or improv at the “right” moment, and most times, I can.  It’s a huge amount of fun, trying to control the duration of a note drop event, and get it to work in a really musical way.

Finally, if you choose to drop at the bottom of the pad, well then you are going to get the longest drop of all, possibly a bit too slow to be very musical, but just as useful – and everywhere in between, you get all the different speeds. So to put it into phonographic terms, it can be like dropping from 78 to 16 rpm in a millisecond, or from 78 to 16 rpm in a second, or maybe take five seconds to get there – or, you can stop the process anywhere along the way, so maybe you might just go from 78 rpm down to only 33 1/3rd rpm, instead of all the way down to 16 – it’s entirely up to you.

The pad is physically pretty tiny, and you have to learn to use it … sort of… “in between” your notes, or, at the end of a series of notes – it CAN be used while you are playing, but that is hard – it’s possible, with some of the more standard sounds, like a jet flanger or a nice phaser, you can hold a finger on the pad while you are strumming or picking, but – it’s a difficult act of co-ordination, and really, you would be a lot better of concentrating on playing your notes properly, and using your stomp box flangers or phaser, and they very probably will sound better – and, they stay on, too, until you shut them off, whereas, the pad stops working as SOON as your finger or fingers lift off of it – and that makes it tricky to use as a “regular” effect (whatever THAT means lol).

However, the real strength of the Kaoss guitar, isn’t the more “standard” effects, but the ones that work well when used in between notes and in between phrases, like my best friend the vinyl break, but also, the large selection of various loopers are truly useful and give you some remarkable effects if used well.  It’s tricky, but, it’s do-able.

There are different ways to approach it, and I keep trying new things, or picking one of the 100 voices I am not as familiar with, and trying to see what I can do with it over a longer period of time – high pass filter, low pass filter, mid filters, you name it, it’s all there, there is even a decimator, which is an amazing patch – I absolutely love the decimator, it’s a brilliant sounding effect.  Most of the effects sound really good, but some of them are hard to use in the sort of “momentary” way you need to use this guitar to it’s best effect (no pun intended).

One trick I have found helpful, in making sure I co-ordinate playing a note or chord, and then, immediately applying the pad (before the more or chord fades away so much that the pad then does NOTHING to it – very embarrassing!) is by likening the pad to a whammy bar in your brain – a whammy bar used, of course, in the more usual way, where, at the end of a phrase or chord, you use it – well, the Kaoss pad works best that way.

Just as with the whammy, of course, you CAN whammy WHILE you are playing – but it is more difficult to do, and the results might not always be consistent.  So if you tell yourself to use it in the same times you might use your whammy -and if you are fortunate, it will work well – although there is no guarantee.  And that’s where you can have surprising and dismaying failures – let’s say you’ve worked out a part where, you stop playing and then do a move on the pad, a really dramatic move like a drop or a pitch shift of some kind, and you do it say, for four bars in a row, once each bar….and on the fourth one, you are a tiny bit too late on the pad – and out comes….silence.

That can be embarrassing, and even disappointing, because maybe that fourth amazing Kaoss swoop – should have been the most flamboyant and remarkable of the four in a row – but instead, you play three good ones, and the fourth one – just isn’t meant to happen.

So you lose an entire perfect take, because you timed your Kaoss sound off by nanoseconds – and that resulted not in an error, but instead, in a fail – a silence when your audience would clearly be expecting some kind of fantastical Kaossilator effect – and that is annoying!  I have lost solos and takes because of one failed or less than spectacular Kaoss swoop.

The remedy for that, of course – is more practice, and, of course, the more you practice, the less likely these time-based mishaps will haunt your kaoss playing.  No one said this would be easy – but sometimes, it is pretty easy to make the pad sound good, on other occasions, not so much so – but if you work at it, you can play some truly extraordinary and more importantly, utterly unique chord patterns, notes, guitar solos and sound effects – I mean, with 100 sounds to choose from, you have an enormous palette of high quality Korg effects with which to modify your beautifully clean or very distorted Ibanez guitar – and that to me, is a winning combination.

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back to the beginning …again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

GLASSWORKS by Soniccouture

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

all tracks recorded 20141206 by dave stafford for pureambient records

all rights reserved © & ℗ 2014 / 2015

 

 

 

REV by Output

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

all tracks recorded 20141227 by dave stafford for pureambient records

all rights reserved © & ℗ 2014 / 2015

 

 

 THE IBANEZ RGKP6 KAOSSILATOR GUITAR

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

 

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

 

THE FUTURE AND BEYOND…

 

So – what is to come in 2015?

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

Peace And Love To All

 

D. 🙂

 

TC-11 – a touch-controlled synth for ipad that really delivers…

since acquiring a tablet device some time ago, I’ve tried a lot of ipad synths, and I am not ashamed to say I have a very large collection of them, that is still growing steadily – and probably always will! 🙂

they tend to fall into three broad classes:

• category one – those that work to emulate normal synthesizers, and therefore, their main method of producing notes and chords is a “virtual” keyboard;
• category two – those that use an alternate method to produce notes and chords – in a serious number of radical configurations, some more successful than others;
• category three – other less easily defined interfaces – oddball devices / devices that use truly unusual methods of triggering notes and chords;

so – in our first category (by far the most populated, from what I can tell) you have keyboard-based synths ranging from animoog to xenon, including classic emulations of moogs and korgs (such as the iMS-20 or the iPolysix), other standalones  such as addictive synth, alchemy, mini-synth pro or magellan, and second and third generation devices such as the amazing thor and the equally capable nave.

the second category is a mixed bag, with some good entrants, such as the strangely satisfying sound prism pro; then you have your cantors, your mugicians, and the like…they don’t have keys, but they have a single, straightforward way of producing notes and chords.  but that is also their drawback – they only have one screen pattern, regardless how innovative.

and then finally, the somewhat unclassifiable, such as the good dr. om, noisemusick, the 76 synth, or the moog filtatron – any number of oddballs “fit”, more or less, into this third category.

in category one, some stunning advances have been made, and in the case of a keyboard-based synth like the mighty thor – well, this synth is almost a textbook case for how to build a perfect synth in ios – it’s just a dream to play, it sounds great, it looks great, and the developers deserve a huge pat on the back for what they’ve done with thor – it’s really incredible.  if I want the best in a keyboard-based ios synth, I almost always turn to thor or nave, nave or thor, or let’s not forget the redoubtable iMini.

while I might go for one of those first, depending on the requirement, for another session, on another night – I might go for animoog (which has become quite the synth now that you can get the richard devine and other nice sound libraries for it, the metallic library is also fabulous) – so that’s a synth that has improved with the addition of new libraries, although of course, you do have to pay for them – or I might choose one of the korgs, or addictive synth, or cassini, or xenon or sunrizer.  or let us not forget the mighty n log pro – a fantastic first generation synth.

I’ve been less impressed with the progress of category two and three synths, that is, until I decided to take advantage of a rare price reduction on the TC-11 synth a few days ago – and suddenly, all these attempts to use the massive screen of the ipad in a unique and unusual, yet totally functional and musical way – well, it all starts to make sense now!  the designers / developers of TC-11 has done what the sound prisms and mugicians and the cantors could not quite do – they’ve created a synth with no keyboard, that is actually playable; that challenges the very need for a standard keyboard, and I found today, in making some test recordings, that it is entirely possible to play music with the TC-11 – despite the lack of a keyboard.

so the claim on the itunes store that the TC-11 synth is “the only fully programmable multi-touch synthesizer for the iPad” – would actually seem to be true! – I’ve certainly never encountered any other ios synth with the level of “under the hood” control that the TC-11 gives you.

the key is that there is no one solution, there isn’t one static screen (as there is with sound prism pro, mugician, cantor, and so on) instead, there is a different screen for each preset!  and each patch is totally configurable, from the oscillators to the filters to sequencers to the effects to determining how the movement of your fingers affects auto-panning, total behind-the-scenes control.

I actually bought this synth thinking “OK, I am a guitarist, and I have a lot to learn about synthesis still, despite playing and working with them for more than a few decades; I will buy this, and I will sit down at some far future point, many months from now, and try to teach myself how to program it…”  I expected it to be beyond me – and am pleasantly surprised to find that really, it’s not.

within seconds, I was playing, within minutes, music was emerging, even before I really understood what is going on with this remarkable synthesis engine, which is utterly and so beautifully configurable, you have access to everything under the hood, and I do mean everything – and this synth has just about everything you could ever, ever want – you are in control!

like any good ios synth, of course, it comes stocked with a healthy dose of presets; and from examining the way those are designed, I can begin to make my own connections and alterations and create fantastic patches of my own.  I actually didn’t expect presets, I thought I would have to build all of my own, but the developer has spent some serious time and effort to give us some absolutely great sounding presets right out of the box – which also work as building blocks for sounds of our own that we will design later…did I mention that the synth comes with a fantastic set of presets?

when you play through some of the presets, you will see that not one, but several different screen configurations are used, based on various different geometrical shapes – commonly, a circular interface; fret like interfaces; and various alternate versions of several basic screens, none of them featuring a key of any size or shape! nary a white key or black note in sight – and that, in the case of the TC-11, is a good thing.

despite the lack of a keyboard, there is a somehow-obvious logic (that I can’t describe in words) and when you play each patch, well, sometimes, it just hits you how you should use your fingers, you might make a fist to create a really pure chord, or stretch two notes far apart to increase that amazing thick flanger – but the design of even these presets is incredibly complex, and you can get amazing and very musical results by variously:

• making a swirling circle with one or two or three fingers
• putting all five or all ten fingers down in a semicircle
• making a fist in the centre of the screen, and spinning it slowly around
• trailing a single finger from one corner of the screen to another corner
• tapping out individual notes just as if you had a keyboard, but – you don’t
• moving the entire ipad in various directions to effect the sound as you hold fingers on the screen
• playing the screen like a typewriter
• any combination of the above
• using your imagination – just try it…and hear what it does to the sound !!!

…in other words, almost any gesture that you can imagine, made with finger, fingers, the fingers of two hands, the backs or sides of your hands…will produce a distinct result within the parameters of that patch, and some of the effects are extreme and wonderful – especially in the world of auto-panning, a lot of work has gone into the panner, not to mention some beautiful delays and flangers, too.

I imagine that you could put your forehead down on the screen, and something beautiful would come out of the TC-11. 🙂

so now – what I suddenly have here, is a superlative touch control interface synth that I can already play.  with some rehearsal, and some knowledge of how to get the best out of some of the best presets, and I should be able to play it live, anywhere, without issues.  so when I want to move from playing thor, and the world of the black and white, the tradition, playing those 88s in which ever mode I find them on whichever category one synth I am playing…

…to the world of total freedom, where one patch is all about circles and chords, another, about fretless dub bass with sonic qualities you will not believe, the next, an abstract plane of rectangles that fades into the top of the screen in an endless, fading curve, which defines your “playing field” for the next patch – it’s fantastic, a fantastical world of sound that is one of the most exciting I’ve heard, touched and seen, in a long time – the TC-11 is the real deal.

playing it is very, very liberating, the only experience I can compare it to, was when I first got my korg kaossilator, and I realised that after forty some years of making music with either frets, or keys – that I could make GOOD MUSIC without the benefit of keys or frets – well, it’s a similar feeling – and a wonderful, freeing one I can tell you.

I can make that comparison easily, because when I started out with the koass pad, I had no idea what would happen, and to my everlasting astonishment, with one day of practice – I could make music – without those pesky keys or frets or strings!

same thing with the TC-11 – within minutes, I could make music, even though the interface was completely alien to me, after a few minutes, I could begin to pull tunes out of it – which surprised the heck out of me, because with other category two and three synths, like sound prism – OK, you can get some nice chords and melodies out of sound prism – but you don’t get what you get with the TC-11 – beautiful, rich, synth music – with a really, truly unique playing surface, which is really, really fun to play – with a beautiful synthesis engine powering it, giving you the power to configure each patch to suit the way you want to move your fingers, to create the sounds you want to hear when you use that patch – total control, including the playing surface.

and, with the total configurability of the TC-11, even the most demanding, experienced synthesist should find the kind of control they crave for their patches – total control,  and playing without keys, finally got truly do-able.

so if you enjoy the challenge of playing the synthesizer without a keyboard, using a variety of approaches for note and chord generation, and you want a totally configurable synth with a powerful engine that you can tweak to your heart’s delight – then the TC-11 is the category two synth for you!  give it a try – I am finding it to be very, very addictive – it’s just a LOT of fun to play, and trying out different gestures to see what sound will result is a real hoot, and sometimes a new gesture will bring out an amazing sound out of a patch you thought you knew everything about – it’s full of surprises.

I took a bit of a risk in purchasing this, thinking it was far beyond me, but that risk has been rewarded a thousandfold, and what I have with the TC-11 is a fantastic tool for both live performance and recording – and a tool I know I will make a lot of use of in the years to come.  the TC-11 is a winner with me – a real winner.

you may want to give it a try – I am so, so glad that I decided to give it a go – because boy does it ever go! 🙂