iOS 11.0 – the application killer

I set out, in mid November, to try to fully understand and realise, just how many audio, sound, keyboard, synth or guitar / guitar effects applications I was going to lose permanently…if and when I finally updated to ios 11.0 on my devices.

The list started out OK, I basically started opening all of the music related apps on my most-used main music ipad, going page by page, app by app – and found a startling number with the ominous message attached “this application will not work in ios 11.0”….far more than I expected, and a lot more than are in the list.

So here are these very pathetic, and very, very incomplete lists – which I abandoned almost as soon as I started (and I am sure that others have compiled proper lists out there, if you really want to understand the full horror of this nightmarish scenario…) in the meantime, you can see some of what I was faced with, in terms of what I was about to lose:

 

Apps About To DIE in ios 11.0

(Very Much Partial!) List of iPhone apps that WILL DIE in the iOS 11 update – 20171115

ELectus
Fast Tune HT6
Jam Player
Key Chords Mini
MIDI Designer
Nano Studio
Reap DFX
Rhodes Piano
Swipe Guitar

(Very Much Partial!) List of iPad apps that WILL DIE in the iOS 11 update – 20171127

Audio Palette
Cantor
Electric Piano Synthesizer
Grantophone
Groove Maker – 3 versions (but not Groove Maker Free)
ImproVox
LH Rubbing
Mini Synth Pro
Mixtikl 5
Oblique Strategies (Black logo)
Organ+
Spacelab.
Synthmate (already dead)
Thereminator
Vio
Yamaha AR and DR Pad

Guitar Apps

Pearl Guitar
SHREDDER SYNTH
12 String HD

 

And I am not sure, but I believe that Drone FX, another one with an eternal album dedicated to it (music for apps:  drone fx) and an ambient music application of incredible capability and beauty – in a league with perhaps, Eno’s Scape and very, very few others – I love Drone FX, I truly do – strangely, when I went to open it – I didn’t get the warning message – but I believe it is one of the doomed apps anyway.  Only time will tell.

 

If Drone FX disappears – well, for one thing – there will be no more additions to the eternal album dedicated to works created with it – and I would then have to live in hope that the developer of Drone FX, decides to revive it or create a brand new version that I can purchase someday – and then, I could continue to create and upload new drones to the eternal album.  If the developer doesn’t – and Drone FX dies – so does my eternal album of the same name.  Dead – gone – stuck in time with the pieces I’ve done to date, with NO HOPE of the addition of additional tracks in future (the whole POINT of an eternal album, I might mention).  If it is gone, and doesn’t come back – then it’s a sad, sad day for lovers of the truly beautiful and the truly ambient – Drone FX is one of the finest apps I’ve ever used – mixing up to five ambient sound streams into a live, evolving ambient composition…it sounds absolutely amazing – but don’t take my word for it – please, have a listen.

 

So I stopped working on the lists, because I realised it was just futile,and I also realised there was not much I could do about it – because I will need to update to ios 11.0 just to keep my devices secure.  But – there are considerations, and in the case of musicians like myself, that work in many, many different apps all the time – I can and often do have, many, many partially finished, unfinished, nearly finished or completely finished songs, on many apps – at all times.

Now, intellectually, I understand why Apple are doing this – but my human, emotional reaction is one of unmitigated DISMAY.  I just don’t welcome the death of some of my favourite (and some, less so) applications, and one or two of the intended victims of this purge, upset me quite a bit – because I have a personal attachment to them, and a long history of music making with them, too.  This includes not only the examples I’ve given, but other groundbreaking or awesome musical applications, anything from Mini Synth Pro to Cantor – all gone.

I don’t think that Apple, representing Giant Faceless Corporations Everywhere, but trying to appear like a harmless old man shuffling down the street, understands the devastation that their little message “this application will go up in flames when you update to ios 11.0” can cause to the dedicated Application Musician.  Real dismay, real upset, a real sense of loss.

 

I am here to set the record straight, to let Apple know, using just one or two examples of applications that will cause me grief in more ways than one – that to me, these are the senseless murders of beautiful creative tools.  APPLE – are you listening??

Example 1:  Nanostudio

Nanostudio was one of the very first music applications I ever purchased, something like five or six years ago now – and I have spent many, many hours recording, composing, mixing, and uploading tracks made with it.  It even has its own dedicated “eternal album” on my bandcamp site, “music for apps: Nanostudio” which contains the bulk of the work achieved with this humble little app.

I love Nanostudio – so I was horrified to realise that it was one of the apps slated for the chop.  Not just because I love it – that’s almost beside the point, but because I have a number of finished but not mixed, or unfinished and not mixed, tracks sitting in Nanostudio, that I really MUST finish and upload before the dread 11.0 ios arrives.  If I don’t do that – I will lose them.

Why – well, because the makers of Nanostudio, have wisely decided to retire the app gracefully (heartbreaking!) and release Nanostudio 2 – which of course, I will have to pay for all over again – so they are saying goodbye to Nanostudio 1.  Now – maybe, maybe I will be REALLY fortunate, and I will be able to import projects from 1 into 2 and continue working on them in real time.

However – I seriously doubt that, and being somewhat pessimistic sometimes, I have to assume the worst – that there will be NO backwards compatibility – and that if I don’t complete, mix and master all the tracks IN Nanostudio 1 – they WILL be lost forever.

Now – take that nightmare scenario – and multiply it across any and all apps that you can record with, that are going to die in the update – and you can begin to see why it’s not just upsetting, it’s downright threatening to the creative work that I have completed, but not mixed, or is nearly complete – I now MUST finish those tracks, at all costs, PRIOR to updating.

Example 2:  Shredder Synth

This app – well, this one really broke my heart, it’s the single most amazing guitar app around, a working audio-to-midi guitar synth that I’ve been using for years, with which I have created a few pieces of extraordinary beauty, playing my guitar through an iPad.  I love Shredder Synth, it’s a very creative and beautiful app, and I don’t actually know what the developer is planning if anything – I HOPE for a Shredder Synth 2, but I am too afraid to look it up – so I am letting it be a mystery to me.

I had such a blast with this app when it first appeared, I could not BELIEVE (and still can’t really) that someone could design and build a GUITAR SYNTHESIZER that you could play on an iPad !! That is truly remarkable.  I only have one other such app, and it is not nearly as capable.  Of course – it’s going through unharmed, while the one I love – is being destroyed.

 

So – using the apps above (and below) as my working examples – these are living, breathing music creation tools that this update is MURDERING.  It’s KILLING them, and all of the beautiful musical dreams they have inspired – but, worst of all, are the unfinished pieces, trapped in a strange limbo of impending death, hoping that I will make the time to save them from destruction by at least mixing and mastering them and eventually uploading them to bandcamp.

 

But that is just one facet of this issue – there is another issue.  Most of the beauty of working in iOs music applications, is the fact that you can create variations, or completely different versions, of tracks – by making copies of an existing project, and then making changes, deletions or additions until you have created something completely different – and often these “spin-off” tracks are more interesting than the originals.  The problem is, though – that you HAVE to have the original app they were made in, so you can open them and work on them.

 

Over in Garage Band, which is not under threat (thank God) I often will create multiple versions of tracks in progress, to try out different ideas, or, to make sure there is a snapshot of the track in its current form, which I am totally happy with – but, I want the OPTION of trying other versions.

Again, not knowing what kind of backwards compatibility will exist, with any of these apps, throws real uncertainty into this scenario – I am assuming, that for every lost app, I will then LOSE the ability to work with the track in an editable form – all that will be left are the MIXES – and what if, for example, you suddenly hear in your head, a version of a track where a certain bit is REMOVED to create a space, and you can no longer achieve that because the song has been completely mixed down – and unless you can open the original file, and use the current version of the app to edit “old sessions” – you are out of luck.  Completely out of luck.

 

Example #3:  Mixtikl 5.0

A third example is Mixtikl.  I “grew up” using Mixtikl 5.0 – in which I created more than 60 unique compositions, some of which are quite extraordinary (please see “music for apps: mixtikl”) so I felt so sad to find out that Mixtikl 5 is one of the victims – while 6.0 and 7.0 (both of which I also own) will continue on.

Or at least, 7.0 will.  Now – 7.0 is fine as far as I can tell, but it won’t be like 5 – and I love 5.0 – it’s the bee’s knees.  Sure, I should like 6.0 and 7.0 more – but it’s just not necessarily so.

Now, I think in the case of Mixtikl, that there may be the ability to work on old sessions – so in 6.0, you can still load 5.0 projects and amend them – but I am not sure about that.  If that is so – great, that avoids the dread Nanostudio Scenario – but, it’s still not the same, because the tools within 5.0, gave the tracks made with 5.0 – a unique musical identity – and to my mind, if I used 6.0 to update and amend a basic track made in 5.0 – it would NOT be as good as if I had been ALLOWED to complete the track within 5.0.

 

Why not keep them ALL alive?  If you can keep six and seven going – why not five too?

To be honest, I’ve barely looked at six or seven, just enough to briefly assess what is going on, but I’ve not used either to make tracks yet.  I have not been in “applications mode” for a while, but I am planning on working more with applications again starting in December 2017, and moving on into 2018 – and I would have loved to have had Mixtikl 5.0 available to work with. (Sigh).

Oh well,

Again – intellectually, I understand the need to move forward, for both Apple, they need to move to a 64 bit architecture (I assume that is the main reason for 11.0 but I don’t actually know!) and for each affected developer, there will be one of three scenarios I should think:

• Upscale the existing app to work in ios 11.0 and give it out as a free update to users
• Retire the existing app, and replace it with a completely new version with the next numeral identifier incremented upwards – (note: variable on this scenario – the new version MAY, or MAY NOT, be backwards compatible with the old version) – I continue to assume “MAY NOT”.
• Do nothing, let the old app die – and replace it with nothing.

I think that for developers, those are the choices, and I doubt if any of them seems all that palatable.

It all means a mass of work for them (except for 3) which they can ill-afford to do, and I couldn’t actually blame someone for choosing number 3 above.

It’s my hope though, that most will choose 1) or 2), and there will be some kind of continued existence for these remarkable music-making applications – which mean the world to me – I love them all.

Is there a workaround?

Well – maybe.  I have a vague plan to update some devices (my main one has already been updated to ios 11.0 – luckily, I did not have anything in that particular implementation of Nanostudio except for a very forgettable drum track, so I exported that and then “pushed the button”.

However – on other devices, where there IS unfinished content in various states of development – I may choose, as my “workaround”, to NOT update them for many months (at some considerable risk) or at least, for long enough for me to mix, master and upload all of the unfinished tracks leaving me free to finally upgrade that device.

This is my vague plan, not sure how well it will farm out, but I have to try – I have to.  I want to save the work where I can.  Other, lesser apps may have had tracks that were mixed, but I have decided to just bite the bullet and essentially destroy the working masters in the apps – what choice is there, really?

You can save a mix.  You could even save the individual tracks and rebuild your session in a future version (with a lot of painstaking work, you could do that) but if you import those tracks into a brand new version of the app, and then do work on it in that “new” app – I can guarantee that the finished track WILL sound different, to how it would have if completed in the original, now “dead” application.

 

So I suppose there are some positives here, but I am struggling to really see them – mostly, it just feels rotten, and despite understanding, intellectually and technically, “why” this has to be done – emotionally, and as a musician who is fond of his musical creations (for those of us with no actual children, songs can often become like our children) I don’t like the thought of losing unmixed or incomplete pieces of music, so I will be spending some time, trying to SALVAGE what I can, for example, from each implementation of Nanostudio – I’ve got songs on my iPhone, I know – so I will need to get that sorted out ASAP so I can wipe it by installing ios 11.0.

I don’t mind change, when it’s change for the common good.  But in some ways, this change feels wrong, and I do wonder if the people at Apple ever think about the very human consequences of their actions – i.e. how will the users react to the idea of their favourite music apps being gone forever, and, to having works in progress suddenly be sentenced to death – and having to scramble to save them, so the inevitable update can finally go forward – and my instinct tells me that they have not given it a single thought – it’s just business as usual, who cares about a few “old” applications, anyway?

I have a feeling I am not alone in this, and that other musicians will have their own favourites, which they will be, like me, bemoaning the loss of due to the 11.0 update.

Not to mention, now having to scurry about, seeing what unfinished Nanostudio pieces are on which devices, and trying to finish songs that perhaps, you weren’t ready to finish – but now you HAVE TO, because a clock is ticking…you have no choice any more.

Speaking of that ticking clock, I had better get to assessing what work is sitting unfinished on which devices, find SOME way to complete  them, get them mixed and mastered and offloaded – and then kiss the working files goodbye, forever – forever, that is – forever.

 

 

It’s all in the name of progress – I promise.  It really is.

 

 

Until next time, then

 

Dave 🙂

 

 

 

 

studio diary 20170705

well somehow time has really gotten away from me, and I’ve not managed to write a blog for a couple of months now.  I have an excuse (of course):  I’ve been busy.  Mainly, working on the new pedalboards and guitar system (more on that shortly) but also, still trying to “keep my hand in” by working on music in the form of a very, very large collection of new tunes created in Garage Band.  I would venture to say that over the past few months, GB became a bit of an obsession, to the point where my iPhone overfloweth with Garage Band songs and drafts, sometimes, just one or two versions, sometimes, six or seven if a particular song needs a lot of detailed work.

the net result of that, is that actually, both my phone and my favourite tablet, are currently overflowing, and later today, I will be offloading completed tracks, and also, completing incomplete tracks and then offloading them, and then, making sure I have final mixes of all unpublished tracks…so that finally, I can master them and upload them. Normally, this would be a handful of tracks, but if I am not mistaken (and this number might not be exact) at the moment, I have no less than 16 NEW Garage Band tracks to sort out and add to my Garage Band Eternal Album on Bandcamp.

Sixteen new tracks!  Now – I have been working pretty exclusively in Garage Band over the past several months, and not working so much with real instruments, etc. in the studio – and that is because when I have had time to work in the studio – I have had to dedicate that to working on the guitar system and pedal boards (plural).  Those have now grown to four in total, and in fact, just yesterday, I worked out a brilliant new system, for accessing the different sounds – I am using a very simple device, a “pan pedal” which is made by Ernie Ball, to allow me to “move” between my main studio set up (which currently is comprised of two pedalboards, which I call “Pedalboard 1” and “Pedalboard 2” (imaginative names, I know) and a third board, which, surprisingly, is named “Pedalboard 3”.  So I can be playing one sound via PB1/PB2 (which are currently chained together) and then I can “switch” over to take a solo on PB3 where a completely different sound is waiting patiently for me.

Having the pan pedal, also means I can “blend” the two sounds – and hearing that, you can get some amazing “stacked” guitar tones – because for the first time, I am actually running two complete stereo set-ups, through two separate guitar systems – and, I have the output of PB1/PB2 going to the board direct, while the output of PB3, is miked with two Shure SM-57 instrument microphones, and those are going direct to the sound card. This then means when I record, I can record two tracks of the direct sound on PB1/PB2 and two tracks of the miked sound of PB3 on two OTHER tracks which means I will then be free to mix and match however I want – using as much (or as little) of each of the two completely different-sounding stereo feeds.

I haven’t yet mentioned the fourth pedalboard – it has an incredibly imaginative name, which you will probably never guess – Pedalboard 4.  But – it does have a distinct sub-title, unlike the other three – it’s the Guitar Synth board.  It’s quite simplistic, but it is a viable very different sound source, and it can be easily chained to PB3 or otherwise incorporated into the mix since it’s also tied directly to the mixer.  So the Guitar Synth library of sounds is also readily available now – directly out of the mixing board.

Also – with just a very quick change of cables – I can re-route the pan pedal to move between PB1/2, and PB4, or, back to PB3, or if I really wanted – I could have it pan between PB1/2 and PB3/4 chained together.  Talk about sounds…that would be a lot of sounds.  Right now, I am pretty happy with my PB1/PB2 combination, panning to the little PB3 board which is great for distorted soloing.

Getting all of that set up and working, and finalised (for the moment, of course, until I change my mind again, or, more likely, until I think of a “better way” to do things) has taken up the last several months’ time, meaning that I have not had time to work with real instruments in the real studio, except to test sounds and boards – and I’ve been doing a lot of that.  I have successfully re-programmed my Ground Control MIDI controller with 200 awesome sound combinations, and successfully done a sysex backup of that new set of sounds.  So that challenge was finally sorted out after quite a bit of trouble…I have, however, finally cracked MIDI Sysex – which for a long time, was a mystery to me – no more, now, I know how to backup, and restore, the entire contents of my Ground Control…it’s fairly easy to do, if you are patient.

I do have one other aspiration, which I actually got this idea from Vernon Reid (a great source of guitar ideas – he has helped Eventide with a lot of their distortion algorithms – so I offer up my thanks to Vernon wherever he is!), which is to stop doing ALL of my effects in series, and do them in parallel (to be honest, I also remember the late, great Allan Holdsworth, describing the same idea in a guitar workshop) – running effects in parallel.  Vernon has discovered a nice little DOD Resistance Mixer (the model AC-240, to be exact) which allows you to run four in to one out, and he uses a few of these in his live set-up (which I saw on YouTube, of course!).  It’s brilliant, and I do plan to look into that when time permits.  For the moment, out of necessity more than choice, I am doing it “old school” – in series.  Given that I am running a lot of hardware in series, it actually is all sounding very, very good now.

Note:  later on this year, we are going to see Living Colour play live in a Glasgow venue, so I can’t wait for that – one of my guitar heroes – Vernon Reid, I will finally get to see and hear Vernon play – I can’t wait!  A great and greatly under-appreciated band, Living Colour.  One of my personal favourites…it”s going to be amazing. I am very excited about this concert!!

Anyway – based on the work I’ve been doing, I have decided that once I finished processing the outstanding 15 or 16 Garage Band tracks (which I plan to begin work on this afternoon) that I will no longer spend as much time working in Garage Band, or, if I do, it will be probably for ambient projects, rather than my endless exploration of Apple Loops mixed with “real” content i.e. bass parts “played” by myself, and instead, go back to working on real music with real instruments – primarily, the electric guitar.

I think that my obsession with Garage Band has finally run its course, but, the result of it is an already very interesting catalogue of music, but, once I mix and master the next 16 tracks of completed Garage Band music – it will become apparent what a brilliant tool it has become for music creation.  It is pretty amazing what you can do with it, and I’ve been working more with matching tracks up pitch-wise and timing wise, so, matching a “real” bass part to an Apple loop, for example, or pitching different tracks to fit better with other tracks.

It’s amazing how well it all works, and, I have had an absolute blast creatively, it is endlessly fascinating to me what you can do with a stack of pre-made loops and a little bit of crafty bass playing.  I’ve found that to be key in most of the compositions I have worked on – I might create an entire piece out of Apple loops, but then, to humanise it, I play a “real” bass part – and that does it, that suddenly makes the track “pop” – it’s weird.

For a while, another technique I would use, would be to have the first two thirds of each piece, be entirely artificial; all made from loops, and then suddenly, during the last third or quarter of the piece, bring in a “real bass” part and the effect is really dramatic – it really makes the tracks sound so much better, even if there is already a synth bass or whatever – having that wonderful, plain, “Paul McCartney” bass there makes the tracks irresistible.

I have spent a ridiculous amount of time perfecting some of those bass parts – which are often played on the fly in one take, and then close-edited later to sharpen them up – taking a wild, on-the-fly live performance, and custom-fitting it to the existing song.  It’s a lot of work – but it’s so, so worth it, because it just brings the pieces full circle, and the artificiality that the loops create, gets seriously negated by the humanness of the Paul McCartney plays as “played” by yours truly.

So when you finally get to hear the next 16 Garage Band uploads from me – please listen especially to the bass guitars – because I have indeed, worked really hard on those bass parts – which you will find in most all (but not all) of my Garage Band work.

I should also mention the other “star” of the Garage Band tracks, which is the Korg IWorkstation synthesizer, with it’s two dozen different sets of presets – if you search long enough, you can always find the perfect sound, and since Garage Band’s Inter-App Audio is so well implemented, it’s easy to bring in a powerful synth like the “iWavestation”, and I use it extensively, on multiple tracks, on almost all of my Garage Band material.  So those are my two secret weapons, really:

1. Apple’s “Paul McCartney” bass, in “Note” mode, which I play like a real bass, then close edit later to “perfect” the bass part
2. Via Inter-App Audio, I call up the “Korg iWavestation” synthesizer which can provide an absolutely astonishing universe of sounds from any kind of synth sound; any kind of beautiful, spacious pad sound, to drums, basses, whistles, you name it, it’s in there – one of Korg‘s most amazing products, ever.  It has become my “go-to” synth whenever I am recording in an app that offers IIA connectivity – the first thing I do, is bring in an instance or ten or the iWavestation – I cannot recommend it highly enough, it’s a great synth and workstation, too – absolutely amazing and sounds great.

The third and uncredited star, is of course, those amazing Apple Loops – without them, none of this amazing catalogue of work would exist, and I can’t believe how this incredibly diverse set of music, where every piece is completely different, where each time, I try to find a new approach, a new sound, to make it utterly unique, and, importantly, different from the last piece I did – and if you are doing this across dozens of tracks, you end up with a diversity of music that is almost indefinable – I could literally, not describe the different genres, types, feelings, grooves, systems, concepts – I just can’t, the only way to describe it is to say, go to the Garage Band Eternal Album, and listen to it from start to finish – and then try to describe in words what you just heard.

And when I add in the next 16, which feature some of the most diverse and weirdest, most out-there compositions so far – that will make the above experiment even more interesting.  If I were to continue with this, the madness of being addicted to Garage Band might send me right over the edge – I don’t know.

I am going to take a break, I am extremely happy with both the catalogue “so far” (note, as of this point in time, 20170705, the Garage Band Eternal Album contains 24 unique tracks) or to date, as well as, I am very excited about the next 16 tracks – which will close out the catalogue in the short term (bringing the total number of tracks to about 40 – which in itself, is amazing), because I am (with some difficulty, I admit) going to slow down or stop producing so very much Garage Band material, and return to working on real songs with real guitars and keyboards, and I am going to give the amazing, easy to use, fun to use, Garage Band – a well-earned rest.  Because if I am honest, I have spent altogether too much time working on Garage Band songs, and not giving my other musical outlets a chance!  Of course – that wasn’t intentional, they weren’t ready – but, now they ARE ready – so – I am ready.

 

It’s also my hope, to return to making ambient music, and in particular, ambient music made with applications.  I still have unexplored areas that utilise ambient tools that I have had for many years, as well as some newer apps that I also have not spent enough time with – so I hope to rectify that situation, and in the process, hopefully, add some new ambient tracks to some of the catalogues / eternal albums up there on Bandcamp.

 

I am hoping I have reached, or nearly reached, the “cut-off” point, where the total obsession with Garage Band ends, and a new practice of music-making begins, which involves using real guitars and my new pedalboards and guitar systems plural.  That is the idea, anyway – and that is why I have also spent the last several months trying to get everything ready for this day – and after extensive testing, and spending a lot of time creating 200 amazing and beautiful guitar sounds in my Ground Control Pro MIDI Controller – finally, everything is ready, and I have now, at my fingertips, a huge and diverse array of guitar sounds that I can use in my new compositions!  It was a lot of work to get to this point, and I am beyond pleased with the way my guitar is sounding – and that is not something I’ve said very often in my life.

Of course, Komplete will still be there to play it’s part, since I don’t have the space for a physical drum kit, and, I’ve never had the opportunity / chance / space / time to learn how to play a real drum kit – I still depend on Komplete to help me set up my real guitars-based tracks – mostly, with the drum tracks.  I also, often, will use Komplete to do basses – and certainly, I use it for keyboards and synths, along with other softwares like the M-Tron Pro mellotron software.

When the urge takes me, I do sometimes play real bass instead of Komplete’s bass, but using Komplete is truly tempting because it does contain toolsets like Scarbee’s amazing Rickenbacker bass samples, and I just can’t resist having the sound of a Rickenbacker or a Fender Jazz bass or a Fender Precision on my tracks – I love those basses, and being able to “Play” them, even via a MIDI keyboard – is heaven.  My cheap throwaway bass cannot compete with those sampled basses for tone – it was so cheap, that I actually paid nothing for it – a good friend of mine, and an amazing musician, too, Michael Dawson, actually gifted that bass to me – which I have subsequently used on certain tracks, one of which was the tribute to the late John Wetton – “Wettonizer” is the one main track I remember using the “free” Washburn bass on.  It is actually, a lot of fun to play (it’s tiny, and I am not!), so maybe I will add in some “real basses” as well as using the amazing Rickenbacker and Fender samples available via Scarbee via Komplete.

In essence, in the studio, Komplete is my “band” – they come up with the bass and drum tracks, and if needed, keyboard and synth tracks – and then, I am left to play real guitars on top of those created tracks.  It’s as close as I can get to having a real band to play with at the moment – and again, I don’t have the space available for a real band anyway, so at the moment, the Komplete “band” does me more than proud – and you can hear exactly how well they do, by listening to a couple of my larger works, where they are heavily featured – in particular, on “the complete unknown” “planet obelisk” and “day seventeen” – these are examples of the full Komplete band – drums, bass, keyboards – supporting me, the man of many guitar parts :-).  It takes weeks or months to get the drums, basses and keys in place on tracks like these, and it’s not uncommon that three months might pass, before I get to play a single note on the guitar.

(Note: all of the tracks noted above, are all taken from the dave stafford “progressive rock” eternal album – please have a listen on Bandcamp).

 

Of course, it does take time, creating drum tracks, and bass tracks, and keyboards and synths – but it’s worth the time, because I want the best possible backdrop for guitars – and with Komplete, I get the best there is.  For example, depending on what kind of era I want to emulate, I tend to use the Abbey Road drum kits, and I can choose from a vintage 50s kit, a 1960s kit, a 70s kit, 80s, kit or “modern” kit – and each one has it’s own character and options, and they sound absolutely amazing – so I tend to mostly use those, although there are many, many other drum options within Komplete…Abbey Road drums are my current favourite, and they can be heard on a lot of my works.

I have also favoured the Scarbee Rickenbacker bass, using different pickups and presets, for a lot of my pieces, and I think Scarbee is an absolutely amazing company, the care with which they create their instruments is exquisite – the details are absolutely stunning.  I can get so many amazing tones out of that Rickenbacker bass, I could just about not ever use any other – except of course, when I do need a Fender bass for a deeper, more traditional sound – and then, I turn to Scarbee once again – and in many cases, they even offer an “amped” version – so you can have just the bass, or, the bass sampled through amps – it’s amazing – I am totally spoiled for choice.

After a lot of hard work, especially the programming of 200 custom preset guitar “sounds” on the Ground Control Pro, I am ready to play some serious guitar – but, serious guitar with the best tones possible.  I have really chosen a bit of a strange path, over the years, I have mostly stayed away from “guitar amps”, instead, using a plain power amp, and asking either software, or, my pedalboards, to be the main source of “tone”.  Now I am in a hybrid set up – I am using an amp, or actually, two amps – one is a solid state guitar amp, which has a line out to the mixer, and the other is my plain power amp, where I am miking my two 1X12 guitar cabs direct to the sound card.  The “tone”, however, is the tone of whatever guitar I am playing, plus, what sound colourations are available from the pedalboards – which of course, include the many-faceted Eventide H9s – each of which contains a massive library of absolutely astonishing, high-quality sounds.

When I think about what is possible with just the H9s (ignoring all other pedals for the moment) I kinda wish I had more than 200 slots in my MIDI pedal, but the truth is, by combining different H9 algorithms, the number of possible insanely good guitar sounds, is not just 200, or even 2000, it’s probably more like 200,000.  Seriously – and, Eventide keeps adding in new algorithms, too, which just increases, exponentially, the possibilities, to basically, limitless – the latest new algorithm, “Pitchfuzz”, contains some amazing new distorted and / or pitch-shifted sounds, which are out of this world, and, of course, I have incorporated the best of those into my 200 presets.  Using the H9s in multiples, makes it possible to create combinations of effects that are truly lush and incredible sounding – you have to hear them to believe them.  Exquisite combinations of beautiful, individual sounds…

I did spend a bit of extra time on one particular sound that I truly love, and I got this idea straight from Allan Holdsworth (may he rest in peace) – on the first of several occasions where I was privileged to see Allan play guitar, he had this amazing “swell” sound, where while the bass and drums played a kind of “drone”, he would “fade in” or “swell” these beautiful, clean chords, which were drenched in layers of delay and reverb – and I never forgot how beautiful that sounded live.

During the Bindlestiff years, I even tried to emulate that sound, by fading the sound in manually with a volume pedal, into a huge reverb “room” – close, but not quite.  But now – in the land of H9s – I can have auto-swell, at any time setting I want, and it’s brilliant.

I took this opportunity to create some special Dave Stafford auto-swell settings; starting with a short auto-swell (1900 milliseconds), then, medium (3100 ms) and finally, the “Allan Holdsworth” series of auto-swell (my “long” swell at 4000 ms or 4 seconds) – and I made several variations of that basic sound, running the swell through various different Eventide Space reverb sounds, and in one final example, through a beautiful Eventide delay and then into a beautiful Eventide Space sound.  The result is a mini-bank of amazing “swell” variations, and I am so glad I took the time to work out the programming for those sounds – taking care of details like that, gives me an edge, it gives me something unusual, not stock – but with my own personality – these 200 sounds are Dave Stafford Guitar Sounds, regardless of whether they are “stock” or “custom” – they are my choices and juxtapositions – and it’s so nice to have such an amazing library of “algorithm meets algorithm” possibilities.

This afternoon, then, will be dedicated to downloading (and, clearing off, thank god) the 16 new Garage Band pieces, trying to first get the final mixes just right, then, the mastering, and finally, probably starting in a few days’ time, uploading them – and once uploaded, the Garage Band Eternal Album will have reached about 40 unique Dave Stafford compositions done over a relatively short period of time – months – but, in terms of sound, and quality – it’s a huge, huge sound – and, a catalogue of which I am both very proud and very fond of – I have really enjoyed my “time of Garage Band”.

You should try it – drop everything else for a while, and just create with Garage Band – a piece every couple of days was usually my method, although some of the more complex pieces might then stretch out to a week or two until I was happy with the final version – and then, immediately, start another one – preferably, something that sounded COMPLETELY different to the piece just completed.

In a week or two at most, you will be able to hear all 40 tracks, and these should give you a good glimpse (at least) – if not an amazing view – of what this creative and innovative Apple tool – one of the oldest “computer-based” music making tools (now, mobilised on the iPhone and iPad, of course – in the Apple way) can do; and, with it’s latest updates, it has become one of the most fertile, stable, and unique grounds for growing musical ideas.

Anyone can have a go – drag some Apple loops into your song, and you are away – dream up any kind of music you like.  Just do loops if you don’t want to play, or don’t know how – you can still create, using the magical Apple loops, if you do play an instrument, then you have the opportunity to add in some keyboard based or drum or bass content of your own.  It’s easy to learn, and endlessly expandable, you can add many, many bars and create very long pieces, or create three minute pop masterpieces – it’s all there with Garage Band.

 

And now – to mix, download, master and start getting those new tracks uploaded – I can’t wait !!!

 

 

peace and love

 

dave 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Studio Diary – September 17, 2016

Aka   Eventide Heaven for ambient guitarists…

September 2016: mad flurrying to Aylesbury on the train for the Return Of The Crimson King (please see my previous three blogs – 3/9, 4/9, 5/9) …a day at the truly remarkable Bletchley Park, taking in an evening play at the Old Globe, and the guilty pleasure of a Warner Brothers tour of the Harry Potter sound stages…then, chaotic problems with trains over-packed with frustrated commuters, only, we were just trying to get home to Scotland from Aylesbury…

Then – finally, back home again, later than anticipated but intact – and trying to assess what already recorded music needed to be dealt with – and the answer, as always, was “quite a lot”.

A spur of the moment decision to attend the live Eight Days A Week screening at the Vue Theatre, a very enjoyable three hour plus evening of Beatles music – absolutely fab. The boys were playing their hearts out, George played some excellent solos, and I really enjoyed seeing “The Touring Years” – and as Giles Martin did the music, this meant that murky bits of Beatle history such as the now ancient-looking “Beatles At Shea Stadium” suddenly now rock hard, you can HEAR the music now and what Giles did here, and throughout the project, is nothing short of amazing. I am sure George M. is smiling, grinning actually, somewhere…

Meanwhile, I’ve been quietly working on a number of new pieces, or new pieces a number of I’ve worked quietly on meanwhile, I am not quite sure which.

Most of the past year and a half, has been filled with the large amount of work required to complete just three lengthy pieces of (progressive rock) work: “the complete unknown”, “planet obelisk” and more recently, “day seventeen”. 

These creations required a lot of painstaking work, and since they are all built from scratch as I went…it takes time. I think the first one took the longest, “the complete unknown” but by the time I got to “day seventeen” something had affected me, and it took me far, far too long to create this most difficult of pieces.  I struggled, which is unusual, normally, I just move along apace, it takes time, but I keep going.  But this time, I had to re-play guitar parts multiple times, some of the parts just wouldn’t reconcile…it took weeks, maybe months, longer than it should have, and I was so, so pleased when it was finally done!  A huge sigh of relief.

In the end, though, I managed to complete all three, and have since decided that I will be taking a break from progressive rock and very long songs, and will be revisiting my first love: the electric guitar.

To that end, I recently created one of a very few new “eternal albums” planned for this year: “electric guitars – an eternal album”. Which then meant that I could begin to work on shorter, live pieces and use some of the great new guitar tones I have available as well.  

Thus began a couple of different work streams, one looking back and the other, looking forward. It also meant that the relatively “new” eternal album has suddenly grown to about 50 tracks – or rather, it will once I upload the outputs of the past one week of work on mixing and mastering.

Beginning with the “looking back”; sometimes, in the middle of a project say, when I might be feeling frustrated by a lack of progress or frustrated by simply not knowing what sounds to make next in a piece in progress, I will “take a break” and just play some guitar for fun.  

June 15, 2016 was one such day, smack dab in the middle of the sessions for “planet obelisk”, one afternoon or evening, I sat down, plugged my guitar in, and played for some 60 minutes plus, doing an extraordinary, non-stop 26 takes in a row, using various sounds from the (then brand new) Eventide “SpaceTime” algorithm..

If you haven’t yet heard what SpaceTime can do – you should! It’s a remarkable amalgam of echo, delay, reverb, shimmer, reverse and I don’t know what else, and I had only just received the update when I decided to embark on a sort of “SpaceTime Jam 1” exploration of the sounds that the H9 pedal could make with this brand new algorithm..

Over the past few week, I reviewed and assessed these tracks, and a remarkable 25 of the 26 takes from the 20160615 session, were viable. So I decided I would do a sort of arbitrary “grouping” of these very live takes, into short song cycles of 3 or 4 takes per “song” (and in one case, just 2 takes making up the final song of the cycle).

So I ended up then, with eight quite interesting songs, mixed and mastered – and as I was working on them I thought…I could add some drums to these, and then release them, explaining that they were sort of made up of the same musical DNA as “planet obelisk” is. In some cases, in many cases in fact, I used drums leftover from the “planet obelisk” sessions.

In other cases, I would create new bespoke drum parts, or adapt existing parts to fit the improvised electric guitars. Adding the drum parts in ended up taking quite a bit of time, off and on, but when all eight tracks were complete, I was glad I’d made the effort. I also did one bespoke tabla part, which utilised Native Instruments “India” and that was a blast – I played one take, live, along with the three guitar tracks, including not playing in between the takes…and coming in at the right time. I managed to hit it all on take one, and “playing” the tabla is an absolute blast – I love this instrument (India).

The guitar takes are all improvised, on the spot, and in almost every case, the natural spaces between them, as it happened, have been preserved – because the session was rapid-fire, and the 26 pieces were played in surprisingly quick succession, with very little time between takes – in some cases just a few seconds, long enough for me to change the patch, and then dive into the unknown again.

Every take used the same basic preamp sound, which is my >Frippy patch from the new Sculpt algorithm – that’s the constant. A plate reverb was also used, and I then changed SpaceTime patches on one device as I played. Being able to use the H9 Control application on my tablet really was a life saver, I could change the patches manually with almost no effort, so you do get to hear a broad, broad variety of the SpaceTime algorithm’s many amazing patches.

More than the sum of songs, because in some cases, i would change the patch mid-song, sometimes multiple times within one song. Also, where I was able and it felt appropriate, I also used expression pedal on some of the patches, which then gives you deep and wild control over many variable aspects of any SpaceTime patch you are using.

The expression pedal implementation in the Eventide H9 is remarkable right out of the box, and every one of the patches features a range of possible expression pedal values, carefully chosen for the best effect – for rotary sounds, obviously, it’s the speed that the pedal controls, but the range of expressions possible with the H9 is simply staggering – what a brilliantly designed device.

I was mesmerised by the beautiful sounds that SpaceTime gave me, and I play a fairly joyous hour of happy and heavy lead and rhythm guitar. And that hour of music, took me 65 minutes to do – so no faffing about between the takes – I really just got on with it, trialling dozens of SpaceTime patches and taking many, many expression pedal excursions too. A wonderful session that I really enjoyed, which does contain quite a lot of “planet obelisk” DNA – without really sounding anything like it.

The 25 viable tracks then, were edited into these eight new “songs”; which vary in length from perhaps, five and a half minutes long, to over ten minutes in length in one instance. The total running time actually becoming about 55 minutes of music in total, mostly because of the fact that take one was unusable, it was a great take, but the levels were far too hot, and it suffered from multiple wounds of digital distortion, and nothing I could do would have saved it – a sad loss, but I was very happy that I turned everything DOWN after that and captured nice clean versions of the remaining 25 tracks.

The resulting eight tracks are:

building the obelisk

all good children go to heaven

beautiful metallic noise

the occasional chord (to remind us)

it’s echo soup in here

the heavens unfold

since the dawn of time

reaching catharsis (bridge)

A possible ninth track may be uploaded:

the road to obelisk – 55 minute track compiled from the above listed eight tracks – this recreates the continuous nature of the original session – if successful, it will be added to the upload list as well.

It is my hope to upload the above eight (or nine) tracks over the coming week if all goes well. Along with the appropriate outputs from the forward-looking project, which came from a session that I had somewhat arbitrarily named “brief session” – and it was, if compared to the “planet obelisk” 25 takes – the new “brief session” contained just 10 takes, although take 7 was an extended take with something like six individual parts on it.

The first six takes are very, very ambient, indeed, and are really a highlight of the session – the remaining four, used distorted guitars instead of clean, and although interesting, they did not come out nearly as well as the first six, which used clean guitars and more Eventide H9 wizardry.

I am very, very excited about these six tracks, which represent the bulk of the session time-wise, because for the first time in my memory, I was able to play ambient guitar, without the use of either a looper or of an ebow (energy bow) – I can now create very, very ambient guitar, just using the stock algorithms from the Eventide H9.

That is an incredibly freeing experience – yes, you do still have to play the guitar, but, the beautiful sounds that come out, whether produced by SpaceTime, Resonator, or MultiTap (such as “UltraTap”….heavenly patch) it matters not – there is not just one ambient sound available, but in fact, droves of them, and I can see myself playing a lot of clean, careful guitar into an H9 (or two) that can translate that input directly into the kind of soundscape I’ve always wished I could produce.

My best method of creating that atmosphere has always previously been, running an ebow guitar into a looper and then into a good reverb unit. And of course, I will always, always still do that, because I love to do it – but, the H9 gives me an alternative to that, where I don’t need to rely on the ebow or the looper (however, I have retained and have used the ebow on several of the eight tracks above), because that made them sound even better, so ebow + SpaceTime is a winning combination for me. Ambient guitar made…a little bit easier than it used to be.

For the six tracks below however, I did not use the ebow – I didn’t need to, the pure ambient output from the H9 was all I needed.  What a brilliant device!

The resulting six tracks are:

exogenesis

exoskeletal

exospheric

exothermal

exocyclic

exonumia

I cannot express how wonderful it was to be able to create these pieces, and I sat there in awe of the sound design that has gone into the Eventide algorithms – especially those that I would call “totally ambient” – and there are many, many of these sprinkled here and there within the algorithms.

I see this then, this set of six songs, to be very future oriented, very forward-looking, and I will very probably be exploring much, much more along these lines, in hopefully some longer-form improvs, just what I can achieve for ambient guitar, without resorting to ebow + looper + good reverb – although, that is still a great formula for ambient music!

I feel like a man who has been given the actual sound of heaven, and by gosh, I am going to use that sound – those sounds – as often as I can, because they are truly remarkable. Even one of the oldest of Eventide’s algorithms, “Space” – their do-all reverb magic box – is an incredible tool, and contains reverbs that can also act as ambient guitar creators – it’s all in there, in that little white box…

“exogenesis” was the starting point for me, I could just close my eyes and hear those ethereal sounds, and realising that I was just playing clean guitar notes, slowly, carefully – and this river or ocean of beautiful, ethereal, reverberant sound just flowed all around me – as it should do. I could really get used to this – I really could.

The six super ambient tracks from the “exo” series will also be uploaded in the near future – as soon as possible.  

So, I haven’t been absent at all – I’ve been busy!

love peace and order

🙂  dave