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 🙂

 

 

 

 

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studio diary 20150214

I had thought that “fair play”, my new “korg gadget” piece, was finished, I did make the odd adjustment here and there, but I thought it had reached its final form, until I sat down to listen to it a few days ago.

 

the listening session was fine, I am happy enough with the song, “fair play”, as it stands – but, I felt like I wanted to hear more of the “middle section”, which, as it happens, is a key change up to C major, there were only a few bars, so I copied those three bars, inserted them before the existing three bars, and then set about modifying just the Chicago bass / synth (which I am mainly using as a lead synth, not a bass – the hammond has taken the role of the bass for the majority of this track) part so that I had, effectively, three “new” lead lines, and the third, was sort of a very monotonous, circular sort of riff, so I instructed the device to play that bar twice, which gave us this:

Chicago 1 Modified Chicago 4 X 1
Chicago 2 Modified Chicago 5 X 1
Chicago 3 Modified Chicago 6 X 2
Chicago 4 Originally Chicago 1 X 1
Chicago 5 Originally Chicago 2 X 1
Chicago 6 Originally Chicago 3 X 1

so, wonderfully, that means that the “middle eight”, which is a whole tone above the basic song (which appears to be in F or Bb, I am not exactly sure!) is…seven measures long ! I love stuff like that – it makes it odd – but musically, you would probably never notice, it just sounds like a synth “solo”, which is in a different key to the bulk of the song – and it brings musical relief because it jumps up a whole tone – it’s very exciting, it builds tension beautifully…and hopefully, no one is counting bars, and the fact that my middle eight is not, in fact, a middle eight, but a middle seven – will go unnoticed by everyone except; everyone who just read this paragraph. 🙂

we have then, a whole piece of music, at last, that begins (and continues for most of the song, to be honest) in the staggered, drum-driven rhythmic world of gentle giant, moves to some beautiful acoustic v electric piano sections, with a solid and wonderful hammond bass underpinning everything – it then, finally mutates to a seven measure long “middle eight” – (perhaps, I have invented the world’s first “middle seven” – who knows? I’d love to take that credit) and then, via a reprise of the opening segment, moves onto a spectacular ending featuring a four-measure version of the “middle seven” – why not?
So at no point does the “middle eight” ever equal eight bars, it’s seven in the middle of the song (and four when I re-use it at the end) – and I think that is just fine.

 

“fair play” to me, is a proof positive that the newly-enhanced “korg gadget”, which to be fair, they only added a few instruments, but, the instruments they added are so awesome, that it makes creation with them easy, in fact, with the 15 original synths, you could do a lot, already, but having the core electronic keyboards – well, one is acoustic, I suppose, so having one acoustic and the rest of the core electronic keyboards, to hand – gives us CONTROL…it means you can build songs using those more familiar, more comforting keyboards, and then bring in the 15 original korg synths – the “gadget” originals – to add colour and shade and light and dark…

 

I basically started this piece out with organ, acoustic piano, drums and electric piano – and that IS the core of the song, and all of those are instruments that are made available in “korg gadget” from “korg module” – which, right away, shows us the real value of “korg gadget” – and that’s just the start – what will it be like when you can access ANY instrument via “korg module”, in high quality samples??

I vote for mellotron, sitar, and anything else they fancy sampling…go for it. I want to see “korg module” become the premier sample based app on ios – unless native instruments jumps in – then, I would have to wait and see what THEY come up with 🙂

I was eager to try “korg gadget” now that it’s been “upgraded” – simply by the existence of “korg module”, that gives “korg gadget” a whole new face, and transforms it into a player of high quality instrument samples – directly parallel (in its basic function, anyway) to kontakt in komplete – we have our world class sample player now – the ubiquitous “korg gadget”.
this is a really clever idea from korg (they seem to be having a lot of really good ideas lately – witness the Ibanez RGKP6 guitar and bass, which feature a korg kaoss pad 2S built right into the guitar’s body – a fantastic idea whose time has finally come – a very clever idea). korg makes really interesting synths and other products, too, and the more I get into their stuff, the more I enjoy it – they have been around the block, they obviously listen to their customers, and, their stuff is well built and long lasting – korg is a name that says “quality” to me.

 

they seem too, to be able to compete in the world of ios, in the app world, at the same level and with the same commitment to quality that they show in the virtual world, the bricks and mortar world. I like that about a company, and I think that they are handling themselves well in both arenas – not something a lot of companies can probably boast about.

 

I have listened again now, to the playback of “fair play”, and I am now fairly certain, that it is indeed, complete. I hope I will not change my mind about that again! It’s ended up just about four minutes in length, which for this type of piece, is ideal. I hope to master it and upload it as soon as possible….(update: now done! “fair play” can be found here).

 

and then…well, things happen 🙂

I was and am totally happy with the completed track, “fair play”…but, while I was doing some final tweaks to levels and stereo placement, it struck me that I’d really like to do two things: I already have finished and mastered “fair play” as it stands, in it’s complete form, but also, I’d like to take it from the point it is at, and do some further work on it, make it an alternate version of itself – so I did a “save as” of the completed “gadget” track, and named it “fair play – advanced version” – and immediately began work on transforming the by-now familiar “fair play” towards new musical areas, I have removed some of the sparser parts, I’ve added more drums, there is far less “space” in this new version, it just rocks straight through rather than having dynamic sections as the original does, and so on.

I’ve also been doing some serious “randomisation” – this is a process that I tend to get into in “korg gadget” especially – where I will lift one melodic pattern, and randomly copy it over a different pattern in a different instrument, so, organ bass part becomes electric piano riff, or acoustic piano now doubles with electric, synth solo becomes hammond solo, and so on…taking existing themes, melodies, and solos and moving them to different places within the composition – it’s huge fun.

I might also decide to just remove four bars of music here, and then, copy two others into their place, remove five bars here, and not replace them, add some of my favourite bars from the first half into the second half, and so on – endless possibility, and it’s very quick, very easy, to edit in korg gadget, too – add extra snare drum hits, add extra bass drum hits, change single hits into double hits – it can all be done so, so quickly – and probably, within the first fifteen minutes of editing, I had radically altered the basic DNA of “fair play” into a completely oddball variation of itself – “fair play – advanced version” – which I plan to work on for a few weeks, to give it roughly as much gestation time as the original got – and then master and upload it as well.

I am very, very glad that korg has jumped into the area of high quality samples for ios, with the beautiful “korg module” app, and I am extremely glad that by chance, they made those samples available to the “korg gadget” app – that, prompted me to re-visit “korg gadget”, and create a song that utilised some of those amazing samples – and I find that it makes a HUGE difference to me, to have hammond organ, acoustic piano, and electric piano as three of the most important samples in my new piece(s) “fair play” and “fair play – advanced version” – which might get re-titled “unfair play” or “fair work” or some such – I don’t know.  or…it might just stay as “advanced version” – this remains to be seen.

I have a lot of work to get on with now, I’ve recently recorded a lot of guitar sessions which should hopefully yield some new videos (down the road a piece, probably, but, maybe some interesting takes in this last batch of videos…) as well as a lot of audio mixing to do before I even think about the video side of things – this is always the challenge for me – I am now able to record a lot of material very quickly, but with only myself to handle post-processing, it takes me weeks, or in some cases, years, or in some case, never, to create video content – or sometimes, even process the audio and create master audio mixes.

the backlog is not getting any smaller at the moment, which is actually OK, and what I’ve finally decided is that I will abandon utterly my original intention of trying to present my video work chronologically, I will master and upload what videos I feel are the most important, what videos are the most interesting or unusual, and then, as time permits, I will go back and continue work on the “old” video backlog.  controlling this, will be playlists.  I’ve already created video playlists, by date, for many of my legacy video sessions so I would suggest that whenever you visit the pureambientHD channel or indeed, any of my video channels on youtube, that you always go to the Playlists section, rather than the Uploads – because as of 2015, uploads will no longer be chronological, but completely random – so you will find instead, that in the Playlists section, you will find “dated” dave stafford live music video session in chronological order – and this then frees me to pick and choose between the now, and the historical-that-haven’t-yet-been-processed – so I am recommending that you stick to the chronology as imposed by my “dated” session Playlists – or else, complete and utter confusion may be the main result 🙂  as for me – well, I am chronically chronologically challenged anyway – and confusion, well, it might be my epitaph 🙂   but playlists will get you the unconfused view of dave stafford live music videos.

I really enjoy creating these music videos, and trying out new instruments and techniques, I have never gone in for the “here is my demo of the roland gr-55 guitar synth” and then sit there, and play you ten seconds of each of it’s voices – instead, when I acquired the synth – I just started making videos with it, I just started using it, so you can learn along with me – and I hope that this can, will and might inspire others to pick up some of these interesting instruments, and have a go yourselves – I reckon that it’s easier to learn about something just by trying it – so, for my first ever video, “st. alia of the knife”, I selected the “oboe” voice, set up a nice reverb, ran an existing reverse loop – and did a live oboe solo / improv on video.  from there – I just kept working with the synth, until I eventually used it to create my first classical composition, my “concerto no. 1 in em for oboe and guitar” and also, I’ve continued to use it on improvs, as well as part of multi-track recordings such as “this is a test”, as well as the title track, from the “gone native” album, and in fact, I used it on several of the tracks on “gone native” – I really think that the roland gr-55 guitar synth is a great instrument – and I find that all of us who use the device can compare notes and share what we’ve learned via video, audio, and other modes of communication – indeed, why not?

but I digress, this is mainly a report of the now split-into-two “fair play” – and I hope you enjoy the original version while I continue to develop the second version, “fair play – advanced version” 🙂

 

until then I remain

your faithful servant

yours truly, etc.

 

 

dave

pureambient HQ – 20150214

 

 

 

 

studio diary 20150202

it’s a new year, and since during the past two months, I have completed not one but two major works, first, “concerto no. 3 in D major for piano & strings”, and more recently “concerto no. 4 in F major for harpsichord & strings”, I thought it was high time I turn to some of the other very neglected, and very excellent apps – I am not ashamed to admit that I have allowed Notion to dominate my musical life in the area of applications, for pretty much all of 2014 – and, that’s fine, because out of that, I’ve created two very interesting bodies of work: “music for apps: notion – an eternal album” and “classical – an eternal album” – and the quantity and quality of the pieces in those two albums meets with my wholehearted approval – I think these are strong works using an excellent application, and I know that over the years, both Notion the iPad app and Notion for the PC, will be my go-to apps for classical composition, and for alternative works involving a lot of orchestral instrumentation.

that is for the future though, right now, in the here and now, I have embarked on a new composition, entitled (at the moment, anyway) “fair play” – and this is my first piece created (this year) using the most excellent “korg gadget” application, which, in a sense, is like a new app – because of the presence now of “korg module”, which, interestingly, directly interacts with korg gadget” – in practical terms, this means that I now have available high quality grand piano and high quality electric piano samples available within gadget, via module – which is brilliant, don’t get me wrong, the original 15 synths supplied with the original gadget were and are, they remain, very functional and some of them, like the beautiful ambient synth, are both unique and very pleasing to the ear – and, very useful when composing for 15 synths, too!

so, I had downloaded “korg module” several weeks ago, and I had played through most of the extremely high quality samples available, and, really, as someone observed, that if you have this, and “neo-soul keys” (which I have but haven’t used much so far), and maybe, what is it, “sample tank” (which I don’t have) – that is “all you need” for sample-based jamming fun. I agree, but at the same time, I would actually welcome any number of products similar to “korg module” – basically, world-class samples, available for use on ios. Not just the ordinary ones, either, sure, those are great to have, but I’d welcome a sort of “komplete” for ios, obviously, it couldn’t have the many GB of content that “komplete” does, but, in a very scaled down version, with only the best and most essential samples – it would, it will, be brilliant !! come on native instruments – build for ios! teach korg how to do it right lol !  🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

another example of this type of thinking, in new applications, is “ruckers 1628” a high quality harpsichord sample that I was very happy to obtain, so there are more and more of these apps out there based on quality samples – quite a lot of them already, really.

 

knowing that I now had the high quality keyboard samples available to me within “korg gadget” from “korg module”, I decided to create a new piece of music in honour of that. however, the song itself, had a strange genesis; when I first got “korg module”, I went through whatever process there was, and I was testing within “korg gadget”, to verify that I could indeed access and record with, say, the electric piano sample from “korg module”. I opened up a new, empty file, and randomly stabbed at the keyboard, just to make a noise, and recorded two bars of “music” – and there I left it. “fair play” for the first week or so of its existence, consisted of a sort of vaguely-gentle-giant-sounding electric and acoustic piano “riff” – so that was how it started. and when I say vaguely…I mean…vaguely :-). the riff was just about nothing, just a feeling…

 

a few weeks went by, and finally, I found some time, and I went in to create this new song – and I decided that its intro, at least, and possibly, part of the actual song, would be based on these random events that I had stabbed carelessly into the app weeks ago – so, I made a couple of very minor changes, and away I went. within a day or two, I had a lovely, 17 bar tune, with two decent themes, one of them based on that accidental intro.

 

The accidental intro worked beautifully, in fact, I ended up using it as one of my main themes, with various modifications, and it sounds as if it were planned into the song – when it absolutely was not – a complete and utter accident.

 

In the next incarnation, now at 34 bars, a third theme was added, which included some lovely parts done with the electric piano v. salzburg, one of the existing solo synths – a nice lead sound – I had them trading melodies back and forth, and it was really a lot of fun. I did also use acoustic grand piano, but not in a solo capacity, more in a supporting role, it’s time will come, but immediately, I was really enjoying the fantastic and very realistic electric piano sound – and I even took the opportunity, in the next incarnation of the song, to have a couple of bars of it “solo”, playing a lovely circular once-again-a-bit-like-gentle-giant riff – and it sounds great, when the drums stop, and then, when they start up again, it just rocks – really nice effect, having JUST that beautifully-sampled electric piano playing on its own out there for a moment, into a nice bit of reverb – fantastic!

 

the final session to date, added yet another 17 measures, bringing the total up to the current 51 bars, and this was really just further development of the existing themes, some different juxtaposing of electric piano v. salzburg riffs, and other refinements and improvements. when I do a play back now, I can’t believe this started with just two stunted, inaccurate bars of non-music riffage – it’s really sounding quite, quite good already.

 

It’s odd, when I read back the above description, it sounds like a really long song, so I should probably say, that the entire piece right now, in its unfinished state, waiting for a resolution to bar 51, which is just hanging in space, in the middle of a song, clocks in at a modest 2:15 !!! so I am thinking that I am perhaps, half way through the piece, compositionally speaking – I can’t see it being a lot more than four or five minutes – maybe, but it depends what happens next. I like the activity of the piece, I love that there are a number of themes and changes that really grab the listener’s attention; but I am far from finished with the piece.

 

so now I am just in a period of reflection – what will happen next? – add more instruments? carry on with additional content?, more refinements?, repetitions of themes? – or, make it short, end it sooner? – I have no idea (!?!?!?!!!!!) – what will happen next.

 

 

I will say, though, I have REALLY enjoyed working with “korg gadget” this time, moreso than ever before, and that is simply because the app has grown up, instead of those 15 synths of varying usefulness, there is now a core of truly great sounding important, core, sampled instruments, with the 15 synths providing a bit of variety and spice to those central samples. It’s amazing how going from 15 to 17 or 18 synths (depending on what you get in terms of in-app purchases) makes all the difference, but, it really does.

 

the weak spot: users of “korg gadget” will already know what I am going to say: drums. yes, there is a choice of drum machines, and some pretty decent and some pretty interesting choices of instruments within those drum machines. but…they all sound a bit wimpy, when I mentally compare them say to the drum samples in “nanostudio”” – well, then, I long for the powerful sounding drum kits of “nanostudio”. ok, sure, for a lot of modern styles (which I have almost no interest in) such as I don’t really know, dance music or whatever today’s version of “hip-hop” is) – the drum machines provided with “gadget” are probably sufficient.

 

I can (almost) make them sound like rock drums if I really work at it, but that’s really my only “gripe” about “gadget” – and I would have said so from the very beginning. I should be a bit clearer here: the drum synths are not BAD, they are just not in the Dave Stafford style, and they don’t have a lot of big, loud, rock and roll drums like some other devices do have – “nanostudio among them.

 

I think in time, with a few more high-powered, well-sampled sounds inserted, that “korg gadget” will be top of the heap, at least in terms of a sort of “studio” where you have a lot of good instruments from which to create whole songs. It’s already one of the top (MIDI) studios, along with “nanostudio and a few others – there are a lot of these, and some are better than others – but “korg gadget” is one of the good ones – and, it’s made better now through its marriage to “korg module”, which gives you more powerful sampled keyboards – which has taken a great app and pushed it towards the fantastic – well done to korg for that.

 

It still surprises me sometimes, after being away in the wilderness for many months using mostly “Notion” for everything, occasionally dabbling with other apps just to learn more about them, that I can return to an app like “korg gadget” or “nanostudio” after many, many months of not working with it – and (much to my surprise!) I can set up and build a new song as if I’d been using the app every day for a year! I think apps are like this – once you learn them, you don’t forget – unless it’s really, really tricky, in which case, you will need a written procedure ANYWAY – so for “korg gadget” or for “nanostudio” – I just sit down, and I build a drum track, and then some bass, and then some synths…and then I’ve got a song. they are equally easy to use, and I actually really love working with both of them.
there are others, like, “synergy” – I’ve done exactly one piece in “synergy”, which came out ok, but I’ve never “finished” it; same for “isequence” – one song, never finished; same for “cubasis” – one song or part of a song, never finished; same for “impc” – well, that’s a sampler, really, but again, I have started a song in it – and it’s an interesting process; never finished – but not nearly as easy to use and not as easy to get going in, as “korg gadget” or “nanostudio” are – those are the two most user-friendly, almost without a doubt.

 

then there is “auria”, which is audio only, and works well enough, it took me a long time to really get going with “auria”, and actually, it was through de-constructing that amazing james mccartney song that I learned about editing in “auria”, and it’s extremely useful for throwing tracks together quickly, just to see if they “work” together, or for editing audio which isn’t easy to do elsewhere on the iPad, I am glad I have “auria”, although my tendency is to master tracks in their original app, and then take them to the DAW on the PC for proper mastering, EQ and reverb – I have a LOT of tools for those processes on the iPad, but I just don’t trust them, and it’s just a bit tricky getting around on the iPad – I can do it SO fast, on the PC, that usually, my goal is, get the piece done, mixed as well as possible, and then, get it exported – get it OFF the iPad ASAP – and then take it to the DAW for all processing.

 

when I have time on my hands (almost never) I promise myself, that I will spend time working more in “auria”, using my various stereo placement and mastering tools, using my beautiful reverb units (and, I cannot fault the quality EFFECTS available on the iPad – I have a lot of those, and I do use those on tracks), in Audiobus, when I want a beautiful atmosphere for a track – I will use ipad reverb units – the best of which, strangely is probably AUFX: Space.

 

but it really depends, most songs, I tend to get to a certain point, where the playing is all done, and the mix is OK, and all I want to do is get it off the ipad! And hence to the PC for some PROPER processing! Master it, reverb it, etc. using the superior PC tools available in SONAR – I have an audio mastering template that is fantastic, where I can add appropriate amounts of compression, EQ and reverb – at will, whenever I finish a track – I tend to finish it here.

 

so somehow, I am not able to commit fully to the idea of making music FULLY on the ipad – I am happy enough to create in the apps, and mix in the apps, and even sometimes, use reverb to treat whole tracks – but then, it ends, and I want it off the device and onto the PC, so I can master and eq and compress and reverb to my heart’s content, the old-fashioned way.

 

I am completely set up for making music on the ipad, the WHOLE process, so I could carry on, add EQ as necessary, work on stereo placement, add reverb, etc. – and create FINISHED tracks that would not require a trip through the DAW mastering stage. I will try to start doing this in 2015, to see if I can “let go” of this desire to do things half and half – I want to create ipad music on the ipad, from start to finish, and PC music on the PC, from start to finish, and maybe even some pieces that combine the best of both worlds – who knows???

 

So that is what I will attempt to do, for one of my many resolutions I suppose…see if I can resist the temptation to do it the “easy way”, in SONAR, and instead, develop high quality, quick way of mimicking the PC process on the ipad – thousands of musicians are doing that every day, and I am avoiding it! I guess I am more old-fashioned than I had realised…

 

However – I am sure I can do this, there are already a few tracks of mine that were created without the PC process, so I know it’s possible. I can do it – it just takes time 🙂 :-). The challenge will be to create a mastering process that is just as quick and easy as it is on the PC (and, more importantly – just as good) – and I think that now, in 2015, that is actually possible. There are some nice mastering tools available now, for the iPad, and I am sure with time, they will just get better and better.

 

As time goes on, too, there seems to be more and more a “merging of church and state” – i.e. PC and ios ideas and processes are often duplicated (for example, “Notion for Ipad” and “Notion 5 for PC”) ok, that’s a bad example, because they are not duplicated, but, they are essentially the same, it’s just that the iPad version is less capable. So I believe that often, the processes on PC and ios are becoming more similar, although ios has lagged, and because of Apple’s desire to be a bit of a CONTROL FREAK, for example, Apple makes the “what SHOULD be the simple act of moving a WAV file”, into a ridiculous production – a little thing called “iTunes file sharing”. It took me a long, long time to accept that this is actually the way I have to move files in most cases (thank you, “nanostudio” and a few others, for your Nanosync or equivalent…bliss) but now, I am used to it, so I just hook up, attached to iTunes, download all my files, and distribute them to the correct folders on the PC for processing.

 

So Apple wants to control you, it wants to make things difficult to accomplish, and that is annoying and that is partially why everything takes so much longer on ios than it does on PC – it’s just SLOW!!! Annoying! Too slow…PC is a million times faster, for every process. But – the gap is closing, slowly.
Audiobus, was a huge gap-closer, a great workaround, and I love it, especially now the turbo-charged version where you can have multiple chains – wow – that is amazing! I love you Audiobus, – long may you reign.

 

OK, I have bent your collective ears long enough, I really just wanted to say that I am very happy to be working in “korg gadget” again, and I am looking forward to working in a LOT of different applications this year, to try and keep up the good work – please wish me luck – I really want to add many, many tracks to all of the existing eternal albums, while at the same time, I’d like to ADD as many NEW eternal albums as is humanly possible.

 

So we move from the notion year, to the everything else year – that’s my plan, and I hope I can stick to it. Am I missing “Notion”, am I craving lines and notes on the staff?

 

You bet I am.

 

But I will resist, and I will work in many, many other apps – without a doubt – and I will present the results somewhere on a Dave Stafford eternal album; existing or new – that’s my 2015.

 

Oh – and, I will also be doing guitar work, and guitar songs, and guitar improvs – including some new things which I will talk about next time around…can’t wait till then !!!

 

peace love apps and guitars

 

dave

🙂 🙂

mobile universe of sound (the ios world)

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

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

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

HARDWARE SYNTHS

or, how it all started…

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

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

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

LEARNING SYNTHESIS, ARPEGGIATORS & SEQUENCING

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

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

THE ARRIVAL

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

FIRST GENERATION SYNTHS & THE FAIRLIGHT

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

MOOGS & KORGS – GREAT EMULATIONS

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

AND ARTURIA TOO…

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

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

TOUCH CONTROL – THE REMARKABLE TC-11 SYNTH

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

SECOND GENERATION AND MISCELLANEOUS SYNTHS:

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

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

GENERATIVE DEVICES

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

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

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

THE LAND OF AMBIENT

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

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

PHYSICS-BASED SYNTHS

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

GRID-BASED SYNTHS

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

MICROTONAL GRID SYNTHS

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

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

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

VOCAL SYNTHS

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

RECORDING STUDIOS – AUDIO, MIDI, HYBRID

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

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

STANDALONE ARPEGGIATORS

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

DIY SAMPLE PLAYERS – NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY

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

PIANOS, ELECTRIC PIANOS, ORGANS, MELLOTRONS

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

DRUMS & BASS – AND PERCUSSION, TOO

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

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

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

ODDS AND SODS SYNTHS

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

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

IN CONCLUSION…

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

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

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

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

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

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

happy synth-ing!

the shortest blog in history?

we all know that the world of ipad applications is an incredibly rich and varied one, and for artists and musicians, it’s a world full of amazing tools with which to create music.

over the past year or two, I’ve watched as a myriad of incredible applications appeared, beautifully designed synthesizers that rival their hardware counterparts, and allow us to create incredibly beautiful music – all without leaving the comfort of our ipad‘s screen.

audio and MIDI studios abound; an early favourite of mine is still nanostudio, and I continue to compose in nanostudio to this day (two new nanostudio songs are ready to be mixed as we speak…).  then there are the Moog and Korg apps, fiercely competitive those two; each coming out with ever better and ever more beautifully designed synths – and some of the earliest entrants are still some of the best: I give you Moog‘s Animoog and Korg‘s iMS-20, two of the very best on ios.

sometimes though, something comes along that really throws you for a loop. audiobus was one such; giving musicians the power to have a real workflow for music apps: input, effects, output all in one easy to use interface. sheer brilliance of design; economical, functional – and audiobus made life so much easier for us all!

I’ve watched my ever-growing app farm with some trepidation, I am amazed at how many wonderful synthesizers I’ve collected (my next blog will actually be about that topic) and also at the studios: auria, nanostudio, cubasis, isynpoly, isequence, tabletop and so on – wonderful tools, and it’s so much fun to make music on the ipad because of the brilliant design, and excellent sound quality, of all of these apps.

today though, I was caught off guard – I got up, a typical Saturday morning, and for some reason, I opened up the app store, and looked to see if there were any new music apps…and there it was:

Korg Gadget.

Get it.  I did.  OK, yes, it’s pricey, but I look at it this way:

1) You get a fabulous new studio for music creation

2) It has fifteen, count them, fifteen amazing synthesizers:  drum machine, bass synth, synths for harmony and lead – polyphonic and monophonic synths…

3) So if you think of it that way – you are getting FIFTEEN premium Korg synths…for 20 quid!

4) There is no number 4

5) Get it !!

Without consulting the help, I managed to load up some synths, create a scene, record a drum track, a bass track, and synth tracks – and then, went back and manually edited them in piano roll view (the default view) until I was happy with the track.  Without the manual or any help at all – I created a fairly complex track.

Gadget is quite intuitive, it does has one odd attribute: it’s set up in Portrait mode – which, after using it for an hour, I really quite like – but others may find the lack of a Landscape view disappointing – I don’t, really.

But the synths….sound GOOD.  And the studio itself is very sharp, really nice graphics, extremely good controls on the synths.  I was in shock, I was just sitting there on a Saturday, when an absolutely amazing and very unique korg studio dropped in my lap – and, fifteen fantastic sounding synthesizers, too – it’s worth it for those alone!  and – one of the synths has some M1 patches in it, which is very cool – the M1 was my “dream synth” for years, which I never could afford – but I love the sound of it.

I really felt a shock when I opened up that app store page and found Korg Gadget sitting at the number one spot in music; (of course) and all I can say now is, it’s a fantastic app, it sounds great, it’s very, very easy to use, and you can create good sounding music without reading the manual – ticks all the boxes in my book!  And I’d have to say to Moog: Korg has just upped the game here, and you need to look sharp!

Kidding aside, with Gadget, Korg have raised the bar very, very high, and the other manufacturers are going to have to work hard to beat Gadget…but I actually hope that they do, a Moog studio as good as Korg’s Gadget would be amazing.

Still raining, still dreaming…

Korg Gadget.

One hour with it was all I needed to convince me.  It’s well worth the money, it sounds really, really good.

But don’t take my word for it, just go and read the reviews: after two days, it’s already at four and a half stars.

What an awesome way to start the day !

Enjoy.

d 🙂

the “eternal album” – and, sequencing with the fairlight pro app

with the recent release of my first “eternal album”, “music for apps: fairlight pro” I’m now moving much more publicly into the realms of app-based music, so far, I’ve kept most of my application-based music just in the world of you tube videos, with musical activities such as the purescapes channel, which is a you tube channel dedicated to music I’ve created with “scape” – the generative ambient music application designed by brian eno and peter chilvers… I’ve also done the odd live improv involving applications on some of my other you tube channels such as “applicationHD” and “synthesizerHD” but this is my first actual full “album” of application-based music.

I should take a moment and explain the “eternal album” concept; this is an idea I’ve been working on for about one year, I’ve mapped out a series of these albums to be made using existing and future music recorded with applications – and application-based music is like science fiction to me; I still can’t really believe that it exists, and that for the last year and a half, I’ve been able to create music (and, a lot of music at that) on a tablet; using a myriad of music-making applications – to create music of  incredibly varied styles, from super ambient (scape, mixtikl, bloom) to frenetic, heavy, synth music (nanostudio, imini, animoog, addictive synth, thor, nave, n log pro, magellan, sunrizer, and so on…) to almost anything in between (launchkey, loopyHD, cantor, mugician, sound prism pro, beatwave, and so on…) – five years ago, I would not have thought this possible.  however, a practical problem has emerged, that the “eternal album” solves – how to present a large number of finished compositions (far too many to assemble into ordinary “albums”) in a way that makes sense for both artist and listener.  the “eternal album” solves this new world, application-based problem.

so, after 41 years of making “normal” albums – i.e., for release first on cassette, then on compact disc, and eventually, online (a mixture of downloads and compact discs), but this…this is a new “kind” of album, one that recognises that the album concept has become slightly outmoded.  of course,  I will still continue to make normal “albums”, where I collect songs together (such as “gone native”, my recent collection of active music, or ambient albums such as “sky full of stars” and “the haunting” – and many others, too) – this will continue, and it will revolve mostly around music made with electric guitar, or guitar synthesizer – I still feel in particular that for ambient music, the normal “album” full of songs is the best presentation method.  there are many reasons for that, the foremost of which is that by selecting a group of songs, and ordering them in a particular way, the artist can control the “mood” of the ambient album experience – so I think a defined set of tracks, carefully sequenced, is very often a good idea, and in ambient music, it’s particularly effective.

but…not so for music made with applications.  since to me, with my old-fashioned brain, this is futuristic music, science fiction music, music that I never dreamed could be made, mixed and published on a tablet device, in vast quantities (example – in just about one year of creating “scapes” using eno and chilvers remarkable application, I’ve created in excess of 1000 scapes) – and, the majority of them are of a quality I would absolutely publish – so – I feel that this music, in these quantities and at this level of quality (there is really no such thing, for example, as a “bad scape”) – this music deserves a new kind of album – the “eternal album”.

the concept is simple:

1) there is no finite number of tracks – tracks are added as they become available.  we begin with existing, completed tracks, and add new tracks as they are created and completed

2) there is no ending to the album itself – it’s end is dictated either by the disappearance of bandcamp, or by the disappearance of myself from the planet (both will happen eventually – this is inevitable)

3) customers can download any number of tracks and construct their own “versions” of the album, from a single track to hundreds of tracks if available, or anywhere in between

4) customers can either use the suggested running order or create their own, four seconds of silence has been added to the end of each track for this specific purpose

5) there is no album price, as the “album” is whatever the customers want it to be, from one track to hundreds of tracks (if available) in any order they please

6) a word about track pricing, because of the nature of the “eternal album”, we have set the track prices at a special low level to compensate for the higher track count

so what this means for me as an artist, is what I need to do to present the work for a particular application, is to create a normal bandcamp album, in this first case, the album is called “music for apps: fairlight pro” (in fact, all of these albums will have similar titles, such as “music for apps: scape” and “music for apps: nanostudio” and so on) and I then upload the existing, finished master tracks that I’ve created with that application.  that might be just a handful of tracks, it might be many, but once uploaded, I would then add to the album at any point in time over the next 30 or 40 years,  many, many more completed tracks – as they become available.

this might mean that if I have a very prolific period of composition next year, that I might add 20 or 30 new tracks during 2014, to the existing fairlight pro tracks that are already part of the album.  or, if I do not have the urge (or more likely, the time, due to other commitments) to work with the fairlight, it might be that no tracks are added until 2017, when I finally find the time to record new fairlight sequences…the input is totally flexible.  note: if customers indicate a demand for more tracks of a certain type, i.e. they ask for more fairlight sequences, or more scapes, I will do everything within my power (and my schedule) to provide same.

so any “eternal album” can have any number of tracks at any time, more tracks can be added at any time, or, they might remain static for many months or years depending on what apps I am currently recording with.  it’s the ultimate in flexibility for me, the artist, but it’s also the ultimate in flexibility for the customer for these reasons:

1) the customer can listen to all of the available tracks before making any purchase, and decide if they like none, one, a few, many, or all of the tracks

2) the customer can download only the tracks they like, ignoring those tracks that do not appeal to their “ear”

3) for completists, they can own every available track and get the full musical impact of perhaps a decade or two decades’ worth of the artist’s work in that particular format – perhaps, a hundred or more songs recorded over ten or twenty years – something that most artists do not necessarily make available to their listening public (but I wish to as much as is humanly possible)

4) having many “eternal albums” to listen to and choose between, gives the customer a very good idea indeed “which” of the applications that he or she likes the sound of, so some folk, for example, who are more used to my ambient work, will favour the scape and mixtikl “eternal albums” while others who perhaps like the louder, more active side of dave stafford, will opt for the “eternal albums” created with the fairlight, nanostudio, or other active/synth tools.  it provides a much greater range of choice, which appeals to me.

it’s really all about choice, and to me, having a range of albums, sorted by application, with a comprehensive catalogue of tracks created within each application available to listen to at no charge and no risk, gives customers the chance to listen, compare, and decide which applications they feel drawn to or that resonate with them, and, which applications do not appeal to them at all.  it might be that one customer only likes the sound of scape and mixtikl, and does not enjoy the fairlight pro or nanostudio albums.  or, the complete opposite, or any mix of styles/apps – but the beauty is, as with all albums presented in bandcamp, you can listen, compare and contrast before making any purchase decision.

since I have just been through a complete review of every single track I’ve ever produced using the fairlight pro (peter vogel cmi) sequencer, I wanted to take some time to talk about the joys and frustrations, the highs and lows of creating music with the fairlight pro app in particular, since it’s the subject of the first dave stafford “eternal album” and is our featured application today.

whether you call it by it’s current official name, “peter vogel cmi”, or if you are a bit lazy like me, and you call it “the fairlight” or “fairlight pro” – this is one of the most unique applications that appeared in the early days of the ipad tablet revolution.  despite it’s high ticket price, it was one of the very first applications I purchased, because I wanted that sample library – the one that kate bush and peter gabriel used in the early eighties, I wanted those sounds!

I had a bit of a learning curve, I am first a guitarist, second, a pianist, and lastly, a synthesist – and despite playing both guitar and keyboards, sequencing was a skill that I had really never got the hang of…until the fairlight pro application appeared in the itunes store.  it took me a few weeks to really understand and take advantage of what the app can do, but once I got the hang of it, my skill set just skyrocketed, and within a few months, I found that I was creating pieces of music that really surprised me in their complexity for one thing, but at the same time, it was the sound of the pieces…and that takes us right back to those incredible samples.

in uploading the tracks to the album, I’ve taken the unusual step of defining in full, in the attendant metadata, a detailed description of each piece, it’s duration, tempo and the instruments used in the creation of each track, so for each track that is part of the album, there is a list of the eight instruments used to create it.  the reason I’ve included this is because it’s so, so difficult, when listening to a completed, mixed, stereo sequence, to tell what the component parts are.

but even knowing what “went into” the piece is sometimes not enough, sometimes it’s more about unusual choices made with note durations, or adjusting the tempo to make a certain melody sound a certain way, a lot of the fairlight “magic” is in the combination of instruments used – and sometimes, strange things happened, and instruments that sound one way juxtaposed with three other instruments, suddenly change their sonic character when paired with say, two other different samples.

there is something about the fairlight that you can’t explain in words, and at that point, you can only listen.  the samples are just classic, and I love the quantity and diversity on offer, but even more important, the insanely strange combinations of instruments you can achieve by mixing and matching across categories, and if you think about it, each fairlight “instrument” consists of (a maximum of) eight instruments, so just how many combinations of eight can be made from the many hundreds of samples there are??

what amazes me, too, is that I can create a new instrument, and it always, always sounds completely different from any other instrument I’ve ever created!  no matter how many I create, each instrument seems to create an utterly unique sound, which you can’t replicate easily using other applications.

yes, you could physically collect those eight instruments (although it might be difficult, for example, to get ahold of “jetpasso1” – mosts musicians do not have a jet in their studio) and record with them, but it would be utterly impractical in a lot of cases, again, I don’t have a digeridoo in my studio, but with the fairlight – well, I do.

listening back to the sequences I created beginning in february 2012, and then moving up to the present moment, it’s a journey of pure discovery, a joyful, joyful journey, with a few moments of frustration, a few paths that I shouldn’t have gone down, but mostly, it’s just one of the most unique, interesting and entertaining bodies of work I’ve ever had the pleasure of creating and being the composer of.  I’ve created silly sequences, sequences composed of bird song, classical music, pop music, heavy synth music, rock music, progressive rock (quite a bit of prog in there), it’s unbelievable the variation of tracks I’ve created over the last year and a half – I even have one sequence that accidentally sounds a bit like an obscure XTC b-side…

I think that this unassuming little app, with it’s amazing set of classic 1980s samples, has a remarkable power – it allows you to play eight very diverse instruments together, in an impromptu “band” that you then arrange measure by measure…creating completely unique pieces of music with these one of a kind “instruments”.  I love spending time creating with it, and I hope that you’ll enjoy some of the fruits of this labour, it’s always an amazing feeling when you push “play” for the first time, and a remarkable and very unique piece of music plays back…which was built literally, note by note.

so – I think it’s appropriate that the music made with the fairlight pro application is the subject of  my first “eternal album”, it seems right, it’s both a classic synth from the 80s but also, one of the first high quality sequencer/samplers to be made available for the ipad and iphone, so therefore, it’s part of our past and our present and our future.  I love working with this tool, and I recommend it highly to anyone who plays keyboards, that wants to learn how to sequence – it’s how I got started 🙂   note by beautiful note !

the future of generative music – beyond bloom, scape and mixtikl…

as one of our readers recently pointed out, the ios is a fantastic place for generative music to blossom and grow.  already, we have a surprisingly high number of generative music applications available, and I am sure that list will grow over the next couple of years.

I’ve expressed before that I am a late arriver onto the generative music scene, but as with every new music that I discover, I tend to jump in head first, and continue to dive in as time goes on.  my purescapes channel on youtube is one example of this ambition – to eventually, over a number of years, to publish all 1100 scapes (and counting) so that the world can hear what an amazing, ever-changing, ever-surprising generative application brian eno and peter chilvers‘ “scape” is.  I could sit here and wax profound for paragraph after paragraph, trying to describe what a beautiful, generative, ambient sound “scape” has, but I realised early on, that the ONLY way to describe “scape“, would be to simply capture and publish every scape I’ve ever created.

and across those 1100 plus scapes, there is such a huge variance in sound, composition, approach, ambience, melody, dissonance, mood, atmosphere – and I allowed scape to “grow” organically, so I started out with the minimum tools, and allowed the app to “reveal” new sounds as I went along, so for many, many months, every few days, I would “get” another new element, which I would then experiment with, on it’s own, in multiples, with existing elements, through different “mood filters” – until the next new sound arrived.

so the scapes in the 300 range, will have double or more the elements of the first 30, and those in the 700 range, more elements still, until now, in the 1000s, where I have all of the elements and backgrounds exposed and at my disposal.  I had deliberately set scape aside for a few weeks, until last night, when I picked it up, and within 10 minutes, another 30 scapes are added to the ever-growing catalogue, and – the sound of a completed scape, with carefully chosen backgrounds and elements, based on my now many-months of experience – still does not fail to UTTERLY delight me – the sound of scape is mesmerising, I can and do listen to scapes for hours; creating them is a joy, and my only regret is that I cannot produce the next 1090 videos fast enough – I would give anything to be able to push a button and upload all 1100 scapes to youtube, just so the whole world can HEAR this music – it’s like I’ve made 60 new eno albums over the past several months – which in an odd sense, I have, since I am merely assembling, re-assembling, breaking down and building up, a lot of sounds either found or created by eno, and chilvers – so of course, that does make most scapes sound a LOT like…the music of brian eno.

and that, my friends, is a good thing.  I would go out on a limb and say that in some regards, out of some hundred or so music apps I now have (that in itself is gobsmackingly astonishing!), some of them absolutely incredible – that scape is possibly, my single favourite music application, and the one I probably get the most enjoyment out of.  but – I tell you what REALLY excites me – the idea that within a few years, I will have uploaded hopefully at least the first few hundred scapes, so that you can hear this amazing music – I feel like I have this secret cache of eno music, that I really want everyone to hear – so – hence, the purescapes video page – slow going I am afraid, but in time, I hope it will become a point of reference for anyone interested in acquiring and using scape – which I unreservedly encourage and recommend most highly.  if you are even thinking about downloading scape – I urge you – do not hesitate, just do it – you will have hours of fun, and, you will create your own library of “new” eno compositions – to enjoy now and for always.

and scape, of course, led me to it’s predecessor, mixtikl – an application that I am just now becoming familiar with.  and what an application it is!  massive sound libraries of the most astonishing weird and wonderful sounds; create your own sounds (I am dreaming of recording many, many samples of long, long ebow guitar notes, and then assembling them into strange mixtikl creations…) – and then load them either by design, or by using the random generator, into wonderful pieces of generative music.

mixtikl, despite sharing a founding  father figure in mr. brian eno, is the polar opposite of scape in terms of elements being exposed and available.  scape is entirely hidden, the rules are hidden, control of volume, eq, effects is primitive or non-existent, but in mixtikl – well, you have almost TOO much control of what is going on.  every cell, every sound, every effect, can be adjusted, tweaked, and modified to your heart’s content.  while scape creates it’s pieces using a very tightly limited set of elements, mixtikl allows any sound imaginable – and yet, both apps, create wonderful, ambient, generative music.

it’s true, that in mixtikl, you can easily create very noisy, very active pieces, but I am not particularly attracted to that – although I have used it to create a great quasi-ambient drum-driven backing track for ebow guitar – I tend to steer mixtikl down the ambient path, because, to my mind, that is what it does the best.  I am sure active music creators might disagree, and I am sure it’s extremely capable of creating great active music – but that’s just not my interest.  but what mixtikl can achieve in the ambient realm – well, I am just getting started, and so far, the pieces I’ve created do not disappoint – you do have to tweak things quite a bit to get it to sound truly ambient, but it’s worth the effort.

in scape, it’s almost too easy to make a good sounding piece – the samples, and the rules, just automatically add up to a great sounding, eno-sounding, eno-soundalike – almost every time.  very rarely, I produce a scape that is not quite eno-like, but – that is rare indeed.  in mixtikl, it takes much, much longer to assemble and tweak a piece of ambient generative music, but it’s always worthwhile, because once you do get things sounding good (usually, by removing elements and turning elements volume DOWN…) – it sounds REALLY good.

I feel as if I’ve been short-changing bloom this entire time, but for some reason, I always felt like bloom was a prototype for scape (which in many ways, it was), and while bloom can make some really lovely sounds, it just doesn’t seem like an instrument to me – it plays back some really beautiful eno-esque sounds, but when scape came along, with it’s infinitely more varied sound palette, plus the ability to capture scapes very, very quickly as finished pieces of generative music…it kinda knocked poor old bloom off the charts.  which is a shame, because bloom is a really lovely app, well worth spending time with.

I tended to just create a track in bloom, and listen to it, rather than capture it – so even though I’ve created many, many bloom tracks – I’ve never recorded one – which is a real shame, as some of them were downright beautiful.  I think though that eno went back to the drawing board, and came up with scape – which is a million times more capable – I just like the sound of scape a little bit more than I like the sound of bloom.

even though I am singularly unqualified to say, since I really have only had experience with a few of the many, many generative music creation tools that have come along over the past decade or so, I really believe that the next few years may be a real game-changer for generative music.  if I just take the toolsets of  the two generative music applications that I am personally most familiar with, scape and mixtikl, and I think about the power and choice on offer to create beautiful, or dissonant, generative music, it’s difficult to imagine where things might go next.

the change from bloom to scape was like a quantam leap, and the strange, secret complexity of scape’s hidden “rules” is most impressive.  since it’s been expressed out loud that folk would like a version of scape where they are able to, a) load in their own samples and b) create their own not-hidden “rules”…to which chilvers basically replied that it was very unlikely that eno and chilvers would produce such a thing, simply down to the way the programming had to be done, it’s not readily adaptable to either the use of user-created samples OR users being permitted to set and manipulate “the rules”…so knowing that eno and chilvers won’t do it, it’s my hope that some other enterprising application writer will.

the future: imagine then, if you will, a sort of open-source app that is like scape in design, but with one staggeringly different difference – the samples are created entirely by the user; the rules are written and set by the user, the coloured filters/effects are set by the users – like scape with a mixtikl-like level of control.  that would really be something, and I would imagine too, that the visualisation, regardless if it mirrored the scape “screen” or the mixtikl “visualisation” screen – probably this new super-generative app would allow for either approach – and all the VISUAL content would be user-generated.

this would mean, for example, instead of assembling a scape using the “shapes” the eno and chilvers created and related to a musical event, that multi-media artist/musicians could create entirely unique, and utterly personal, multi-media artworks, where each musical background, and each musical element, relates to a user-created music sample, and all aspects, from the visual design of the artwork, to the relating of the artworks’ elements to sound events, to the final EQ, mixing and filtering – the application of effects – all completely controlled by the user.

sort of an amalgam of mixtikl, bloom and scape, but with complete user control.  maybe no one will build it, but, because somebody asked chilvers the question, and he said no, scape isn’t going that way – then maybe, just maybe someone will pick up the fallen standard and carry it forward to a brave new world of generative music that right now, I can barely imagine, but then, three years ago, I would never have dreamed I would have 100 amazing sound creation applications on a tiny tablet from which I can produce world-class music of not just ambient, but of any time, that I would be able to play my guitar through virtual amps, cabinets and effects in an application such as ampkit+, and that audiobus would revolutionise recording of synths and other sound sources in the ios.

so the whole thing is impossible, so a future with super-generative applications that are far, far, beyond koan, mixtikl (and all it’s “-tikl” brethren, too many to mention!), bloom and scape – is totally and entirely possible – and I will actually be surprised if it DOESN’T happen.

I am continually astonished by what happens in the ios – someone conceives and then invents audiobus – and suddenly, every music app creator worth it’s salt, immediately adds audiobus capability to their apps (the latest entrant, addictive synth – that make me so, so happy, because that is one of my top three favourite ipad synthesizers of all time!) meaning that a huge number of sound producing apps can now be used together under audiobus – which, if you have something like auria or cubasis installed, makes professional multi-track recording a reality, not just for synths and MIDI devices, but also for guitar apps – that is astonishing.  I would never have dreamed, a year ago, that something as clever as audiobus would free us to make recording on the iPad very simple indeed.

a few weeks ago, there were at most, a dozen apps on the input side of audiobus.  today – there are 25, and more being added every day. some music apps have taken audiobus support so seriously, that they have configured their sound-generating app to work in all three audiobus positions – input, effects, output.  that’s dedication!

so when I see growth like that, I can readily imagine that generative music apps might go through similar startling adaptations, and great leaps forward, audiobus-style, which might eventually make the very, very complex and capable mixtikl and scape, seem simple by comparison.  I do not know – I could be wrong – but the ipad’s ios is clearly the place where developers come up with startling, innovative concepts like audiobus, not to mention several miraculously life-like and sound-perfect recreations of classic hardware synthesizers, or incredibly high quality amplifier, speaker, microphone, and effects modelling in a product like ampkit+ or stomp box (my absolute two favourite ipad guitar apps – hands down).

to me, all of that is magic, magic of a high order – and what it’s done for me, since I never had the money to invest in a lot of music hardware, I never could afford a moog of any kind, or a korg, and I absolutely would never have had the money to buy a hardware fairlight! – yet now, I “own” all of those instruments in the incredibly low cost application version – and more importantly, I can now have the experience of creating music with those tools that were always beyond my reach – because I can afford to pay twenty quid for a fairlight, but twenty grand – no 🙂

I think that music making on the ios has already exceeded our collective expectations, but I shiver to think what the future might hold, not just for amazing, super-generative music apps, but for all music-making, not wanting to particularly paraphrase the carpenters here, but I have no choice: we’ve clearly, only just begun.

I can’t wait, I am so, so looking forward to the next five, ten years of music development on the ios.  the sky is the limit!

🙂

generative music applications – mixtikl and scape

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

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

ABOUT KOAN

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

ABOUT MIXTIKL

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

one virtual album per application.

MORE ABOUT MIXTIKL

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

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

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

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

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

ABOUT SCAPE

…and then there was scape.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

so, the totality of your control over scape:

three actions; change backgrounds, elements, filters.

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

 

ABOUT MIXTIKL & SCAPE

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

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

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

CONCLUSION

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

another minute adjusting final volume levels.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

choices to the seventeenth !

or, to the thirty-fourth…

 

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

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

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

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

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

I am so, so pleased !  🙂

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

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

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

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

or so it seems to me. 🙂

the music of the moment

sometimes…I do feel frustrated when my life gets in the way, and I can’t find time to sit down and write about music, or, worse still, play music, mix music, work on music – but that’s what happens, there are these little obstacles and problems that pop up, and you have to deal with them, there is no option…but I do get annoyed when I fall behind on any (annoying) or all (really annoying) aspects of music.

unfortunately, I did lose a little bit of momentum with the recent, extensive work on the release of the physical CD of “gone native”, but I am getting caught up now, and this weekend should be the final session, when I can (hopefully) send the audio master away to the pressing plant next Monday and then just wait.  I am very much looking forward to it, I had no idea that the artwork would be so tricky and so time consuming, but I am happy in a way, because I’ve learned what’s expected (in 2012 terms) for physical CD manufacture – and that is useful for the future!

I can’t believe it’s been ten years already since I originally stopped manufacturing CDs, and went “all download”, but I feel strongly that “gone native” is an extremely important work for me, being the culmination of my craft as it were, a representation of my guitar playing based on the last 41 years or so of recording, performing and just playing the guitar 🙂 – so, a proper CD release was absolutely on the cards all along.

however…some progress at creating music, both past and present, is also being made; last weekend, I did find time to return to mixing audio and preparing video for the first time in about three weeks, and I think I managed to mix five or six tracks in total, including a couple from the “synthraga sessions” (there are four more of those waiting for me to mix this weekend, and, so much more…) – but again, the frustrating aspect of that, is that these are tracks that I recorded back in May !

talk about a backlog – but, I did make a start, a few tracks got mixed, video clips were prepared; and hopefully, if I can just find a few hours each weekend, I can keep mixing audio and prepping video…and eventually, in a few months, I may actually “catch up”…well, whether I do or not, I will just keep going…

meanwhile, new music creation still goes on thanks to the world of apps, with two new pieces emerging on the fairlight this week, I decided to see if I could create ambient music on the fairlight, and it’s quite challenging.  my first attempt, entitled “nightfall: silence”, is still languishing, incomplete, in the application, just three bars long – however, an enormous amount of very, very interesting music occurs in those three bars!  I think that runs about a minute, or something like that – because, I set the tempo to 5 beats per minute – something I’ve never done.  I then used a lot of very odd samples, pitched very low, and this strange, movie-soundtrack-like piece of music emerged.

I don’t think I’ve ever done anything with a tempo less then 30 bpm, and usually, more like 120 bpm!  but I thought I would try 5, and, something else very strange and glitchy happened – I sequenced a single note, a low C on a bowed acoustic bass – and it just repeated, as if it were looped, for the entire measure !  so suddenly, I had this very slow; very low, and very ominous loop like sound to build my strange ambient piece around.  I have no idea how, or if, it will turn out – but – so far, so good…

it sounds like nothing on this earth, it’s more atmosphere than music, it sounds like the strangest, most ominous incidental film music you ever heard – and it was never meant to be that, but with my “automatic writing” bowed low C note, how could I go wrong?  and, composing at a crawl, it’s an utterly surreal and very strange experience, you place notes into the sequence, but your mind can’t quite get around just how slowly they will unfold when played back…

today, september 13th, would have been my Dad’s 82nd birthday, so in honour of him, I created what should have been my second ambient fairlight composition, “eighty-two”.  this uses choirs, humans and orchestras, and one lonely percussion voice, the finger cymbal, which proved to be crucial about half way through the creation process.

it started out very choral, with big, deep, minor chords, which then took a sudden chromatic slide down, with a few very strange harmonies as the chords descended; this developed into a nice little piece, very lovely but also a bit wistful or sad…but then, just as it seemed to be developing into something very sombre, on a whim, I added a quick little finger cymbal solo in on top of a copy of one of the orchestra/choir “chords” – and suddenly, my would-be ambient fairlight piece became quasi-ambient-techno-electronica!! much to my surprise.

I developed three different measures of melodic finger cymbal, some of the notes insanely high pitched (so high I had to boost their individual levels so you could actually hear them!), which sound fantastic against the deep, low, choral backdrop of orchestra and choirs.  then I did one percussion run, with just a deep bass/orchestra backing – then one without any backing, then brought the bass back in, then the full choir and orchestra, and then eventually, returned to the original, chordal, choral motif…ending with a strange, solo four-note finger cymbal run – three whole notes followed by a cropped 1/16th note for that “sudden finish” that I love so much.

 

in just 30 minutes, “eighty-two” was complete, not what I expected, but as it turns out, I think the almost accidentally-created finger cymbal melodic section is a real highlight, and it made the piece, it really did.  so, my second ambient piece, actually became my first electronica piece.  you never know what will happen when you compose on the fairlight!

the music of the moment – the “fairlight 51” album – plus, 3 other amazing apps…

in a typical dave stafford multitasking way, even as one album project reaches fruition, another one is still in the creative, formative stages.

so even though I’ve been very involved in the work in support of “gone native“, at the same time, I’ve been reviewing in particular, my work created using applications, and I’ve also been working on application-based existing tracks, improving existing tracks, and, creating new ones.

before I speak about the upcoming “fairlight 51” project and the “fairlight pro” application, which is shaping up to be the next album release after “gone native“, I’d like to speak for a moment about three other applications that I have really been enjoying: “isequence“, “tabletop” and “nanostudio“.  I have not had much time with isequence, but I would have to say that I will be using it for music creation in the future, as a sort of alternative to nanostudio.  it’s laid out in a completely different way to nanostudio, but I really like the available voices, and the different GUI is challenging and fun – so even with just a couple of preliminary test tracks, I am really liking isequence a lot, and I am looking forward to using it much more over the coming months (and years!).

another application that is new to me is tabletop, which is yet again, a completely different layout to the other two, and with a lot of unusual and interesting instruments, many of which are free, and some of which are in-app purchases.  I’ve also done a couple of test tracks in tabletop, and I am equally excited about using it, and isequence, as time progresses.  these tools are so, so exciting to me, because of course each has it’s own synths, it’s own drum or percussion options and it’s just so exciting to hear some of the really sophisticated sounds that these tools can make – a lot of really fantastic sonic possibilities there, and I am excited about finding the best sounds, and using  them in compositions, and trying new combinations of sounds…the possibilities are nearly endless, with so many great tools to make music with…

finally, there is my old friend nanostudio, which was an early purchase, that I have worked with for a long time, and I have probably six or seven pieces in progress. a couple of those are nearly complete or essentially complete, and I went through a full review of the pieces and I am very excited about a couple of them, “atlantis rising” and “alien…or sutin” in particular – these feature the fabulous eden synth, which is one of my very favourite ipad synths, it just has so many amazing patches, and both of these pieces are dense, exotic and full of really interesting synth sounds, some of which are quite odd, but with nanostudio, it’s so easy to sound good – you just lay out a drum track, and then start playing synth parts…and very quickly, you have a really beautiful and complex piece of music built up.

I am thinking that what I might do is dedicate the works that I do on nanostudio, tabletop and isequence to my so-far empty soundcloud account, just so I can get them out there, although of course I will probably gather and compile them for another application-based album down the road…so hopefully, over the next few months, I can get at least my nanostudio work mixed and uploaded to soundcloud, and hopefully add some isequence and tabletop pieces into the mix a bit later on.

and then there is the “fairlight 51” album, the fairlight is one of the first applications I purchased, and I now have a months-long relationship with the fairlight, and I have a great working relationship with the device, and recently, the pieces are appearing almost by osmosis – I build a new instrument, I begin to create passages of music, and often, not always, I have a complete piece of music 30 – 60 minutes later…

over the past few weeks, I’ve created quite a few new pieces for the fairlight, some of which defy description – some of which utterly surprise me – some of which I really cannot even explain rationally. this tool…makes you think in a completely different way, it makes you compose slowly, bar by bar, taking care with every note, every percussion sound, every cymbal splash – and of course, being sample based, you are basically conducting a strange orchestra of eight pre-selected samples, in a bar-by-bar composition that at least for me, well, I really never quite never know what is going to happen with any given composition, until I hit “play”… and then these pieces of music just come to life, and it’s a strange dichotomy – you compose slowly, yes;  but sometimes, the process itself goes very quickly, and in the space of 20, 30 minutes – you’ve composed a very complete and intricate piece of music. as if by magic.  it just…happens.

over the past few weeks, new pieces have been arriving fast and thick – I can’t believe how many have appeared, and most of them, in a single session, an hour or less, and they arrive almost fully-formed.  sure, a few pieces need a bit of work the next day, but that’s the exception rather than the rule – most of them, arrive within 20 minutes or so, and that is pretty much their final form.  that never happens to me when I use normal compositional tools, when I play guitar or keyboard – but when I compose on the fairlight pro…it almost always happens.

and each time, I start with a completely different “instrument” – and the effect that has on the sound, the feel, the mood of the piece – if I select brassy, bold sounds, maybe a cheery, poppy melody will appear, if I choose wooshy synth sounds, maybe something dark and mysterious, and what is also remarkable is how each piece sounds SO different from the previous one!!  it’s as if each piece is a tiny island, a unique island, in a strange archipelago of sampled sounds – but the piece are so unique, and so far, with some 35 – 40 pieces recorded towards the project, there has been almost no repetition of anything whatsoever.

that’s astonishing to me, it really is – that you can create an instrument, then compose and execute a composition, then, the next day, when you repeat the process with a new instrument and a new composition – it comes out completely and wildly different. this is probably because you have eight utterly unique samples, that when “played together” as a virtual instrument, create one sort of “island” of sound; and then the next eight, create a completely different “island”, and so on…so you get this huge and amazing diversity that you wouldn’t think was possible.

over the past few weeks, I’ve been witness to the arrival of “mutant sheepish”, “monsoon season”, “long walk in the pouring rain”, “effective immediately”, “a passage of time”, “kiwi republic”, “the harold angels”, and over the past few days, “carbon life form” and it’s brother composition (which sounds COMPLETELY different) “silicon life form”.

I literally do not know where these pieces come from; each one has it’s own unique identity, and it’s getting to the point where the pieces just arrive almost automatically, I am just there to make sure they arrive safely…

I haven’t tried to figure out why, but recently, the name “fairlight pro” changed suddenly, to “peter vogel cmi” – and I actually don’t care about who owns the code or what the reasons for this change are, if peter vogel can’t use the name “fairlight” anymore – well, it’s been “the fairlight” to me for the past eight months, and I think it will always be “the fairlight” to me – and I am sure peter vogel will only make this app even better; I’m pretty happy with it now, and I am sure it’s only going to get better…

whatever name it goes by, the application formerly known as “fairlight pro” is one of my very favourite applications, of all time, and I can see myself continuing to work with it indefinitely…I love how surprising it is, how you literally never know what a piece is going to sound like until you hit “play” and the remarkable, unique sample set of the fairlight pro comes into play…whoever gathered those samples originally, really selected a remarkable and diverse selection of amazing sounds, such that, fast forward about thirty years from the original fairlight to the app version on the ipad – and those sounds still sound as fresh and otherworldly as they did when peter gabriel and kate bush and so many others made some of the most iconic music of the early 1980s using the £20,000 hardware version of the fairlight.

I could never, ever have afforded that, and as a guitarist, I never would have aspired to…but in december 2011, when I realised I could have that library of SOUNDS for a tiny fraction of the cost of a “real” fairlight – how could I say no?   as a guitarist, I’ve always had a great love of synthesizers of every description, and I’ve always enjoyed creating and composing on piano, organ or synth – but now, to have such a huge array of amazing synthesizers all shrunk down to tiny applications that deliver big sound for very little investment…

these application tools are going to give me so many sonic options, and already, some of my hybrid experiments, where I am driving two or three app synths from one key-press, means that not only can I use the unique and astonishing sounds of an extraordinary array of app synths, but if I want, I can use three or four at once – and that’s when the possibilities extrapolate out into an unknown universe of sonic madness.  and I plan on going there with them 🙂

the music of the moment – last minute adjustments – “flying solo”

well, I stated my goal for this past weekend as doing the needed repairs on the one unfinished song from “gone native”, “flying solo”, and, dealing with the album artwork.

while I can’t say that both are finished, I made significant progress on both, and I a pretty certain that “flying solo” is complete, whereas the artwork, well, we did photos over the weekend, and sketched out some cover ideas, but that just needs more time – one possible idea for a cover has been conceived, front and back, so that just needs more work during the coming week.

as far as repairing “flying solo” goes, well, it’s been a really interesting experience.  first, I don’t believe I have ever tried to “reverse engineer” a guitar part that I had previously recorded, which is a challenge to begin with, however, in this case, it was made even more difficult by the fact that said guitar part was originally completely improvised, take one, off the top of my head.

in the event, it proved to be quite, quite difficult to “learn” an improvised guitar part – more difficult than I would have imagined,  a two-hour session last saturday, with 8 takes made, yield no clear winners but it did mean that after two hours, I had pretty much mastered the form of the part – which is a solo guitar, with no accompaniment at first, so about a minute playing utterly on my own, and then the drums and existing guitar solo come in, and I then had the beat to play along to – and then another brief solo section at the end.

returning to the piece on sunday, I did a further ten takes, with take ten marked “best” – and, it does have a clearly superior (and new) ending. in fact, in many ways, it’s entirely better than the original track.  however, there are two notes in the introduction that went slightly out of tune, so something will need to be done to fix that – probably “fly in” those notes or that phrase from another take would be simplest, and take 6 from sunday seems to have a “good” intro, so it’s a likely candidate.

I did do some very rough tests last night, using 95% of take ten as the take, and flying in part of take 6 for the questionably-tuning notes, and it seems like it is a winner with that slight adjustment.  of course, I really was trying to get the entire take live, but after 18 tries, I think 95% live might be all I can manage – sure, I could do many more takes, until I got one that was more perfect, but – I doubt I would get the beautiful ending that I improvised on take ten again…

It’s disappointing though, because on a couple of occasions, I got VERY near to nailing the entire thing in one live take, which of course I would have preferred. I found it strangely difficult to “play” this part, it was like learning someone else’s guitar part, and it took a lot of work to make it sound natural, as if it were improvised – which strangely, originally – it was…but now, it’s a re-creation of an improvised part.

the fun part of this though was the middle section, when the drums and guitar solo come in, I just completely improvised the rhythm guitar that went behind the central solo, in the original version, I had just taken a section of the improv guitar, and “looped” it as a backing, so now, the song has a proper rhythm guitar part, including a lot of really strange harmonics and bending – strange because of the synth voice I used, “flying tremolo” – which does some amazing things to the sound of your guitar, especially when you play harmonics.  I thoroughly enjoyed playing a sort of adrian-belew-vamp behind the solo, and I think it has improved the song greatly to have a new intro, backing rhythm for the solo, and outro – nearly captured in one very good take.

the two notes in question are right at the top of the neck, and you guitarists will know that if you “miss” hitting these notes with extreme accuracy, they WILL go out of tune.  it’s a shame, because those two notes are “right” on most of the other 17 takes, but never mind.

I am also tempted, now that I know the part like the back of my hand, to possibly have one more go at it – it depends, if I can find an intro that I love, or that can be used to repair my near-perfect take ten, then I would just use that, but if I can’t…I may end up playing this two-minute guitar part yet again…I want it to be right, and if possible, to be perfect.

re-recording the part has changed the character of the piece a little bit, but not in a bad way, I actually think that piece is stronger now, especially since I totally improvised the middle section EACH time, on every take, I did it differently each time, “learning” parts and then discarding them, replacing them with better ideas, learning what NOT to do – and by the time I got to take ten on the second day, I actually had constructed, almost by accident, a rhythm guitar part that really works with the piece.  I knew exactly how to handle it, and I even introduced a chord change in two spots that did not exist in the original.  why not?

the new introduction, well, it’s very nearly the same as the old one, but hopefully this time, with no inherent distortion (levels are being kept on the low side just in case). the intro was made even more difficult in that I had to calculate the timing “blind” – I had to play for a certain amount of time, play all the notes, octaves and chords planned, and end up on a descending riff of G, F#. E, D# JUST as the snare drum comes in… so that is a feat of extreme estimation – start too fast, you end up early, start too slow – late – and it was not easy ending up at JUST the right spot every time.  to my credit, I did make it there at the right time on the majority of the takes – you just “get it” after a while, you know just how long you have…

much to my everlasting astonishment, on most takes, I ended up there at precisely the right moment – basically because I was playing the part correctly – but a couple of times, my tempo would stray, and I would end up either early or late – not that that is a huge issue, because of course in SONAR I could just move the intro to where it needed to be – if I detached it from the rhythm guitar that follows.  but it was and is my preference to play the part right, from start to finish, and not resort to any moving of guitar parts, and I think my current solution, using almost ALL of take ten, plus a tiny bit of take six (or another one if I find a better candidate) – take ten went extraordinarily well, and I really liked the ending I played, it was very gentle at the end, ending on a barre e minor on the 12^th fret – strangely, a couple of beats AFTER the drummer hit his final cymbal crash, but it was always meant to be some solo guitar after the drums finished – and I held the chord briefly, and then stopped it – which has the strangest, most wonderful effect of doing a sort of detune-then-fade out – thanks to the very odd “flying tremolo” patch – it gave me the perfect ending – very pretty followed by a briefly detuned, dissonant farewell – the sweet followed by the sour – which worked out perfectly. if the synth hadn’t of done that, the ending would have been too sickly sweet, so I am really glad it did!

so my first experience of learning a “dave stafford guitar part” – an improvised, take one part was – that it was bloody difficult to learn, and nearly as difficult to play!  that surprised me, because I thought “it will be easy” – but in the end, it turned out to be difficult enough that it took me four hours of practice to play one minute of guitar “well” – because once I got to the end of the intro, I just “wung it” (that being the past tense of “winging it” I assume) and made up the entire thing from middle section onwards through the ending – and that was really fun, playing along to this very outrageous solo, a very loud and “in your face” solo, and trying to make it work in the “reverse engineered” fashion – it was a blast..

I’m sure if it had been any other part, it would have been much easier to “re-learn” but by chance, this particular little piece of music is quite tricky – it starts with an e minor ninth chord at the root, which then jumps up to a high melody beginning on the 15^th fret; then, back down to the root for another e minor chord, with a 2 note trill; then, jump back up to the 12^th fret, a climb up the e minor scale across the strings, and then a really high melody including an incredibly hard to replicate top-string bent D to E at the 22^nd fret followed instantly by a two note trill on the second string, and then a couple more difficult trills on the third string…then a reverse strummed e minor chord at the 12^th fret which then turns into a riff that climbs up from the 12^th fret e on the low string, resolving on the third string in an F# (to re-iterate the e minor ninth theme present throughout) – then, a section involving some octaves played on the fifth and third string, that eventually climb up to a final strummed chord e minor chord with a set of descending half-step note pairs, descending down across the 12^th fret; then a jump back down from the 12^th fret to the root, and at last to that final four-note ascending pattern, coming off an e minor chord…into the middle section.

written like that, above, it sounds as difficult as it was, I really had to analyse it to truly become familiar with every nuance, but now it’s committed to memory, I could play it live if I had to – and maybe I will, as it’s a very distinctive piece indeed.

I assume that I will resolve this eventually with a new mix that I am happy with, and I love the “new” middle part and ending – even if I am never 1000% happy with every note in the impossibly-designed introduction – it’s just bloody difficult, so I definitely challenged myself there…but then I never dreamed when I was originally playing it, on march 6, 2011, that I would have to come back a year and a bit later, and try to re-play it – if I had known, I would have played something easier to learn!

it doesn’t surprise me, however, the lengths I will go to, to try and “save” a song that has problems, especially if I think that the song is a good song – I will spend a disproportionate amount of time “fixing” a song that I spent three minutes making, originally – because I care about the music being “right” – and for me, “right” means, basically, perfect, or as perfect as it can be given my current faculty on the instrument in question…

the passing of the “album”…how we view recorded music now

well, they make jokes about it now, about vinyl albums, about “sides”, about those big, square cardboard containers with their big, circular chunk of vinyl – but when I was a teenager and a young man, we didn’t have the CD format, and we certainly couldn’t have imagined something as exotic and unlikely as “downloads” – so it’s remarkable how much has changed, in the way music is delivered, over a very short period of time.

in a similar way as my previous blog topic, the running order, the “album side” has also come to my attention, of course, because I have just “finished” an album – or rather, finished the music for an album – because of course again, now, the real work has to begin – all of the detailed work that supports an album release.

because I am a bit…older…in my mind, albums are still albums, and they still have two “sides”.  so for “gone native”, in my head; side one is active rock songs, side two is experimental music, loop music, ambient guitar and so on.  for anyone a bit younger than me – well, it’s a CD, or it’s a download album of 20 tracks – there are no “sides”.

which I believe, in many ways, is a real shame.  first of all, it makes having “concept albums” much more difficult – in the vinyl days, you could have a concept for side one, and a different concept for side two.  or, you could spread two parts of a long work over two album sides…and it is a bit sad that you can’t really do that with the CD format.

there were a lot of options! and while the compact disc does offer a lot of advantages, there is, perhaps, something lost as well – certainly the artwork suffers; and vinyl purists will say that a certain audio warmth has been lost as well.  for me – well, I hated surface noise and scratches so much, that I can accept that “loss” without complaint – but it’s difficult for some people, the CD format.

for me though, I am forever thinking of most recordings as vinyl albums, having two (or more) “sides” – and each side has it’s own character, a good example of this is “all things must pass” by george harrison from 1970 – a triple album, six sides – four sides of which, are normal “songs”, the last two sides, are jam sessions – “apple jam” (since it’s on the apple label, a very handy joke indeed) – but that was very distinctive, you knew what to expect.  so putting on side one, would be a very different experience to putting on side six.  when you wanted to reflect and listen – side one.  when you wanted to rock and roll, with eric clapton, george harrison, and a host of superstar musicians jamming madly – side five or side six.  easy!

and whether it was intended or not, you would develop fondness for a particular side, if I use the beatles as example now, the white album: a double album, four “album sides” – I think everyone who owned it on vinyl, as I did, thinks of this record in terms of the side they love the most – for me that is undoubtedly side 3, because of the presence of so many amazing songs, and to this day, when I go to listen to the white album, I will often select “disc 2”, and stop the disc after “long, long, long” – that’s the old vinyl “side 3”.  birthday, yer blues, mother nature’s son, everybody’s got something to hide (except me and my monkey), sexy sadie, helter skelter, long, long, long – I will never forget that running order.  that’s my “side 3” of the white album…

it even allowed artists to name their albums in a peculiar way, for example, a normal, single vinyl LP by the raspberries was named “side 3” – because it was their third “side”, third album (not because it had three sides…however…see below).

or, with a self-titled album from todd rundgren’s utopia, where there were literally only three “sides” worth of music (because, in that case, that was all the songs they had)– the fourth side just being blank vinyl! – but, this practice goes way back, “second winter” by johnny winter, an album from the 1970s,  is another example of a three-sided album…(my pal jim whitaker had this album, I never owned it, but I remember thinking “how peculiar”…that it had three sides…).

so: the compact disc isn’t able to have “sides”, so you do miss out on these peculiarities, some of which made for some very charming, entertaining and clever/artistic/unique ideas from musicians (or the artists representing the musicians)…and it’s been a little bit more difficult to do this type of creative packaging in the CD format – difficult, but not impossible, and I am sure we could all cite examples of unusual and creative CD packaging, but, as clever as some of those are – there will never be anything quite like the vinyl album, with it’s massive 12 X 12 inch canvas “work space”, where musicians could create or have created, a lot of very large scale artwork to attract (or repel, as the case may be) potential customers.

and, you can no longer have three-sided albums, or even make jokes about having three “sides” as the raspberries did  – actually, they were very serious, not really joking – you get one, one long block of time, for your digital music now, and that’s the CD – here to stay I think; and despite a lot of vinyl purists’ complaints about the sonic problems CDs allegedly have, I for one, do not miss….surface noise, crackles, pops, snaps, hiss, distortion, “vinyl warmth” and all the other problems that vinyl had – when I used to buy vinyl, I returned almost as much as I bought, because of these problems – I despised the idea of trying to listen to MUSIC…through a barrage of snap, crackle and pop. (michael dawson, you remember this!).

this became extreme during the oil crisis, when the quality of vinyl plummeted to new depths; and I can remember buying really quiet, ambient records like eno’s “music for airports” –over and over again and and then immediately returning it, over and over again, until I got a copy that was only 2% noise instead of 17% noise.

even then, I would take the precaution of recording each and every record, once, to a high quality chrome cassette, and then NEVER playing the vinyl – and if the cassette died, then I had a near mint vinyl “master” to repopulate a new cassette.  this system worked reasonably well – I would listen to the cassette, and put the once-played vinyl away for safe-keeping – but it should never have had to have been invented, the poor quality of vinyl made it unavoidable.

I recently found “crib notes” for transferring vinyl to cassette, where I timed out the spaces between songs, so I could quickly remove the crackling between tracks, so I would do a sort of “live mix” to cassette, removing the noise during the spaces between songs – talk about an extreme desire for SILENCE surrounding my music!  but that’s what I want – music, with silence in between.  and blessedly – the CD gives us that! – so I consider it to be a modern miracle, because it actually solved this problem for me.  as an ambient musician, I’ve struggled to acheive silence between my tracks, and in them when it makes sense, and it’s difficult to keep noise, and clicks pops out of very quiet music…difficult, but not impossible.

I don’t miss any of that crackle and pop nonsense, and buying a quiet album now (on CD, obviously!) is a pleasure instead of a test, I am just horrified by good, clean music being damaged by surface noise and crackles and pops – it totally spoiled my enjoyment, so I for one, will always love the CD format, long may it thrive…of course, some day, it WILL be superseded by something (although I cannot imagine what) but I am sure whatever that is will be spectacular.

since I have just finished recording “gone native”, this question of “sides” and “concepts” has returned to haunt me, and I was feeling a bit regretful that there is no way now, when I go to have “gone native” pressed up, really, that I can have a two-sided record, because if this had been back in the vinyl days, I would have had a definite running order, a definite set of “loud” songs on side one, and a set of “quieter” songs on side two – but all I can do is make note of this on the CD sleeve; perhaps, leave a space or gap of seventeen seconds between the two “sides” – that might be one idea, I don’t know, but I am regretting that just this once, for my ultimate guitar album, that I can’t have it be “two-sided”.  oh well, this is progress I suppose…

the idea of “sides” really lends itself well to concepts, and for “gone native”, it’s not just loud and soft, rock and ambient – it’s a lot more, it’s also, to some extent, past and future: side one, is a set of rock/progressive rock songs I’ve developed over the past three and a half years, side two, more recent loops and experiments and examples of extreme guitaring – the future of dave stafford guitar, because the tracks on side two are the first examples of the work I will be working on going forward, including a lot of very exciting music using either soft synths – software synthesizers – and/or, application-based music, using iPad apps for guitar or iPad app synths…

sure, I can just “explain” that there are meant to be two sides, as I just did, and that’s fine, but somehow, it’s just not the same.  I wish we had unlimited funds, because if we did, I would do a short run of heavyweight vinyl for “gone native” along with the CD run, which would mean I could then realise my vision for the “two-sided” version of the record.  but – it’s just a question of timing, if I had made this record in 1979 (when I probably should have) it may have been on vinyl with a “later” CD release…since it’s going to (hopefully) come out in 2012, it will be CD only with alternate downloads.

…unless I can get 500 vinyl pre-orders (highly doubtful), that is not ever going to happen…but that’s OK, my main concern is the music, and that is actually best delivered via download or via CD, not so much on vinyl 🙂

speaking of “gone native”, there is going to be an unavoidable delay before I can continue to work required to actually get the record released, which frustrates me no end, as I’ve wanted to release this album for more than three years!

but I am just having to patient – I have multiple issues, from hardware failure (my main work laptop is now down, it does need a new fan I am afraid) to other unavoidable facts – such as – I haven’t even begun to look at the artwork, which is holding me up, so that is what I am going to work on.  unfortunately, an image I really wanted to use, is unavailable to me, so, I have to start over from square one…but, I have some ideas, so I am sure that will be sorted out soon enough.

I can’t really move forward at all, broken laptop and all, without the artwork, so I can’t even set up the downloads at this point in time, so unfortunately, I am just having to wait for  the laptop to be repaired, work on the artwork over the weekend – but as soon as I am able to push the release forward, of course, I will!

there are other aspects of pre-release that I can work on, such as samples of the songs on the discography, other web site updates, etc. so I will be working on those while I am waiting for the main release to finally occur.

despite any delays or setbacks, I am really excited about the impending release of “gone native”, more excited than I have been about any album of mine, for a long, long time; and I am pleased to say it looks like as well as making the album available for download in the pureambient store, that it appears that we will be able to produce a limited edition CD of some kind, so of course, once I have more information on that, I will let you know.

I think regardless of format, despite the fact that we’ve lost some of the idiosyncrasies of the vinyl album format, that the concept of “album”, even without sides, still exists – people still think of a CD release as being an “album” (at least, I believe that older people do – not sure if younger people would maybe just call it a “CD” – I do not know) so I think the idea of an “album”, as a collection, a scrapbook, a snapshot, a group of songs that serve a common purpose or denote a key theme, will be with us for a long time still.

that certainly describes “gone native” – it’s a collection of songs and more abstract works, but in my mind, it’s an album, and it will always be an album, regardless of what names get applied to it over the years.

I think that “changing formats” demands in turn, that we change in the way we think about music, and I look forward to whatever the next great innovation is, I’ve seen the vinyl album be replaced by the CD, I’ve then seen the CD partially replaced by the download (legal and illegal, I am afraid) and I am not sure what might be next – but I am betting that it will be very, very cool !

so – is the album dead? – I do not know; the album is dead <?!!?>, long live the album…

the importance of the album “running order”

first of all, I’d like to apologise for the length of time between posts – I can say happily that it’s for a good reason – the work on “gone native”, which is getting closer and closer to reality every day – the work continues.

secondly, I just want to mention that further down in this posts, there are links to both audio and videos that feature on gone native, so if there is to be a “sneak preview” of the album, this is it – three excerpts of earlier demos of songs from side one, and a few videos for tracks from side two of the record – the ambient/experimental side – so please check out the links below.

third – here we go:

because of the continuing work on the pre-production of “gone native”, various topics surrounding releases keep coming to mind, and this is one topic that I have long held as significant – I really feel that the very best records are made or broken by the order in which the songs are presented.

I know for a fact that george martin worked very closely with the beatles to establish the best possible running order for each beatles album (even including the very early ones!), and lennon went on to say later, how appalled he was by the re-ordering of tracks on the beatles “albums” created by capitol america for the american teenage market in the early 1960s – how the beatles had chosen the songs for the british albums with care, in a very specific running order for very specific musical reasons – and then capitol america just ignored that completely, releasing songs out of sequence in the bizarrely constructed “capitol masters” series. (and, myself being born american, now british, I grew up hearing those wrong, incorrect, bastardised capitol “versions”..a fact that fills me with a gentle horror now – and even in that very wrong form, that music WAS still brilliant…). note: that did NOT stop me from buying the capitol masters vol. I so I could hear them in that childhood-memory order!

it was not until I was fully adult that I realised that I had been…swindled in this way, that I had never heard the beatles albums properly, the way the beatles intended – so, in 1987, when they did the first release of the beatles albums on CDs, I bought them all – and was amazed to find, for example, that “yellow submarine” is actually a track from “revolver”, and other similar, remarkable running-order discoveries – the british records make SENSE; the running orders make much more musical sense when heard in the original british releases…

now that I am used to them, the british ones seem right, the american, wrong (so what’s new there?) but I’m here more specifically to talk about running orders in general, not for the beatles, so shifting back to that topic…

in the here and now, the running order of “gone native” is something I’ve given considerable thought to, and it’s ended up, by intent, partially chronological (side one), but partially, musical (side two) – so the earliest rock songs begin the record, with the very first rock song recorded, “thanks frank” (remarkably, originally recorded, in a tour de force I-can’t-believe-I-nailed-that-guitar-part take one, in november, 2008 !!) in the lead-off position – followed immediately by my first two pieces featuring all of my “new” 2009 tech: sonar 4, the line 6 x3 live, and the m-tron pro mellotron – “open to anything” and “force of nature”.  these were the earliest songs created using these exciting new tools, which soon led to much more sophisticated song construction: more complex pieces still followed: “wettonizer”, “sinuous thread” and “what are souls made of”; full-on multi track extravaganzas, including not only mellotrons but real bass, and lots and lots and LOTS of guitars…

having the m-tron pro mellotron soft synth available was hugely inspirational, and I was working simultaneously on several active tracks for “gone native” that rely on the presence of the mellotron to bring the mostly rock / prog / guitar-based work to life, and at the same time, I was creating the all-mellotron, all m-tron pro created ambient album “sky full of stars” (released in late 2011) – so getting that mellotron made so much difference to both my active music and my ambient music – I don’t know what I would do without it now, and, it’s also a huge part of the upcoming “scorched by the sun” record, “dreamtime” – where I have overdubbed m-tron pro “mellotrons” onto bryan helm’s remarkable series of basic tracks – so again, the m-tron pro has shown it’s worth in that project as well as my own two album projects…

for the tracks on “gone native” that feature mellotron (most of the songs on side one do) it might be anything from the simple flute part at the end of “force of nature”, to complex overlays of black sabbath sound effects in “sinuous thread” – despite the fact that this is primarily an album about guitar, guitar, and more guitar, the addition of the mellotron parts, in all of the songs where it appears, gives the pieces a unique atmosphere that would be hard to create using any “ordinary” soft synth – the m-tron pro is unique, and it will always be my “go-to” soft synth – always.

– and then – life happened, and I wasn’t able to work on the album for many, many months – time then was often spent doing definitive mixes of all of the above mentioned songs, especially “wettonizer”, “sinuous thread” and “whatever souls are made of” – those three cost me weeks and weeks of time, particularly the very sonically dense mix of “wettonizer”…but in time, I nailed it (with a lot of remote help from california, by the way, from my good friend and business partner ken mistove).

eventually, I went back to work on the record, spending quite some time working out the curiously reverse-engineered “this is a test” – I had a guitar solo, made when I first got the line 6 x3 pedal, just the solo, by itself, that I really liked, so I set out to create a song based on this solo, adding first drums, then bass, then many guitar synths, until I had built up a real song.  using another piece from the 2009 x3 sessions, an unreleased ambient loop of ebow guitars, I also added that to the piece, so it’s a rock song with an ambient loop outro, a most unusual combination – and it’s one of the highlights of the record – possibly because of it’s unique, reverse-engineered construction, and beautiful ambient outro.

“gone native”, the album’s title track, took quite a long time to gestate, but it was well worth it, it was begun pre-guitar synth, and completed post-guitar synth, so it is sort of a hybrid, it’s a “standard” dave stafford prog/rock piece, leaning heavily towards the “rock” side – drums, bass, mellotron and lots of guitars – but then that guitar synth came along, giving me organ/guitar hybrid solos, cellos, thunderstorms and other amazing sounds to combine with my phase-shifted mellotron flutes – all contributing to one of the most remarkable pieces of music I’ve ever had the honour of working on – it’s just one of those tracks that you know is right – it’s just right!

then, when I had a block of time to actually work on the record this summer, I took a some pieces from early 2011 (one fully produced piece involving drums and classical instruments, from the guitar synth, of course “caladan”; one guitar piece with overdubbed solo – “flying solo”, one piece involving four different guitar synths mixed into one song “sun willow quartet” – adding drums to the latter two), recorded when I first got the roland gr-55 guitar synth, and the next three rock pieces were complete…

“junction” is the penultimate track on side one: a song I would find difficult to describe in words, so suffice to say, it reminds me of early to middle period bill nelson (and it also makes a vague musical reference to “secret ceremony” by bill nelson, but only roughly)…it also contains a roving “bill nelson/maps of dreams” style bass guitar – but, call it “bill nelson done dave stafford/guitar synth style” if you must call it anything at all.

at the moment, I am struggling with this part of the record, the next and final piece on side one, “flying solo” did not translate well when compressed to a test MP3, I am getting some distortion from the rhythm guitar tracks, and further investigation shows me that the original track does seem to have some inherent distortion, so I need to sit down properly with the multi track master, and see what my options are.  if I can’t fix that guitar, I would either have to re-record it – not necessarily possible, since it was an improvised take, but possible, or, if I really can’t solve it, I might have to remove the track entirely – which would be a shame, as it has a nice legato solo in it that I really like.

update: a further remix of the original “flying solo” did not solve the problem – well, the wav file sounds fine, but it doesn’t compress well, so the MP3 still distorts, so now the plan is to re-record the rhythm guitar – which is maybe a good thing.  so I would take the drums and the solo, and “underdub” a rhythm guitar – strange, but possible…we shall see!

this running order works for me, because it’s basically chronological – five original rock/prog pieces from 2009 first, then, one reverse engineered piece from 2009 completed in 2010, and finally, five more drum-based pieces from early 2011 rounding out the side – eleven tracks that “are” side one of the album:

“gone native”, side one:

thanks, frank

open to anything

force of nature

wettonizer

sinuous thread

this is a test

gone native

caladan

sun willow quartet

junction

<<<flying solo>>> repair, re-record, replace, remove?

so for me, the driving force behind the running order of side one, was to show a musical progression – plus, these are all rock, rock/prog, or drum-based pieces (and you can hear the progression in the music, it gets more and more sophisticated, and hopefully, more and more interesting, along the way…) as well as sticking to a rough chronology, whereas side two is a completely different animal…

side two, on the other hand, was entirely conceived and constructed during the current session, during the summer 2012 mastering/mix sessions for the album, drawing mostly on music created between march 2011 and the present.  since this is a shorter time span we are covering, and I was wanting to demonstrate some very different guitar sounds, styles and approaches, I decided to not stick to the chronological model this time, but instead, to base the running order of side two more on the style of the music itself.

now, it had always been in my head that the ambient mix of “whatever souls are made of” would be the final song on the album (although in the end, it’s not quite the final track…), and that idea stuck, and in the final assessment, it’s a good call – it achieves a number of things: it brings us back to a more song-based area after the rather unusual sonic experiments that are side two, and, it brings us full circle back to a 2009 composition, it “ties back in” with side one – so that device works as intended.

so what to put “in front of” that final track, since I had decided on the “ending” first?  I just looked at what I had recorded over the past many months, and made decisions based solely on musical merit, performance appeal, and uniqueness – or some combination thereof.

to begin then, I definitely wanted some ambient pieces, just a few, to demonstrate at least some part of the mostly ambient musical world I’ve been inhabiting since about 1989; I also wanted to include a few very unique examples of some very unique guitar styles, some specialised pieces; just as side one delivers a broad range of guitar information in the “song” format; side two delivers a different range of guitar information in some more exotic and unusual forms, including ambient, looped and treated music.

“salusa secundus”, the first track on side two, is what I would call “semi-ambient”, it’s ambient in nature, but there is still a fair amount of musical activity in the piece – yet, the overall effect is ambient. this was a piece I built up very quickly in one day, by layering guitar synth parts, and it just happened very organically – there were no re-takes, I just added parts until it was “right” – including a very occasional bass guitar, carefully timed to work with the guitar synth parts in a particular pattern.  It uses some particularly beautiful guitar synth patches that include pitched up guitars and wind chimes (always a lovely sound) and I just like the feel and the spontaneity of the piece – it was always going to be on this record, it just “belongs somehow”, and it’s a great way to introduce the ambient section of the record.  the thunderstorm patch, previously heard in the title track, also makes a return appearance, and then that single, ominous bass guitar note keeps appearing…

the next track on side two is a very, very unusual one, “desert power I (drone mix)”; it’s a live loop, originally done as a video for youtube, that I then took the audio mix and ran it through a special resonant filter (using the breeze plug-in in sonar) to create an utterly unique and very strange alternate “mix” of the song – all of the normal guitar sound has been replaced with a wonderful, buzzing drone that I really like the sound of – and, it’s a very unique sounding piece, like nothing you have ever heard (I hope) – perhaps reminiscent of early fripp & eno? – if it is similar to anything at all.

track three on side two is “cinematique I”, a piece similar in character to “salusa secundus” but realised in a completely different way – a totally live loop, one guitar synthesizer, looped, but inhabiting a slightly darker, more dissonant musical space than “salusa secundus” does – so this one might be comparable to a later robert fripp soundscape – and it’s created the same way – a completely live, ambient, dissonant, loop.  this is perhaps the most dissonant piece on the record – and I have at various times in my career, over the years, created a number of very, very dissonant loops, far more dissonant than any of the pieces here, but I think it is essential that at least one such piece be included to show the “darker side” of dave stafford looping.

and speaking of that dark side, next comes “the gemenon blues (long form)” which is certainly one of the strangest pieces of music I have ever recorded, it’s an almost eight minute long live guitar synth looping performance, where I create a backing loop of a sound called “crims-o-tron” on the fly, and once that’s established itself, eventually, I play a live solo on top of the loop, which I then also loop, so the piece starts out very dark and strange, then, a thick, sinuous guitar solo appears, and is then joined by many more looped guitar solos, and the whole thing is incredibly atmospheric – and I am happy to have a few live pieces on side two (desert power I (drone mix), cinematique I, the gemenon blues (long form), wide open spaces), that represent what can be done with one guitar – or one guitar synth – the roland GR-55 – and one good looper – the roland RC-50 – you can get some remarkably full recordings out of that combo!

next, comes something so completely different that it’s almost indescribable, it’s a studio piece, a multi track work, but, it’s composed entirely of loops and sounds made using the korg kaossilator, the miniature x-y pad synthesizer, and this piece, “zencouraging”, was a complete surprise to me, as I had created it one day back in december, 2011, and then immediately, completely forgotten it’s existence, and when I was looking back over the last year or so of tracks for material to include on side two of “gone native”, I happened upon it, many, many months later.

it’s one of those songs that you cannot describe in words, it does have drum loops in it so it’s not truly ambient, yet, it’s so atmospheric, it has a beautiful, deep, deep synth bass that is so incredibly sonic, you almost feel it more than you hear it, and it’s melodies are very, very distinctive. because there are no keys or strings, there is a certain “kaoss pad” melodic style that is unmistakable although very hard to describe in writing – the synth melodies are less distinct than they would be with a key or string triggered device – they have a sort of wonderful “fuzziness” of pitch. this piece is truly a one of a kind, it contains no guitars whatsoever, but it, surprisingly, it fits in beautifully with the various loops and experiments on side two – a real standout track in my opinion.

switching gears again, the next piece, “wide open spaces” (video forthcoming), was almost an accident, I was testing out an ipad application for guitarists called “ampkit +” and during the trial, I recorded three different energy bow guitar solos, and this one moves from mournful to joyful to lyrical, a weaving, sliding melody.

it’s not ambient e-bow, as I’ve mostly done historically, but instead, it is an intentionally active, melodic guitar solo – using the e-bow. of the three ebow pieces recorded on that day, I felt that “wide open spaces” was best – although all three are quite good – and it seemed to me to be a good, upbeat-feeling piece to start to bring the record back around to it’s more upbeat beginning – to the next and penultimate piece, “whatever souls are made of (ambient mix)”.

“souls (ambient)” is just that, the full song appearing on side one of the record, but with all of it’s melody e-bow guitars, bass, and drums, removed; leaving only the backing layers of looped and layered energy bow, which create a fantastic empty shell, that sounds wonderful with or without those overlaid instruments – so it’s a reprise, a chance to experience the song in a very different, far more atmospheric way, and it’s one of my very favourite pieces on the record (in either guise, if I am honest).

originally, the record was meant to end with “whatever souls are made of (ambient mix)” – and nominally, it still does, in terms of tracks proper. however, I had a live guitar track, or rather, part of a track, that I really wanted to include on the album, but it wasn’t quite an actual standalone piece, so, included as a “hidden track” a couple of minutes after the conclusion of “souls” (ambient)”, you get the remarkable “a plague of frogs (coda)” – which is literally just the “delay tail out” of an active piece of guitar originally recorded for a youtube video.

so, I played this piece of active guitar, ended suddenly on an e flat chord, and I had set up the digitech time bender delay to create this amazing delay “tail”, which sounds like a chorus of frogs – so I just snipped out the frog chorus only, faded it in and out, prefaced it with 2:17 of pure silence; and this “hidden track” then came to life – just to add a bit of unusual atmosphere to very, very end of the record.

“gone native”, side two:

salusa secundus

desert power I (drone mix)

cinematique I

the gemenon blues (long form)

zencourage

wide open spaces

whatever souls are made of (ambient mix)

hidden track: a plague of frogs (coda)

I am hoping that by talking through the reasons and the logic behind my two very different running orders, I can demonstrate here just how important running orders can be, and in this case, how important running orders are to me.

because I grew up in the era of vinyl albums, to me, an album has a certain musical identity that is in part dictated by the songs on it, but almost equally importantly, by the order in which those songs is presented.

what would the beatles’ “revolver” sound like with something other than “taxman” as it’s lead off track?  for some unknown reason, it was decided to put george’s song first, and that is so iconic, “revolver” is almost defined by that odd count in – that was actually added onto the beginning of the track – and I can’t imagine those songs in ANY other order – I really can’t  – and in the same way, for my own music, which of course I do spend a lot of time creating and then compiling into albums, I have a very, very definite running order in mind – that’s the way it works out.

I am aware that some artists and bands do not care about running order, leaving that decision to producer or even manager, but I personally disagree with that, you need to care about the presentation of your songs, and the order in which the customer hears them – while it may seem trivial, it’s actually hugely important, because this one album might be the only record of yours that they ever hear – so you want to make a good impression!

I personally believe that running orders are very, very important, and I take them very seriously even if other artists and bands – do not – that’s fine, but for me, I will always care about this, and each time I collect songs together into a new album, I will always spend the time to work out what the very best running order for those songs is, to optimise the listener’s experience – and in the case of “gone native”, I’ve done all I can to make it as enjoyable and as logical as possible.

first you rock, past, present and future (tracks 1 – 11) ; then you rest (tracks 12 – 14); then you explore (tracks 15 – 16); then you arrive full circle back to the ambient shell of one of the earliest pieces (track 17); then finally, a detached chorus of electronic frogs (hidden track 18) whisks you away to an unknown musical future of as-yet-undreamed musical ideas…

who says running orders are not important?  it’s in my nature to care about every aspect of the music I present, and that includes the order that those pieces reach your ears – the best order I can imagine given my knowledge of the tracks themselves…no chaos, instead: logical, orderly, sensible, and – delivered and presented with a real sense of quality.

the music of the moment – dave stafford / “gone native” – test pressing

after three days of intensive work, the first set of master mixes for the “gone native” album is at last, complete, and I am sitting here listening to the very first playback of these new mixes as I write.

the first thought that I have is that this record has been a long, long time coming, as reflected by track one, “thanks, frank”, which is playing now, which was really the whole impetus for making a rock / progressive rock themed album.  recorded originally in november, 2008, this is the oldest song in the collection, and the song that started it all.  at that point, I had spent many, many years as an ambient artist, a live looping guitarist, and occasionally, as an acoustic crafty guitarist, but part of me was harking back to a time when I played a thing called “rock” – so I created a drum part out of pieces taken from mike bowman’s “fever drums” (drone forest, velveeta heartbreak), which was originally a source file for the drone forest project, and then overdubbed it with a live guitar take – which turned out to be one of those amazing, lucky “take one” miracles that you get so, so seldom – it just worked.  I overdubbed a bass part, wasn’t happy with it (because it wasn’t as good as the drums or guitar) – scrapped it, overdubbed an new bass part – which was better, but still imperfect – finally, in the brand new, june 2012 mix of the song, I did some edits to the bass part, and now, at last, I am truly happy with it – it works.

so – a power trio of drums, bass and guitar to lead off the album, and then onto the work that followed in a “rock” vein, the first pieces, recorded with SONAR 4 in 2009, my very first proper multi-track work in a long, long time, and over the next three and a half years, I created a number of pieces with “gone native” in mind. it was, undeniably, a slowly evolving work, and the first eight or ten pieces all took quite some time to conceive, organise and mix – I wanted these songs to truly reflect my ability as composer, arranger, and mostly, as guitarist.  more importantly, I wanted these to be the best quality in terms of the playing, the arrangements, the mixes – I wanted this album to be the best.

the title track is one example of demonstrating my playing and arranging skills;  a powerful, pounding drum part is overlaid with a myriad of strange and wonderful guitars, many of them created using the remarkable roland gr-55 guitar synth, which makes such a huge difference to this record, as well as the m-tron pro mellotron, which I had  found indispensable on the “sky full of stars” album – because of my positive experience with it on that album, it’s made it’s way onto the title track and onto other tracks on “gone native” as well, providing that crucial bit of authentic prog colour – and for me, that allowed me to create a “virtual band” with the instrumental line-up of guitar, bass, mellotron and drums – eerily and not accidentally similar to a certain band called “king crimson” – and while this music does not in the main sound anything like king crimson, nor would I compare myself to that band in any way shape or form, I love that particular combination of instruments, and just using those four instruments, you can really create a good band sound.

as time went on, I greatly expanded on that basic “virtual line-up”, most significantly through the introduction of the roland gr-55 guitar synthesizer, and, in other ways,  but it’s present for the first few songs, certainly for both “open to anything” and “force of nature”, two of the earliest pieces here.

of course, to do rock or prog right, you have to have drums and bass, so during this time, I also taught myself (with a lot of help!) how to use both BFD2 and session drummer 3 in SONAR – between these two, I could create high quality drum parts, and I delighted in trying to create real sounding, interesting drum tracks to compose against.  I also took up the bass guitar again, something I hadn’t done regularly since I was a very young man, so that these tracks could benefit from having real bass. so, even though the drums are made with machines, everything else is very, very “real”, and it’s my hope that the humanity of the instruments will help to blend in the drums, so that everything mixes up very nicely and organically.  I think, in the main, that it has worked out well – I’ve had some compliments on the drum tracks already (feedback on early mixes), so that’s a good sign.

I won’t go into a song by song analysis now, at some point, I might detail that, but suffice to say, this is, in the main, not an ambient album, it’s a rock/prog rock album, and therefore is completely different from any record I’ve ever made. most of what I’ve done over the past 20 or 30 years, has been very live, or looped (I’ve done a lot of loops), and not multi-tracked, and not including anything using bass and drums, so it’s already in a completely different class to say, my last two records (“the haunting”, and “sky full of stars” – both from 2011) which were both very, very ambient.

this record gives me the opportunity to do things like play extended bass solos (“wettonizer” – a tribute to king crimson’s finest bassist, john wetton) play an active ebow solo (“wide open spaces” or demonstrate the quirky but amazing korg kaossilator (“zencourage”) – every all-guitar album should have at least ONE all-synth piece on it!! there is a broad range of styles here, there is extensive use of guitar synthesizer on the later songs which gives me a wealth of “instruments” to inject into the mix, there is even a song reverse engineered from a guitar solo (“this is a test”) and a song treated with a resonant filter that converts it to a buzzing drone that does not resemble the actual performance in any way (“desert power I – drone mix”).

there is ambient music here – how could there not be, given that it’s dave stafford – in fact, in my mind, the record has two sides, just like the old vinyl albums had – side one, is “songs”, rock songs, prog songs, strange songs, but basically, all multi-track affairs involving drums.  basically, that’s the first ten tracks, then, the next eight, are a variety of unusual pieces – guitar synth demos, live loops, and even an ambient remix of one of the songs on side one, (“whatever souls are made of – ambient mix”) to close the record.

a few of the tracks on side two are pretty much completely ambient, or semiambient, and there are a few live performances on side two as well (“desert power I – drone mix”; “the gemenon blues – long form”, and “wide open spaces”) as well as the aforementioned multi-track korg kaossilator piece (“zencourage”).  I like this idea; first, the songs, and actually, the album feels to me like it’s in three pieces, not two, the first eight pieces are the “songs proper”, tracks 9 and 10, are the “bridge between” – songs that are more recent, with partial drum tracks, and then finally, eight ambient, synth demo, live or otherwise strange and wonderful examples of extreme guitaring.

In this way, I really hope that I can demonstrate not just the work of the past three and a half years (impossible to believe that I have been working on this project for that long, but there it is, in black and white) but really, the work of my life, because these 18 songs are the sum total of what I’ve learned – sometimes, from others – from people I’ve worked with, for example, sometimes, from myself – such as learning the ins and outs of MIDI, SONAR, mixing in SONAR, guitar synth, korg kaossilator, and iPad applications – the latter which, barely existed when I started this project.  in the last few years, I’ve been adding in a lot of very interesting technologies – everything from the roland guitar synth to the m-tron mellotron to the korg koassilator to the iPad applications – and that has made the record much better, it has really benefited from those innovations – and I’ve also learned an enormous amount myself, about the possibilities of making music with a lot of very, very bleeding-edge technologies, and some of the remarkable things that can be accomplished are truly mind-boggling – but that will be for the next few albums, which will explore a lot of the more experimental music I’ve been making in the last year or so.

“gone native” then is the sum total of two things, first, forty-one years of playing experience, and second, the changes and growth and experience of the past three and a half years.  hearing these eighteen piece today, gathered together at long last, for the first time ever, well, even I am surprised and amazed at the incredible diversity on show here; from the hard rocking, guitar based songs all the way up to the very ambient pieces on side two, it’s an amazing variety of music and I am very, very proud indeed of this brand new dave stafford album.

production is next, it will be a few weeks probably, but once everything is set up, I will be announcing the details for download to begin with; and possibly, this time, a short run of “hard copy” CDs for those who prefer physical media to downloads – this is something we are going to start looking at again…

 

in the meantime, there is much work to be done still, but, I am so, so pleased to be able to say with finality, that “gone native”, dave stafford’s first proper hard rocking rock/prog album, is completely done, and will be ready to release before this summer is out. until then – keep on rockin’ !!!

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

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

 

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

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

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

applicationHD – featuring music created with applications on the ipad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

so I see it sort of like this:

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

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

guitar synth only

guitar modeller only

cantor unprocessed

any 2 of the above

all 3 of the above

then, from any of these stereo chains into…

two parallel effects chains

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

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

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

stomp box effects only

rack mount effects only

both

none

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

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

immediately after cantor (or real guitar or synth input)

immediately after the guitar synth but before the guitar models

immediately after the guitar models but before the guitar synth

immediately after the guitar models but before the amp models

immediately after the guitar synth but before the amp models

immediately after the amp models

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

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

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

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

🙂