the stupidest policy in the universe

 

RECOGNISING STUPIDITY WHEN I COME ACROSS IT

like my late father before me, I find that there are certain aspects of life that are just so stupid, that you can’t help but become agitated and very outspoken when one of these “stupidities” comes to light.

I actually have a real knack for recognising stupid issues, and that realisation came home to me in a quite surreal experience I had at a Guitar Craft course held in Ojai, California back in the 1990s. It was a very good course, with mostly good weather, and we got to listen to Robert Fripp rehearse his Soundscapes, not to mention hearing an early DAT of the then non-existent King Crimson album “Vrooom”, which of course preceeded the album “proper” which is the even more awesome “THRAK”.

but i digress, the incident that confirmed to me that I do have a real knack or propensity, if you will, for seeing stupidity for what it is, and usually, confronting it head on….started like this:

A GUITAR CRAFT STORY

The course was in a lovely, big house on a lovely big green hilltop, a grassy hilltop lawn that of couse, being in California, was fully equipped with sprinklers, which went off automatically at pre-set intervals, to keep that hilltop lawn watered and healthy and looking good.  That is absolutely standard practice in southern California, because, if you don’t water…your lawn, and / or your plants, turn brown and then die.  California, after all, is basically, an artificially-irrigated desert, with water piped in from other states! – from many hundreds of miles away.

part way through the course, on a rare rainy day, where it was raining pretty hard, but in that warm kind of unconvincing California way…   I believe it was just before lunch, and the whole group, including Robert were sitting in silence (as you do quite often at Guitar Craft) and of course, if you are not quiet inwardly (as I often wasn’t) your attention may start to wander, and I confess that at this point, where a long, uneasy silence was waiting to hopefully, become a proper silence…I was looking out the window, watching the rain and looking  at the plants and the lawn.

the silence went on and on, and after an uncomfortably long time, suddenly, Robert spoke: “can anyone” (he said, addressing the entire course) “give me an example of real stupidity that is going on here, right now” and he sort of, gazed up and around the room.

confused silence was the first response, while people tried to think if perhaps, THEY had done something stupid earlier on, and now here was Robert Fripp calling them out?  You could sense some rising panic in some of the faces…but no one answered.

then, the answer smacked me right in the brain, that Stafford tradition (my Dad would have been so proud of me!!!!) came back and I blurted out “the sprinklers”.  “The sprinklers are on, watering, while its pouring with rain”. I added.

“Thats right, the sprinklers” Robert agreed.

And of course, thats pretty much the only time that I had the answer when the gathered elders of Guitar Craft did not, so I was pleased that I’d seen it so quickly.  And no one except Robert had a clue, it is just one of those things that people born in California, are used to seeing, all the time, all of your life.

And, it IS a pretty stupid thing, to have your sprinklers busily overwatering your lawn, and indeed, the combination of a substantial rainfall and the powerful large radius-coverage sprinklers running at the same time, could and often did turn your lawn into a green soaking wet sludge –  serious over watering can occur.

I have told this story before, in a more abbreviated form, and I apologise if you have heard it before – but it was necessary for me to restate my “credentials” as a more than “averagely aware of stupidity” kind of person.  I see stupidity in many designs, processes, and even in well establish practices, where people are doing activities in a particularly stupid way, when a much better way is or at least, might be available.

for example – sprinkler systems that can be overridden and can be programmed NOT to turn on, in the case of rain.

clearly, the owner of that nice house on the hill in Ojai, was unaware of this possibility, and because of that, would be always overwatering his lawn and plants when the sprinklers regularly came on while it was raining!

Stupidity at work, in the universe…a perfect example, and both Robert Fripp and I, while looking out the window at the garden in the pouring rain, had realised what was going on just outside the room, while the other fifty five people were only thinking inside the room, or, hadn’t noticed  or, hadn’t realised – that a really stupid thing was going on, right then and there – but outside, not inside!

It’s a day I’ve never forgotten, not only because I knew the answer when RF was the only other person who did, but because it was a great course, and my “Stupidity Detector” was clearly working better than it ever had done before.  A very useful tool, being able to recognise stupidity when you see it – and, if you look around, you will often find that its … EVERYWHERE!!

So what does this long and somewhat tedious Guitar Craft story have to do with today’s blog?  Not a lot, really, except perhaps, to establish that I have this knack, this ability to spot stupid practices, and that, coupled with some forty years in the business world, makes me the Customer From Hell, when companies have to deal with me.

THE ISSUE IN QUESTION

Today’s blog, however, is not about a gentle, somewhat forgivable stupidity such as watering your lawn while its raining…no, today’s blog is about something much, much stupider than that – and therefore, a hundred times more irritating because the stupidity actually has a real, negative effect on you.

I am writing today about a very specific “policy” that a particular music store has, which is, in short:  supplying the wrong type of power supply with almost every guitar effects unit they sell: a European power supply with round pins that cannot be plugged into the wall in the UK! (where we use flat pin power supplies only). To me, this “policy”…is right up there on my “stupidity radar” – supplying a useless power supply that could only work in Europe…in the UK.

a) it is a policy that makes NO logical sense – and the stream of useless Euro power supplies arriving every few months – utterly useless

b) I am sick and tired of ARGUING about it each time I make a purchase – and, an important point here – having to ask in the first place is bang out of order – when it SHOULD HAVE BEEN in the box when it arrived!!

Life is literally too short for me to waste my time railing against such a stupid thing – and they, unwilling to do as I, the customer politely asks again and again – well, the most recent sale they made to me – will be the last bit of business they get from me…I need vendors that will work with me on this.

Not, fight me tooth and nail when I try to get a useable power supply for my effects unit – that I have already paid for (it is part of the effect units’ purchase price)

Meanwhile, I have grown so frustrated with this “policy” over the past six or seven years (!!!!!!!) that I have recently reached the point where I told them that, if they were unwilling to continue to make the situation right, each time I make a purchase of an effects pedal from them (containing a European supply), that they will no longer get my repeat business or any of my business, because I refuse to participate in this specific power supply stupidity any more!

ANALOGY

I’d like now, to ask you a few simple rhetorical questions:

Note: today’s “stupidity” only occurs in the United Kingdom to my knowledge.  It does not occur in Europe or elsewhere that I know of.  This is important to remember.

 

So – UK residents only, then – when you buy a new toaster (or any small appliance) do you expect it to have a UK style plug (flat blades, three pronged) attached, so you can plug it in the moment you get home, and have some nice toast with your cuppa tea?

when you buy a new iron, do you expect it to have a UK style plug attached, the correct flat-bladed UK style plug, so that when you get home, you can plug that iron in right awaty, and get your three week backlog of ironing done in a jiffy?

when you buy a new hair dryer, do you expect to be able to plug it into the wall, and dry your soaking wet hair right away, without waiting?

when you buy a new alarm clock, do you expect a UK style plug attached right to it, so you can plug it in straight away, set the alarm, and then get woken up ever so gently to the quiet strains of Rammstein’s “Zwitters” blasting out at 6:05 a.m., at volume 10…?

when you buy a new Hoover, you expect it to have its UK style flat bladed plug already attached, so when you get home, you can plug it in straight away, and hoover your dirty ole carpets to yer heart’s content?

If you got a new set of hair straighteners, you would definitely want to go hone and plug them straight into your UK 230 volt wall outlet, so you can then wait for them to heat up, and straighten your hair to PERFECTION??

Let’s go large now, you finally bought that brand new washing machine you wanted, and I just know you will expect that it will come with a UK style plug already attached, so you can plug it straight into the wall outlet, hook up the water, and wash all those dirty clothes that have piled up everywhere??

I think you can see the everyday truth in the above statements.  Nothing tricky about them – just ordinary appliance purchases and expectations.

 

You may have gathered that I am making a point, and I am, and yes, OK I have rather belaboured that point (apologies)…but there is a reason for the many, many examples of ordinary electrical appliances both small and large – so that we can establish that for any electrical item that you buy in the United Kingdom, you have developed the perfectly reasonable expectation that the moment you get it home, whatever it is – you can plug it in, and start using it immediately.

however.

What if that were NOT the case? What if, you brought that toaster home, and it didn’t have a UK plug on it, or with it, so you couldn’t plug it into your common, ordinary, garden UK 230v outlet – in fact – you couldn’t plug it in anywhere in the UK.

First of all – that would make you feel very frustrated, because, you couldn’t feed that horde of screaming children waiting for their morning toast.  You would all starve, or at least you’d be eating untoasted bread which is almost as bad – when you want toast. and it goes on for days and days and days – no toast, and a useless, cold toaster.

That scenario is pretty unpleasant, but let me take this story one step further.  Let’s say that on that same day, the day you got home, took that toaster out of the box, and THEN realised that you couldn’t plug it in…that you rang up the store you bought it from, and asked them to please provide a proper UK plug, and they said, yeah, OK we’ll do that, you will get it in a couple of days.

Three days go by, with no toast made, that toaster not lighting up at all.  The toaster is dead.  The promised UK plug does NOT arrive.  You ring the store again, they say they will send the plug…so now three weeks have gone by and you still have no working toaster and no plug from the store…

After many calls, much argument with the store, pleading, cajoling…You reach the three month mark…THREE MONTHS WITHOUT TOAST…and finally, you get a UK style plug for your toaster delivered, finally sent by the store at long, long last.

And if the children haven’t all starved by now, they finally get some toast – but you’ve been through three months of hell trying to get the store to make things right for you, and you really begin to question your sanity.  You have argued calmly that it should have had a UK plug all along, but, the store seem unconcerned, and they also seem bent on supplying the NEXT item you buy from them…with ANOTHER useless Euro style plug.  Repeat of same scenario above.

Now, I could build a similar scenario for each and every item above, but it would take far too long, and I think the toaster example is a good enough example.

Three months without being able to plug in your new toaster?  Can you imagine?

 

Now – with the above everyday analogies, I’ve set up the background here, I’ve created practical examples of how it would feel if you got home to find that you could not plug your new toaster in, and then, the store you got this rather useless appliance from, took over three months to make it possible for you to plug it in and finally have some toast.

How would that make you feel?

 

IT’S BEEN MY EXPERIENCE…THAT WHEN THE ROW GETS SERIOUS…

A CERTAIN SILENCE WILL FALL.

 

How would that make you feel??

 

Now – that is a question.

Unfortunately, I can answer that question. I can provide in fact, a first hand account of exactly this “toaster experience” but with something else in the way of “small electrics” that I regularly purchase: effects pedals for guitar.

For the past several years, I’ve been purchasing the odd guitar pedal or two, and often from one of my favourite stores, DV24/7.  They were, and are, a good store – they delivered quickly, they always had the lowest price, and eventually, they got all of my business.

Until a few days ago, when I reached such a point of impatience and sheer frustration with their attitude regarding the power supplies for said guitar effects – that I’ve told them that I will be taking my business, my REPEAT business, to another guitar store.  ANY OTHER STORE. One that will truly want AND truly appreciate (not just say that they appreciate, but ACTUALLY appreciate) my repeat business. GAK, Dolphin, I really do not care. Just – no more Euro power supplies.  Please.

 

I must have at least six of these useless Lumps Of Plastic with round pins sticking out of them, cluttering up my storage area at home. They are worthless in the UK, sadly, they would be quite handy for any number of young guitarists in Europe.  I have enough for a whole Euro power pedalboard.  In Europe.  Where I don’t live.

They are doing me not one whit of good unless you think it’s perhaps, a good reminder from myself to myself to say NEVER AGAIN to accepting a Euro style power supply for any UK-purchase / UK-use electrical appliance or guitar effect pedal.  Ever.

 

DV24/7 refused to listen to the pure logic I presented to them regarding this very, very stupid “policy” of theirs – which is this:

Each effects unit they sell IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, comes supplied with a power supply (as intended by the manufacturers – who meant for the correct-country power supply to come with each pedal, it is included in the PURCHASE PRICE!) but with a twist; its a EUROPEAN power supply that DV24/7 regularly send to their UK CUSTOMERS.  That cannot be plugged into ANY power outlet IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.  Now – where, exactly, is the logic or sense in THAT?

Answer?  There is no logic present in this odd policy of supplying useless / wrong power supplies with each effects pedal sale.  If I just shelled out £400.00 for a really nifty pedal, it had darn well come with the CORRECT, USEFUL POWER SUPPLY.  That will plug into one of the many UK OUTLETS that I have in my UK HOUSE.

TALK ABOUT SPOILING YOUR ENJOYMENT!

So,  you’ve finally decided to buy your first Eventide H9, a truly powerful and exciting new guitar effects device – you order it from DV24/7; it arrives in a day or two..

but…BUT…it comes supplied with a EUROPEAN power supply.  So all that anticipation, all the excitement – dies, because you cannot PLUG IT IN.  So you then get to LOOK at it, but not use it, or hear it, for several days or even weeks, while you impatiently wait for the store to send you the right, usable power supply. After the fact, after the purchase….”oh please, kind sir, may I have a UK power supply so I csn actually USE my guitar effect??”.

 

Now, the first few times this happened, I would just ring or email them , and say “can you please send me a UK power supply for this REALLY EXPENSIVE pedal i just bought from you?”.  And – generally, they would.  I just had to ask.  (Not my job, really, but, whatever).

And I would then have to wait, a few days, a week, whatever, and the power supply arrives – so I can FINALLY plug in my brand new effects pedal.  Finally use it, finally hear it – at last. But it is just not the same, as being able to plug it in the moment it arrives…nope.  A third-rate experience at best.  Sheer frustration and mounting anger at the worst end of the “DV experience” 🙂

After this had gone on for some five years, let’s say, they started resisting me when I would insist on the proper UK power supply, and then finally, just a couple of weeks ago now,  their salesperson told me, in an email, no less “you will have to accept that some of these effects (read: all of these effects) will come with a Euro adapter, and we may then provide a UK plug adapter with the Euro power supply”.

And, that, dear reader, was the wrong thing to say to me.  my reply was “Salesperson’s Name Here, I must certainly do not “have to ACCEPT” anything – “I am the customer, and, you’ve set a precedent with me, i.e, you have been supplying me with the proper UK adapter, AFTER each effects sale, with NO ARGUMENT, and at no charge for several YEARS NOW – and now, you are reneging on that, and saying that I MUST ACCEPT Euro plugs, and a crappy plastic ‘plug adapter’ to go with it ! – no thank you, and furthermore,  I refuse to trust my really expensive device to a £1.79 plastic UK plug adapter”.

So because they instigated this new “policy”, where they no LONGER supply the proper UK power supply at request or at no charge…which they had done for about five years out of the six OR seven years (or more) I’ve been buying from them, I’ve had enough – more than enough of their attitude – and if it costs them money, to supply what should have been in the box all along – well, that is NOT my problem.

I was a good, repeat business customer, a good one – but over the past two years, I’ve had to argue, argue, argue, and eventually they would reluctantly send me a UK power supply for the device I had just bought.

I got really tired of the whole subject.  I even called the UK store manager in Romford, and had a long talk with him about..about just how incredibly STUPID (THERE IT IS….THE ‘S’ WORD) the policy of sending Euro plugs (aka, something that in the UK, MAY AS WELL BE A LUMP OF USELESS PLASTIC WITH SOME ROUND PINS STICKING OUT OF IT) – and he agreed it wasn’t the most brilliant policy, but I thought we had reached an agreement, that they would continue to supply them to me when I ask for them…but I was wrong.

not so.  In fact, after the last conversation with the boss, it was then that I waited THREE MONTHS for a UK adapter to arrive for my Ground Control Pro. Almost as if he had told them to drag their feet…

 

But not long after that, the real arguments started, and the salesman started telling me what I “MUST ACCEPT”.

That was the signal for me to end my relationship with DV24/7 (except of course, in the event of me needing to use one of my many, many, three year warranties that I have with them for a number of my effects devices).

So the income and the profit from sales to me have how stopped, permanently, they claimed, in an email that they “valued my repeat business” but basically, I would have to accept Euro plugs with UK plug adapters…so from that threat, I could tell that clearly, they do NOT value my repeat business at all.

If they did, the precedent set six or seven years ago, would still be in place, and I would still get a proper UK power supply for each device I purchased.  But – no more

All the other stores, I will be completely honest with them going forward:  I will EXPECT a UK adapter with each pedal I purchase – or, I will give the business to the vendor who will happily say “yes” to that humble, simple request.

 

WHAT THE MANUFACTURERS MEANT TO HAPPEN

(and what they supply to MAKE it happen in the different markets)

 

As if the all of the above wasn’t enough, now, please consider this:

Each manufacturer, for example, Eventide (USA based) or Electro-Harmonix (USA based) has included in the price of their effects pedal, a working power supply for that device, which should be different for each non-USA country it is sold in.

So let’s imagine that you bought a pedal from a well known online store in the USA, and you LIVE in the USA.

Let’s say it’s that Eventide H9 I mentioned earlier.  You would receive that H9 in a box, with a US style two-flat-bladed-plugs-bearing power supply.  You open the box; you plug that two prong flat bladed US style plug directly into the nearest 110v US outlet in your US home – And you are instantly delighting in the beauty of the H9 experience.

So let’s now imagine that you bought a pedal from a well known online store in Germany, and, YOU live in Germany…or anywhere in Europe except the UK.

Let’s say it’s that Eventide H9 I mentioned earlier. You would receive that H9 in a box, with a Euro style two-round-pins-plug bearing power supply. You open the box; you plug that two round pin style plug  directly into the nearest 220v German outlet in your German home – And, you are instantly delighting in the beauty of the H9 experience.

Repeat above  paragraph for Japanese market.

Repeat above paragraph for South American market.

Repeat above paragraph for any non-UK market.

 

Finally – let’s now imagine that you bought a pedal from a well known online store in the UK, and, YOU live in the UK.

Let’s say it’s that Eventide H9 I mentioned earlier. You would receive that H9 in a box, BUT, much to your everlasting astonishment – instead of the 3-flat-bladed UK style power supply you expected (just as with your toaster, your hair dryer, your washing machine, your hoover…) but instead, to your ultimate dismay – you find, inexplicably, that you have instead been sent – a Euro style two-round-pins-plug bearing power supply.

You open the box; you remove the wrongly supplied Euro power supply in disbelief, which you cannot plug in anywhere in the country you live in – And, you now have no idea what the H9 SOUNDS like, because you cannot plug it INTO THE WALL as you can in every OTHER COUNTRY ON THE PLANET.  And – you DO NOT GET TO DELIGHT in the beauty of the H9 experience.  Not for days or weeks or latterly, apparently – ever.

Eventide MEANT for you to get that box, open it, plug the RIGHT power supply into the proper outlet, and play your guitar through their pedal. Immediately.  You PAID for that, you paid for the good experience, the one where you get to actually use the pedal you just bought.

No..not here in the UK.  Instead…you get argument.  You spend literally hours, emailing, calling the DV24/7 boss AGAIN to complain.

THE LAST STRAW

There is one remaining wee story to tell.  And that story is about a device that I bought from DV24/7 … LAST YEAR.

I bought a new Voodoo Labs Ground Control Plus MIDI controller from DV24/7 in late October or early November – the actual date isnt really important.

 

you’ll never guess, to my amazement…it TOO, like the Eventides and the Electro-Harmonix pedals before it, the Ground Control Pro arrived…with a Euro style round pin power supply – with a twist, it was an AC adapter (rather than the much more common DC adapter), with a higher current requirement than most pedals have.   Still useless though…I did say “Euro” and “round pins”.

So standard procedure, I rang up or emailed DV24/7 and said “please send me the correct voltage Voodoo Labs UK power supply for my Ground Control Pro”.  I got argument and stalling.  I rang the boss yet again, applied pressure verbally…he promised they would send the adapter.

still no adapter.  Christmas passed.  I cajoled, I asked nicely, I became irritated…no result.

New Year passed.  I wrote again, this time simply saying “appalling customer service, making a good, repeat customer wait OVER THREE MONTHS for a lousy power supply that costs £2.00 to produce in Asia…you ought to be ashamed”.

Nothing.. No response to my emails anymore.

 

then, tonight, on January 20th, having waited thru November, thru December and thru most of January with no power supply – when I got home, a small box from DV24/7 had been delivered to my neighbour.  I went to retrieve it.  Finally – and, by the way, NOT a Voodoo Labs supply at all, but the cheapest of the cheap generic type adapter, BUT the right voltage 9 volts AC at 500 ma – so theoretically usable with the Ground Control.

The adapter was promised over and over, the salesman promied, then his BOSS promised it, and it didn’t arrive.

I doubt it was my “you ought to be ashamed” message that finally caused it to ship to me – but it should have been.

They still owe me a power supply for an EHX pedal I bought recently. But we shall see what happens with that one.  But, I won’t expend the least bit of effort on DV24/7 any more, no more chasing down a power supply EVERY SINGLE TIME I BOUGHT SOMETHING.  For SEVEN YEARS.

 

A SIMPLE, SIMPLE SOLUTION EXISTS

DV24/7 have some internal “problem” where some their stock that is to be sold in the UK, comes from Europe, and it has Euro plugs in it.  But guess what – the manufacturers make at least four different adapters, that are supposed to be sold in the US, the UK, Europe, and Japan.  So – you, as the distributor of these products, are supposed to be SMART ENOUGH to order the right boxes with the right adapters for each country you are selling them in.

A quick example of a smart policy:

You are a big music store with stores in Europe and in the UK.  Sales are roughly equivalent in both areas, so, instead of buying 1000 boxes of EURO Eventude H9s, you order instead, 500 boxes of Euro H9s (which you sell in EUROPE) and 500 boxes of UK BOXES, (which you sell IN THE UNITED KINGDOM). Simple.

Under my clever scheme (see above) the customers in BOTH Europe AND the UK END UP WITH THE CORRECT POWER SUPPLY when they receive their order. Rejoicing. No more phone calls.  No more emails. No more arguing with customers.  No more customers so traumatised by their never-ending NEGATIVE EXPERIENCE AT DV24/7 that they finally just say NO MORE.

NO MORE.

 

Now – clearly, their purchasing department wasn’t smart, and all their pedals are in EURO boxes.  So this won’t ever end, with DV.

BUT INSTEAD of them making their problem by MY problem, and pawning off their unwanted garbage/Euro Lumps Of Plastic onto UK customers who DO NOT WANT THEM…instead of you making your problem be my problem…why don’t you just SOLVE the problem, and buy the boxes with effects with UK power supplies in them, to SELL IN THE UNITED KINGDOM???

by the way:  I ***HATE*** it, when companies, or people, make THEIR PROBLEM be MY PROBLEM.  I refuse to allow that.  My time is too valuable, too precious to waste on the “Euro round pin power supply game”.  It is a game that sucks, I can tell you that much for free.

THE REAL INTENTIONS OF THE EFFECTS’ MANUFACTURERS

Remember, the manufacturers, WANT YOU not only to get a power supply with your device, but, they WANTED for it to have a power supply with it, that meets the following  criteria (you PAID for all this – it is included in the effect’s price!!!!):

a) fits the outlets in your country

b) supplies the right voltage and has the correct current handling requirements for your device and your country’s power outlets

c) you PAID FOR THAT privilege, to be able to plug right in and enjoy your purchase – whereas, I got to LOOK at how nice my new effects looked, for many days, while I waited for the “afterthought” correct UK adapter to arrive – and, looking is not HEARING or ENJOYING, is it?? and

d) they did NOT intend for you to receive the WRONG PLUG type, that does NOT plug in, in your country, and is, to a UK customer anyway, a useless LUMP OF PLASTIC with two round pins sticking our of it.

 

CONCLUSION (?)

 

i rest my case.  As Bryan Ferry once said “don’t let this happen to you!!”

I told you I could find the STUPID stuff.

 

 

 

peace and love and UK POWER SUPPLIES FOR ALL!!!!

 

Dave 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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from the garage to garage band – a long road

hello fellow travellers,

 

just checking in before 2016 gives way to 2017, I have been quite preoccupied of late with my new guitar system, I’m building three pedalboards at the moment, and I am in the middle of creating 200 MIDI presets to call up an enormous range of ordinary, unusual, and ambient guitar sounds – from massive distortion (as in, Crush Station and Sculpt) to beautiful modulations to amazing delays to gorgeous reverbs (thanks to Space) or incredible combinations of delay, echo, repeat, and reverb (as in SpaceTime, Ultratap, and Resonator – three amazing H9 modules) so instead of uploading tracks and writing blogs and putting items up on Twitter – instead of any of that, for something like the last two or three months now, I’ve been slowly working out the way these three boards should work.

I have, in an attempt to at least release something for the New Year, I’ve uploaded two completed tracks to the new “music for apps: garage band – an eternal album” record and they are a couple of really interesting pieces – the first one, “preponderance”, is eight minutes plus of something so strange, involving so many interesting sounds and loops, and musical events, that I find it almost impossible to describe.  the best thing is to give it a listen, it’s quite unusual.

the second song is much shorter, and features a strange, dissonant bass line that I actually played on my iphone, on the Apple “McCartney” style bass interface, and then looped in Garageband – and then, I proceeded to create an entire song, entitled “demonstrations of affliction” (in honour of Bill Nelson’s “Demonstrations Of Affection” – of course!) over the top of this very strange and repetitive bass line.  But – it’s interesting, and I look at “what works” with what in a slightly different way after this experience.  there are times when the bass loop clashes loudly and horribly with the overdubs, but, I do insist – it’s SUPPOSED to be that way!  Really, it is.

these two pieces brought me a lot of joy in their creation, and there are two or three more that I’ve been working on that are not quite ready for prime time – but, once I’ve finished those – I will put them up, I am really enjoying the “garage band experiments”.

now – back to what is important – these crazy pedalboards.

 

why are there three? – well, because that’s what works for me.  everyone does pedalboards differently – I want three, but, the three work together to form one giant system.  and that is actually really awesome!

so the first board, is for non-MIDI stompboxes, such as, pitch, distortion, overdrive, EQ pedals.  that’s a small board, with perhaps, 8 or 9 devices – and, it can be used standalone for practice or rehearsal, or for very small gigs where you don’t want to haul all of the equipment.  this board is known as the “Input Board” – this is where the guitar signal starts.

then – there is the MAIN board, which is for MIDI-controlled stompboxes.  This is where my Eventide devices live, along with their dedicated power supply and a MIDI splitter and cables.  this is where the magic happens, by combining different patches across the H9s, or using the Pitch Factor and Space stomps to provide harmony and … space…the possibilities here are staggering.  so this is the heart of the system.  The output of the Input Board, plugs into the Input of the Main Board…so I drive the non-MIDI effects into the MIDI controlled effects.

finally – pedalboard three – is the “Control Board” – this is the simplest of the boards, it contains a large MIDI pedal, that can be programmed to call up all of the different patches on the five devices.  Along with that, are two expression pedals, which are used to alter different parameters on different effects, you know, like the speeding up and slowing down of a leslie speaker simulator, or increasing the spaces between the beats on a tremolo and so on….plus a third expression pedal to operate a stand-alone non-MIDI delay that I use (exclusively) for reverse guitar sounds.

yes, I could have got reverse guitar sounds from the H9s (and I do, actually) but I wanted to free up a bank – so by adding the delay, that means, I freed an entire bank that had been dedicated to reverse sounds.  so I am much happier this way, because I can now make any of the 200 patches – play in reverse.  That is brilliant!

 

but this is where this whole pedalboard building experience really amazes me…if I step back a moment in time, to when I was about 13, and I was in my first real band, and I had a no-name red semi-acoustic electric guitar, and I played through a single channel of a tiny amp, with another guitarist (the owner of the amp) plugged into the same channel of the one channel amp – I didn’t have an amp of my own, so I had to plug into one of the other guitarists’ amps!  That – was my “set up” in 1971.

I remember speaking with the drummer in the band, Brian Monaco, he and I were the main singers, so we solemnly both decided that we would each buy a Radio Shack best quality vocal microphone for something like $25.00 – which was a huge amount of money, and then we had to buy the mic stands, too…no boom for me, just the straight stand with the massive, heavy weights at the bottom.  Brian had the expensive stand with the boom, because he needed it – he was the drummer, after all.

We plugged both mics into one tiny guitar amp, and with the guitars all plugged in together in a way that you just should not do… and that was the bands’ set up.  Three tiny no name amplifiers, with three guitars and two microphones plugged into the six possible inputs – and all three amps were single channel, so the sound must have been terrible.  But – we didn’t notice – we just played.  Amazingly, there is a tape of that band, which you can find somewhere on this blog, in the “companion” to the blog – there are a few tracks from that gig posted.

So when I think back to that, and I then consider what my guitar system is like today, some forty plus years later – with my MIDI controlled presets (20o of them!) and the endless combinations of effects and sounds I can retreive with one button push – I can’t really believe this is happening, it doesn’t seem possible, but – it is.  I’ve just done my first sysex backup of the Ground Control Pro MIDI Pedal, which was very exciting.  It actually worked – which means I can back up and restore the entire contents of the MIDI pedal as needed – which is great!

I often wish that my “13 year old self” could just see my current 2016 set up, so he would know (have known) what the future held.

I remember when I was 15, I began to use guitar effects, first, I had a wah wah pedal that I bought myself, which was a great tool, and then later, a cast-off and not very good sounding Arbiter Fuzz Face, the old red one – which I now wish I still had! and then later still, I had the use of an Echoplex, which was simply an amazing tool, when I was something like 16 or 17.   If I could have seen where that was headed, to modern delays, loopers, and so on – I would have said “no way, this is simply not possible”…

My 13 year old self would not have believed what can be achieved with MIDI and guitars, it’s simply astonishing technology – and I was blissfully unaware of it until much, much later in life.  But I’m glad Ive gone through this, and I think that it’s better to have a good sounding guitar, with a range of different interesting patches, than just ONE GUITAR SOUND – always the same.  That does seem dull, and I know that as a guitarist, I should love the idea of plugging my strat into a tube amp, with NO pedals, and just wailing and waxing poetic with the pure sound of tubes – and yes, I do love that sound, but…not to the exclusion of all else.

 

I think effects are important, and I do spend a lot of time, trying to get them to sound as natural and as organic as possible, I want you to hear the guitar playing first and the effect, second – definitely. I don’t want to be defined by effects, but by my note choices and the songs I write and record and play.  So I do try to remember my roots, try to remember what it was like, always playing through a borrowed amp, for years, as a teenager, because I couldn’t afford an amp!

The truth is, the last time I even OWNED a tube amp, was at least ten years ago – no, at least 12 or 13 years ago (a beautiful small black MESA Boogie which I should NEVER have sold – SIGH!!) so perhaps someday, I will get into amps again.  I think in this day and age, using a high quality device such as the H9 for my main sounds – that I can do just as well (using only a pedalboard into a clean stereo power amp) as a tube amp and no one will really know the difference, – except other guitarists.

I have never hidden the fact that I love effects, and I mean, I have gone pedal mad, I read about pedals, I dream about pedals – and I think there are some truly wonderful pedals out there that can transform your playing and take your guitar sound into the realms of the beyond.  I’ve finally realised that that, is where I want to go.  Beyond.

 

 

We have the technology – so – why not?

If you see what I mean.

 

 

I must now return to programming, I am on bank D now, so, I have about 140 of the 200 presets entered.  Wish me luck on the rest…

 

ta

 

Dave at pureambient

 

 

Happy Very Belated Christmas and a Merry New Year to all !!!!

 

From Gong’s Guitarist to Blu-Ray Music Extraction Processes to the NewestOld ios Application for IDevices…

I am becoming acquainted with the first five albums by Steve Hillage, beginning with his band “Uriel” and their album “Arzachel” in 1969 and moving up to 1976’s BBC Radio 1 In Concert – which is playing now in my headphones – the announcer letting us know that only 8 percent of BBC listeners are currently listening in stereo – and they’d like to get that number up as soon as possible!

On almost a whim, I decided that if I was ever going to get caught up on what I had missed in the solo canon of Steve Hillage, outside of his work in Gong, with which I am very familiar, would be to shell out for the remarkable new 22 disc box set, “Searching For The Spark”.  It arrived a few weeks ago, I then spent a few days ripping discs, and I’ve since spent a very, very enjoyable morning indeed, listening to all five of the discs currently on my IPod – and – Hillage is a remarkable person – and, along with his life partner Miquette, he fronts a band with ever-growing confidence – especially when we get to “that” guitar solo.

I was quite amazed at the jump in guitar playing quality between the first two albums that feature Hillage, the above mentioned Arzachel from 1969, and then, 1972 brought us “Khan” with their album “Sea Shanty” – and in the three years that had passed, Hillage’s guitar prowess had increased by a significant amount – but nothing like what was about to come – in the form of his first two solo records, the first that bore the name “Steve Hillage” – “Fish Rising”, followed by what is probably his best-known work (and, produced with Todd Rundgren, using Todd’s new Utopia – Roger Powell, Kasim Sulton, and Willie Wilcox – as Hillage’s backing band on the record) “L” – these two releases are where you can really hear the confidence and power of his playing – and I would heartily recommend them to anyone!

I did own a cassette with “L” on it, years ago, so I was familiar with that one album, but never had a chance – until today – to hear Fish Rising, the two early albums, and the first of many, many live CDs that are in the box – this wonderful BBC Radio 1 In Concert 1976 that is playing – in glorious stereo, I might add (after a lovely across the kit drum roll – which just went across my brain in lovely carefully-drum-miked stereo).

I think I will leave the task of a full review to someone who knows more about this, for me, this was just a “way in”, a way to hear the development of this incredibly talented guitarist – who I was really, really fortunate to see both the Steve Hillage Band and Gong, during a very brief UK tour in 2008 – and he was remarkable in both bands – the perfect musical foil for the late Daevid Allen – and it was a unique opportunity, to first hear Steve and Miquette play solo Hillage material (which was unfortunately at the time, besides the obvious cover of “Hurdy Gurdy Man”, unknown to me) as well as, play as an integral part of Gong – this was a remarkable performance featuring most of the main figures in Gong history, including his long time partner Miquette Giraudy, Hillage and Mike Howlett as well.

So that is my most recent listening, previous to that, however, I’ve been revisiting my catalogue of XTC releases, trying to get caught up with capturing all of the additional music hidden away on the Blu-Ray discs included in each of these amazing “Steven Wilson” re-masters – and I guess I can say that I definitely am collecting Steven Wilson re-masters – starting with the King Crimson re-masters – the ultimate – King Crimson in 5.1 sounds absolutely astonishing – it’s so worth it just for that alone – but, there is always a lot of additional music buried on the DVD or Blu-Ray portion, and I’ve developed a unique way to capture this additional material

In assessing my XTC discs, I now have four Steven Wilson XTC re-masters:  Drums & Wires, Skylarking, Oranges & Lemons, and Nonsuch.  I realised that I had only partially done the work on capturing the extra tracks from three of them, so I set out to “right” this wrong.

I also have the same issue with my Gentle Giant, and Yes “Steven Wilson” re-masters – again, I have ripped the ordinary CDs, which contain some of the additional material – but, the additional music on the Blu-Ray has remained accessible only on the 5.1 system – which I can’t take out with me on my iPods.

So – I have developed a process, which includes templates of blank folders, and a template in SONAR Platinum for capturing the music from the discs.  I was wondering if anyone else uses a similar process to this:

 

ACQUIRE BLU-RAY AUDIO CONTENT WITH HIGHEST QUALITY POSSIBLE:

• Set up your blank folders using the template, which prepares you to “receive” WAV files of the tracks you are capturing, and then later, converting them into MP3 files for your portable device.

• Those folders look something like this (after conversion from the dummy template folders):

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc01-SWMix-MP3

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc01-SWMix-WAV   (Note:  These are from the CD, which is just ripped normally – not related to this Blu-Ray process)

 

Sometimes there might be two, or even three, CDs (which of course, are all ripped normally)  in which case, those would eat up the Disc01, 02 and 03 slots, and your Blu-Ray material would then start with “Disc04” rather than “Disc02” – you just have to adjust as necessary depending on the contents of the set.  Then, follows your DVD or Blu-Ray ONLY Content:

 

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc02-OriginalMasterMix-MP3

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc02-OriginalMasterMix-WAV

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc03-AlbumInDemo&WorkTapeForm-MP3

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc03-AlbumInDemo&WorkTapeForm-WAV

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc04-ExtraDemos&WorkTapes-MP3

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc04-ExtraDemos&WorkTapes-WAV

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc05-RehearsalsAtLeedsStudiosLA-MP3

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc05-RehearsalsAtLeedsStudiosLA-WAV

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc06-Videos-Mono-MP3

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc06-Videos-Mono-WAV

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc07-StereoInstrumental-MP3

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc07-StereoInstrumental-WAV

 

These folders are only one arrangement, of course, the folder set I come up with, ultimately, just reflects what music is available to me to extract from the Blu-Ray in question.  The set of folders above, is probably suitable, with possible minor alterations, for any XTC album.  Of course, something like “Drums & Wires” has many, many more folders that this example, because there are several different Rehearsal sections on that disc – hence, many more folders (12 in total I believe, or 24 if you count the WAV versions).

 

For King Crimson or Yes, it would be similar, but perhaps, instead of “Videos-Mono” you would probably get “OriginalVinylUK” and “OriginalVinylUS” and so on – so basically – anything that needs captured, you build a folder for.

• Then, you take a copy of your SONAR Template session (.cwp file) (or equivalent in whatever DAW you use), which is set up with many, many Audio channels – one of my recent efforts ended up at 98 channels – and these are pre-set to use the special S-PDIF “pure digital” input of my sound card – so the S-PDIF outputs of my Blu-Ray player are fed to a pair of inputs on the Sound Card – and all Blu-Ray recording is done via this “pure digital” route – directly from the disc, to the sound card, to SONAR – where I capture them as 48K 24 bit WAV files – the best I can do. The SONAR CWP should be in the root of your work folder, so you can view it and work with it, AND see the folder set shown above.

• Arm for recording, a single track, which will have a title such as

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc02-OriginalMasterMix-UNTOUCHEDORIGINAL

• Put the Blu-Ray into the machine, and queue up the Original Master Mix (the Flat Transfer of the original CD with the original Mix) from the EXTRAS section of the Blu-Ray.
• Press RECORD on the armed channel in SONAR, and once you see the transport moving, then start the Blu-Ray playing.

 

• Leave that entire disk worth of music to play, while of course, SONAR is recording it in the highest quality possible – Input = S-PDIF and SONAR = 48K 24 Bit.

 

• Normally, I do not have to adjust the levels at all – for S-PDIF, they seem to be pre-set, and they always make a clean, but never too “hot” recording – it’s ideal. They just approach 0 db, but never surpass it – so, loud and clean.

 

• Once the Blu-Ray has ended, and you have your recording of the entire CD captured as a SINGLE large WAV file, you can now move onto the next piece of music, and repeat the above process on the next target disc (in this case, it’s Disc03, “Album In Demo & Work Tape Form”).

 

• When completed, you then move onto the PROCESSING part of the process, which is probably the most time-consuming and patience-testing.

 

PROCESSING THE FILES:

 

• In your SONAR .cwp file, you now have a series of large wav files, each one representing a disk full of music. Using the back of the box set or it’s booklet as a guide, I then create a single AUDIO track just below the main, large WAV.  That is set up quite simply, you won’t be recording on it, but you need to set it up so it is playing to Master, and thence out to your headphones or speakers, as you need to monitor this process (I use headphones to be the most precise possible).  Once you are happy with your new empty, Audio track, before we work on any music processing – count the individual tracks that are in this large WAV file, and use TRACK CLONE to make the appropriate number of copies of your new, empty Audio track.  If it’s a 15 track album, then I would create 14 more of these, by adjusting the Count of Clones in the Cloning Window.  Push the button, and SONAR (or your DAW) adds 14 empty audio tracks – and now you have 15 empty spaces for tracks.  Which already have their name template ready for a track number at the end – then, go back – and put in your track number and names:

 

• Return now to your single large wav track, and before you do anything, take a COPY of it, and PASTE it into your new first audio track – TRACK 01 – which will be labelled something like XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc02-01-GardenOfEarthlyDelights-OriginalMasterMix, and first, clean up the lead in – there will be extra space there, so you want to reduce that to a very short lead in, and make sure it starts fairly quickly – usually in under a second, so it starts like a normal CD would – immediately.

 

• Then, find the end of Track 1. Determine the best spot to SPLIT the tracks, so that Track 1 has a proper ending, and that Track 2 will end up with the SPLIT quite close to its first sound.  Once you are happy with this transition point, go ahead and SPLIT the track (leaving the first long recording UNTOUCHED – as the name implies!) always do your first splitting, on the SECOND one – the COPY!!!

 

• Once split, REMOVE the large chunk of remaining audio, which contains tracks 2 through 15, and MOVE them into the next track.

 

• Repeat the split, each time, leaving the remainder (of your large wav file copy, which gets smaller and smaller each time you split and move it down) and moving it into the next track.

 

• Once done, you need to clean up the end of the final track, just to make sure there are no surprises.

 

• At this point, you should be done with PROCESSING, and ready for OUTPUT.

 

OUTPUTTING THE FILES:

 

• Ensure that all tracks except your Track 01, “Garden Of Earthly Delights” are MUTED. This is crucial, if you leave anything with sound on it unmuted except for the ONE TRACK you are outputting, it’s sound WILL MIX with your track – thus, ruining it.

 

• Select the track with your mouse, then, EXPORT – and point the output to your pre-made WAV folder:

 

OUTPUT FOLDER:      XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc02-OriginalMasterMix-WAV

 

• Once the output has completed, check the folder for the presence of the file, make sure it’s there, and, named to your satisfaction.

 

• Repeat with each track, making sure that you MUTE the previous track, and unmute the one you are working on (or you get a SILENT output file!) – and that ALL tracks except the one you are currently working on, are always MUTED.

 

• Once the WAV files have all been output, for each Disc – save and back up the .cwp file, save and back up all Audio files created during the session (your large WAV files).

 

• At this point, you have the best quality, 48K, 24 bit WAV files of the individual tracks, SPLIT out perfectly in the steps above, ready to now transform into MP3 files so you can load them onto your iPod or other portable device.

 

 

FINAL PROCESSING:

 

• Using DVDSoft tool “Audio Converter” (or any decent utility that Converts WAV files to high quality MP3 files), set the type to your desired quality (I use “Lame Insane Quality 320 kbps Frauhofen MP3” myself) and point the output to the root folder above your WAV and MP3 folders:

 

OUTPUT FOLDER:      XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-WAV&MP3 (or whatever YOUR project folder is called – the idea being, we want the tool to output ALL of the MP3s, from ALL of the WAVs, back into the root of your Project, so you can then assign their internal names BEFORE they are finally split up, by you dragging them into their individual, pre-made “MP3” folders.

 

• Once your type and target folder are set in the Audio Converter tool, you can now drag the files you want to have converted, into the area at the top of the application where it says “DRAG AUDIO FILES HERE” or similar.

 

• Open your XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc02-OriginalMasterMix-WAV folder, and select all 15 / however many you have of your WAV files with your mouse by using SHIFT-mouse, and then DRAG them across into the top part of the DVDSoft Audio Converter Application. I usually just do all of the WAV files as one giant conversion, so after I drag over the Disc02-OriginalMasterMix files, I then carry on, opening each WAV file folder next would be Disc03, then 04, etc., and dragging their contents into the DVDSoft Audio Conversion tool.

 

• Once you have the entire set of WAV files in place in the Audio Converter, re-check that your output type is correct (for me, that’s always highest quality, 320 kbps MP3), and that your target folder is just the root folder you are working in – and then press “Convert”. The tool starts working, taking each WAV file, and converting it into an MP3 file.   This can take quite some time, depending on how many hours’ worth of WAV files you have loaded into the tool – be patient, it will eventually tell you that the Process Is Complete. NOTE:  When it converts, it adds a “Comment” into each MP3 file – in the field “Comments” it puts its little advert “DVDSoft.com”.

 

• It’s harmless, but I don’t want it in my file, so the first thing I do, is select all items, while they are all still in the main folder, and I DELETE this “comment”, leaving the Comments field empty as it should be.

 

 

• While the MP3s are still in the main, root directory of your project, you should go ahead and add in your “Internal File Data” – I start out, by doing a few bulk updates – I select ALL of the MP3s, right click and select “Properties”, select the Details tab, and then, under “Album Artist” and “Contributing Artists”, I add in the band’s name (unless it’s already there). I also do a bulk update on any other fields that are the same for ALL of the files, such as “Genre” IF they are all the same Genre.

 

• After that, you can highlight each album, or each file, and make whatever adjustments you need to make the INNER NAMES meet your own personal Standards – I have very particular standards, which includes an Album Name that is preceded by a Year and Counter, so, “Oranges & Lemons” is actually called

 

“1989-1 Oranges & Lemons – Remaster – Expanded – Disc 02 – Original Master Mix – The Surround Sound Series” in my collection.

 

…or something like that – by dating these (using this YYYY-Counter template), I can force them to sort into Chronological order, based on the Album title – it works pretty well, but I did start out with that Standard some 9 years ago, so it would take anyone else a long time to institute – but a very good percentage of my existing MP3 collection does contain these dates.  I have even recently, been converting posthumous live CDs back to their performance date, rather than their more current release date – because let’s face it, there were not that many Gentle Giant live shows in 2006 or 2012.  But there are a LOT of shows from 1975, released in the last 30 years – well, I have managed to get them into chronological order with just a few exceptions where no data exists for the date of a concert.  Oh well – it’s the best I could do.

 

• From here, you would then rename each MP3 folder to match your MP3 collection – to whatever Standard you use there – and then copy them to your individual folders on your drive or drives. I am currently keeping seven copies of the MP3 on seven separate hard drives, and four copies of the WAV masters (because I sweated blood and time extracting these tracks!) on four separate drives – that’s my backup at the moment.   Because I am always short on disc space, I am going to reduce the MP3s down to four soon, to recover a lot of space – but, it was set up as seven and that’s how it was for the longest time…a lot of redundancy!

 

• Finally, once the MP3s are added to your collection – you can add them to ITunes and sync your device, or, put them on your non-ios device by drag and drop or whatever methodology you use – your MP3 files of rare Blu-Ray content, are NOW FINALLY READY for your listening pleasure – ENJOY!

 

 

So – back to reality – how’s THAT for a Process?  Since I had to do the content of Skylarking and  Oranges & Lemons during the last week or so, I used those experiences to build the Templates and work out exactly how the process should work, getting it down to a science – but not a quick one.  I recently used the new process on XTC “Nonsuch” – and it worked beautifully – it’s much better to have a consistent process for this, because it is pretty complex – as well as three of my four Steven Wilson Yes albums that still need the process done to them.  And one or two of my Steven Wilson Gentle Giant albums.  And ALL of my Steven Wilson Jethro Tull albums…including the brand new Stand Up – The Elevated Edition which sounds awesome, I might add!

 

I’ve got it down from days to hours now, but it can still eat up most of a day, just doing one “album” – because they usually pack a LOT of amazing music onto those Blu-Rays.  It’s quite amazing, to have a 20 disc version of “Drums and Wires” by XTC !!! Lots of choice there…

 

 

The only catalogue that is actually done – is King Crimson – that was my first Steven Wilson remix, the giant DVD release of In The Court of The Crimson King in about 2008 – hard to believe it (my obsession with the quality recordings that are any and all “Steven Wilson Mixes”) goes back that far, six years!

 

The problem is, to do this PROPERLY, takes a huge amount of time.  OK, ripping the music off of the disc, you can just start it and walk away, and do other work while it’s copying the content to that WAV file.  Repeat as necessary.   Sometimes, I just let three or four discs worth play into a HUGE WAV file, then, split it by album, and move them to their appropriate channel.  But once that easy step of transferring the music over is gone – well, then you are back to that horrible processing section, and cutting up different versions of the same album, or, massive quantities of Andy Partridge demos – it is very, very time consuming – and, I am a perfectionist, so if it isn’t perfect – I do it again – but, I am getting better at it…slowly.  It took me two full days to process all of the content on Yes’ “Tales From Topographic Oceans” – 2 whole days!  That seems to be what it takes, although maybe I could do one in a single day under the right circumstances.

 

I do want to get on with the Yes and Gentle Giant in particular, because both of those sport Stereo Instrumentals, which I absolutely love.  I’ve been listening to the Instrumental versions of Yes’ “Tales From Topographic Oceans” and they are fascinating and beautiful – you hear all kinds of things that the vocals hide – and I played “Ritual – Stereo Instrumental” yesterday on the 5.1 system – wow – it sounded fantastic!  Weird without any vocals – but, fascinating, especially hearing what Steve, Rick and in the case of Ritual, Chris are really doing – how it sounded before any vocals arrived – it’s just astonishing.

 

Now that I have finished XTC “Nonsuch”, so that’s all four of my SW XTC Discs  done – and then, eventually, to Yes and Gentle Giant – as for the Steve Hillage CDs that I just ripped – thank GOD it’s just all audio CDs in this set – no DVD or Blu-Ray content – so, that makes it so easy!

 

Until just now, I’ve never written down this process, and now that I see it in black and white, it just seems like going to extraordinary lengths to be able to hear rare music on your portable device – but, I have it streamlined now, so it does go a LOT faster using the templates, and my experience and skill at cutting up tracks, has gotten much, much better lately, so – it’s not quite as bad as it was.  But it is a LONG process by gumbo!

 

OK then, onto pastures new, now that you have learned one way, probably NOT the fastest way (I just know someone will come back to me with a tool that rips all audio from a Blu-ray or DVD with one button push) and it can even split up your tracks for you while cooking you a delicious breakfast – but I don’t know, mine does guarantee consistent, high quality, MP3s, built from the best possible, super high quality WAV file – for the level of technology that I have, it’s not too bad – it could be a lot worse!

 

For me, it’s just for the chance to hear this remarkable music, these musicological gems that Steven Wilson finds on these master tapes, and brings to us all – some amazing music has been unearthed just by his standard processes of “re-mixing” classic prog and pop albums.

 

Speaking of music, well, despite spending SOME time on Blu-Ray content – I have actually also been working on new music – in the studio, I have a new track, which I started a couple of weeks ago, called “On The Cusp Of Yesterday” which I am currently having a titanic struggle with.  The basic track has been done for some time, and, for some weird reason, the last one-minute guitar solo is also done.  So I needed to add guitars, from the beginning to the beginning of this existing solo, which is a bit challenging.

 

I spent an entire day (a few weeks ago on a Sunday, I think) adding some new parts, using a lot of truly beautiful H9 patches, a nice, ordinary clean delay into a hall reverb, not too ostentatious, but just nice – and then some other more strident patches – doing guitar over dubs.  All day, and, I wasn’t happy with the last…two or three overdubs.  Maybe the first one was OK, or maybe it’s just the second one…

 

I was so dissatisfied, because it just had not come out how I heard it in my head, which I didn’t even bother to make a rough mix of it with these new hard-fought overdubs, which were technically ok, but weren’t doing the job for me.

 

So the next time I got some free time to work on it, “On The Cusp Of Yesterday” got a new makeover – I actually decided to go ALL THE WAY BACK to the backing track, hiding all of my previous guitar bits, including the good ones – and I would try again, with that lovely clean delay to start – but this time, a clean delay into a beautiful SpaceTime patch.

 

I did several takes, some involving harmonics, others, strange chords, others, melodies and lead guitar.  Saved everything, but listened to nothing.  Now, I am waiting for another chance to go back and hear what I did – and I know that some certain bits – like the very end – came out REALLY well, there is some viable music there, and possibly, enough to flesh out part of the track, perhaps leaving some spaces for me to populate.

 

At the moment, I am just avoiding it, I am not sure where it’s going, the backing track is exceptional – drums, odd bass, really odd “keyboards” courtesy of “REV”, and a lovely violin.  A good solid track, and I really like it – but, for some inexplicable reason, I am not sure what belongs on top of it.  I am tending towards something quite ambient at the moment, rather than “normal” guitar parts (which is what I did the first time around, where I REALLY didn’t like the outcome) – I am liking ambient guitar parts at the moment, so that might be the way – time will tell.

 

Update: another session, I was able to take the recordings made the second time around, and produce a nice mix of “on the cusp of yesterday” from those – it’s come out really well.  Probably ready to be uploaded…which I still haven’t done, because I still haven’t decided about it…

 

Next – is something a bit unexpected, I am now at this very moment, revealing my plans for my next new “Eternal Album” which has turned out to be something I really did not expect AT ALL:  “Garage Band” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

How did that start? I had read somewhere on the Interweb, that Garage Band had had a really good makeover, and was a really cool way to make music now – and I can remember seeing Garage Band years ago on a friends Mac – and I myself have used it, I have a few songs made with it on an old Ipad, that I’ve never published – and possibly won’t, they were very early experiments, before I really had working with Apps down to a Science.

 

I decided to try out this new, improved Garage band, and wow – I was very, very surprised indeed!  It really has a lot of great features, and I think it could become my go-to place for working with samples – and that is what sets it apart, is the “Apple Loops” which are professionally-recorded bits of music, 2 bars of this, 4 bars of that, 8 bars of something really strange.  A lot of grooves, drum grooves, bass grooves, a lot of it is rhythmic in nature, including ethnic sounds from India, Afghanistan and even Egypt – and, a nice batch of African sounds, mostly drums – I have to admit, they have supplied a LOT of great, ready-made content, that you can fit together into tracks in a very easy, intuitive way.

 

I have thoroughly enjoy my Garage Band Renaissance or GBR, and I immediately started producing strange and wonderful hybrid piece of music beginning in mid-September and continuing to the present day.  And I finally did upload the first five complete tracks, to the new album, a few days ago.  I am also nearly finished with a sixth track, working title “preponderance”.  So the Garage Band Renaissance has been a real hit with me – here are the tracks:

 

Start Date            Title                                                       Containing

 

20160919             Hare Rama Buys A Llama               Drum Samples, Manually Played Bass, Grand Piano, Synth, Raucous Rhythm and Lead Guitars, Bizarre Guitar FX, and Bass Samples, Strings Samples

 

20160926             Opposites Attract                            Wonderful Pastiches of African Drum Samples, Ever Changing,

Manually Played Bass, Cello Samples, Afghanistani Melodic Instrument Samples, Sub-Bass Samples, Dub-Step Bass Samples, Bass Synth, Melody Synth, Reversed Melody Synth, Drum Kit Samples, String Section Samples.

 

20160926             Metal Crisis                                        (Altered version of abandoned track “Cuban Crises”) Drum Kit

(Metal) Sample, Metal Chug Rhythm Guitar Sample, Metal

(Metal) Sample, Metal Chug /Blues Lead Guitar Sample, Funky Clean Wah-Wah Guitar Sample, Beautiful Female Voice Singing “Oohs & Aahs” Vocal Sample, Funky Fender Rhodes Electric Piano Sample, Synth Sample, Additional Drum Kit Sample, Manually Played Bass.

 

20161014             Nambutamba Rain Shower         African Drum Samples (Many Different Ones), African Percussion

Samples, Mysterious Electric Piano Riff Sample, Mysterious Guitar Riff Sample, Mysterious Synth Chords, Additional Conga Sample, Rock Bass Guitar Sample, Drum Break Sample, Crash Cymbal Sample (Note: In the end, I actually did not play a single actual note on this, it’s entirely composed of samples – and also, it’s probably the first ever Ambient African piece of music ever made!)

 

20161017             Ten Seventeen (Aka “Nine Nine”)        Drum Kit Samples (Three Different Funked Out Drum Kit Samples, Manually Played Bass Guitar, Sarod Sample, Indian Drum Samples (Khol and Pakawaj Drums), Transport Stop Synth Sample, Voyager 1 Synth Sample, Vocalised Synth Bass Sample, Boogie Right Vox Synth Sample, Vigilante All Sample (String Section & Timpani Samples).

Update: after several more sessions, I FINALLY got the manually played bass guitar part how I wanted it.

 

I am very excited about working with Garage Band again, now that it has had such a brilliant face-lift, and I love how very simple it is to create very intriguing and interesting music, using mainly samples – something I’ve not done much of outside of Komplete – but that’s a very different world of sampling – the Native Instruments world – and I am afraid that Garage Band is not quite up to that standard yet :-).  But – it’s not bad for Apple!

I had a blast recording these tracks, the first where I used an IPhone instead of an Ipad – it’s not bad at all – I found it easy enough to do.  I do like the samples that Apple has provided, and the temptation to just sit and create, is overwhelming – they have a lot of great-sounding samples (and, some terribly bad or terribly cheesy ones, too) which make composing a dream – they even “theme” them together, so for example, you can put a bass guitar, rhythm guitar, and lead guitar “together” and they play back a chunk of an imaginary song by an imaginary band.  Of course, I like to manually force them to match up with the wrong track, cross-breeding them rather than putting them all together as intended – intentionally misusing the pre-matched loops…but that’s just me.

 

 

I have already used that technique twice during the last five weeks of Garage Band work, myself; once on “Hare Rama Buys A Llama” and again on “Metal Crisis” – it works well, and I like it. For the latter track, though, I brought in additional bluesy lead guitars, and purposely “mismatched” those over the other, patterned rhythm guitars – and it worked fine, because the musicianship of this unknown guitarist, was of a high calibre, and his beautiful blues riffs could have “fit” almost anywhere….by purposefully mis-placing them, I created some impossible and very musical moments in this metal / beautiful vocals track – a strange experience, but well worth it – I like this track!

So really, I am right back where I started, with music on an Ipad, often, Garage Band is the first thing you learn, and in my case, I am no exception, I did work with it for quite a while, until ambient apps came along and distracted me – once I had Scape, and Mixtikl, and Drone FX – that was me, away from “normal” apps like Garage Band, and when I did use normal apps, I favoured Nanostudio (and I still do!) as well as learning how to sample from the Fairlight, and so on – I began a long journey of discovery, that has now, in 2016…led me right back to the beginning, to where I started in 2011 – back to Garage Band.  Who would have thought?

Not me.

 

Now that the new Garage Band Eternal Album is loaded up at last, I am off to work on the guitar system which is undergoing yet another massive upgrade…as usual.  A game-changing upgrade I hope, including Pedalboard Mark 68, I can’t wait till it’s all sorted out…

 

 

Happy listening!

 

 

Dave

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the return of drone forest

I was pleasantly surprised to find that my old friend and partner in musical crime, ian stewart, has just created and posted onto you tube, some lovely long form drone forest videos (each running about 29 minutes and change) – four of them, to be exact, released on ian’s you tube channel just last month (june 2013).

I first ran into ian stewart via his excellent music mag “autoreverse”, and ian did some features on my mid-90s ambient and crafty output, and over time, we became friends.  he has also done a couple of in depth interview with me over time – one, back in 1995, reprinted here from autoreverse, and the other, quite recently – again, from autoreverse – 2011 version.

ian is an incredibly creative person, plays a number of instruments, and has a wonderful band called “devilcake” – a metal band – whose songs are exclusively about food, and another band called samarkand…he’s a fellow fan of XTC and king crimson, and is one of those people I’m always happy to work with.

one day, quite a number of years ago now, ian asked me if I would record some material for him on guitar, but he posed a really, really curious and difficult challenge:  he wanted pieces of music, but, critically, they were to have no melody and no beat – just texture.

so a few days after receiving this request (and, scratching my head a bit in terms of, how exactly will I do this?), I set up my guitar system, and started recording pieces of guitar “texture”.  I actually found this really quite difficult to do, because of the no melody rule in particular!   but, using stompboxes and my trusty ebows and some just plain strange, strange techniques, I produced quite a large “library” of these textural guitar sounds (probably more than an hour’s worth – I remember it took two cds to capture them all – maybe 25 tracks or more – I will have to locate the original discs to be able to say definitively how many tracks / how much time there was there).  I then mailed them away to ian – and promptly forgot all about it.

ian had never really said why he wanted the sounds, when I asked him about it, he would mumble something about a project of his, so I just put the whole thing out of my mind, and carried on with my life.

a few months later, out of the clear blue sky, a cd arrived in the post from ian, bearing the band name drone forest, entitled “drone forest”, which, apparently, was a new band, featuring ian c. stewart, c. reider, mike bowman, and…myself !!! I couldn’t believe it – here was a cd I was playing on, that I didn’t know existed, that I didn’t know was being made – I put the disc on, and sat there in an astonished state – and there were those textural guitar sounds of mine, recorded perhaps four months previously and then promptly forgotten –  expertly mixed in with sounds produced by the other three musicians (none of whom I had ever met, although I knew of c. reider because he’d reviewed one of my albums for…none other than ian’s “autoreverse” magazine!).

sitting there, hearing this cd, and realising what ian had done – he’d basically asked the same of both chris and mike, solicited material – they duly recorded sounds with no melody and no beat (a difficult task in particular for mike, who is a visual artist first; a drummer second, and a great guitarist/multi-instrumentalist – with his main instrument at the time being drums…the “no beat” rule must have been extremely challenging!) – but, all of the samples were superb, and ian had done an amazing job, creating several unique songs for the album which is known as “drone forest I” or simply “df1” – the first of many, many cds to come.

“drone forest II” followed hot on the heels of the first album, and after that, the albums started flowing so quickly that we couldn’t really believe it – we very quickly worked out a way of working:

1) we formed a yahoo “group”, and we all uploaded our self-created audio samples to our “sample pool”

2) we then would listen to and download the samples that the others had uploaded, picking what we liked, ignoring what we didn’t like

3) these then became the source material for new “drones”, which we each made many of, using whatever music software we favoured at the time

4) sound stretching, speeding up, slowing down, crushing, distorting, flanging, delaying, echoing, cutting, reversing, phasing, reverbing, mixing, contorting, convoluting – anything and everything went, any source files, mixed any way – as long as the end result sounded…like a drone.

a furious year of work, 2003, saw us so exhausted from the speed and quantity of creation, that we just sort of…stopped working.  leaving a massive trail of really, really interesting and innovative drone cds in our wake.  a while into the project, we decided that we would each produce a cd, instead of creating tracks and then picking a few from each member as we did originally, so I set off to produce “my” drone forest project, which is entitled “ZOSO” – the supposed “name” of led zeppelin‘s fourth album (although the music has nothing to do with led zeppelin – I just fancied calling it that, and that was that) – and each of the other members produced their own vision of drone forest – so all of these approaches, all of these amazing ideas were just flowing and it was a really fabulous and truly exciting time.

I am not exactly certain of the numbers, but I believe that in the first year, 2003, we produced eight cds – and then again, in the second working period, 2006 (which spilled over into the first part of 2007, to be fair), we also produced eight cds and then, chris produced a lovely piece of vinyl entitled “amy’s arms” right near the end – as well as two “posthumous” cds as well – for a total of 19 releases.

we’d invented a sort of  “bastard son of ambient” genre, the “drone” – along with several hundred other artists and bands, probably, but the quantity and quality of the drone forest catalogue cannot be underestimated.  sure, others before and after us, have claimed to invent the drone, but I think ian’s “drone supergroup” idea was a first – and his methods of working are unique and unrepeatable – brilliant thinking.

ian, as the godfather and founder of drone forest, embarked on a number of really, really interesting drone projects, including but not limited to a project where he created 100 one hour long drones (these were amazing, I never even heard them all, I probably have about a third of them), I think only ian has them all.  in any case, he developed a really clever and remarkable way to create these drones, for the 100 drones project (which was called “megadrone” I think – not quite sure) – he would create a short drone in the usual way, using different source files, he would build it to a particular length, five minutes or seven minutes or whatever it was (he had calculated this out) – and then, once happy with the short drone, he would “stretch” the track to one hour – and whatever the outcome – that was the drone.

remarkably, using this very strange and quite random technique – the resulting drones were – surprisingly – very consistent, and, they sounded great, and were perfect to listen to – equal in every way to drones that I had spent hours carefully concocting in cool edit pro multi-track!!  so he could produce a one hour drone, using a seven minute starting track – just by pushing a button.  this allowed him to work very, very quickly – to create a massive body of work – 100 hours – using a formulaic method that is truly inspiring.  I worked far too hard on my drones – ian just did it the easy way – and the results speak for themselves – really beautiful work.  what is perhaps most fascinating about this is, is that it demonstrates that the creation method of a drone can be almost anything – I spent hours meticulously building multi track drones, whereas ian just pushed the button – but both methods, along with whatever methods mike and c were employing – ALL methods produced beautiful, quality drones. it’s uncanny, really.

each of us worked in a different way; each of us favoured different software for the squashing, crushing, stretching and other audio atrocities that were committed in the name of drone creation – yet, when you put together an album with say, two tracks from each of us – there would be no way to tell “whose” track it was, because they came out remarkably consistently!  it really was quite something – mike, as a drummer, would make his drones the way he made them, c.,who is primarily a vocalist, would make his drones the way he made them, I would make my drones as if they were songs, but intentionally working towards a dronelike sound – and ian, well, ian was the master, really, he could make these “push button” drones, sure, but he was also the guy who put together that astounding first album – still one of my very favourite records from that period.

time passed, and for some reason, in 2006/2007, this time driven more by c., who in the meantime had built up the very, very cool drone forest website – we started recording again (quite suddenly, we just…started up again, as if three years hadn’t just passed with almost no band activity), and we created another large batch of records during another intense year-and-a-bit of drone creation.  I should mention that c. is the champion of all things netlabel, and on his netlabel site, you can download lots and lots of not just his music, but music by other netlabel artists, including compilations and collaborations galore – a fabulous netlabel resource.

and then…we stopped again – this time, for good – mike was busy starting a new family, and always busy with his art work – and his music (see velveeta heartbreak – this man is an incredibly talented artist and musician!) – I was busy with guitar craft, bindlestiff and my own solo records, and c. carried on his own solo work, on his label vuzhmusic – as well as being the caretaker of the drone forest website and being it’s main builder and webmaster.

ian carried on with his “megadrone” drone projects, and others, and also continued to work with his two bands, samarkand and “devilcake”, as well as going on to run the internet version of autoreverse, and also, his own bizarre depiction label.

but – there is so, so much drone music that has never been released – ian was far, far more prolific than any of us, and while we all gradually returned to our normal lives after the ’06/’07 round, ian continued with the “mega” and other drone projects – which really should have been released – as they were the some of the best – really remarkable stuff.

ian did produce an ultra-rare, 10-cd set of one of his unreleased projects – “metadrone” (which has the cryptic title “df8” on the actual package, and ian sent one to each band member – I am the proud owner of number 10/10 of “metadrone”, and also, a very proud owner of the vinyl record that chris produced, “amy’s arms”).  luckily, you can now download “metadrone” for free from the drone forest web site, while c’s vinyl release is still available for purchase as far as I know.

if we now fast forward to june 2013 – ian has (apparently, as I had no warning or inkling of these new recordings’ existence until today, when they appeared as suggestions on my you tube page!!) taken the original source tapes (I assume, from myself, mike and chris – and himself) and created new random audio mixes, one each for his four 29 minute long videos, using the original “drone forest I” source materials.  this is exactly the kind of thing that ian excels at, and I am so, so pleased to see these “new” videos, along with the first brand new drone forest music since 2007 (that I am aware of, anyway!).

what a pleasure and a privilege to be involved in a project like “drone forest” – an internet band, but an internet band like no other – working with three of the most creative people I’ve ever had the pleasure to know and to work with, and it’s with an incredible fondness that I think back on those two-and-a-bit remarkable years of creation, and, the massive catalogue of music we produced – which, by the way, you can download every single album and track for free at www.droneforest.com (with the one exception of the “amy’s arms” vinyl release, which is a for sale item as it is in vinyl format) – otherwise, all of the other tracks, 16 original cds and 2 posthumous cds, are free to download!!! free.

for me – well, what an absolute joy the entire drone forest experience was – and is, because right now, I am sat listening to four brand new, 29 minute long drone forest tracks – probably recorded in some very unusual way by the most excellent ian c. stewart – all hail the master of drones ! these new pieces are intriguing, dark, and most, most excellent – drones 2013 style.

you can view the entire discography on the drone forest website – we created 16 cds in our main heyday of 2003/then 2006-2007, plus the “amy’s arms” vinyl release makes it a nice round seventeen (my lucky number)  – and two “posthumous” cds.  in looking at the discography just now, I noticed that there are actually two of the drone forest cds that I produced, in 2003, it was the aforementioned “ZOSO”, but in 2006-2007, at the end of the second run of albums, I did a second production job on the final cd released by the group as a whole, “spatial displacement”.  in a way, I’m pleased that I was the one to master and produce our final album as a band – followed by the swan song – c. reider’s most excellent “amy’s arms” making it seventeen releases in total during our active lifetime as a band.

I think it’s more than fitting that exactly ten years after the release of “drone forest I”, that it’s creator has seen fit to create four brand new works from the band, here and now in 2013, but, using the ten year old samples – randomly re-arranging them into these there wonderful new pieces of music – I think that is brilliant !

if you are interested in drones, which, after all, are a sort of bastard son or offspring of ambient music, I would suggest a visit to the drone forest website, download an album or three or five or nineteen, and you might find you have a new love – the drone.  drones can be dark, disturbing, momentarily uplifting, disorienting, wonderful, moving, annoying or just downright cool, but, as an unusual offshoot of the ambient genre, once you start listening…you may find them very compelling indeed – I just listened to two full hours of brand new drone forest music, and it was absolutely captivating, relaxing, exhilarating – a great listening experience.

here are direct links to the four brand new drone forest videos, on the ian stewart you tube page:

drone forest video 1

drone forest video 2

drone forest video 3

drone forest video 4

ian also produced a short form drone forest video in 2009, which is here.

in listening to the new tracks tonight, I really find the to be most excellent – an updated, remixed, powered up version of the drone, set to ambient videos of – what else – trees, forests, snowstorms…the 2013 version of what we did so well back in 2003 and 2006/2007 – re-imagined for the 10s by none other than the drone master himself, ian c. stewart.

all hail indeed!

the drone forest discography:

title  /  assembled by

drone forest / ian c. stewart

drone forest II / ian c. stewart

our ghost in her wood / c. reider

june 21, 2003 / c. reider (a live simultaneous one hour event from four studios)

ZOSO / dave stafford

airways nova teeth / mike bowman

remixes, volume I / ian c. stewart

metadrone / ian c. stewart (original release, handmade, hand painted limited numbered edition 10 cd set)

drone forest IV / compilation – assembled by the band

remixes, volume II / the band

kirchenkampf vs. drone forest / john gore – guest assembler – drone forest source material

biolegacy / ian c. stewart (original release, handmade, limited numbered edition 3″ cdr 10 copies)

point / c. reider

honey / ian c. stewart

wormwood / c. reider

spatial displacement / dave stafford

amy’s arms (12″ vinyl release) / c. reider

forester / c. reider (posthumous release – the entire DF catalogue to date, put through an audio mulcher)

distinguish / to be determined (posthumous release)

I’ve been in some unusual bands before, from the dozey lumps to bindlestiff to the orchestra of crafty guitarists, but there has never been another band quite like drone forest.  go have a listen!

a short session with the “shredder synth”…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. 🙂