today I am going to talk about a new kind of music that I’ve been working with now since may, 2012 – or rather, I am just getting caught up with a new kind of music that I invented in may, 2012 – and I’ve dubbed this new process the “synthraga orchestra”, and the music that is output, “synthraga”. I’ve talked about this before, the reason I am thinking about it now is that I’ve just produced and uploaded the first video from the session, which has turned out really, really well.
on may 19th of this year I did my some of my first experiments using more than one ipad application in a live setting, specifically, a set-up where I use itabla pro for drone and percussion, in the form of tanpura and tabla, and on top of that, I play a melody on my 88 key MIDI keyboard, driving another ipad application, a really nice synth named “nlog synth pro” – and that’s the basic set-up – but, wanting to push this “how many apps can I drive at once, realistically” question a little harder, a couple of the improvs include an additional application as well, another nice synth called “mini synth pro” – so two melody synths on top of tabla and tanpura – and that turned out to be the answer for now – two seems to be the maximum at the moment with no special set-up.
I did try adding a third synth, but the output got really, really confused – so I need to read up on how to best layer applications – I know you can do more than two, but I am very lazy when it comes to details like setting MIDI channels and so on – so I managed to get a great sounding basic set up, with minimum effort – which just allowed me to play – and this first video really encourages me, because it shows on film that the ipad is not in any way shape or form a “toy” – it’s capable of making serious music – but without the kind of serious set up that I would have to do say in SONAR, to accomplish this.
in fact, while the set-up is a little bit tricky, on film, it looks easy – I am tapping away with authority as the piece progresses – first, I start off playing the melody with no accompaniment from the itabla pro application. then I reach down and switch over to the itabla app, and a moment later (all the while, playing the melody synth using nlog synth pro) I switch on the tanpura.
I continue to play with nlog pro synth melody and now, underlying tanpura, for another minute or so; then I reach down and enable the tabla. I then play the main body of the song, for another couple of minutes, and then, reverse the process: the tabla come out, the tanpura continue, then – everything stops.
it works beautifully, and I am looking forward to producing the next five “synthraga orchestra” videos over the coming weeks, and I hope you will give them a listen – I really think this might be a genre of music that I would, over time, record quite a lot of – it’s quite, quite relaxing, and I really put the pitch bend wheel on the synth to great use too – which makes sense when you are playing what is essentially, a modified raga – I was pleasantly surprised how useful the pitch bend wheel was in creating these pieces, which sound pretty much like the label on the tin: “synthraga” – playing now on the synthesizerHD channel on YouTube.
see you there!
pureambient / dave stafford 