Grant’s Music Diary 31 March 2017

I have been playing guitar regularly again lately and am finding it hugely influential on the way I hear and think about music. Something essential of me comes to the fore when I physically play either guitar or bass; it’s present when I just use the iPad apps but seems to come to the surface when I hold these instruments, which after all I have spent countless hours and about 40 years playing (on and off).

Anyway Gadget has been updated with the possibility of adding audio tracks, both vocal and guitar, and I have been exploring the new options this opens up in app. Previously any tracks with guitar or vocals have been made in Auria which is certainly superior in sounds and options and versatility but having everything in Gadget makes it easy to sketch ideas etc in one place.

Probably the best option would be to import each track from Gadget to Auria for finishing but that is for another day. This track is all Gadget.

I began by jamming 7 tracks of guitar along to the drums, slowly building up the (admittedly simple) idea. The horns where also built up by playing the guitar, this time triggering the midi in Gadget by way of MIDI Guitar. This required quite a bit of editing because it wasn’t very accurate but I think yielded good results so I will continue to try this out. I tried singing the vocal but ran up against my inability to sing well, so I ended up doing it as a spoken word, just keeping the last bit of singing which is reasonably in tune and made a good backing I thought.

Anyway I’m really happy with this, I hope you enjoy it.