Posted by Grant
Grant
May 25, 2016
Day 271: Weds 25 May 2016
Grace:
Today we have a Beatscape with Spoken Word.
I enjoy the tracks where I include some voice; whether it be Trudi or myself, whether it be spoken or sung, or maybe even without understandable words but merely denoting a recognisable human presence.
Three things hold me back from doing this more often: Firstly I find writing words difficult, they don’t always come when needed. Secondly I don’t have a great voice and am reluctant to use it (hence Trudi). Thirdly I’m lazy and can’t always find the energy to set up a mike etc, go into another room on another floor so that my poor family doesn’t have to suffer, and struggle with my own fears of inadequacy and foolishness.
Tracks often seem whole without a vocal of course but today I really felt this needed something and fortunately something came to me; just a little text (or possibly poem) of four lines it’s true, but it took as long as the rest of the track to get it sounding this right. I think it could do with a bit more fine tuning but hey I told you I was lazy. Also it’s called ‘Track A Day’ not ‘Track Whenever The Damn Words Are Good Enough Which Might Be Never’.
Anyway I constructed this in the car while waiting for my son’s exam to finish, so the vocal is just recorded through the headphones inbuilt mike. The rest of the beatscape was made using LaunchPad, iSpark, and Patterning. Assembled in Auria and flavoured with Dedalus and ApeFilter.
I hope you enjoy.
Grant
May 24, 2016
Day 270: Tuesday 24 May 2016
Lost (The Longer):
Another Beatscape today, I’m really digging these at the moment.
A dark and forbidding, post apocalyptic track using Gadget which I simply jammed into AudioShare with Dedalus.
Grant
May 23, 2016
Day 269: Monday 23 May 2016
From Whence Does Pleasure Derive:
A Beatscape made from iMaschine 2 and Alchemy.
Both apps have four tracks which can either be drums or keyboards with samples; in iMaschine I used 4 drum tracks and in Alchemy 3 drum tracks and one bass synth. I made them one after the other at the same bpm, recorded them both to AudioShare with Dedalus and ApeFilter, then arranged them together in Auria.
Grant
May 22, 2016
Day 268: Sunday 22 May 2016
Midnight In The Garden Of Goods & Weevils:
A very slow DM2 groove started off today’s track. I ran it through Dedalus three times with different settings and combined them in Auria. Then I added the bass arpeggio from Addictive Synth, and the higher arpeggios (variations of the first) also using Addictive Synth.
Actually that summary doesn’t give justice to my struggles today. A fact that I was contemplating about yesterday’s post which represented only a small portion of the day’s work.
Yesterday I worked for hours on a piece that just never quite got there, giving up and turning to iMaschine at the end of the day. Today I struggled with apps quitting and losing sound, and having to do restarts and standing-on-my-head-holding-my-mouth-the-right-way before I finally got things working.
Phew.
Grant
May 21, 2016
Day 267: Saturday 21 May 2016
Deceptively Simple:
Beatscape.
iMaschine is my main instrument here (drum kits in all 4 parts as is often my way), with a little appearance from iElectribe and DM2. So it’s all drum machines today.
Effects used were Dedalus and AUFX:Dub. Auria helped put it all together.
Grant
May 20, 2016
Day 266: Friday 20 May 2016
Giving Birth In A Car Park (To The Melodious Sound Of Jackhammers And Cranes):
A slightly strange, quirky little Beatscape.
I had no idea how this would turn out but I guess that’s true of everything that I do.
I began by trying to figure out DM2 a little more (which I did), recorded the ‘song’ from there into AudioShare with FLUX:FX and Emo Chorus, put that into Auria, combined it with a few Poseidon arps and a recording of me saying ‘huh’, and that was about it 🙂
It took all day (between doing family and life stuff) and gives an unexpected result. But I’m quite happy with that.
Grant
May 19, 2016
Day 265: Thursday 19 May 2016
Cheesy Drummer Travels Far And Wide, Finds Himself (Fancy That):
A gentle piece of Electronica today.
Made with a combination of Keezy Drummer (a little beat that I made on my iPhone while walking the dog), DM2 (yes it came out today and I had to give it a run), Addictive Synth (re-using an arpeggio from last year with a different sound and speed, but don’t tell anyone), and Auria. With a little help from AudioShare, Dedalus, ApeFilter, AltiSpace, and Caramel.
Grant
May 18, 2016
Day 264: Weds 18 May 2016
Moments Like These:
Ambient Beatscape.
I began today with an ambient jam in Shoom. There are three sound engines with 2 oscillators each plus noise. It’s great fun to start from scratch, designing the first sound and moving on to the others, designing them to fit, then jamming a track into AudioShare (in this case with Dedalus and ApeFilter).
I then moved on to Diode-108 which I enjoy very much but haven’t used in a while, altering slightly the beat that loaded, recording it through the same AudioShare effect chain plus Caramel, then repeating three times with different sounds.
Next I loaded everything into Auria for arranging.
Finally I turned to Poseidon for a little arpeggio action that I could throw into the mix.
I hope that you enjoy the result.
Peace Out Tracklings.
Grant
May 17, 2016
Day 263: Tuesday 17 May 2016
Holographic Deities Unite In Distain For Wetware Mortals; Trouble Ensues:
Pure Beatscape, nothing but drum machine.
Yes I seem to be in the mood for simplicity at the moment.
Gadget provided the sounds, I used just one instance of each of the drum or drum-like modules: London, Amsterdam, and Tokyo. Exported the result to AudioShare where I effected it with Dedalus, ApeDelay (my new favourite combination), and Caramel. Imported both to Auria for layering and arranging. Cut out a couple of hits for a breakdown in the middle. Bingo.
Grant
May 16, 2016
Day 262: Monday 16 May 2016
Gentle Genial Denial:
A Beatscape today pure and simple.
Patterning, AudioShare, Reverb FDN, Dedalus, DubFilter.