Archive for the Notes and Musings category

Grant

Musing & Bio… On Loving Bass

Grant's Bio, Notes and Musings No Comment

I am a Bass Player.

It’s a funny fact about myself. Like my love of black jelly beans, or my inability to learn Norwegian 🙂

But to me it is quite fundamental.

I am a Bass Player.

‘Hello my name is Grant and I am a Bass Player.’

Except (though it is a sort of addiction), it’s not a problem, but a strength. Or at least an interesting fact for me to recognise.

(segue alert)

I began my musical journey at 15 or 16 by learning Bob Dylan songs on a three quarter size guitar that my parents had given me when I was 6. Apparently my mum would lose me in the city and find me staring transfixed at the guitars in the window of the local music store. Unfortunately what my parents failed to recognise, or more likely they didn’t have the money to realise, was that I was staring at the beautiful hollow bodied electric guitars, with dreams of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. It took two years for my parents to get around to music lessons (procrastination must run in families cause it’s a vice I too suffer); but again my dreams of musical coolness did not really include riding in the winter on my push bike, to an old lady whose house smelt of stale urine, to learn ‘Oh my Darling Clementine’. I only lasted a full term because my mum insisted that it was already paid for.

Anyway, by the time I was 15 I couldn’t hold back the desire to play. So long evening hours in my bedroom with Bob Dylan songbooks ensued. And eventually I was a guitarist in a couple of bands with high school friends at 19 or so.

BUT..

Life really began for me when I despaired of ever being able to play.

Looking back on it now I think this was my first severe depressive episode, though it wasn’t severe compared to what was to come (but that’s another story). Anyway, crippling self doubt and all that; I thought I was shit and I should just give up. But I decided to give it one last try; I had sometimes swapped instruments with the Bass Player in my first band and enjoyed it thoroughly, so I went into debt and got a bass and amp. In my mind this was it the final throw! If I can’t do this I’m giving up.

What a revelation!

After a false start or two I realised that this was what I was meant to be. The two instruments are superficially similar (after all the tuning is almost the same) but their roles are very different. The very fact of the register difference is crucial here. (A fact that was reinforced for me years later when I learned the mandolin). You are playing a very different instrument.

So… for eleven years or more I was almost exclusively a Bass Player. For a lot of that time I didn’t even own another instrument. I did flirt with my first Synth in there somewhere (but again that’s another story). I thought as a Bass Player, I breathed as a Bass Player, I dreamed as a Bass Player, I moved as a Bass Player…you get the idea.

Where was I going with this?

Oh yeah… bass lines have been creeping back into my music lately. I don’t even have a bass. I mean I own several but they are on the other side of the world. More and more I realise how much I miss my bass. A bass. Any bass.

Grant

Musing on Stuff and Supplementary Post

Ambient, Audio, Notes and Musings, Supplementary No Comment

I often make more than one track in a day, sometimes they are exploring different apps or different approaches. But often I think they must reflect my mood because they end up in the same place, or at least feeling like they belong together.

Todays post (Day 67) was a very minimal ambient piece made entirely with one patch in one synth and just played. Very much as I might play a guitar, no switching apps or collaging, just two notes interacting.

Which brings me to a thing that I have been musing about.

How much or how little is needed for a track? How simple can it be? How do we tell when something is finished? When it doesn’t need any more? Would spending more time on these things improve them? Is perfection necessary or just annoying and counter productive? Perhaps these are two different states of being?

These are some of the questions that I am probing with my ‘Year Of Posting’. But as yet I have no answers.

Your comments and ideas would be appreciated.

As an example I include a playlist of all yesterdays tracks. The first three are all made with one patch in CubeSynth and definitely belong together as minimalist pieces. The fourth went through a more complicated journey; CrystalSynthXT, Dedalus, FLUX:FX, TwistedWave, and Borderlands Granular (more like my usual mode of working though without the trip to Auria for collaging), and yet somehow it feels like it belongs here.

Anyway Peace out peeps.

Grant

Day 57: Supplementary Post

Ambient, Audio, Notes and Musings, Soundscape, Supplementary, Tracks No Comment

Perspective: A Drama In Three Parts:

Musing:

Each track I make is a journey; there are usually twists and turns (often wrong turns), there are decisions made, decisions rescinded, backflips, and surprises. I never know when I start where I’m going to end up.

Sometimes the result is close to the initial idea or intention. Sometimes the work takes on a life of it’s own and I have to hold on for dear life while it works itself out. Often I have nothing in mind, but just begin and try to keep myself alert for the possibilities and signs of life that unfold.

I am anthropomorphising I know. So be it.

The creative process does seem to be out of my control; but I’m too much an atheist to attribute it to spirits, or muses, or being receptive to some god or other. Perhaps it’s something to do with Freud’s Subconscious, or Jung’s Collective Subconscious, or perhaps I’m being all Zen, or attuning myself to the Tao. Whatever. Take your pick, or use your own metaphor. It’s great fun! It’s the stuff of life!

 

Anyway…takes a breath…

Todays track had three way stations on it’s journey, three moments of clarity, almost like shrines along a pilgrimage: one near the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end. As it should be I suppose.

If you so choose, come journey with me.

The Tracks:

Part One is the original Beatscape that started it all.

Part Two is how I clothed the Beatscape but with the Beatscape removed.

Part Three is the resolution, the arrival, the conclusion.

Cube Synth, Patterning, iFretless Bass, Dedalus, Emo Chorus.

Grant

Musing On Genres

Notes and Musings No Comment
I’ve never gotten my head around the plethora of genres and styles of electronic music; there just seems to be so many. In fact when genres are mentioned I usually have to go and look them up (Thank the gods and goddesses for the internet).
Actually I’ve always had trouble placing the music that I make in any particular niche. I’ve never been a blues guy, or a country guy, or a metal guy, or a reggae guy, though I’ve touched on those genres from time to time, I’ve never really lived within any genre.
But now that I’m using my iPad to make largely electronica music i.e. clearly synth and sampler based, I really feel the need to arrive at some definitions (if only in my own head), for the landscape of sound that I’m moving in.

And that is how I feel about music making, that each song or instrumental piece is a landscape that we are moving through.

So there is a landscape and a journey.

A landscape and a narrative.

A landscape and a mood.

Which leads me to my personal take on genres; its not comprehensive and its open to change, and it probably doesn’t apply to anyone else, but it is how my head is working at the moment, as I think about and make music.

When I make these landscapes, these Soundscapes, there is often no identifiable sounds, no reference to real world instruments or objects, I think of these pieces or elements as Abstract much like abstract paintings (which I make).

At the most they may contain some drones. If a piece is largely drone like I think of it as a Dronescape.
If it has more synthy, pad like sounds emerging and disappearing, more ‘notes’ in other words even if no exact harmony, I think of it as Ambient.
So, so far I have Abstract Soundscape and Ambient Soundscape.
Then sometimes drum beats appear. Perhaps as one element in the landscape, one of  the things encountered on the journey; but sometimes as the major element.
In fact sometimes the drumbeat becomes the landscape that the other sounds exist within. Thus we have the Beatscape.
And that is the little world of music that I’ve been living in lately, and it explains my categories in this blog.
Now I’m aware that there is more to music than that. There is more to my music than that.
I can feel the urge to pick up my guitar again, and I’m wondering more and more about returning to some sort of song form, and how I might be able to incorporate those elements into my landscapes.
But I guess thats what this year is about: how to explore these abstractions and ambiences, these soundscapes and beatscapes, and how to include field recordings, found sounds, words, songs, instruments, voices, and whatever else comes to mind.
Cheers, and thanks for listening to my ramblings.
Grant

App Of The Week

Notes and Musings No Comment
I loath manuals. I hate them. My antipathy is visceral, I can feel it like a hard knot in my gut. So therefore, for good or ill, I never read the things. I like to open an app or a program and leap straight in.
Of course this can have mixed results. Sometimes it’s fine, almost freeing; especially with simpler apps or ones that just ‘gel’ for you. But some apps are just so deep and complicated that this approach does’t get you very far, in fact it can be downright useless. And sometimes you can have results with an app while still missing half it’s capabilities and pleasures.
So I have decided to choose an App Of The Week, to really investigate and come to grips with. Note that I may choose longer or shorter periods of time depending on the app, I’m not going to tie myself in knots over the ‘week’ idea. I’ve got enough pressure with this track a day thing 🙂
My first App Of The Week will be Addictive Synth.
This is one of those apps that I just loved from the first time I tried it; if you’ve been reading my track descriptions you will have seen it’s name pop up regularly. But it’s been so easy for me to find sounds I love in it that I’ve only brushed the surface, and it’s time to dig in deep and see what I find.
I’m thinking that I’ll report back when I reach some conclusions.
Grant

Oh By The Way

Notes and Musings No Comment

It took me till day 19 of my ‘Year Of Posting’ to sort out wordpress etc and get this blog idea running; hence the first days are being posted over a day or two while I catch up.

But don’t worry, I’ll maintain my track making in the meantime 🙂

Grant

What To Expect Here: guidelines not rules

Notes and Musings No Comment

1- I begin my ‘Year of Posting’ with a group of tracks all made entirely on my iPad or iPhone, and I may do that all year. But I’m not sure how things will develop; as I explore my music world I may move to guitar, or keyboard, or hardware synths, or spoken word, or Ableton and Logic on my laptop, or something else entirely, or a combination of the above.

Who knows.

2- I begin the year with a series of tracks with videos from my YouTube page. I probably won’t have time to do that every day, so I may move to some audio only.

We’ll just have to see how it goes.

I find that the process of putting together a video helps me listen to a track in a different way; so it’s a process I enjoy and find useful.

Grant

Who Am I? A short bio

Grant's Bio, Notes and Musings No Comment

I am a 54 year old bass player and guitarist, who began playing Post Punk in 1982, having played in several bands over the years since then. Though never more than semi professionally.

I have tried my hand at several other instruments in that time including keyboard, percussion, and mandolin but I claim no real competence on those.

In 1999 I set up a little home studio but always struggled to produce anything; somehow being daunted by the scale of the task.

This year however has seen me embrace music making on the iPad.

Something about the all in one interface, the carry it everywhereness, the sheer versatility of sounds available, has freed me from my inhibitions and allowed me to embrace music making again.

 

Grant

A track a day for a year, are you insane?

Notes and Musings No Comment

Possibly.

By challenging myself this way I hope to:

-Overcome my chronic procrastination

-Concentrate my thoughts and feelings about what music I want to and/or can produce

-Share my journey and my pain to anyone who is interested or is on the same path.

To anyone who does want to journey with me; welcome, I hope we have some fun and learn some stuff.

 

 

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