Archive for May, 2016
Grant
May 31, 2016
Day 277: Tuesday 31 May 2016
Little Bridge:
An Ambient Dronescape today for your delectation.
Made with Gadget, recorded into AudioShare with ApeFilter, Dedalus, AUFX:Dub, and AUFX:PeakQ, plus a little assistance from TwistedWave.
Grant
May 30, 2016
Day 276: Monday 30 May 2016
The Tale Of Flying Bertha:
Beatscape!
I felt like having a play with Rebirth today, it’s a little fiddly and little more ‘blippy bloppy’ than I usually get, but I’ve been slowly learning to embrace my inner blip and blop. So no worries.
I jammed onto AudioShare with Dedalus and ApeFilter (because I wasn’t in the mood to struggle with Rebirth’s song mode today) then moved to Auria where I did my cutting up and arranging and added a hit from yesterday’s Impactor recording for good measure.
Grant
May 29, 2016
Day 275: Sunday 29 May 2016
What?:
Another Ambient Drone with beat, like yesterday’s. In fact it is the second in a proposed series, all using the same bedrock of sounds coming from the same Session in Shoom, and using the same structure of Ambient/noise/drone with occasional beat (plus occasional other elements).
This track uses Patterning for the beat flavoured with Caramel, as well as ApeDelay and ApeFilter on the drone. Recorded and arranged with the help of AudioShare and Auria.
Grant
May 28, 2016
Day 274: Saturday 28 May 2016
When?:
An Ambient piece today, long and slow and gentle. Must be the hangover speaking.
Mainly Shoom but with a little DM2 and a little Trudi spoken word (iSpeech TTS, AltiSpace, TwistedWave). Also some help from Auria, AudioShare, Caramel, Crystalline, DubFilter, and ApeDelay.
I particularly recommend the Shoom, DubFilter, ApeDelay, Crystalline combination. It sure is a thing of beauty.
Peace Out trackers, I hope that you enjoy your saturday.
Grant
May 27, 2016
Day 273: Friday 27 May 2016
One Hundred:
Another pure Beatscape like yesterday’s, nothing but drum apps.
Also like yesterday’s this one uses three beats from three apps. Today it’s Attack, DM1, and DM2. Assembled as usual in Auria, with a little assistance from Dedalus, ApeDelay, and FLUX:FX.
Grant
May 27, 2016
Day 272: Thursday 26 May 2016
100:
A Beatscsape, nothing but drum apps.
DrumJam, Diode-108, and iSpark.
I did a little experiment: I made a beat in each of my drum apps at 100 bpm without otherwise trying to match them, then brought them together to see what would match and how. The beats from the above three seemed to go together and I was able to construct this track from them but the ones from DM1, DM2, Attack, ElasticDrums, and Patterning didn’t fit. I may yet be able to use those in related projects.
I didn’t use my more groove box sort of apps like iMaschine, BeatMaker, iMPC Pro, iElectribe, and Alchemy all of which I tend to use as drum machines with extentions, and three of which (BeatMaker, iElectribe and iMPC) I haven’t used enough to be fluent with.
I also tried to use Different Drummer, DrumPerfect, and Gumdrops but realized that I had no idea how to use them. Manual and YouTube trips required there I’m afraid.
As you can see I am a fan of drum apps (there are several that I don’t own yet) but I was surprised at how many I don’t use much or at all. Each one has slightly, or massively, different approaches and can give different results and I really want to be able to use them all to see what they can bring to my tracks.
On a related note doing this blog has made me realise that I don’t really use synths all that much. Drum apps and Grain Synthesis apps have become my main go to instruments for constructing the sort of sounds that I like. Subtractive synths in particular aren’t getting much of a look in. That wasn’t a conscious choice but it’s an interesting thing to discover.
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.