Archive for the Audio category
Grant
November 20, 2018
Weekly Post: Sunday 18th of November 2018
Ha ha, I forgot to post on Sunday and today is Tuesday. Oh well never mind, I obviously haven’t developed the habit. Better late than never.
Novembeat is going well, 20 tracks in 20 days and no sign of flagging. In fact I do find this sort of intense work on one app or one idea very fruitful. I’m still using just Korg’s Gadget app for this project, and mainly the Bilbao Gadget loaded with my own samples, concentrating on beats and vocal snippets.
Using primarily homemade samples is a great way to develop a personal sound and feel. In fact the kind of sounds I try to make are influenced by the use I make of them. It’s a sort of feedback loop.
Before this week the vocal snippets have been either my own voice or my ‘Trudi’ character which I make with a combination of the apps Text To Speech and TwistedWave. This week I have been including samples from the Beatles movie ‘A Hard Days Night’ specifically George’s solo scene. I doubt it’s legal but since I won’t be making any money I hope it counts as fair use or something.
The interesting thing that comes up with this way of using voice and text is the question of meaning; is the voice just a part of the rhythmic layer, one more beat element? Can we separate our listening to words, even discrete or partial words, from our brains meaning and sense making apparatus. Should the random conjunction of words and meanings be embraced? Or should a form of sense, even just the appearance of sense, be sort after? All of these methods have emerged in the series so far, as well as in previous tracks. I haven’t made up my mind if one approach suits me more or not.
Speaking of intensely using one app, I have another ongoing series at the moment using the app Groovebox. It began in August and has developed into an almost daily obsession. This app does not allow me to include my own samples but uses included sound packs with the ability to alter those sounds but not to design and save your own. The sounds included are very high quality though and I have yet to purchase them all, finding lots of inspiration in what I have so far.
Each app has it’s own way of doing things and each takes me to a different place and gives me very different results. I get very different results in this series for example than my Gadget tracks and also from my series made with iMaschine. This is fascinating to me and leads me to reflect on what aspect of myself and my musicality each app brings out, and exactly where it is that I stand among it all, where the commonality is.
Thanks for listening to my ramble.
Here’s my Groovebox playlist for you to sample…
Grant
October 30, 2018
Hello World October 30 2018
Hello Peeps,
If there are any peeps out there 😉
It often feels like I’m alone yelling into the abyss but I guess yelling into the abyss is useful for it’s catharsis if nothing else. Perhaps I should change the name of this Blog to ‘Yelling Into The Abyss’.
Anyway, Hello again. It’s been a while I know. It’s not that I haven’t been working, in fact the last few months have been very productive and I have a number of projects on the go; it’s just that I’ve been unsure of the future or direction of this blog or the place it might have in my process.
Today I decided to start posting again and see if or how it develops.
So, here is todays piece. Yesterday and last night was the first snow of the season and this feels like my homage to the beginning of winter.
Grant
December 1, 2017
Grant’s Music Diary 1st of December 2017
My intention this month was to write lyrics, I joined the November Album Writing Challenge and hoped to write at least 30 odd minutes of Spoken Word/Sung pieces but alas although I wrote 5 texts, I failed to find a setting for all but one of them. No matter, their moment will come.
However, though I failed at my intention, I did manage to make 24 tracks of various kinds this month and here they all are if anyone is interested. I think I will call this pseudo album ‘Words Are Hard”.
Grant
October 19, 2017
Random Post
Nothing particular to say today, just that I finished this track and it’s unusually happy…
So I though I’d share 🙂
Grant
September 13, 2017
Totally Fictional #3
It’s been a while but I finally got around to making another radio episode for Mixcloud.
It’s a concept that I’ve been developing as another way to showcase my tunes and as a fun way to indulge myself in a little fantasy; so I have the lovely but totally fictional Trudi Mcboody run her own radio show.
The previous episodes had tunes all made in one week but since it’s been a year between shows I’ve included tracks made from September 2015 to June this year.
I hope you enjoy it.
Grant
March 31, 2017
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.
Grant
March 22, 2017
Grant’s Music Diary 22 March 2017
I discovered this track from Feb 2016 lying around in one of my folders and decided that I really like it. I was making a lot of Abstract Soundscapes at that time and I have been thinking about making more stuff along that vein.
One of the disadvantages of loving lots of different genres and styles is that I can never decide where to put my energies or what is truly me.
The basic assumption of course is that the music that I make will be better the more ‘authentically’ ‘me’ it is. The problem is that I’m not entirely sure where, or what, or if such an ‘authentic’ me might be found.
The concept of authenticity I often find problematic anyway; it’s usually used by people who want the power to define and limit others, have you noticed how the people who claim to be ‘keeping it real’, never actually are. Also, whatever it is that you are talking about, the closer you look at the boundaries between the authentic and the inauthentic the more grey areas you see, till everything becomes a blur and a blend.
So, if I look at the world and doubt the usefulness or the ‘truth’ of the concept how can I still apply that concept to myself. And if there isn’t an authentic me, what is there? An inauthentic me? Or is that a false dichotomy?
Ah the thoughts that pester…
Grant
March 15, 2017
Grant’s Music Diary 15 March 2017 (Horns #10)
Still feeling unsure of myself and my direction but I had a lot of fun today jamming this horn arrangement. Drums and bass set up in Gadget, just a repeated 4 bar thing, then 3 passes per 4 bar segment jamming along in a different octave each pass. I played the notes in with my Korg NanoStudio Keys controller.
So it’s not really an horn ‘arrangement’ as such. More a series of 4 bar jams arranged together (of course I did them with the intent that they go together).
Anyway it’s a really fun way to work so I think I’ll do some more and maybe refine as I go.
Grant
March 13, 2017
Grant’s Music Diary Monday 13 March 2017
This last week has seen a few Gadget and iMaschine tracks plus quite a bit of guitar playing but I’m feeling lost again. This often happens after I finish something intense; in this case the FAWM series of tracks. I then seem to go through a rough patch filled with self doubt and ennui.
I wish that I new how people keep up the self confidence thing.
This piece sounds a little like how I feel at the moment: lost, uncertain, melancholy, slight panic with moments of calm. Made with iMaschine and Dedalus.
Grant
March 5, 2017
Grant’s Music Diary Sunday 5 March 2017
This is an addendum to yesterday’s Gadget fun. Here i’ve used iMaschine 2 to make a quick track (about  2 hours or so) and I’ve used the same vocal sample as yesterday plus adding some of my own guitar and a beat from my Teenage Engineering PO-12.
Typically I will sit down with a coffee after walking my dog first thing in the morning and make some music. If I’m feeling tired or uncertain I can just fire up one of these two apps and have a play…