Archive for the Notes and Musings category
Grant
December 3, 2018
Weekly Post: Sunday 2nd December 2018
Well that was a busy month. A completely ridiculous 83 tracks posted. The weird thing is that it didn’t feel rushed or difficult, it all just flowed out.
I competed Novembeat 2018…
I’m so happy with this set of tracks that I plan to release it as an album on Bandcamp, minus the ones which use samples from a film, just in case it leads to trouble 😉
I also completed National Solo Album Month. You can check that out here if you like…
Plus a whole swathe of groove jams, plus an assortment of other stuff. Phew. That’s five and a half hours of music so I don’t imagine anyone will listen to it all but it is available here…
Because releasing stuff into the world is what it’s all about… maybe.
This month I plan to:
a) experiment more with my live performance ideas,
b) check out some other apps which I own but haven’t got to grips with, because the way of working which they have may surprise and delight me.
c) sort out the mastering of my Autumnal Grooves album which I want to release officially for sale, before Christmas hopefully.
d) record the words/lyrics/poems that have built up over the last few months.
There is more but if I concentrate on those for December it should keep me pretty busy. Let’s review my progress at the end of the month.
Cheers folks, keep on keeping on.
Grant
November 25, 2018
Weekly Post Sunday 25th November 2018
This month has turned out to be my most prolific ever. 54 tracks posted to SoundCloud already, 16 Jams unpublished, and numerous tracks on the way. I just can’t seem to stop, it’s an obsession. Most other activities seem tedious just now, I turn to playing around with sounds and for some reason things flow.
Enjoy it while it lasts I guess.
Working this intensely is a wonderful experience but I wonder if I’ll crash and burn like I did in February. I hope not, perhaps it will just fade back to some sense of normality.
Most of the tracks are from my ‘NovemBeat’ series made with Korg Gadget and my ‘Groovebox Jam’ serious made using Groovebox by Ampify/Novation. One involves carefully crafted short pieces and the other longer looser compositions and this juxtaposition is endlessly fascinating at the moment.
There are other tracks emerging as well although my idea of doing some longer form ‘suite’ or ‘symphonic’ style pieces is proving difficult to realize just now. Never mind it has stimulated my thinking and will bear fruit some time I’m sure.
Here is one Groovebox Jam and one NovemBeat track to illustrate the different approaches…PS they both sound like me I think 🙂
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
May 13, 2017
Grant’s Music Diary 13 May 2017
This is an older track; made last year and never posted, for some reason I decided it wasn’t good enough but listening to it now I really like it. There are lots of tracks still sitting around; some unfinished, some not very good, some good but for one reason or another passed over and awaiting their time in the sun.
As it’s title suggests I have posted this to mark my 500th post on Soundcloud.
Who would’ve thought 2 years ago that I could be so prolific? Certainly not me.
It was the discovery of the iPad as a musical tool which sparked off this unexpected plethora of creativity and for that I am very grateful. It’s not that I have ever stopped wanting to be creative, that has been a constant desire all my life, but for some reason the iPhone and iPad was the platform that I needed to overcome my personal demons and to unleash those silent parts of myself that were consigned to dark, dusty and hidden corners.
The other essential ingredient of course was meeting my wonderful wife Lene without whose encouragement and support I could never have beaten back my demons long enough to make anything. The demons still come knocking from time to time of course but she is still there to help me, as I hope I am there to help her.
I am not sure when I will post here again.
It is time for me to revaluate my musical options and explore the different avenues open before me. There is still much to do but I now feel that I will be better served pursuing those avenues without the pressure to produce finished products on a regular basis. It’s just a slight adjustment of perspective I suppose.
Anyway thanks for watching and listening and reading and following my journey so far. This is not the end but merely a hiatus after which I hope to return stronger than ever.
Peace out Tracklings 🙂
Grant
June 26, 2016
Notice: I’m on Holidays!
Fear not Trackers the track-a-day will continue but I don’t know how often I’ll have internet access, so for the next three weeks postings may be intermittent.
Enjoy yourselves as I take advantage of Norwegian holiday times and spend three weeks in Australia!
Grant
June 23, 2016
Musing on Day 300 and Thank You All
Grant
May 9, 2016
Day 255: Monday 9 May 2016
Misted:
I’m finding it very difficult to allocate time for track making at the moment. I can grab small amounts; 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there, a half hour, an hour at best. But this just isn’t enough to really dig into the music and make discoveries and pull something interesting out. I find that a 2 or 2-and-a-half hour block of time is the bare minimum for the creativity to have a chance to get firing, and preferably another similar sized block of time following a small break, and preferably a third a little later.
But even though I can’t dive deep (please excuse the mixed metaphors) on these busy days, I can always visit iMaschine or Alchemy and quickly get something. In fact I find it amazing just how quickly I can get results by playing around with these two apps.
I’m sure that other apps are every bit as good for this quick throwing together of stuff. But I haven’t had the time to explore them all properly: BeatHawk, Gadget, and iMPC Pro come immediately to mind out of the ones that I own.
Today’s track is from iMaschine. Assembled across 3 blocks of time through the day; 2 blocks of maybe 10 then 20 minutes to make the beat. Then another 20 minute block to jam it into AudioShare and assemble the pieces in Auria for extra arranging and adding a touch of Dedalus.
Of course improvements and refinements could be made but there is a pleasure to this quick way of working.
I hope the results can give pleasure too.
Peace out.
Grant
April 17, 2016
Day 233: Saturday 17 April 2016
Breaking My Shackles (With A Whisper):
An Ambient piece today. A simple almost minimal meditation on melancholy.
Two jams with Shoom combined in Auria along with two jams in Alchemy.
I’ve always enjoyed minimalism, in art as well as in music. The baroque annoys me with it’s obsessive busyness. My most profound experience of Art was standing in a room of Rothko’s; and Eno’s work has always attracted me, as have many of the ideas centred around Zen and the Japanese Tea Ceremony.
There are many ways to express and experience minimalism, and I have been thinking about and experimenting with the concept lately. Whether it be in shorter simpler pieces, or the more frequent use of silence, or the use of fewer elements.
Grant
March 24, 2016
Just a Quick Note
Hello guys and gals and non gender specific peeps, just a quick note to let you know that my beautiful wife and I will be away for the next few days and I’m not sure what the internet situation will be, so you may not hear from me till we get back.
But do not fear I will be taking my trusty iPad, so tracks will be made and posted on our return. Thanks of course to my supportive and long suffering wife (she truly is my better half),
As always thanks for listening and for your support.
Live long and prosper. Peace Out.
Love Grant
Grant
March 19, 2016
Day 205: Saturday 19 March 2016
These Beta Blockers Are Making Me Thirsty:
A Beatscape.
I used iSpark for the beat and Addictive Synth for the bass. Recorded with AudioShare and arranged in Auria. Effects used on the drums are: Dedalus, Muckraker, Caramel, Emo Chorus, AUFX:Dub, Nebulizer, and Sliver.
The initial beat from iSpark was 27.25 bars long at 60 bpm, I recorded it into AudioShare and then recorded versions of it using the different effects; I tried others but only used the ones I’ve listed. That left me with the original beat and six effected versions, I loaded all seven into Auria and did a little panning and mixing of volumes. Then I did some cutting and pasting and arranging and muting until I had this composition sketched out.
Finally I turned to Addictive Synth for the bass arpeggio which I kept short and simple. Incorporating it into the mix required a little more arranging.
Musing:
It is difficult when making music like this to know when to stop or what else might be required, we have so much potential at our finger tips. For example I could have carried on adding sounds and parts to my hearts content. But it does feel finished to me, so I’ve left it here.
Of course part of the nature of this endeavour (posting one track each day) is that I must work quickly and I don’t have the luxury of excruciating over tracks and decisions. Which perhaps is leading me to a certain type of composition and a certain type of working.
There is something to be said for working quickly; hopefully it means I’m working from the heart and the gut, and not giving my misgivings and sense of inadequacy time to impose it’s usual dictatorship on my actions.