I’m finally making some headway on ideas for a new solo album (or whatever a collection of music that used to be called an album is now called). I’m still not sure whether it’s going to be all completely solo, have a few special guests, be all collaborative, or what, but at least some musical ideas are happening.
I had another go at the new tune I posted on Youtube a couple of weeks ago, at the gig in Edinburgh last weekend. This new version is a lot faster (not sure that’s a good thing) and has a nice little loop/delay thing going with the melody about half way through, and then an improv section at the end where the main loop disappears, a bit of the tune continues and a few other interesting things happen around it – so here’s the 0.2b public beta version, on youtube:
Also this weekend, I’ve been playing around with a few of the new features on the Looperlative. For those that don’t know, the Looperlative is the looping device that I’ve been using for about 4 years, that I had a hand in helping to develop with its genius inventor and builder, Bob Amstadt. He’s constantly adding updates to the software, and one of the recent ones is ‘quantised replace‘ – being able to replace bits of the audio in a loop, but doing it in rhythmically defined sections. You can divide the loop into as many bits as you want, and then replace them ‘in time’.
Here’s what that sounds like, recorded on AudioBoo:
So add those two pieces to the new stuff I recorded with David Stevens on Thursday, and you’ve got a whole load of interesting new ideas for me to toy around with.
And I’ve just moved into my new teaching/recording studio room on the boat, so I’ll have more space and time for making music (as soon as I fix the Looperlative from where I blew one of the channels on Thursday, after connecting up my preamp wrong and sending what as basically a speaker-level signal into a line-level input. Not advisable on any gear).
It’s worth noting that there’s a bit of a Looperlative Sale going on at the moment – Bob has a limited number of units available for just $999 – basically, it’s a steal at $1499 (list price). At $999, that’s less than they go for 2nd hand… Srsly.
So, musicians, what have you been up to? Any new music to report? Feel free to post your updates in the comments…