on the horizon


track: 06

recorded: 20140306 - 20140712

duration: 2:25

type: active


this is a much more recent piece, I started it late one evening, and very quickly, built up the parts – and the whole thing came together at quite a pace, it then required just a few more sessions to deal with certain issues – for example, I ended up changing a lot of the drum parts, and I replaced the last 20 bars of bass completely (because the original bass line was tedious and a bit boring) – and, I also added new synth solos, and did some other manipulation in terms of copying and repeating parts to increase thematic recognition to some extent.

I started with the drums, which is the tradition (which I often ignore) but starting with the drums is often a great way to guarantee a good result – but, I did some unusual things with the drum track – for one thing, I used TWO drum synths, to give me more sonic variations, something I hadn’t tried before – and being able to “combine” rhythms, often taking the MIDI from one drummer and dropping it into the OTHER drum track a few bars down the road, meant that each “drummer” could play the same measure, but with different drum kits and styles – a nice effect.

of course, bass was next, and I blocked the whole bass part out, from start to finish, so at that point, I had two drums and one bass all done.

next, I began to add synths – I think there are four in all, but the way it worked was a bit strange – the first one was played up to a certain point, and then, not played again, and another one took over from that point – and then there are many sections where two or three synths are playing at once, and again, I did some MIDI cross-pollination, so a riff that sounded great on one synth, would be copied over to another synth, so I’d get two very different sounding versions of a particular synth melody, or, I might have them BOTH play it for yet another effect…it was a lot of fun, working out all of these parts.

the synths within Gadget are really world-class, the more I use them, the more I like them, and they are certainly a lot more user friendly than the iMS-20 or even the iPolysix – although those are two very capable, good sounding apps – they do not hold a candle to Gadget in terms of “ease of use” – you can whip up complete pieces in Gadget in almost no time, whereas a piece of a similar length in iMS-20 would take much, much longer. :-)

I am feeling more and more comfortable with Gadget, and working with these last two pieces has got me in the mood to do more, so I am hoping that “on the horizon” is the beginning of many new Gadget songs – I hope so!