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about

while you were sleeping


track: 03

recorded: 20140125

duration: 3:43

type: ambient


the final piece started on day one, this one was completed late that night, or possibly early the next morning – hence the title – and for this piece, I used a radically different technique: I had already identified the “most ambient” synth out of the bunch, which is called “helsinki”, and since I wanted to try an ambient piece next, I dropped six instances of “helsinki” into the mixer, and began to experiment.

of course, in a piece like this, the traditional “first drums, then bass, then chords, then melodies” approach goes right out the window, and you have to employ other techniques, for me, when I am actually wanting an ambient track, I tend to think of it almost as if it’s loops, but in this case, the loops are MIDI sequences – and the piece is made up of several simple repeating motifs, which collide with each other at different times and work together to create a complete piece of music.

one of the first things I do with any new synth app or studio app (and gadget is definitely the latter, although you could argue, that it’s both!) is, whether it’s designed for it or not – can I make ambient music on it? in some cases, such as korg’s ipolysix, I found that I could, with some difficulty. not so in gadget, obviously, “helsinki” was designed with musicians such as myself in mind – and you can hear for yourself the beautiful tones and sounds that you can achieve using six iterations of “helsinki” :-)

again, I used my “new” technique of slowly removing notes from each frame, paring the track down, eventually until there was nothing left – and I think the technique worked particularly well on this piece, because it’s more gradual than on track 2.

so, both “while you were sleeping” as well as track 4 which follows, are both ambient, but I would say it was incredibly, comparatively easy to get gadget to play ambient, as opposed to other devices where I’ve managed to make a few ambient tracks with them, but – it wasn't easy, and in the end, I would then make the decision that any app where it’s a struggle to do ambient, I would just use for active work – and that approach seems to work out fine.

of course, “helsinki” is only one of fifteen synths within gadget, and a few of the others of course, have really nice pad sounds and other chord-based patches that would lend themselves nicely to ambient, but at the same time, most of the synths are designed for active music, and this gives me the best of both worlds – if I want to compose ambient – I can, if I want to make ambient tracks like “a third or less” or “night flight to mongolia” – that is also an option – which I think is fantastic.

I don’t know why, but this has become a sort of test, an "initiation" of sorts: can new synth x, play ambient music?? so I subject every new synth to this test, and many of them fail – they really can’t play ambient, but happily, gadget is one that does both styles admirably.

I think that the sound of “while you were sleeping” certainly proves that gadget passed it’s “dave stafford ambient test” with flying colours.

lyrics

instrumental

credits

from music for apps: gadget - an eternal album, released March 17, 2014
dave stafford: korg gadget application

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all rights reserved

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about

dave stafford Stirling, UK

ambient loop guitarist dave stafford performed on stage with robert fripp and the orchestra of crafty guitarists in early 2009, and again with robert fripp and the symphony of crafty guitarists in 2015, and has worked with ambient music and looping for over twenty years. stafford has a rich back catalogue of ambient and loop music, +rock, prog or acoustic crafty guitar music: www.pureambient.com ... more

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