Playing to Artists

The Artist community of Woodbridge. I did the 3rd Techno Brunch on June 2nd 2018.
A day with a bad weather forecast - thunder storms and 80% rain - but it didn't rain or thunder and I enjoyed my set very much. Susie Hammond sketched as I played.
Her son George suggested I half the hi-hat tempo, I ignored him because I was too involved in playing but the suggestion was good, ta George.
Jan Pulsford liked a particular bass riff, for it's timbre, and I shall investigate what the instrument was and endeavour to use more like it.
Cad Taylor danced, which I am unused to, but thanks Cad for adding your libido.
Artists all adding to an event. The best people to turn-up.The music is getting better every time.

Three friends - Album release. Sublove Festival. And girl in a gale set at DJ David Freeland's Street Food event at The Table Restaurant Woodbridge.

DJ David Freeland

DJ David Freeland puts on shows with cool music and guest artists in a cool food place, The Table restaurant in Woodbridge is that. David asked me to play a live set.

Introspective Sounds are a production company doing events of varied electronic music genres and asked me to do a set at SubLove near Beccles in a couple of weeks in The Chill Out Zone.

On Friday 8th of June 2018 my BEOWULF album is released. It was a result of the cultural event in Woodbridge, The Spirit of Beowulf Festival created by Jan Pulsford and Clare Victoria Perkins (Woodbridge Mayor) to celebrate the famous Sutton Hoo Anglo-Saxon treasures.

Two pieces are directly related to The Spirit of Beowulf: Track 3 - The Whale Road, is a concept track about the sea voyage of Anglo-Saxon immigrants sailing from Denmark to Britain - sounds of sails flapping, shingle beaches and whales: and, Safewater - the feeling of gaining safety after a voyage, arriving at a foreign shore, including synthesized Anglo-Saxon speech.

The rest of the music on BEOWULF is pure girl in a gale ambient techno, one track #6, Sun Mor was recorded at 10am on a Sunday morning and has a delicious calm timbre - that peace you feel as you anticipate the first strong espresso coffee of the day.
And track number 7, Sun Lun, is a bit more active, Sunday lunchtime when the espresso has kicked in.
BEOWULF, over an hour long, is a representation of my musical story in Spring 2018, available on Apple Music, Google Music, Spotify and the rest from Friday 8th June 2018.

The Table, Woodbridge, outdoor music and indoor cosy quality dining ambience.

girl in a gale set in the chill out zone.

album release Friday 8th June 2018

Techno Brunch #3 and Gorilla Glue.

The Ferry Quay Cafe', Caravan Cafe' has me again for a live set of my ambient techno. It is a low key affair, just a 40watt pa system, with cafe' visitors and music fans attending.
The pa system has been repaired, a tweeter had broken loose inside, I'd glued it back in place previously with epoxy resin but it broke loose again, so this time I built a mound of Gorilla Glue around it. That stuff reacts to water, expanding and solidifying into a pad of plasticcy mechanical support.
Ambient Techno is not so much dance music as an artform, not the up-market club scene, more artistic electronic listening music. Nevertheless a consistent 128bpm beat with a 4 on the floor kick for 15 minutes is actually very danceable.
The 4 on the floor kick is an essential human rhythm and takes courage to explore interestingly because there are strong associations with Eurodance pop, hard Tek and rave of the 90s. Ambient techno is more nuanced and sensual.
I'm biased, I grew up with prog-rock (synthesizers) and eventually jazz (harmony, meter, swing and rhythm) which led me into minimal electronic music (repetition as an aesthetic surface and simplicity as a relief from the chronic over-thinking of prog-rock).
My favourite performance this month (May 2018) is a half-hour Facebook Live jam with a drum machine (listen here).
The whole of modern western music culture is rooted in African influences, drums/rhythms are good so at Techno Brunch #3 I shall thoroughly enjoy the part where I do an extended drum machine jam and this is why I love playing music - it's like cooking, not following a recipe' word-for-word but knowing what can be done with a few ingredients.

Notes and pads and drum patterns - imagining the future of electronic music.

I have an album in review by my distributor, I imagine the audio quality and cover image resolution is just fine, and I love the music. So I predict within a day or two it will be approved for the global digital markets.
"Beowulf" is the album title, inspired by my contributions to The Spirit of Beowulf Festival, Woodbridge, Suffolk at the beginning of May 2018, produced by Jan Pulsford and Clare Victoria Perkins. My contributions were a Techno Brunch at Ferry Quay Caravan Cafe'; and an hour live synth/drum machine set by the Woodbridge Tide Mill - a part of a wider public event which turned out, partly due to delightfully warm weather, very well.
Because I am an unknown musician with just one or two Spotify streams daily I have an advantage - I can do what the heck I want. If I wish to make a new album using just a drum machine, I can, because it won't threaten my listeners numbers. If I wish to make an hour set of Moog drones with subtle harmonic resonances, I can, because it won't threaten my fan base. And I haven't got a record contract with executives saying, "We'd like you to make some more music like that track "Brent", because that is gaining more interest than your other tracks".
NO - I'm free to be the musician I am.
I love Brent, but I continue to have a world of music to explore. And Brent was made with that very same freedom of expression. So that's where the good stuff is, not in "Success", but in the musical journey, why do I kind of want some success anyway? When "Success" would pin me down to a particular formula?
 I don't. Thank you.
Meanwhile I shall continue the journey in notes and pads and drum patterns. And in fifty years who knows what electronic music will be like!

If you wish to listen to Brent on YouTube here it is.

Turning down an "opportunity"?

A DJ, who I play saxophone with locally, invited me to a weekend Electronic Music festival in mid-France, to blow along with his House music set. We played together last night in my hometown and it was awesome, but ...
Wow, through the tunnel, so many people to meet, contacts to exchange... but ... .  The logistics are costly. 500 miles from where I live. Camping for the weekend (I hate camping and don't own a tent). Need to put my soulmate dog in kennels for five days. Only a "fascinator" saxophonist with no chance of doing my own ambient techno set. Budget offered would cover about a 1/4 of total costs and as I mentioned there is no opportunity for me to play my own live ambient techno set, so I decided to decline.
Last night's dj/sax gig was excellent, I used a looper, fx pedal and the loops sounded really good. It was almost my own electronic music gig, right or wrong, it turned into a set of funky house electronica, transcending the average Saturday night House set. The tools at my hands - saxophone through looper, delay, reverb and harmoniser put me into producer/remixer mode and the set was fabulous - and fabulous costs more than a few Euros for travel expenses (a quarter of actual costs).

Spotify is drawing my attention

I've spent a few months subscribing to Spotify, a few other months with Google Play Music, but found more music on YouTube. YouTube has live sets where the artist can be seen playing instruments.
Other people have said they prefer Spotify to YouTube because the streaming quality is higher. I thought I'd not noticed a lack of audio quality on YouTube but recently I made a Spotify playlist of my current listening including a couple of my own tracks and during that I definitely noticed the richer audio compared to YouTube.
I'm thinking of subscribing to Spotify again, get rid of those adverts every 30 minutes and make it easier to manage my playlists.
Here is a link to my own work on Spotify, if you have a liking for electronic listening music, ambient techno, then you may like to subscribe to "girl in a gale". Thank you for listening.

Sunday morning podcast - exquisite vibes, improvised ambient techno. Click here to download.

With all the Facebook, YouTube and other social media clamouring for our visual attention my visual field is almost constantly violated, but I find two things soothing: Twitter, because it is what it is, just tweets, easily scrollable and ignorable; and, Podcasts, because my ears do not need reading glasses and I can wash-up, cook, drive, cuddle the dog while passively hearing a podcast.
So I have been podcasting. Here is the 2nd podcast of May 2018, a Sunday morning subharmicon vibe of delicious coffee and waking-up.
Podcast link is downloadable by clicking this post title above, or listenable on Mixcloud below.

Podcast - Going through older tracks, playing them completely differently.

Podcasts have interested me, a chance to listen while cooking or doing the washing-up, or driving, without the need to look at a screen. My tired eyes from years of Facebook browsing need a rest.
A local musician Talvin Singh makes regular Mixcloud podcasts which I enjoy, so I tried one of my own - an hour of live comments on my workflow and equipment between chillout ambient techno and breakbeats.
I had to Google "Breakbeats" because I thought it meant some kind of Trap or Drum&Bass genre but it means 4/4 beats but with distinct variations from the established electronic dance music four-on-the-floor kick. There is the term "broken beats" too where the drums are unquantised to the grid, it is consistently rhythmical but discrete beats are offset - pushed and pulled - to give a more creative edge to the beat.
In this first Podcast my voice is recorded too quietly and I shall endeavour to correct this in the next one. What I find compelling about these hour live sets is they are not an "album" or a live performance, they are a recording of a musician at work.
Because the music is played live there are inconsistencies - a loud surge of bass; a sudden cut of a keyboard riff; drums abruptly stopping. These error messages within the set make it human. Too much electronic music is overly-perfect, having been processed within a multi-track DAW (Digital Audio Workstation): all errors ironed out in a computer.
I am working towards Podcasts, you can listen to this podcast on Mixcloud, link below, or click this post title which will enable you to download the podcast. Next I will learn how to do RSS feeds and distribute my podcasts to the directories. Step by step.

Ambient techno in a barbershop, whatever next!

Local barber, Carl Bowen, asked me to do a live set in his shop. How peculiar, so yes of course I will. The set went nice and I recorded it from the mixer so the quality was good and I released the album, "girl in a gale - live set at the barbershop".
It is on Apple Music and Spotify etc but also Bandcamp. It's a tenner to buy but you can listen for free on Bandcamp Here's the Bandcamp link.

live set at the barbershop - album release. May 4th 2018

Barber Carl Bowen invited me to do a live ambient techno set in the shop while he was cutting hair.

Listen on Spotify

Album release Friday 27th April 2018.

Album release: girl in a gale - live set at the smokehouse. 12 tracks. On Spotify and Apple Music from today. Play on Spotify
Thanks to Jan Pulsford for the photo.

Ambient techno at The Beowulf Festival

#Beowulf CONFIRMED: girl in a gale #BeowulfFestival
brings electronica to the Quayside
music from the river - music from a suitcase, chill out, ambient techno.
Saturday 5th May, 4pm - 5pm http://www.girlinagale.com/ — with Clarissa Vincent in Woodbridge, Suffolk.

Christian Löffler live @ Fontaine de Vaucluse for Cercle

Cercle do wonderful electronic music shows in the most impressive locations. Cercle use drones to film the artists and places in sweeping "National Geographic" quality imagery. Christian Löffler says in the interview in the last ten minutes he has been building this set since 2012, that's nearly 6 years.
I too have built a big set in the last couple of years (around four hours of performance stems to improvise with mixing, effects and synth additions) which evolves month by month as I smooth hard edges and add sparkles and sonics to bring out the parts.
I thought making music was about always bringing out new tracks but at a certain point you stop trying to find it and start learning to work it in all it's dimensions and variations.
I wonder how my live sets will sound in four years. Thank you Christian Löffler and Cercle for the realisation that I am entering a new stage with my music.

2nd Techno Brunch

Live set. girl in a gale. original music. electronic listening music. Techno and brunch - as foretold in ancient Anglo-Saxon texts.
Beowulf Festival weekend. Woodbridge 2018. Part of The Beowulf Festival Woodbridge.

Techno Brunch

A live set at the Ferry Quay Caravan Cafe', techno brunch. Free in. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK. Thursday 5th April 2018.
Snacks, breakfasts, lunches, teas and coffee available at The Ferry Quay Caravan Cafe'.

Live electronic listening music, Ipswich, March 22nd

Live sets by girl in a gale and Alastair Wilson.

girl in a gale in the Barber Shop live set

The album Blackcurrant has 7 tracks, the last 4 are in two parts recorded live in The Barber Shop, Quay St, Woodbridge. I put these four live tracks as two longer pieces because I like the transitions.
Spotify playlist.
https://open.spotify.com/user/clarissav/playlist/1165amT7cGPfH8pw8APZSi?si=WN9JuVSqQFmtkQ3cpZ1sHw

Sonitus at Old Jet

"Synthposium" is a collection of synth enthusiasts and signed electronic artists, demoing and performing their set-ups and sets, run by Sonitus and hosted at Old Jet Studios, Bentwater, Suffolk, UK. I took my suitcase synths based on two Moog Mother 32's and other devices mounted in a suitcase. The highlight of the day for me was the food, a Moog Daal with salad and a delightful fluffy, bun shaped pitta bread (pitta bread taken to the next level!)

Electronic Listening Music (ELM)

A local barber is quite a character, he's had banjo players, a trio of double bass, guitar and vocals and a solo guitarist, perform gigs in his barber shop on odd afternoons. He asked me to play a set of Electronic Listening Music, which is beats, synths and samples, a melodic, minimalist form of Techno music. Thursday at 15th February 2018 at 2pm till 3pm I shall play a set of girl in a gale music.Quay Street Barbers, Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK. This is a run-through of my set of Post-modern barbershop music.

A single oscillator can make hi hats, kicks, snare, bass line, chord pads and melodic thrills.

Moog Mother 32 is a single oscillator mono analogue synthesizer. Mother 32 is a "subtractive" synth which is an oscillator produces a square or triangle wave form which sound like a couple of similar buzzing and aggravating timbres. The magic happens when a filter reduces some of the higher partials, so a buzz turns to a more sensual tone.

The envelope generator is a set of controls to make the beginning, middle and end of the buzz tone slow, sustained, and, like pressing the loud pedal on a piano, sustained. There are numerous other voltage controlled routes for the raw buzz - a filter resonance, which adds feedback into the upper partials (partials are parts of a tone above the fundamental note we hear), filter resonance can extremely emphasise the upper tonalities even to a screaming howl. It's all in the subtle tweaking of these voltage controls.

Another voltage control is a "white noise" maker which on a staccatto note sounds like a percussion instrument, a high-hat. The bass line was easy, with the creamy deep Moog voice at about 2/3 filter, so a little upper growl but essentially a delicious bass tone.

The track "Brent" (I'd seen Brent geese over The River Deben the day I finished the track) used these voltage controls to turn a single square wave buzz into all the instruments merely by subtracting parts of that buzz to leave a synthesis sounding similar to conventional band instruments. And at the same time the synthesized sounds have equal quality, as instruments, as more conventional band instruments.