Blues in the Days of the Orange King

Kirth_Gersen_ · November 2016

Hi all,

Here’s a new track that, spurred by recent events, coalesced from various fragments I’d been working on. The lyrics are from the poem, “I took my Power in my Hand,” by Emily Dickinson. The music was composed and produced by myself: 70% on an Ipad Air 2 and 30% on a laptop (both of which were connected at various times to a Korg 37 mini-keyboard, a Midiplus AKM322 mini-keyboard, a Behringer C-1 condenser microphone, an M-Track digital interface by M-AUDIO, an AKAI EWI-USB, a first generation TEC Breath Controller, and a Moog expression foot pedal). The IOS apps used in producing the track were the following: Cubasis, Animoog, M3000 (with the Caitlin soprano and ClareL violin patches), Magellan, Nave, ThumbJam, DrumJam, AfroLatin DM, iSymphonic, VoxSyn, iFretless Bass, SampleTank, FreEWI, MidiBridge, Audiobus, AUM, and AudioShare. The desktop programs and VSTs used were the following: Absynth 5, Pettinhouse Direct Guitar 3, Sample Modeling SWAM Alto sax, Studio Drummer (for one cymbal crash), EasternONE (for the clarinet sounds, licks and all—a free VST by the way), Chris Hein Solo Violin, Kontakt Factory Strings, Guitar Rig, Kontakt 5, and Reaper.

Some random observations: 1.) the recent M3000 update brought midi volume control. As a result I was able to connect my breath controller and get much more expressive vocal lines than before from the soprano patches in the app. Actually I highly recommend using a breath controller with all kinds of IOS apps like iSymphonic, SampleTank, Magellan, Thor, etc. (And no, I don’t work for a company that makes such controllers). 2.) I love the “jam” slider in Luís Martinez’s fantastic AfroLatin DM. I chose a 2-3 son style and set the slider to 100% to get maximum variations in the rhythm. Yeah! 3.) I’m continuously amazed by the quality of sounds of the various IOS synth apps, and how relatively inexpensive they are. All the sounds used on this track were from presets, as I know next to nothing about synth programming. 4.) EasterONE is a great free desktop VST. It has a variety of Middle Eastern instrument sounds and loops. I highly recommend it.

To finish I’d just like to thank all the people on this forum for making it a great place for musical inspiration and for learning about IOS music-making. With that in mind, here’s one more of my own humble contributions to the conversation.