My Ambient Guitar Gently Sleeps

[jamesmanzi]

Hey, it's been ages since I posted anything new here. If anyone is still interested in what I'm up to, I just released a 3 track EP of ambient post-rock with guitar sounds backed by a bassist and drummer.



The EP is here:
https://casuallyabandoned.bandcamp.c...oof-of-concept

And here:
https://open.spotify.com/album/3ptzB...QSuKQSlkvs1XWQ

Thanks in advance to anyone who may listen.

[jamesmanzi]

Single version of a track from my recent EP, in case you have less than 5 minutes to spare.

https://casuallyabandoned.bandcamp.c...n-from-what-is

[jamesmanzi]

Still rumbling away.

[julioscissors]

Single version of a track from my recent EP, in case you have less than 5 minutes to spare.

https://casuallyabandoned.bandcamp.c...n-from-what-is

This is really cool. Super chill, with some really nice instrumentation and an amazing bass tone. I hear a little post-punk vibe.

[jamesmanzi]

This is really cool. Super chill, with some really nice instrumentation and an amazing bass tone. I hear a little post-punk vibe.

Thanks for listening and the kind words. There's definitely a lot of post punk in my music DNA, glad it leaks out thru this post-rock ambient jam stuff.

[jamesmanzi]

This was a fun little experiment, definitely plan on taking a more structured approach to doing stuff like this. Three elements, a kinda dense looped soundscape over randomish Logic generated drum and bass, and then some improvised Frippertronics down the middle.

[jamesmanzi]

So my friend Nate dropped an excellent new album today, and I'm on the last track, which is only acoustic guitar, ambient eclectic guitar, and voice. I'll let you guess which thing I did.

[hFx]

So my friend Nate dropped an excellent new album today, and I'm on the last track, which is only acoustic guitar, ambient eclectic guitar, and voice. I'll let you guess which thing I did.

Wonderful performace!

[jamesmanzi]

Wonderful performace!

Thanks! It was a lot of fun to do. Basically Nate gave me the finished vocal and acoustic guitar tracks and just let me do whatever I wanted. I gave him a handful of tracks with different drones and stuff and he loved it all and used it all.

[EBES]

I don't listen to a lot of Fripp/ambient guitar kinds of things, so I don't have much knowledge to discuss or critique this, but I had this on while I was doing some work-at-home things and I found it quite lovely.

[Top Cat]

So my friend Nate dropped an excellent new album today, and I'm on the last track, which is only acoustic guitar, ambient eclectic guitar, and voice. I'll let you guess which thing I did.

I agree with hFx, wonderful performance, and I can definitely hear your "magic" in the track, which adds a lot of ambience and fairy dust to the song.

[jamesmanzi]

I don't listen to a lot of Fripp/ambient guitar kinds of things, so I don't have much knowledge to discuss or critique this, but I had this on while I was doing some work-at-home things and I found it quite lovely.

Thanks!

[jamesmanzi]

I agree with hFx, wonderful performance, and I can definitely hear your "magic" in the track, which adds a lot of ambience and fairy dust to the song.

Thanks Top Cat!

[jamesmanzi]

Haven't posted anything in a while, so here's a thing. Some sounds, some wind.

[jamesmanzi]

Just winding down after dinner last night.

[Top Cat]

Both videos are very nice James.
It's not easy doing ambience stuff with guitar.
It seems one has to learn their pedals and then the art of controlling the sound
You've definitely mastered that..
#2 is my favorite of the two videos. Lovely sweet sound.

[jamesmanzi]

Both videos are very nice James.

Thanks Richard!

[jamesmanzi]

First noise making of the new year. A little more structured than usual, but still largely improvised ambience. Happy New Year!

[jamesmanzi]

Dunno if anyone is still scrolling around this thread, but here this was fun. The last thing I posted was multiple tracks recorded and shot over a couple of nights, this one was powered up the pedal board, played for three minutes, and powered down again.

The Zoia is an insanely powerful device.

[Steve983]

It does sound good, I imagine that's only a fraction of what can be done with it but looks a bit complicated for me.

[hFx]

Dunno if anyone is still scrolling around this thread, but here this was fun. The last thing I posted was multiple tracks recorded and shot over a couple of nights, this one was powered up the pedal board, played for three minutes, and powered down again.

The Zoia is an insanely powerful device.

Sure do! Always exciting to hear what you're up to

The Zoia looks... sounds very interesting indeed!

[jamesmanzi]

It does sound good, I imagine that's only a fraction of what can be done with it but looks a bit complicated for me.

I've been intimidated by it for a long time, but finally came to terms with the fact that this one little box can do the things I've been trying to do with multiple loopers and matrix mixers and driving myself crazy, and got it. And it's not as difficult as it looks, once you're used to the steps for assigning modules and patching them to each other, there really is no limit to what it can do.

That's said, I've barely begun to scratch the surface as I've mostly been playing with delay lines to create multiple parallel loops of different lengths, and then processing the different loops differently - pitch one up a fifth, another up or down an octave, send one thru a granular delay. Then play one note and let it bounce around until you feel like playing another.

[jamesmanzi]

Sure do! Always exciting to hear what you're up to

Thanks!

[Steve983]

I recently picked up an EQD Arpanoid which I've been tempted by for ages. I got it 2nd hand for a good price on Ebay. I've never been too keen on its own sound but what if you put delays in front of it and loads of big reverb after? Put the ARP in random up & down mode and see what happens...It's a sort of chaotic atonal spooky sound which I really like, I might put some of it on You Tube.

[jamesmanzi]

Okay so the main reason I got Zoia was the ability to set the times/lengths of delay lines manually, so one could conceivably synch their loops with the tempo of a project, e.g. 8 measures of 96 bpm is 20 seconds exactly, so if one uses a delay line to create a 20 second loop, that loop will repeat every 8 measures. If one then creates a bunch of delay lines in different multiples/fractions of 20, and feeds those delay lines into different processors (pitch up a 5th, or down an octave, etc), all kinds of crazy things can be going on, all in time to the groove. This is my first test of that concept.