Adam Howliston SHR5E014C~002 24100826

My performance contained extensive use of live guitar looping as well as varied tone building. Combined with the use of a drum pad for rhythmic parts to be programmed and played live. In this essay I will discuss the learning processes and journeys I embarked on in order to create my 6 minute performance covering the ongoing critical evaluation and reflective processes I undertake when creating any composition, detailing the equipment and technology used, how they were used and my journey with each of them. From this I will discuss the recording process discussing how my practices developed and changed.  As well as this I aim to cover plans I have for the future both consistent with the style performed here and potential developments in my creative choices and ambition. I will also go into detail on my personal influences and artists I had in mind in the creation of the composition, as well as delving into the history of the techniques I employ and who pioneered them .I will conclude with the more holistic and methodical lessons I have learned rather than technical abilities I have gained since beginning this project.

Firstly the equipment I used for specifically recording the guitar was first my “Chris Robertson” special PRS se. I chose this guitar as it offers a fantastic range of tone options using simply the knobs available on the guitar. Having a P90 and a humbucker allows you to have really smooth jazz appropriate tones as well as a higher treble tone giving some bite to more suit a rock or metal track. While its versatility is a massive advantage I chose it more for its playability and reliability. I purchased the PRS in 2018 and other than a replacement pickup switch and jack input it has given no unexpected faults. Because of the sheer time I have spent with the instrument I was better able to get any desired tones from it than any other guitar I have or could have rented from the Conservatoire. I had the PRS running through my 50 watt Boss Katana. Much like the PRS the Amp choice was incredibly easy. Having owned and consistently used the exact same Boss Katana for approaching 8 years I am extremely familiar with the tones that are achievable from the built in effects alone. Of which there are many. In the recording I occasionally am using some of the built in delays on top of other effects to add slightly more chaos to the loops as well as a base reverb on at almost all times alongside all my external effects. The amp was closely mic’d using a Røde NT1-A as it is a condenser microphone the sound captured is typically bright, regardless of placement. Over the course of recording the composition, experimenting with mic placement has given me considerably more options in how I now record guitar at home and in a studio. Having learnt of the position relative to the cone of the amp affects the brightness and warmth of your tone. Across the composition, guitar takes and loops have been built with a variety of mic positions. With some more reverbed guitars being recorded with the mic central to the room and the volume cranked. The main body of my effects and the central looping station was the Line6 Helix. The journey with this piece of equipment has been considerably shorter than the rest of my guitar set up. Having bought the Helix in January of this year I have been gradually familiarising myself with its systems for the past 5 months. How 80% of my time using the helix has been spent making tones for Pop, Rock, Funk and RnB gigs. The looping system and its more atmospheric and unconventional effects had been left unexplored. This composition allowed great time and space to delve deeply into the digital menus and explore this space. While a steep learning curve after a couple of months using the help of Youtube tutorials, Blogs and Reddit posts I have become a lot more comfortable using the looper in both live and studio settings. Now understanding the Helix’s workflow I am far more capable of creating tones much closer to either a tone in my head or a specific sound/tone I am aiming to recreate. Despite this the absolute breath of the library on the helix and how complicated you can make your effect chains, I still haven’t scratched the surface relatively speaking. The loopstation was the essential tool within the helix and was essentially the sandbox for my composition. Start a loop build up and continually change effects while it loops to songwrite live and change tones as felt appropriate for the composition as I could hear it permanently in context. I found this extremely helpful. For the specific effects chain I used for this composition. In order to achieve that ambient “wall of sound” I was going for I first had a pitch shifter that was linked to the expression pedal with the heel position giving me an octave below the guitar (bass range) and the toe position giving an octave above the guitar. This was used for bass drones as well as a small melodic passage that uses the pitch shifting in a more overt way. The bass drones were done by combining the pitch shifter with an infinite hall reverb and looping it. By doing this with a single E note I set a constant that remained throughout the composition. The entirety of the composition was based around E. I decided to keep the bed of harmonies very simple in order to allow me to explore melodic ideas freely and to draw attention to the competing, interweaving and clashing rhythms, it is also far easier logistically for the live looping element if the harmony remains fairly consistent as there can be no accidental unwanted dissonance. The only other reverb used on the helix was a shimmer reverb that gave a spacey texture adding to the ambient style while not specifically sounding like a guitar. I then had 2 delays often playing in different parts of a loop at the same time, by this point the soundscape has been built and is nearing or at a peak. The first is a reversed delay, in experimenting with this I found that using the reversed delay in combination with the reverse tool in the loop station you can fully recontextualise melodies and the direction of a composition by using these tastefully. The second delay was titled “cosmos delay” and captured an oddly space-like sound that was deliberately left unquantised with the loop and was implemented as a final layer in the first build to fully cause chaos to really create a contrast when all the other layers drop out. Finally was a subtle overdrive for lead melodies and a pattern tremolo that had the same function as the “cosmos delay”. All of these effects took time to understand and control, with the knowledge of them I have now I have been able to apply them in more conventional spaces. In the closing minutes of the composition two guitar tones come from a DI signal. I used a digital amp modeller and the effects within logic to create the washing tone and the higher gain lead that was often echoing the phrases of the first. I then used an Akai MPD 218 to record in programmed drums. This was an even more unfamiliar piece of equipment for me. Having borrowed it from a friend who makes sample based hip-hop the usual use for this was far out of my wheelhouse. However it was fairly intuitive after a couple hours messing around choosing samples and hits to play in live and loop using logic. I used logic and my Scarlett i2i  for the entire recording process. The journey of using logic has been gradual, slowly getting more efficient when recording has helped save time in the long term.

The artists I drew inspiration from greatly were Briano Eno and Robert Fripp. Specifically an ambient album they created together titled “No Pussyfooting”. Almost all the tracks are full of ambient drawn out guitars creating almost synth like textures. Brian Enos extensive work in the ambient space essentially means anything of that style I try to make will have his imprint on it somewhere. The undeniable influence of robert fripp pioneering live looping with “Frippertronics” the invention of tape looping. Much of the composition wouldn’t have been possible without his influence. With the integration of the live drum pad moves the composition out of the straight ahead ambient guitar space to a slightly more vague area in terms of definable genre. With the restrained nature of the drums it falls somewhere between ambient dub and some sort of sub-subgenre of ambient techno. I initially had aimed to get the drums in a more straight ahead techno space. With some brief inspiration from techno trio Komfortrauschen. I had initially intended to use the Tr-8 and make the second half far more intense however after extensive experimentation I was never quite satisfied. I decided to keep the rhythmic elements more simple and the drum pad allowed me to play the rhythms in myself which I liked as I felt it was more of a performance, as the timing relies completely on me. While tapping in hi hats I found tapping 16ths at 160bpm (technically 32nds at 80bpm) was slightly too fast for the pad to register consistently. After a few takes I found the random variation to be interesting. This secured my decision to use the drum pad. Hammock were another influence in the ambient space as they are one of the bigger names in the less rhythm focused ambient scene. In terms of guitar tones and scale of sound Richard Hawley is a big influence for my guitar playing on the whole anyway. Songs like “Don’t stare at the Sun” and “There’s a Storm a’comin” are a masterclass in how to create an enormous atmosphere combining guitar and synths. Influences for my playing in terms of my melodic note choice are guitarists like Julien Lage of course Robert Fripp and Pat Metheny, with a mix between written and improvised lines. I worked for many months on expanding my vocabulary on the guitar and being able to express melodic ideas naturally and instantaneously rather than sounding particularly scalic. Working on establishing and building ideas across the piece was a challenge at first but after many takes and practicing fundamental skills pieces slowly slotted into place. My improvisation has gotten to a point that I am happy with but with the knowledge of where it can go in the future as well. Hoping to be able to play more elaborate and dissonant lines while feeling cohesive to the music is a big goal for the near future. 

The biggest lessons and personal takeaways I have had from performance have been firstly a deepened understanding of my recording software and recording processes at home, how to record effectively at home, mic placement techniques and mixing techniques. I have also taken away a great deal of knowledge about analogue equipment and how to approach analogue gear as opposed to digital. I spent several days attempting to implement the moog Matriarch into the composition, however this was my biggest struggle and was unfortunately unable to get material I felt added to the composition. This was a good lesson in patience and having courage to know when something is not working and try something else. Arguably my biggest takeaway was one in time management and managing motivation to be creative. I had periods of real struggle to be proactive with the work, I found having as much of my recording gear set up and ready to go at all times to be the most effective way of regulating output. As the effort of the set up would often kill spur of the moment motivation. By keeping the equipment available any ideas that could have potentially been fleshed out to become full parts, sections and even full songs. There were some issues I struggled with or were unable to solve entirely. Firstly the NT-1A recorded only in mono so I was unable to utilise panning to the extent I had hoped to, I tried to counteract this by varying mic placement but the effect was not as I had idealised. However this helped me focus on my mixing, aiming to have all the layers to be both cohesive and individually distinguishable. This also meant when the drums came in I made the snare panning automate left to right and back constantly to give the track some more movement in headphones and when the 2 DI tracks come in the sound expands again with a clear lead and supporting bed of mic’d guitars. I also would like to have worked more on some of the percussion timbres, they haven’t all sat comfortably stylistically for me. In the future I’d look to create more drumless ambient music, If possible using exclusively guitar for all elements. Now I have gained a deeper understanding of looping and specifically the looper built into the Helix it is considerably more approachable. As well as this I want to get more comfortable using more analogue gear, specifically the Moog Matriarch as its possibilities are broad but understanding the purposes and consequences of each section of the synth will take more time experimenting. I would also like to look into combining the Ambient guitar soundscapes and some softer House, I think they act as a very complementary blend of genres. For this I would spend some more time using the Tr-8 and a 303 for some more active acid bass. In conclusion I have taken away a great deal of both technical, practical and habitual information within the creation of my composition and hope for it to lead to more work of a similar nature. 

Ambient guitar albums, n.d. Reddit. Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/ambientmusic/comments/z8qgve/ambient_guitar_albums/ (Accessed: 3 February 2026).

Ambient music with guitars besides Hammock SOTL, n.d. Reddit. Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/ambientmusic/comments/1859ngi/ambient_music_with_guitars_besides_hammock_sotl/(Accessed: 3rd February 2026).

Moog Music, n.d. Matriarch downloads. Available at: https://www.moogmusic.com/downloads/?product=Matriarch                       (Accessed: 14th April 2026).

Kirn, P. (2020) Deep dive: Master the Moog Matriarch. Create Digital Music. Available at: 

https://cdm.link/deep-dive-master-the-moog-matriarch/                                (Accessed:  14th April 2026).

Akai Professional, n.d. MPD218 User Guide v1.0. Available at: https://cdn.inmusicbrands.com/akai/attachments/MPD218/MPD218-UserGuide-v1.0.pdf (Accessed: 25th April 2026).

New to Helix – where do I start?, n.d. Line 6 Support Forum. Available at: https://line6.com/support/topic/35422-new-to-helix-where-do-i-start/           (Accessed: 18th January 2026).

Sweetwater, n.d. Helix family setup guide. Available at: https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/helix-family-setup-guide/     (Accessed: 15th January 2026).