G.D. West

A medley of instrumental tunes for 6-string banjitar.

Two articles from the Salt Lake Tribune got me to thinking about pride and pridefulness today. Here's what came to mind.

We live hectic lives, for the most part, and sometimes we end up just having to wait for someone or something. What can we do to use that time for self-regeneration and healing?

This is the title track from my EP, "One Night." The concept of this album is capturing a single moment in time. These were longer-scale improvisations intended to test my creative abilities. The longer improvisation opens up new territory to explore and develop sonic textures that require time to construct while using the digital delays. The depth of sonic texture makes the piece more enveloping and hypnotic. For these podcasts, I have foregone the usual introductions, finding them obtrusive. Enjoy these moments, especially with your ear buds or headphones.

This is an ambient guitar composition that uses ambient sound loops. In one part of the piece, you will hear the sound of a train passing through Ellicott City, Maryland. The wheels made a peculiar metallic whining sound on the rails, which just happened to be in a 'D' tonality. In the piece, you'll hear the guitar match and then absorb the sound of the train--a pretty fun trick. Unlike most of my ambient compositions, this one does uses multiple overdubbed tracks to create the desired effect. Enjoy!

This is a recording of an ambient guitar composition. There are no synthesizers and there are no overdubs. This is an extended-length improvisation performed on one guitar in real-time. My recent work has focused on capturing moments of structured improvisations which extend the sonic palette of the guitar. The other songs, "One Day," "One Night," explore this concept, but in a shorter length. "One Hour" provides a period for intense meditation and relaxation.

An ambient guitar improvisation recorded on January 17, 2018. The piece was performed on an electric guitar using a volume pedal, an e-Bow, a Zoom 9150 and 1202 multieffects processors, and three Digitech Time Machine digital delay units into a Furman 4-channel line mixer. No other instruments are used on the track. All sounds are created by the guitar and the effects live-in-the-studio.

This performance was recorded live in the studio on September 1st, 2017. It was played on an electric 12-string guitar through a volume pedal, a Zoom 9150 tube preamp, three Digitech Time Machine digital delays, and a Zoom 1202 multieffect unit into a Furman 4-channel mixer.

Ambient guitar meditation recorded on February 9, 2018.