Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly: In Tune With the Times
Inspirational intelligence shines from 21-year-old singer/songwriter Sam Duckworth. Better known as Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly, Southend-born Duckworth garnered huge critical acclaim for his debut album The Chronicles Of A Bohemian Teenager — released in 2006 — and has built a reputation as a formidable live performer. We caught up with him following a rousing Live From London performance at the Apple Store, Regent Street, which is now available on iTunes.
Duckworth relies on the Mac and Logic Pro — in the studio, on stage and everywhere he travels in between — to help him fulfil his musical vision. “Logic is at the centre of it all”, he confirms. “From recording to having ideas, to being able to run bass, organ, keyboard and strings from the Mac during a live show. One person playing live can sound like thirty — that’s really exciting to me”.
“Logic is the best option for what I want to achieve with my music. It gives me the most parameters on editing, and the interface helps me track the instruments I put in there. The EQs are great and so are the third-party plug-ins.”
It hasn’t always been an easy ride. In earlier years, half-Burmese Duckworth suffered racist abuse in his hometown, Southend. Inspired to fight back with the anti-racist polemic of his track Glass Houses, the young troubadour hit the road, armed with his guitar, a backpack and a Mac.
During two years of sleeping on floors and travelling on buses, financed by sales of his self-produced Smile EP, Duckworth notched up over 200 UK gigs, delivering a collection of semi-autobiographical songs and socially-aware, anti-racist compositions.
On stage he takes his cue from social campaigners like fellow Essex native Billy Bragg, recognising that being a musician means he has the chance to stand up and be counted. And, like Bragg, popularity has not watered down his views — or his willingness to express them. Sam is still Sam. The difference now is that he’s playing sold-out gigs in 2,000-seat venues.
Duckworth uses his Mac to drive both the music and video of these live performances, as well as for composition and recording. With a busy tour schedule, he likes to use his Mac for developing musical ideas on the road. “Macs are much more stable”, he says. “When you travel a lot, having a reliable set-up makes a huge difference.
“You can’t really ask for anything more than getting to make and play music every day. One of the amazing things about having laptops and new technology means that if I have an idea, it’s not like I need to book a studio and wait — I can just get on with it. It means that even though things are hectic, the creative process doesn’t have to stop. You don’t need a huge studio set-up anymore”.
After four years of using Logic, Duckworth knows his way around the app, and finds its vast library of instruments incredibly useful. “I can run a Hammond organ live off my MacBook Pro”, he says. “There’s no way I’d be able to shift one of those between gigs in my backpack!”
He composes songs conventionally, developing lyrics and guitar lines until he’s ready to record them directly into Logic using the built-in microphone on his Mac. Then he tweaks the tempo and builds the instrumentation around the track. “Logic is quick, easy and immediate”, he says. “The song can grow around my initial framework. It’s not like some applications where you hit a wall of limitation, the things I can do are endless. If I add a bass line and it works, I can tweak it into shape using Logic”.
Like painters, sonic artists exploit layers of sound. Duckworth uses Logic’s EXS24 software sampler to help lock down accurate timing of his music’s layered components. Referring to his latest passion for strings, he explains: “I use the EXS24 to build up layers of sounds, and then break them down to sample them as viola, cello, whatever”.
Logic’s versatility matters to musicians. “I prefer it to any of the other platforms out there. Logic is the best option for what I want to achieve with my music. It gives me the most parameters on editing, and the interface helps me track the instruments I put in there. The EQs are great and so are the third-party plug-ins”.
A fast and fluid songwriter, Duckworth needs tools that work with him. He’s hampered by large outboard set-ups, as it takes too long to make the elements work together. “With Logic, you can have 16 instruments, a guitar and two vocals within ten minutes of writing a track. It gives me so much flexibility”.
Duckworth also uses GarageBand for developing tracks, especially when he’s on the road, or needs to capture an idea quickly. “I see it as a kind of mini-Logic”, he explains. And it helps that songs developed in GarageBand can be imported into Logic later on.
With almost 200,000 plays of his Call Me Ishmael track on MySpace, Duckworth is not blind to the digital music opportunity. “We’re becoming a culture of musicians. It doesn’t matter whether you have a record deal or not — if you have a great song, people can hear it. Places like iTunes and MySpace let musicians find an audience, and if musicians keep making good music then people will keep buying their songs”, he smiles. “It’s exciting to see real music coming back into fashion again”.
