Dream Shala

About Dream Shala

Jason Taylor is a musician originally from Toronto. His project Dream Shala focusses mainly on ambient music. He has played live electronic sets (no computer) for yoga classes in Mexico. Taylor got his first taste of electronic music at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto in the early 90s. “I started out playing guitar and jamming with friends but when I got to art school I was introduced to a crazy side of music I had never heard before! Artists like Jon Hassell, John Cage, Brian Eno, Harold Budd and Phillip Glass, this stuff was mind blowing. And for the most part they didn’t have access to samplers and computers like we do today.” A couple of my art school buddies and I put on a show and my “instrument” was a CB radio, like a trucker’s radio, played through a sampler delay pedal. I would tweak the sideband clarifier on the CB and get these awesome squelchy vocal sounds and then sample them and tweak the feedback and delay time knobs.” While in art school Taylor spent a good chunk of his student loans on a used Casio FZ1 sampler, a Roland TX81Z and an Atari 1040ST for sequencing. Taylor recalls; “The samplers back then were so limited! I think my FZ1 had like 1MB of memory in it, and that was a lot! You had to load and save everything to floppy disks”.

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Jason Taylor - Dream Shala

Latest from Dream Shala

Casio SK1 Sample Pack

Casio SK1 Sample Pack

Casio SK1 (1985) Samples I have sampled all the built-in tones and drum beats from my Casio SK-1 (1985). These tones are about as lo-fi as they come but for this reason they have their own charm! Put enough reverb on anything and it is usable! As usual I sampled the...

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Alesis SR18 Drum Machine Sample Pack

Alesis SR18 Drum Machine Sample Pack

Alesis SR18 Samples I just finished creating a nice sample pack of my Alesis SR18 drum machine! The samples are 44.1kzh 16bit and ready for your DAW or hardware sampler. There are actually some really nice sounds in this machine. It includes kicks, snares, hats,...

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Octatrack Experimental Ambient Live Looping

Octatrack Experimental Ambient Live Looping

Here’s a 10 minute experimental jam on the Octatrack. I’m using the OT as a live looper with the main effect being the LoFi effect. All effects except the reverb are from the Octatrack. Track 1 is a Thru track and 2 is a Neighbor track.

Gear:
Octatrack MKii, PRS guitar, homemade noise instrument, Hokema kalimba, Roland JP08, Eventide Space reverb pedal.

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Dream Shala Music

Micro Compressions – 2021

Tripticó – 2021

Epica Flasa – 2019

Music for Yoga – 2018

Dream Shala YouTube Videos

Microbrute Ambient

Microbrute Ambient

Arturia Microbrute Ambient Jam Here's an Arturia Microbrute ambient jam using only the Microbrute. I use a Boss RC1 to lay down the initial drone and a Hall of Fame reverb pedal for some ambient reverb. Please like and comment!

Octatrack Experimental Ambient Live Looping

Octatrack Experimental Ambient Live Looping

Here’s a 10 minute experimental jam on the Octatrack. I’m using the OT as a live looper with the main effect being the LoFi effect. All effects except the reverb are from the Octatrack. Track 1 is a Thru track and 2 is a Neighbor track.

Gear:
Octatrack MKii, PRS guitar, homemade noise instrument, Hokema kalimba, Roland JP08, Eventide Space reverb pedal.

Octatrack Ambient Live Looping

Octatrack Ambient Live Looping

This is a minimal ambient track using the Octatrack as a live looper.
Track 1 is a Thru track for the Digitakt (drums) so it doesn’t get looped. The Digitone and JP08 go through a Mackie mixer and get looped on Pickup machines on tracks 2, 3 and 4. The digitone covers the pad sound, and whale sound. I use the JP08 at the end just for some clicky filtered sounds towards the end.