Jesus

I thought quite a bit about what I should do for the next sub-section 3.1.2: God the Son.  I thought about rock (because He is the Rock) but that seemed like a cheesy thing.

Then one night some ideas came to me, some radical, daring and unusual ideas.  The sort of ideas I like.  This sub-section will be divided into 3 sub-sub sections: The crucifixion, burial and resurrection.

The death bit involves a clanking noise, meant to signify the hammering of nails. This starts at metal on metal, but is slowly enhanced with a thudding noise (actually the sound of a door closing in the Berlin offices of Native Instruments, the suppliers of my drum samples). Overlaid on this is an almost, but not quite 5/4 motif, played on several guitars, piano and bass.  Rhythmically this is slightly out of kilter with straight timing (on purpose), and harmonically deliberately discordant.  As this builds there are a couple of other sounds, the gently stroking and tapping of the open string of a guitar and a rhythmic high note, like an alarm.  This builds to a climax (with a dice rolling sound effect briefly) and leads into the second bit.

...which starts with screams, ("with a loud cry he gave up the ghost") and the sound of tearing - the temple curtain being torn in two. The remainder of this is meant to sound like burial, and so is deliberately bass-heavy and giving the impression of muffled-ness.  There are long bass notes to which a strange process has been applied - first the track is reversed and then played with heavy reverb, recorded down like this and then reversed back.  This basically makes the reverb happen before the notes rather than after, building up to the note.  The overall effect is one of pulsing sound.  On top of this there is very fast bass playing (done by recording slower bass playing and quadrupling the speed) and very fast low quiet piano playing (programmed) both of which have a delayed copy played in the background.  The overall effect is deep and probably a bit menacing.  Over this there are some spaced out phrases - spoken words (with heavy reverb) - "this is my body, broken for you", "this is my blood, shed for you" and "it is finished".  Strictly speaking these phrases were not things said during the burial, but it seemed like a good place for them.

The only things I am not happy about are the sound effects I have sought out and downloaded from the Internet (being careful of course to get copyright-free ones).  The ripping doesn't sound right, the dice are OK but maybe could be better, and the screams could be harsher.  I might be able to improve them by editing, or tone changes, or I might have to attempt recording my own effects.  I'll see how I feel later.  I will certainly have to choose my time if I'm going to record loud screaming!

It has struck me that most people, when confronted with the idea of recording music to indicate spirit and spirituality, would produce something gentle and beautiful. I seem to be producing stuff that is dramatic and at times brutal, certainly challenging and maybe not easy listening. In either sense of the phrase.