After the harpsichord...

...comes the the string quarter playing Pachabel's canon. Well OK almost Pachabel's Canon - just the same chord sequence but as block chords rather than all the fabulous counterpoint. And almost a string quartet too - each sound is really an ensemble sound. This is all about having a chord sequence - and this is a pretty famous sequence. Also it very neatly moves into the next section, as the first melody I'm going to use there has the same (almost) chord sequence.

The drums prevail and the strings play the sequence one. Acoustic guitar and electric bass join and it's played again. Then twice at double sequence speed (each chord takes half as long). Increasingly the feel becomes bouncy and the strings are phased out. Over the whole thing is floated an electric guitar doing vague pentatonic noodling.

The guitar is worth talking about. I tend to use a lot of classic "crunchy" guitar sounds when soloing - I'm quite a fan of that distortion. However, I have been looking for a satisfying "clean" sound, something a little like the classic Santana sound would do me - compressed and sustained and clean. I think I have finally found it in this. Also I had an interesting moment. Sometimes when I want a line (often I can hear in my head what I want) but it seems too fast for me to play reliably, I play at half speed and double speed it up. Well this time I had such a line, and when I tried to double it up it just sounded...wrong. My trickery was unhelpful. So I tried several ways of playing it and eventually found one, and learned it and did it at normal speed. I did use a bizarre little technique though (never used this before but will again) - I was playing high up the neck, and to stop open strings ringing and getting in the way, I draped a jumper over the lower part of the neck to act as damping. Now I think I need to invent the damping capo - it would be really useful.

I have been having lots of problems with cubase in this project - something keeps causing to go into an "unstable state" and it invites me to save out under a different name. Anyway I seem to have finally taken all the individual ideas and aggregated them into one nice track.

Delay Lama

More work on the harmony sub-section tonight (2.3.2) - well a bit yesterday but I'm counting this as one session. The singing bowls are there and they need some backing up with other instruments. Given that the bowls are in c# and a bit this meant some judicious tuning, but I ahve added arpeggiated tibetan monks.

I have mentioned the monks in a previous post. It seemed appropriate that alongside the singing bowl, traditionally from Tibet/Nepal, that I give the monks a go. Actually what it is is a "formant" synth, which models vocal chords and gives a human-like sound. This particular one is called "delay lama" (a play on Dali Lama) because it has a delay, and as a gimmick not only makes the noise but has a picture of a monk who sings as you play the notes. Its fun. I have used two, one for each ear and they are doing arpeggios.

Added to that was some bass. My old, (pretty old) fender bass has found it's way home on the principle that I will predominantly use it for recording while the other one will mostly live at church. Unfortunately it would seem that the Fender has some electronic problems - a disconnected earth by the sound of the big buzzing noises. I managed to get it to stop and have some nice slightly funky bass.

Next was some electric guitar. I wanted a floating guitar "tap-on" arpeggio pattern that flies through from ear to ear. Now in the past I have used Guitar Rig alongside Cubase but it seems that on the new set-up they don't play nice together. It looks like the free ASIO driver I ahve doesn't do multi-tasking. Never mind, I have discovered the "monitor" button at long last - and maybe because the computer is more powerful than the previous one, the latency (lag) is less of a problem than it used to be.

So I think that's the first 32 bars sorted - next I'm going to move into F major and do some scales.

It's all Physics, isn't it Jimmy?

Months ago I talked about my old Physics teacher, with "Och no it won't do". This guy, Jock Marsden, was the most distractable teacher we had, easily diverted onto talk about his days in Aeroplane design. Typically at the end of a long, and diverted lesson, as we hustled out of the door he would declaim "But it's all physics isn't it Jimmy?" (he called everyone Jimmy).

After much deliberation I decided that the pseudo-heavy-metal and pseudo-acid-rock section is fine as Chemistry, and that it will be the last of the three sciences, not the first - the ease with which it will segue into the next section is too good to resist, and it turns out I can find a way of getting out of the previous section OK. So that's the order sorted - the next problem is, how do I turn the idea of physics into music.

Well for a start I could think about how sound is made, flutes have resonant air, strings vibrate, it's all physics. So physical instruments - good idea. Ahhh but electronic instruments have sounds generated by whizzing electrons, and once again it's all physics. The music that is generated at the end is a confluence of air pressure waves, formed by (hopefully) pleasing harmonies (concordance and discordance are not just subjective, they are physical things) and rhythm (periodic factors using the dimension of time...) it's all physics! On top of that, the whole of the first track is about the physical world, so tackles the states of matter (physics), the three classic forces electricity, magnetism and gravity (physics), and space, time and multidimensionality (physics). When it comes down to it, physics is everywhere, it's the fabulous science that links maths to all the other scientific disciplines.

But that doesn't help, what do I do to represent physics musically?

Well I had this musical idea that I'd done a prototype of, which is a kind of Alan Parsons kind of thing - I can hear it in my head with a nice 80s synth. Is it physics? Well everything is physics - but that's now a cop-out, is it particularly physics? I'd really like to use this idea somewhere though and I'm running out of viable sections.

Instead of intellectualizing it, what if I tried to tap into emotion - how do I feel about physics, and how does that translate into music? Physics to me is solidity, and to some extent the "clockwork universe" of Newton's laws.

Solidity = rock

That was the best I could come up with, and so I've used my idea and done it in a rock style. And for now, it's the best I can think of. Plus I really like it.

It starts with a drone and a tinkle, all three of the science ones will. An electric piano plays the riff, joined by rock guitar, slowly speeding up to speed. Then a quick 2-bars of clock noises and the drums come in with four on the floor. By now there are three strong rock guitars pumping out the riff. Twice through the riff fully and onto the B motif, which is more funky, and the drums back this up with a rock/disco beat. A few more iterations and variations and it all works out. The guitars are all in open Dm tuning (I really have a thing about altered tunings right now), and the whole thing is full. There are small bits of solo-ish stuff but having tried to find sounds to play over as solo lines it seemed resistant - the sound is full already but it's effectively a rhythm track.

So I'm going to leave it as is and see if it needs more when I get into the listening phase.

Tortured strings

This is a supplemental to last time, I had intended to talk about tuning.

As I wandered through the process of recording the section there were two interesting things that happened. The first is that although I had some ideas it very much evolved as I recorded it, which is something that often happens. As I play around with an idea, especially on the guitar, ways of exploiting that idea evolve in my mind. In other words, it's not entirely planned before I start, in fact this has been true throughout, and I like it this way (although I have never consciously decided that this is a policy). It make the process feel more "organic" - despite the fact that I dislike this use of the word it seems to fit. It may be that this makes the music itself less clinical as I pull at the threads that seem more interesting at the time.

The second thing, in this case is that as I played with the ideas on the guitar I started retuning. Normal guitar tuning is EADGBE, and the most common tuning for people who mess about with such things is DADGAD. Different bits were played in different tuning and it changed as I went along, I think I finished up at DADFAD, but that's because I wanted the highest three stings in their normal relationship for the solos (but didn't mind being a tone lower as everything is in D anyway). For much of the rest, the rhythm stuff, I seemed to gravitate towards DADGCD, and played the chords with 2 fingers together on the same fret on strings 4 and 5.

Physics, no wait, Chemistry, no wait...

So my next challenge was 2.2.1 Physics. I am leaving the previous sub-section with a D chord, and I had this kind of slightly metally guitar thing in my head I wanted a go at. The problem was - how was that physics?

It's not.

Hang on, heavy metal - that's chemistry surely? SO I change the order of my sciences section around, no biggie.

So there's a bass undercurrent pedal, a bit like right at the start of the first track, oh then there's a tinkly synth bit... like the very start of the first track... OK so if it's a good idea do it more than once. Then there's a guitar doing rythmic chords, sounding like it's played through a bullhorn, then in comes drums, bass, and multiple guitars.

I have a problem with guitars, in that I have a really nice suite of guitar effects called Guitar Rig that will run either standalone or as a plug-in for Cubase. However, if I run it standalone, and record my playing, I can only seem to configure cubase to record without the effect on. Well this is OK because I can take the same effect and apply it as an after-effect to the track. No problem, except if I want more than two guitars, the poor computer starts to struggle. SO I have a method - I record into cubase, isolate that one guitar track with the after-effect on and mix down just that one track to an audio file, which I then load back into cubase as an audio track... confused yet?

The end result is that I spent aaages on this track mixing down individual tracks because I have used about 10 guitar tracks in total.

The heavy metal thing takes nearly half of the track time up, and then I played around with some of the more extreme sound effect settings of guitar rig - getting a nice spacey background. Seeing as I am in chemistry I might as well embrace acid. I have made a fundamental decision that instead of aciiiiiiddd as it applies in the early 90s I'd rather emulate some of the more late 60s/early 70s acid-related music.

There's a problem with this, I start playing with the guitar on a setting called "superfunk" and I have come out with a funky rhythm. I love it, but it's not really the spacerock sound I'm after. Yes, spacerock is a recognised genre. I found another sound that complimented "superfunk" which also was funky. I played a bassline on the guitar (oh I did that for the first bit as well because my bass is at church again). By this stage I have abandoned the spacerock and shrugged my virtual shoulders.

However, once the rhythm is laid down I start looking for some soloing to go over the top. It turns out I can make it quite spacerocky by doing spacey soloing. I spent ages on a lead line, repeating bits, re-recording, and the pinnacle, a genuine tap-on part (that's fast fingering - often I fake this stuff, this time it's not absolutely perfect but I'm happy that it's real). When I played it back, I still had my guitar on my knee, so I started fiddling along to the music - a perrenial guitarist habit. The thing is, it seems that sometimes two guitars are better than one, and harmonising is fun. The first line took ages, the second was on the second take, fully done. And by now the spacerock thing was firmly back in play so I played up to that. I added a bit of minimal spacey drums and Bob's your auntie.

I kind of glossed over the first part - it has a complex, non-repeating rhythm and is in no particular time signature. It actually took ages, and a lot of care to make it work. In fact this may be the most intensely worked-on 3 minutes of music I have ever made, but hopefully it doesn't feel like it.

In the meantime I have a new problem, this was designed to go straight after the jazz section and it works well in that position, but I have a plan for sections 2.3.1, 2.3.2 and 2.3.3 which are all about music: rhythm, harmony and melody. I plan to carry a beat at 120bmp through all three, and the first one of these is funky. This chemistry section ends perfectly to go into it. So it could become 2.2.3 instead of 2.2.1, but the transition was good at the beginning...oooh dilemmna!

Outrageous solos

As previously promised, the sub-section I am working on "The Pride Of Life" features outrageous solos on various instruments.

First, classical guitar, then drums, then bass, then piano and finally electric guitar. then there is a build-up coda (in 7/8) featuring all but drums.

The drums and piano are performed through samplers and so can be programmed as MIDI instruments, which is how the solos were realised, working through slowly and adding the notes by hand.

Guitars and bass are a different matter.  There were two major techniques used - firstly breaking things down into short phrases or sub-phrases, usually a bar or two in length. Secondly, when I want fast playing to a) pitch-shift down an octave and b) resample to twice the speed.  This effectively doubles the speed without changing the pitch.  Not all the phrases have this done, sometimes I did it when I didn't actually need to (I could actually play the phrase) and for parts of the electric guitar I did it twice making it really, really fast.

Basically it's taken quite a lot of time to do this, each sub-30 second solo taking at least an hour to create, this has been one of the most work-intensive sections, but I believe it is worth it.

The other thing I have added is clapping to the flamenco guitar backing, for the first two times through the pattern before the drums solo (after both the drums and bass solos the respective instruments join the backing). I cheated and used clapping samples (I could have done this for real but fake claps often sound better than real).

Many strings

I have started work on 3.1.3: The Holy Spirit.  After the challenging and often discordant things running up to this I have decided that harmonic and melodic is the order of the day, also light and maybe a little airy.  So I have a nice bouncy little chord sequence (Am7, C, G, Fmaj7) which gets repeated several times.

Before this comes in I have chimes (those metal things handing from a long stick which a drummer occasionally runs his stick along) which I used to joke with my friend Bob (a drummer at church) signified the working of the holy spirit. In the same vein a harp is introduced.  

Back at the chord sequence, in a fairly traditional sense instruments are introduced one at a time, first bass drum and synth (the same absynth sound I have used in the previous two sub-sections) then acoustic guitars (6-string on one side, 12-string on the other), then shakers and ukuleles (well the same ukulele played twice, of course, once for each ear), then bass.

At this point I'd like to say I have just recently bought the uke, it called to me in a music shop and I succumbed, after all it was only £15 - making total expenditure on this album, ermmm £15 more than it was last time.  The most striking thing about it is that it is pink. I can live with that.  I play it with a non-standard tuning - I had a peek in a book in the music shop and it should be tuned G-C-A-E, but I have always thought it was G-D-A-E, which makes it the same as a mandolin or violin.  having already learned to play several chords with this tuning I thought I would stick with it.

So after the build-up there are 4 more times through the chords which is destined to have a solo over it, probably flute.  Then there is a "breakdown", a quieter version of the chords twice.  Following this is 8 times more, losing the shaker and introducing a fuller drum-kit (with programmed drums but played cymbals). This has an electric guitar solo over it (which I think I am happy with) and the bass will follow the solo playing the same notes, but lower. In this section, even if I don't count the uke twice there are a total of 30 strings on all the instruments being played.  I have done a lot of tuning tonight.

This then gives way back to the harp (but I'm not happy with the transition yet, I need to work on it).

One odd thing that happened is that I used the bass drum pulse to keep me in time while playing acoustic guitars and uke, and then replaced it with the programmed drums.  It turns out I was not playing well enough in time and had to tweak the placement of the programmed drums to slightly earlier to make it match up better.

Resurrection

And so on to the third sub-sub section of the potted musical passion, the resurrection.  

Firstly I wanted it to burst in with a big loud angelic chord.  There is a cymbal and timp to define a sharp edge to the "bursting forth" and I think nothing says angels like choral sounds and brass instruments.  The chord I used was created by sticking my hands on a keyboard and thinking "now that sounds good".  Actually I'll go further than that and say I'm pretty proud of the chord, but it's hard to describe.  Technically one of the possible names would be "Dm7+4/A" (chords with more than 4 notes usually have at least 2 or three possible names), but that doesn't really describe how it works.  Another way to describe it is that you start on a low A and play four more notes at intervals of a fourth above each time - A-D-G-C-F.  The sounds I used where a trumpet (for the brassy effect) and a mellotron choir (for the choral effect).  Both sounds fade into heavy reverb which makes them dissipate nice and spaciously.

Then I bring in electric guitar chords - the chord used is A9/E (which got used in a sequence back when I was doing "time") and is a new friend.  Again two guitars, one for each ear, and the chord is gently stroked on alternate sides.  However each side is taken through some fairly ethereal effects which make the whole thing very spacey.  Under this a synth (absynth) using the same sound as was used for a "still small voice" back in the "God the father" sub-section, arpeggiates the same chord, and finally a floaty flute sound (Turkish ney to be precise) plays a floaty line with fading in and out reverb.  The end effect is of a loud, bright ethereal angelic shininess.

Phil Lynott Superstar

I have made a good solid start at sub-section 1.3.1 - this one is about electricity. This final 1/3 of the first track is about physical forces: Electricity, Magnetism & Gravity (and yes if any physicists are reading I know that I am missing strong and weak atomic forces)

So lots of electrical instruments to be used.

Unlike sometimes I had a pretty full comprehensive plan in my head for this one. I'd got several motifs (to use a posh word), and an order.  I'd even worked out the timings, based on a speed of 128 bpm, which gave an exact fit in the three minutes.  

Unfortunately when i actually started work, 128 bpm turned out to be too slow.  It needed to be more like 144.  Oh dear.  Never mind, that gives me exactly 4 more bars over 3 minutes, and I remembered an extra idea I had.

So it goes like this - it's a sort of pulsing 8/8 rythmn on 3 electric guitars, which reminds me rather heavily of "do anything you wanna do" by Thin Lizzy. It starts inside the previous sub-section carrying on from the guitar finishing up there, with a pulse on an A with a stabby chord thing every two bars.  Once into the section proper the drums start (again similar to the Thin Lizzy song - a bit of "tribute" going on there - I really wanted the nice rolling rock feel), it goes A for 4 bars, F for 4 bars C# for 4 bars and back to A for 4 bars.  This is repeated.  Over this there will be (not done yet) an electrical sounding synth solo (buzzy sound).  

If you read this blog (and I'm not sure anyone does) you will maybe remember some posts ago I was celebrating being able to do a triangle quintet.  I have now gone beyond this in terms of strangeness - the next bit is an "unplugged wire solo".  Unplugged guitar wires make buzzing noises when you touch them, so I have a very short section of doing that.

Plugged back in, the three guitars play a trio, slight similarities to the Thin Lizzy but using a chord sequence from Jesus Christ Superstar, crossed with the theme tune for Magic Roundabout: A, D, G/A, D.  I think it's pretty good.

The next motif is back to the stabby chords over an A chug, but with a double-time bass solo.

Next just the stabs without the chug, and electrical sound effects: phone dialling and alarm ringing, electric drill, zappy sounds, one of my son's electrical-tune-playing toys (my wife said "I won't ask..." when she saw me recording it) and finally thunder.  Most sound effects free from the internet, with the one exception which I recorded.

back to the A, F, C# A sequence, this one will have an electric piano soloing over it when complete.

Now for the extra 4 bars.  There's this nice rasping sound you can get by running a plectrum edgewise along a guitar string, so I have 4 bars of that (3 guitars) and finally back into the guitar trio from earlier.

It's all very rock and it rolls along nicely (in my opinion). There are several hints at electricity along the way and also I think it feels kind of charged with a sort of musical thrill.

Although  have not been as economical as I could with recording this so far, there are several bits that have been repeated or re-used.  I have made a lot of use of a little trick - doubling the speed of small sections.  There are quite a lot of little triplet runs, and actually I could probably do most of them for real at speed, but they become better defined when recorded at half-speed and doubled up. I've got a lot of overlaying, effectively editing going on on the guitar tracks.

So there are a couple of things left to do on this section - the synth and electric piano solos which I want to take good time over to make them effective, and there is some mucking about to do with the start of this sectiona nd the end of the last to get them to feel seamless.

"Och it'll do ... Och no it WON'T do!"

When I was at school we had a physics teacher called Jock.  Once upon a time I knew his real name but he went by "Jock" to all the pupils, and all his colleagues.  He was, of course, Scottish.  Among the many things he was famous for, along with being especially susceptible to red herrings in class, along with calling all pupils "Jimmy", and along with an absolute manic insistence on ties being tied properly, was his rather unique approach to assemblies.  The one that stuck in the head was his exhortation, whenever we were tempted to say "Och it'll do" to reply to ourselves "Och no it WON'T do!".  This rather unique approach to "If a job's worth doing it's worth doing well" was rather successful in its mission.  The two phrases became catch-phrases for several years, along with the very bad fake Scottish accents they had to be said in.  I still remember it now and I would guarantee that a good proportion of my classmates would also.

Yesterday I finished the bifurcation of guitar parts with what I described as "noodling" on the electric guitar.  Now noodling is all very well in it's place, but to be honest I was making do with sub-standard noodling.  This troubled me.  I resolved that "Och no it WON'T do".

Unfortunately my guitar playing ability is not as great as my ambition.  Later in the project I will be attempting to create blistering guitar solos, but for now I was content to create a new, different tune to the same chords.  That is something I can do, and the result is far more satisfying in my mind.  I cannot do it flashily and fast, but at least I can do what I can do, and I can make sure I do it well.

Bifurcation Revealed

The time has come, dear imaginary reader, for me to reveal to you what is going on in sub-section 1.2.3.  This first track is all about the physical universe, and this second section is about the scope of the universe.  1.2.1 was space, 1.2.2 was time, and now 1.2.3 is about parallel dimensions, alternative universes, the 5th dimension, whatever you want to call it.

Now although I personally don't subscribe to the theory that at any quantum collapse event the universe splits and goes in two different directions, the concept that the universe splits at particular points is a fairly neat way of explaining this concept of extra dimensions, and so this sub-section displays what Terry Pratchett calls the "bifurcating trousers of time".

And this is how I have done it.  The rythmn, (clock and guitar chord sequence) from 1.2.2 carrries on, bass and shaker is added to give a slightly different feel, and the acoustic guitar plays a tune which fits the chords.  This keeps repeating (and this time I have deliberately looped the same recording so it stays exactly the same.) The idea of the split is that two alternatives run in parallel, but over time they become more and more different, so first of all I intruduce a second acoustic guitar playing exactly the same, then they separate in the stereo image, then the "new" one plays a slight variation on the same tune, then it changes for being player with a plectrum, giving a harder sound, then fades into an electric guitar instead of acoustic, then it plays a harmony with the first (constant) one, and then starts to "noodle" over the chords, different to the tune.  Eventually everything fades out and leaves the electric guitar alone, which stops short of the 3 minutes end - the electric guitar is going to stay the same and start up relevant playing for the next sub-section.

My only reservation on this is wondering if the repeated tune is going to get a bit boring, time will tell as I let it "settle in".

One thing I am finding quite interesting is that having done two sub-sections as one recording project file, over this 6 minutes I only have one midi track, all the others are "real" instruments, guitars, bass, percussion, triangles and all - quite a few of them.