Biology

So I tackled 2.2.2 Biology tonight - and realised that fittingly it's the middle section of the whole album. Appropriate then that I had the thought of using a heartbeat rhythm. To be honest when I started that was really all I had.

So I used a bass drum gentle pulse to give a... well pulse. I then wondered what it would be like with a real heartbeat sound effect instead. I found one, and manipulated it to the right speed, and then actually found that it was nice when I combined the drum pulse with the real pulse.

Because I was doing biology I wanted feelings of growing, feelings of strength and solidity, and also feelings of delicateness and gentleness - all the sorts of things we think of for nature. I guess you could say what I got happened "organically" although I hate that mis-use of the word. I played with synth sounds, one giving a gentle rising, one with wide, broad strong yet gentle chords, and then a couple of rhythmic ones. I blended one into another, into another and stripped it back to the pulse and a rhythm synth - towards the end bringing in a gentle enigmatic piano. All of this over a long D note - actually that note carries through all three science sections.

At times this is quite "experimental" - meaning chaotic. Again this appeals to my idea of biology.

So this slots in before 2.2.3 chemistry, and as I write I am listening to the sequence. I seem quite convinced so far.

Cognition

In don't believe this! This is the third time I have tried to write this post, and twice it has got lost in the interweb!  Third time's a charm?  We'll see.  Maybe there are some things that are not meant to be said even if nobody is listening!

So.... The story so far.  First I did track 1 of my album in progress - "Body" about the physical world.  Then I skipped forwards to the third and last track "Spirit" about the spiritual world, because I had ideas and was chomping at the bit to use them.  I have done 6 out of 9 sub-sections of track 3 and instead of going straight on I am leaving the rest until later.  I Have a good reason but I'm not going to tell you what it is, in order to generate some excitement and anticipation, within internationally approved limits.

So I am tackling track 2, "Mind" about the mental world.  This album is obsessed with tripartate ideas, and so I have somewhat arbitrarily split this track into 3 sections, "the workings of the mind", Science and Art (or if you like, thinking, intelligence and creativity).  The workings of the mind is further broken down into Memory/The Past, Perception/The Present and Cognition/The Future.  This was the order I planned, but the idea I have for memory/the past is not a good track opener and I have an idea for Cognition which is.  It is a musical idea I had a while back and when I listened to a prototype I made of it last night I not only thought that the sequence of 5 bars of 7/8 had a feel of complexity which suited the idea of thinking, but the synth sound I happened to use seemed not only good, but invoked a futuristic feel.  Score.

After the work I did on this last night, and after my first attempt at this post I had another thought about the future/present/past thing which also works in with the ideas that I have.  This is in terms of when the sound for something is created.  If you use sampled sounds you are effectively invoking sounds and playing of instruments from the past, so the memory/past sub-section should just use samples.  For the future I could use softsynths, which means I don't actually store recorded audio but MIDI instructions.  Although this gets turned into audio for me to monitor, what ends up on the final recording does not become audio until it is mastered - in the future from the perspective of the recording process. Also using synths I can make it sound futuristic.  Finally for the present I can use proper, real instruments, recording using microphones, sound made in the "present" of recording.  I had also previously thought that because it's about perception and senses, I should only use instruments with which you directly make the sound, with your hands or breath.  Guitars, hand drums, breath instruments, that sort of thing, giving it a tangible immediacy.

The post tried to fritz on me again, but I have manged to fins where this helpful site keeps draft copies of what you type, so not only did I recover it, but have found the previous attempts at posting, so the rest of this is largely pasted in from a previous attempt.

So what did I actually record yesterday?  I started with the bassline pattern I mentioned before. In some ways I am approaching this almost like dance music, I start by introducing synths one at a time, The bass, added deeper bass, a chacha spatial sound (really hard to describe), a pad and then synthetic sounding drums. I have then gone through a breakdown which includes taking the rhythm out completely for 4 bars before it comes back in on the bass. I haven't finished yet - I need to decide what the latter part will be like, but I think bringing in a soloing lead would be a good idea.because of the way I am doing this music in sub-sections of 3 minutes' length.

I often have issues around speed and repeats of sections. In reality I normally have to make sure that my speeds are such that 1 minute is an exact number of bars. This is not too bad as I can often make things work in a small range of speeds so I just choose the right tempo. This time the tempo is 98 bpm which is divisible by 7 exactly. Unfortunately this gives me a total of 84 bars in 3 minutes, which is not divisible by 5, which is the length of the pattern. I could have chosen to try going faster or slower, but it would have to be significantly so - 70 bpm or 105 bpm both work. Instead I need to arrange for a 4-bar bit. Oh look, I've done that.

Now let's see if I can actually post this flipping post and be done with it.

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.

The impossible E-piano solo

After spending quite a while searching for the exactly right electric piano sound, I realised that the one I had used on Under A Binary Tree was the right one to use again.  Time to create some soloing over the A - F - C# - A (rept) part of section 1.3.1 (electricity).  

What I have created, I'm not sure about, there are parts which are played, there are parts which are programmed, and significantly there are parts with one hand of each.  I'm a bit disappointed that the touch-sensitivity of the keyboard didn't seem to be working but hopefully I have got around that.  What I have finally ended up with has some parts which are reasonably normal and hopefully nice and light and bouncy, and some parts which are complex and certainly unplayable by me, possibly unplayable by anyone apart from a mad genius.  The bottom line though, does it work?  Is it listenable and interesting?  Time is the great judge of that - I need to let this one marinade for a while.

On a similar note, I seem to remember saying much the same thing about the opening to the whole thing, a series of splash cymbal hits.  After some time has passed, the answer is an unequivocable (surely that's cannot be spelled right) "yes".  I'd go so far as to say it is iconic - one of those unique startings that leave you in no doubt what you are starting to listen to.

back tot he current sub-section, what is left is a synth solo and some jiggery pokery to make the start work with the previous sub-section.

Bodhran: an owed post

I should have posted this ages ago when I actually did it, but I kept forgetting so now you get it, dear imaginary reader, before today's legitimate post.

I spent quite a while choosing my three solo instruments.  At first I thought I would use three different synth sounds, but that didn't satisfy me much, then I worked on finding three folky sounds. Accordion was quite easy to settle on, fiddle: well it's using samples, and it's pretty impossible to replicate a fiddle sound.  For a while I tried a Chinese plucked thing (it's been a while so I forget which) and for a third chose Irish bagpipes, again sampled, but possible to sound fairly authentic.  Eventually I discarded the plucky thing for an electric organ.  2 out of three are folky and the three sounds go quite well together.

So now onto the bodhran, or "Irish drum" - one of those ones that you hold sideways and hit with a double-ended stick, called a "tipper".  There seems to be no consensus about how to pronounce the name, some have it as "BORE-ran" but some have it as "bor-RAAN".  I have even heard it "BOUGH-ron", but I'm pretty sure that's just bow-wrong.  

Anyway, I wanted some rhythm on the thing (I have one).  I used the newish tactic of just recording a whole lot and editing out the bits with mistakes, or that I didn't like.  The whole thing was made tricky by the fact that the room I'm in to record was rather hot that day, and the heat affects the skin of the drum, so it was slowly getting higher and higher.  I had to keep going quickly to not have any big differences when I edited it down.  Like many things when I record, I recorded it double, one for each ear (this gives it more presence and "thickness".  The change in tuning was beneficial for this in that the two tracks have different resonances, making it sound more like two different drums.  You would have to be very observant to notice that they both rise in pitch through the length of the sub-section.

Over time, one of my ambitions for spatial changes has been dropped - the changing the pitch one.  It was going to make it too stupid.

Arrival of the rainstick

Yes, folks the rainstick has arrived, a bubble-wrap-clad tube which sounds almost as good wrapped as unwrapped.  I've got quite excited about it, it looks cool (covered in a dotted pattern) and sounds even cooler, and it's nice and long.  I have already discovered an alternative use for it - get the beads (seeds or whatever) spread throughout it and use it as a monster-big shaker.  It should sound fab in stereo because it's so long.  So I'm planning to do just that as well as using it in a more conventional way - both at once.

Which all means that I can start section 1.1.1 - all about liquid.  And I seem to be bursting with ideas suddenly, probably too many for a 3-minute sub-section, but that's not a problem, I can pick the best few and run with them.  There's the African rythmns for a start, inspired by the rainstick.  I should dig out some of my African drumming notes.  I wonder if I can find the rythmns for a raindance.  There's the guitar chords and a tune all in there too.  

I've made a start.  The opening of an album is always important, and I have started with a few splash cymbals (I can't resist a musical pun).  Now I need to wait and see if I think they work.  Following this is a very deep synth sound, a tinkly synth sound, and next I am working on whalesong on the bass.  Not as easy as I thought it was going to be actually.  And that's where I'm up to.  it's nice to be excited by this.