Triangulation problems

Tried the three triangle bits I mentioned in the last blog.  The rythmic pattern bit was i think, for me, impossible as it stands - too hard to play fast offbeats with no or little context.  The jangly bit is OK but not as dramatic as i hoped and the cut off decay really seemed to not work.  The earlier parts of triangle soloing sound like someobody is randomly hitting triangles - which is exactly what it is.  All in all I feel like it's not working very well, and I need to think either of ways to make it work, or have the courage to jetison the whole thing.

On the plus side, my triangle technique is vastly improved over the last hour and-a-half, I have discovered how to hold the string so that it doesn't swing around uncontrollably!  This will help in any future efforts.  Who knew you could actually get better at playing a triangle?

After a rethink

As I left the project last time, I was feeling that I was lacking inspiration for three minutes (minus a bit) of acoustic guitar solo.  I had at least two options to deal with this: a) get more inspired, work harder, pull out the solo of a lifetime or b) have a different idea.

I had a different idea.

I need this section (1.2.2) to finish while soloing as I was - this carries on into 1.2.3 for reasons which will become clear later, when I deal with that section.  But then again, why does it need to *start* with the soloing?  No reason.

We can build up to the soloing, maybe with a bit of drums.  Yes not a bad idea.  We can use some woodblocks to give an extra ticking dimension. How about a triangle solo?

Well more of a triangle quintet.

You see, I have 5 triangles of different sizes.  Up until now I have been using a sampled triangle but I think it's time to pull out the real things and have a go.  I have three things I would like to do.  Firstly some "free jazz" triangle improvisation - in other words unstructured playing, this can build up for a while.  Secondly, the structured bit - I have a pattern I would like to play.  The pattern goes quite fast and I'll have to play them separately, recording each part alone and then combining them.  This will be difficult, which is good, I like a challenge. Finally the climax - there's this thing you can do with a triangle, you hold the stick inside the triangle and rattle it round the sides to make a long jangly noise.  I want to do that on all 5 triangles at once.  And then stop all at once and let them ring. And then take the recordings and chop the sound just after the active jangling stops and move the "letting them ring" bit (the decay) back by two bars, giving a gap in the middle.  I don't know why I want to do that last bit but I think it might be cool so I'm willing to give it a try.  I also have possible plans to use the structured bit again in a later sub-section.

OK, so having said all that, what have I actually achieved?  Moving back the start of the guitar soloing, fading in the guitar part, and some drumming to go with it all.  In the long run this gives me about a minute, maybe less for the triangly bits.  

The Mysterious Ticking Noise

Before I get going on the music stuff - the title of this post is a literary reference.  If you have not seen The Mysterious Ticking Noise then I highly recommend it for a good larf. 

Subsection 1.2.2 started, and the subject is time.  There have been many songs about time, notably "Time" by Pink Floyd and "Time" by Sam Brown (two of my favourites).  Signifying the passage of time is really easy - you just need a clock ticking noise.

I have had a subtext of determination so far with this project - to resist sound effects as much as possible.  It would be all too easy to signify water by rain effects, air by wind effects and so on.  However, in this case, the ticking becomes an integral part of the music.

So I looked online for a clock ticking.  I could have recorded my one, but I don't think I have a mechanical clock any more, and my watch is very quiet. Free sound effects are available, but often have a lot of background noise.  I found quite a good one at Sound Jay (http://www.soundjay.com/) , a source I think I'll use again in the future.  There was only one problem with it, unbelievably it was fast!  You would expect a ticking noise from a clock to work perfectly alongside a 120bmp click (2 clicks a second).  I had to process the sound to slow it down!

You can't really have a ticking noise for 3 minutes with nothing else, so I needed a musical idea (maybe more than one).  As it happens I have an idea that has been forming.  A couple of weeks ago in church we played a song that had the following chord transition:  Cmaj7 to Em/C#.  This involves moving one finger one fret on the guitar and is sweet.  Well I've been playing around with this a bit recently and have come up with a cyclic chord progression:

G, Am7, G/B, Cmaj7, Em/C#, D, B7/D#, Em, D/F#, G....

So I thought I might as well use this, but for some reason when I started playing, the G/B suddenly became a D/B - a bit of a thumb stretch but a nice gentle chord.

Now I have a vague sort of plan that whatever I do in this subsection will spill over majorly into sub-section 1.2.3 (in fact right now I'm thinking of recording them both together as one 6-minute track).  So I gave the ticking a few bars to settle and recorded the chords on the guitar, once for each side, many many repeats to be over the 6 minutes long each side - that was a long slog and my attention wandered but I made it.

So I started acoustic guitar noodling over the top, and have come to a conclusion - it gets boring after a while. Anyway at that point I stopped as I seemed to have run out of inspiration.  I'm starting to have extra ideas to come in, basically I think the chords will start later after some other fun with percussion.

27 mini solos

This is an up-to-date post, I've just finished what I'm talking about.

So I was working on 1.2.1, as described in previous posts.  I had the refrain tune recorded for the three voices (I tend to think of solo, lead instruments as being "voices", almost as if they were singers).  I also had the Bodhran backing which comes in at bit 4 (there are 9 bits of 9 bars, each followed by a refrain of 9 bars, the first three are quiet, the next three (4-6) are middling and the last three (7-9) are full on).

Time for some backing.  Two acoustic guitars (one for each ear).  I used a trick of using a capo on one to get a different tonal quality.  They come in at bit 2, quiet for 2 bits, then middle, then load, dropping out for the last refrain (which is just tunes).  Then I felt like the last three should have some bass - unfortunately I have left my bass at church.  What to do?  I wonder what it sounds like if you play the bass notes on the guitar with a plectrum, which will be an octave too high, and then process the sound to drop it an octave. Interesting, that's how it sounds, I quite like that so I'll keep it.  It sounds like a really bright bass with brand new round-wound strings and the treble turned up.  Finally some drums for the last 3 bits to go with the bass.  I used the same trick as before, programming the bass, snare and toms, and using the electronic kit to record the ride cymbal to give it more of a "live" feel.  Once again I found I didn't really like the hi-hat and the ride has a more "open" feel.  I guess I wasn't really after "tight".

And so there are 9 bits which need three solos each (one for each of the voices).  Each solo has a different chord sequence, but the three sequences in a bit are similar, so it's possible to use similar ideas over the three instruments.  This was fun, tracking through finding different ideas.  I've borrowed a proper MIDI controller keyboard from work (I'm thinking of getting one) and so I used this to record the solos.  Some are folky and jiggy and some are just meant to sound like people jamming solos.  Almost all of these were performed on the keyboard, with just the occasional bit of programming or tweaking to make it work.  My one-handed keyboard playing is definitely getting better, there were some relatively challenging bits (for me) but I thought I pulled them off.  

What I definitely try to do is replicate a style of playing you might get with a real instrument, but then maybe throw the occasional bit in which is untypical, or would be difficult or impossible on the real thing.  Well both accordion and organ are keyboard instruments already, but they tend to be played a little differently.  The pipes of course were more of a challenge with this, but thankfully the samples were very good indeed, which gave it good expressiveness - it might even fool a few people (who have not read this) into thinking that it's real pipes played live.  As it happens my wife has a set of Northumbrian bagpipes which sound quite similar to these.

So I've put it all together, and I quite like the effect.  ow to listen to it in sequence with the other sub-sections.  I still have some time today so I may be able to start 1.2.2

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.

The extra factor

No this is not a reference to an annoying TV programme which goes behind the scenes at another annoying TV programme (actually I have to confess I tend to watch the X factor).  No this is the correct meaning of the word "factor" as a mathematical term.  I have an extra factor of 2 amongst all my threes.

Let me explain.

I was trying to think of ideas for sub-section 1.2.1 which is meant to represent space.  how do you represent spatiality in music?  Well you need three dimensions, side-to-side (L and R stereo panning) up and down (higher and lower musically) and in and out (louder and quieter should do the trick).  Oh look, we have 3 things, and this album is an exploration of the number three.  So we can have three positions in each dimension (left, centre, right; high, middle, low; quiet medium and loud) which gives us 27 combinations.  And so I thought I could also use rythmic threes: 9/8 time is a jigged version of (sometimes called a "slip jig"), and I can have lines of 3 bars length and "bits" of 3 lines length.   

Wouldn't it be sweet if in a 3 minute sub-section I could neatly fit in 27 bits, unfortunately I cannot, well I can but it goes too fast. If it goes at a decent jigging speed I can nicely get in 18 sections.  Instead of 3x3x3 x 3x3x3 I have 3x3x3 x 3x3x...2.  Shame.  Never mind, there comes a time where musicality takes preference over maths.

So I can still do the 27 different spatial positions, but instead of each one being a bit, each one is a line.  After each bit comes a second bit which is a refrain.  This will give me the 18 bits which fits exactly into 3 minutes.  

Have I got enough 3s into this mad thing yet?  Well I have a chord sequence and tune for the refrain, but I was asking myself what I would do for the chords for the active bits.  The three most commonly used major triads (each of which has three notes in it, coincidentally) are the chords based on the tonic, sub-dominant and dominant of the scale, otherwise known as chords I, IV and V.  With three bars in a line, there are 27 combinations of these three chords I can play, and so of course once I have thought of it I cannot resist using this.  I think I'm probably going to be in G, so I have the following sequences for my 27 active "bits"

GGGGGCGGD

GCGGCCGCD

GDGGDCGDD

CGGCGCCGD

CCGCCCCCD

CDGCDCCDD

DGGDGCDGD

DCGDCCDCD

DDGDDCDDD

I really think that this might be an opportunity to get the obsession with threes significantly out of my system.  Can I resist the temptation to reshuffle everything so that this is the central sub-section of the whole ablum?

So all I need now is to choose three melody instruments, work out the backing, and write 27 tunes.

Section 1 complete?

Back to subsection 1.1.2 - after a positive start to the second half the rest was relatively plain sailing - repeats of the tune adding mellotron choir backing, taking away the rythmn and finally a quick coda on the piano, dropping down a tone. The tune at the end reflects the motif at the start of 1.1.3 which it goes into pretty much immediately. The timing might be a little off, and I had in my mind something clever on the hanging on over mellotron chord but didn't do it - I may go back to that.

I have an MP3 of the three sections stitched together, which I can liten to a few times to see if it gels, work out which bit jar and where it is weak. So far I think... transition from 1.1.1 to 1.1.2 is a bit empty, and still not sure about the bridge section in 1.1.3. I wonder about the the later parts of 1.1.3 but I'm just listening right now and it seems pretty good.

Once again I'm being struck by how different 3-minute sub-sections is to 4, 5 or 8 minute sub-sections, and maybe I am trying to do too much in too short a time. At first I thought "oh good this will keep it interesting" but now I wonder if for example 2 ideas is to many for 3 minutes, certainly I'm used to taking more time exploring themes and arrangements. I'm sure I'll get used to it, after all i ahve a total of 27 sub-sections to do.

Speaking of which, it's time to start looking forwards to section 1.2: or in other words sub-sections 1.2.1, 1.2.2 and 1.2.3. The theme for 1.2 is time and space, and at the moment I think 1.2.1 is time, 1.2.2 is space and 1.2.3 is relative dimensions - or parallel dimensions. Now how on earth do you represent those ideas in musical form?