(The tuning is E G# E G# A# D#)
Also, check out the drawings I've been posting to twitter.
Irrational Planet - a blog with an eccentric orbit
Showing posts with label improvisation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label improvisation. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Sulk in Moonlight
I've been tinkering with an alternate guitar tuning. Here's the first thing to result from that experiment.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Three New Improvs
I've been sitting on these for a while. One in particular needed editing. But if I start cutting and pasting I have trouble deciding when to stop, and there's only so much of that I can do and still call it improvised. So mostly I leave them alone even if I meander for a while in the middle. With each one of these it gets harder to come up with things that sound new. But I'm still tinkering with interesting effects to try out.
I am planning to record some things that are actually composed. Until now I've left my compositions to the computer to perform for me, but I have something I've been working on that I can do by myself.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Two New Things
Two things today.
Objects of Desire / Skin
I've taken to heart something Andy Warhol said - do something once or do it every day. And so I've been putting more work into recording and editing.
The first, boldly named piece, is based an idea that I shall definitely be revisiting at some point. Aside from a few brief diversions, it's based on just two chords, but I was able to get a lot of interesting emotional effects. The tonalities have just enough in common that they feel related, but each makes a distinct impression.
Unfortunately, there is some background noise that crept into this one, but I excised the worst of it and was too happy with the performance to throw it out.
The second piece is more of an experiment. I played lead pan with my fingers, with the microphone placed right up under the drum. It's an interesting sound, I think. The finger taps remind me of the pluck of a harp, and the muffled harmonics are remniscent of gamelan.
It's a bit difficult to play pan this way. It's hard to get a good tone from any but the lowest notes. Playing full chords as I do at the end is tough, which is why there isn't more of it. The breathless pace was also a challenge and exposed the relative lack of coordination in the fingers of my left hand.
Objects of Desire / Skin
I've taken to heart something Andy Warhol said - do something once or do it every day. And so I've been putting more work into recording and editing.
The first, boldly named piece, is based an idea that I shall definitely be revisiting at some point. Aside from a few brief diversions, it's based on just two chords, but I was able to get a lot of interesting emotional effects. The tonalities have just enough in common that they feel related, but each makes a distinct impression.
Unfortunately, there is some background noise that crept into this one, but I excised the worst of it and was too happy with the performance to throw it out.
The second piece is more of an experiment. I played lead pan with my fingers, with the microphone placed right up under the drum. It's an interesting sound, I think. The finger taps remind me of the pluck of a harp, and the muffled harmonics are remniscent of gamelan.
It's a bit difficult to play pan this way. It's hard to get a good tone from any but the lowest notes. Playing full chords as I do at the end is tough, which is why there isn't more of it. The breathless pace was also a challenge and exposed the relative lack of coordination in the fingers of my left hand.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Climb the hill in my own way / Every day is the right day
Recently, I've been thinking that the process of developing one's musical skills is like climbing a mountain, except that everytime you think you've reached the peak, it turns out to be a small summit, and the true peak remains hidden in the clouds. For every moment that you think, "Yeah, I'm really good," there are countless moments when you think, "I'm not good enough," and this seems to remain true no matter how long you work at it.
Case in point - Making these rough, formative recordings has been a humbling experience. Most of my experience has been in playing live as part of a band, which takes a somewhat different skill set than recording. Being in a band is a social experience. You bond with the other players, and support them just as they support you. You have to be able to listen as well as play, which may seem easy and obvious, but is actually one of the elements of that nebulous concept that is talent. Recording is different. It's kind of solipsistic, especially solo recordings. There's nothing but your sound versus the empty space. And empty space has a way of making you look bad, instead of holding you up the way a good drummer does. Empty space just sits there, daring you to come up with an idea that's better than blank Zen perfection.
As a result of all this, it seems that with each of these recordings I make, I get more critical and demanding of myself. Which is good, really. Once I feel like I've finished with this project, I'm going to have a lot of pent-up energy ready to spend on more structured compositions.
Case in point - Making these rough, formative recordings has been a humbling experience. Most of my experience has been in playing live as part of a band, which takes a somewhat different skill set than recording. Being in a band is a social experience. You bond with the other players, and support them just as they support you. You have to be able to listen as well as play, which may seem easy and obvious, but is actually one of the elements of that nebulous concept that is talent. Recording is different. It's kind of solipsistic, especially solo recordings. There's nothing but your sound versus the empty space. And empty space has a way of making you look bad, instead of holding you up the way a good drummer does. Empty space just sits there, daring you to come up with an idea that's better than blank Zen perfection.
As a result of all this, it seems that with each of these recordings I make, I get more critical and demanding of myself. Which is good, really. Once I feel like I've finished with this project, I'm going to have a lot of pent-up energy ready to spend on more structured compositions.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Arpeggioland
More noodling. If I'd thought of it, I probably would have put the album name in the ID3 tags as "noodles" when I started this project. Oh well.
Arpeggioland
With this one I've used reverb to simulate an effect like the sustain pedal on a vibraphone. This is another effect that I'd like to explore further in real-time if I can figure out how to do it. I'm imagining a plugged-in pan setup that would have effects pedals for stuff like this. Could be fun.
There was an audio glitch in this one that I had to delete, along with a very small patch of music. Hopefully it isn't too noticeable. I almost left it in, but I knew I'd be bothered by it later if I didn't fix it.
Sorry I haven't been posting in the past week, but I have an excuse: Rehearsals with Ray Holman.
Arpeggioland
With this one I've used reverb to simulate an effect like the sustain pedal on a vibraphone. This is another effect that I'd like to explore further in real-time if I can figure out how to do it. I'm imagining a plugged-in pan setup that would have effects pedals for stuff like this. Could be fun.
There was an audio glitch in this one that I had to delete, along with a very small patch of music. Hopefully it isn't too noticeable. I almost left it in, but I knew I'd be bothered by it later if I didn't fix it.
Sorry I haven't been posting in the past week, but I have an excuse: Rehearsals with Ray Holman.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Summer
New steelpan noodling.
Summer
One of my favorite things to do when playing pan solo is to run up and down giant chords, as you can hear in this recording. The tonality is ambiguous; rather than use the diminished chord that normally occurs in major/minor keys, the chords here tend to escape into foreign areas of the circle of fifths. There's a sense of alternate major-minor-ness going on into infinity. The occasional emphasis of the Lydian #4 tonality adds further mystery.
For some reason, the images that came into my mind while I was editing this noodle were of hot summer days outside in the sun when I was young. A feeling of innocence and passing time.
Summer
One of my favorite things to do when playing pan solo is to run up and down giant chords, as you can hear in this recording. The tonality is ambiguous; rather than use the diminished chord that normally occurs in major/minor keys, the chords here tend to escape into foreign areas of the circle of fifths. There's a sense of alternate major-minor-ness going on into infinity. The occasional emphasis of the Lydian #4 tonality adds further mystery.
For some reason, the images that came into my mind while I was editing this noodle were of hot summer days outside in the sun when I was young. A feeling of innocence and passing time.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Phrygdom
Another of my musical experiments is online. More steelpan improvisation.
Phrygdom
This time, I've applied an effect that makes it sound kind of like a weird keyboard... If you played a keyboard with sticks. I like it. I need to figure out how to apply the effect in real time so I can run it through an amp and hear it as I play. It'd be a cool stunt to bring out during gigs, and it might blend with other instruments better.
The scale this time is phrygian dominant, which is heard in flamenco, klezmer, and Indian and Middle Eastern music. It's one of the most dramatic scales, as it has the dark, bold energy of the minor key dominant chord but without ever falling back to the subdued minor tonic.
My plan with these recordings is to keep doing them until I have roughly an album's worth. Since they're improvised, it's not going to be my best work, but the point is to make myself learn more about recording in Logic by doing it. I have some more electronic compositions that are nearly ready to post, too.
Archive.org derives a variety of formats for the files I post, but in the process the ID3 tags are lost, so download the 160kbps MP3. That's the format I upload it in.
Phrygdom
This time, I've applied an effect that makes it sound kind of like a weird keyboard... If you played a keyboard with sticks. I like it. I need to figure out how to apply the effect in real time so I can run it through an amp and hear it as I play. It'd be a cool stunt to bring out during gigs, and it might blend with other instruments better.
The scale this time is phrygian dominant, which is heard in flamenco, klezmer, and Indian and Middle Eastern music. It's one of the most dramatic scales, as it has the dark, bold energy of the minor key dominant chord but without ever falling back to the subdued minor tonic.
My plan with these recordings is to keep doing them until I have roughly an album's worth. Since they're improvised, it's not going to be my best work, but the point is to make myself learn more about recording in Logic by doing it. I have some more electronic compositions that are nearly ready to post, too.
Archive.org derives a variety of formats for the files I post, but in the process the ID3 tags are lost, so download the 160kbps MP3. That's the format I upload it in.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Reverb = Genius
Koto-Scale Improv
I've been experimenting with recording recently, and this is the first thing that I've liked enough to put online. This is about %95 improvised. The simple theme at the beginning was planned, as was the key change, but that's it. I probably wouldn't have uploaded it, except that it sounds so spooky with the reverb.
The scale used for the first half originates with a Japanese string instrument, the koto. This scale, called In-Sen, arises from the way the koto is tuned. Interestingly, this five-note scale can be found within the seven-note scales of western music, but its attitude is quite different.
One of the most pleasant scales is the pentatonic, which can be described as a stack of five perfect fifths, for example F-C-G-D-A. Add two more notes to that stack and you get the seven-note scale of the western world, F-C-G-D-A-E-B. The first and last notes are a diminished fifth apart, and form a harmonic boundary between scale tones and the five other "outside" tones on the circle of fifths. Now, cut out the second and third notes, leaving F-D-A-E-B, and there's the In-Sen scale. It shares a sense of purity with the pentatonic, but the diminished fifth drastically changes its character.
I've been experimenting with recording recently, and this is the first thing that I've liked enough to put online. This is about %95 improvised. The simple theme at the beginning was planned, as was the key change, but that's it. I probably wouldn't have uploaded it, except that it sounds so spooky with the reverb.
The scale used for the first half originates with a Japanese string instrument, the koto. This scale, called In-Sen, arises from the way the koto is tuned. Interestingly, this five-note scale can be found within the seven-note scales of western music, but its attitude is quite different.
One of the most pleasant scales is the pentatonic, which can be described as a stack of five perfect fifths, for example F-C-G-D-A. Add two more notes to that stack and you get the seven-note scale of the western world, F-C-G-D-A-E-B. The first and last notes are a diminished fifth apart, and form a harmonic boundary between scale tones and the five other "outside" tones on the circle of fifths. Now, cut out the second and third notes, leaving F-D-A-E-B, and there's the In-Sen scale. It shares a sense of purity with the pentatonic, but the diminished fifth drastically changes its character.
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