I’ve had an idea for a piece—an actual piece—a kind of micro-composition. But (just my luck) by the time I set-up,* warmed-up and re-tuned, my D-string decides to meet its maker (‘it is an ex-string’). So, by the time I’m in a position to hit record, I’m about lose any available light (ah, winter time in Berlin).
So this is not a piece-piece (it’s barely a study), but just something to get down on (metaphorical, digital fairy dust) tape so I can get back into the swing of things.
More soon (I hope).
* Which takes a little longer with the still-new-to-me camera.
The above is a behind-the-scenes mix breakdown. If you just want to listen to music (and who could blame you), please check out the original (video and album track).
Are you still here? Okay, Juno 3: Proxemics was mixed into multiple buses (including parallel processing of ‘melodics’ and ‘environmentals,’ for example) before hitting the master bus. One of those buses was fed a mix of the bass signals from each performer. How the bass was separated, in each case, was somewhat different depending on the nature of the electronics, for example, or the instrument (e.g. clean v. fuzz guitar).
Folk have asked me about my mix strategies in approaching experimental and improvised musics, and here’s a little window into how I approached some of the problematics (I mean that in a positive, creative sense) in this one. I’ve said that, in regards to Proxemics, there’s a different album that lives in parallel, and that’s partly because there’s separate mix (with its own automation and processing) in the bass/subs.
Track listing: Derealization I (4:07), Derealization II (4:57), Derealization III (3:52), Derealization IV (6:19), Derealization V (5:55), Derealization VI (3:47), Proxemics I (5:05), Proxemics II (3:54), Proxemics III (6:10), Proxemics IV (7:15), Proxemics V (6:10), Proxemics VI: Rumble (5:13). Total duration: 62:44.
I’ve approached recordings and performance as very different animals. One way this lack of interest in ‘vérité’ manifests is in how I’ve been mixing recordings of my guitar playing; sending the guitar signal through a crossover, and processing the high and low frequency components separately, feeding them into separate cab sims, et cetera. I’ve also recently performed compositions by Carina Khorkhordina, and by Camila Nebbia, that involved multiple guitar and bass amplifiers. And this got me thinking about multi-amp setups, and practical (low component-count, portable, pedal-board friendly) ways to do this kind of dual-band processing.
So the above is a test; trying to figure out whether something like a simple crossover, coupled with, say, an analog octaver, might do the job in a live situation. (This test video is based around the recording from back in May, so if you want to listen to the music without the audio tinkering, please check out the original video.)
In Perfect Sound Forever, J. Vognsen asks musicians and composers (including me) how we “maintain an on-going passion for music”:
Album after album, concert after concert, how do you avoid routine suffocating the joy of it? As your list of musical experiences gets longer, how do you make sure each new one remains special?
I read with interest the reponses from Nina Garcia, Angelica Sanchez and others. Charles Hayward’s statement, in particular, (“I like aspects of the routine thing, setting up my drums builds the vibe towards the gig, it’s a joyful thing to clamp the pedal to the kick drum”) resonanted with me. As for me:
For me, I’m not sure ‘habit’ was ever a bad thing for my creative work. I feel like habit, in the context of creative practices, lives next door to ritual….
Habit and ritual are things I hold to during, and get me through, moments of creative funk. The ritual of getting up and making myself do creative work (or making myself ‘go through the motions’ of doing creative work) keeps my creative muscles working and not completely seizing-up from lack of use. From taking the guitar out of the case, switching the amp on, sitting down, stretching and warming-up (doing the guitarist’s equivalent of long-tones or drum rudiments), to grabbing my notebook and sketching, sketching, sketching until a shape emerges. [Read the rest…]
If you enjoyed Vognsen’s piece, please also check out ‘Creative Dead Ends in Music,’ his previous piece in Perfect Sound Forever to which I also contributed a response.
This might be my last in the #onetakestudy series for a while as I’ve got a couple of other projects that will be keeping me busy in the coming months. For those who’ve been following my studies, thank you so very much for listening.
Or maybe I should have titled this one ‘Signal and Noise.’
Some ideas and fragments that I came away with from a session with Sara Neidorf. It’s a bit scattered, and very rough around the edges, but there’s stuff here that I want to return to over the coming weeks.
Simple variation on a trope, technique, gesture, color and shape. This one might be a little more impressionistic than rigorous. Some of this, I think, works; some parts better than others. Enjoy.
I almost called this one ‘Induced Atmospheric Vibration’ after some (likely untrue) reports from Portugal in regards to the recent blackout. As some of you know, I played an unplanned solo set after Kaffe Matthews, with whom I was to perform in a duo, got stranded in Portugal. (For those who had wanted to hear our duo, we will be back!)
If this one feels a little like a throwback earlier studies, yeah, I agree… at least in part. There’s some techniques almost directly lifted from earlier improvisations, but combined with some of the structural concerns from some of the more recent studies. I’m not 100% convinced this one works, but maybe it can be made to. We’ll see.
It’s been a minute since I’ve done one of these excercises; specifically something I’d once called a ‘structural paraphrase’ (my, my, did I go hard on artspeak with that one 😶). Anyway, please enjoy this very loose improvisative paraphrase (with apologies to CT).
And please excuse the scritchy-scratchy pots—the potentiometer in my volume pedal in particular may be beyond cleaning. (You can help me fix that.)
I kept fumbling this one—thus another asterisk [*] on ‘#onetakestudy,’ and thus the title. This one’s very much work-in-progress.
A disprepared ditty bouncing some ideas—well, barely ideas, more fragments of fragments—that emerged from a session with Kaffe Matthews, and a recent gig with Camila Nebbia and Gianluca Elia. It is what it is, but, with a little more work, maybe I can make it into something.
Other than Dean Brown, which players have developed a facility for using the volume and wah pedals simultaneously? Whose playing should I be studying?
Judging from some of the responses I got, however, I needed, I think, to provide a little more context.
So please consider this short improvisation that context. It’s a demo of where I find myself right now, and I’d really welcome suggestions for approaches, techniques, models to study. Let me know what you think.
* irt the asterisk on ‘#onetakestudy,’ this one missed the first take. I wasn’t really ready for this, and I made a couple of aborted takes of the first phrase or two.
My technique feels a little rusty (been busy again with the ‘extracurricular activities’ that come with my so-called career), but I needed to take a break and get something out there.
This one is a little exercise in shorter cycles, or phrase lengths—a little more regular in its underlying scaffolding. I hope you find something in the noise. Enjoy.
