36 hours

Take note I woke up at 8:30 on Tuesday. I spent an hour setting up for the band from 5-6pm. They're called "Behold The Sun" if I haven't told you already. Anyway, all my planning and stuff really payed off because it only took 2 hours before the first recording was in the bag. THANK GOD the band kicks arse, I wouldn't be able to take another recording session of non-kick-arses. If you have ever heard of Portishead, they sound a little like them. As the night blew on, hunger levels were rising and tempers started to flare (between the drummer and lead singer), so we took a break at about 9:30. Well it turns out that the vegetarian food I bought had to be cooked, not microwaved, so we ended up with just a small packet of "Yum Cha" between 5 people. It got to midnight and we had 3 songs down (7 takes of each). After 5 hours recording I was getting pretty wasted, as were the instrumentalists, so we took another short break to try and wake up a bit. After recording the last song until 2am, the flautist and violinist were too tired to go on (they were young), so they left the lead singer/pianist, drummer and I to do some overdubs. I microphoned the Grand Piano, did some run-throughs (somehow the pianist had already gotten high beforehand) and when it got to 3:30 we decided to call it a night, 10 hours after starting. The two band members helped me pack up, to some extent, and left at 4am. I finished packing up while the 8gig of files were being burnt over 2 DVD's, and at 5 I was done. But. I can't get home without catching a taxi, and even if I had the money to get home, I would have to wake up 30mins later to get back to uni at 9. So I did the unthinkable and slept at uni. I had a blanket that I used to cover the kick drum, so I 'snuggled' into the shower cubicle in the level 11 men's toilets. Yes, that's right. I got to sleep at around 6:30, woke up at 8:30, bought a muffin for breakfast and went to Perspectives in Music Tech. I realised then that I didn't have my notebook (the one with all my class notes for the entire semester), and at 1pm I have 3 hours free so I went all through EMU, asked at the security office as well as Elder Library, but no-one had seen it. I was hoping and praying that one of the band members had taken it home by accident, but it wasn't until 3:45 that I got a message saying just that. So my 3 hour break being wasted, I went to my 2 hour Elvis to U2 class, struggling to stay awake (I did actually fall asleep periodically), and ended up leaving uni no less than 31 hours after getting here, and getting only 2 hours of horrible sleep over a 34 hour period.

Enter session 2.

I woke up Thursday morning at 7:00 to get to uni for Foundations at 9. After workshop that afternoon, I started setting up my own deadroom, as I do not like the idea of there being 8 doors in between studio 1 and the actual deadroom. Using all baffles and my notorious blanket, I set up a semi-soundproof fortress, or cubby house if you’re into that, right in front of the studio 1 window. This worked like a bitch (in a good way) so the session was going great. I had bought proper food this time as well. After plenty of flute, violin and trumpet overdubs, the flautist left early (being 2am) and the violin, drummer, singer and I finished off all the vocal dubs. The morning rolled on and I figured I should get all the new recordings onto disc before 5:30. Which I did. With 35 seconds to spare. The computers rebooted and life went on. It got to the stage where we began improvising the session- the band with musical improv and with me making up microphone techniques as I go. So with the files safe and sound we recorded some abstract stuff, and figured at 7:00am we should start packing up before someone finds us all here still. It was then we realised we had just completed a 12 hour recording session. Packing up is second nature now, so it was all done in 30 minutes. So I went home, got ready for bed, got INTO bed, and figured I would check my email. A special shout out to Courtney for her friendly reminder of our pre-arranged choir rehearsal, which I had to be back at Uni for in an hour. Up I get, threw clothes over my pyjamas and caught a bus back. It turns out I have been singing the bass part an octave higher than it is supposed to be for the entire semester, so Ave Verum Corpus (The Burning Corpse) is in second inversion in our trio. At 11 I had the choice of going home and sleeping, probably until 2am the next day, but I figured “What the hell would I do awake at 2am?” So I did the unthinkable again, and stayed awake for the rest of the day, even managing to go to the lunchtime concert thing. Riding the bus back at 5, I dreamt about changing buses at Paradise interchange, and when I woke up I was on a different bus. When I finally got home, I fell asleep on the couch at 7:30pm, no less that 36 hours after waking up the day before.

At least I slept for 18 hours after that.

Oh, and I got my notebook back, hence the blog entries being up to date.

Week 4 - Musical 'Variety'

When people were taking their seats for the Thursday workshop, there was a piece of music playing called “Sweet Air” by David Lang. It sounded familiar, and I deciphered that the melody and harmonies were looping, yet the rhythm that they were being played with was looping at a quicker rate. It turns out I was paying attention in Introduction to Theory and Analysis, as this form of music is called isorhythm. The result was harmonically sound, yet intellectually stimulating due to the regular changing of the timing. A nice start to the lesson, but a false pretence for the following song.

The next piece, “Surf Music II” by Jack Vees, was certainly a tangent to the planned structure of the ‘entrance’ music. Using bowed bass guitars to create deep, repetitious sounds, various harmonics and echoing sound effects that had nothing to do with “Surf”, this 22 minute long overtone-fest would have made more sense with a name like “Submarine Port”, or “Submarine Port II” as the case may be. There were some fantastic effects at the start that I’m sure took a long time to create, like some of the upper-harmonics that would beat against each other while seeming to pan around the room. As the song moaned on with the deep, dying elephant sound, the collaboration of effects seem to get less organised, conjuring images of audio mixing with a food processor. The sound effects that played a small, ambient role at the start became centrepiece about 7 minutes in, and showed why they should be just ambience. Purposefully or not, they were either thrown through a low-pass filter, or just very under-sampled. Chuck in a wah pedal and you’ve got yourself a cheap sounding mess - “I’ll take 22 slices of Cheap Sounding Mess, thanks. Oh, do you sell harmony, melody or rhythm here? Never mind, I can get it from Sam‘s Fruit, Veg & Musical Basics.”

Moving on. “Fog Tropes II” by Ingram Marshall ironically could have been called “Surf Music II”. With the Kronos string quartet playing ever-so-slightly modulating harmonies, the tranquil boat and whale sounds added environmental depth to the emotion present in the music. As the piece moves on from the introduction, the modulation of each instrument begins to increase in severity, with only the occasional chord played perfectly by all instrumentalists. As the tuned harmonies became more and more scarce, anticipation for the next resolute chord increased, until the song reaches a violent climax of upper-partials and senselessness. Calming back down into more up-beat harmonies, the bass betrays the emotion of the main sound, often attempting to manipulate major chords by playing in the relative minor. If I must be critical, in the second half there were human voices and possibly a pan-flute quietly polluting the concept of solidarity created by the strings.

Now to my favourite, Michael Gordon’s “Trance IV”. With seemingly just a saxophone and xylophone playing the exact same melody at the start, it becomes apparent that there is many more instruments playing. Gradually, a saxophone begins to break away from the main rhythm, playing just out of time. Enter a third sax, and two more xylophones all playing the same melody just after one another, and it’s only just getting started. In comes 3 trumpets and it starts to get difficult to locate specific instruments. As complication increases, what else needs to be added? How about asking BassSatan and OverdriveGuitarDemon to kick in with a head-bashing death metal riff, and while you’re there, molest a drum kit to get some palpitating psycho-rhythm.

Then Stop.


Michael Gordon info worth checking out:
http://www.cantaloupemusic.com/artists.html#gordon

Week 2 - Repetitive Randomisation

Warren Burt has indisputably helped shape the digital music age we are in today. His optimistic view of any technological advancement and an obsession to create, understand and/or improve any new noise fabrication technology that has emerged throughout his career has been groundbreaking. His idea of creating a ‘new form of musical community’ is understandable when examining the position that the music culture is in today, with much less of an emphasis on live performance (World Literature Today, 2005) and the explosion of MP3. It’s easy to draw a comparison with the fledging cinema industry and the explosion of DVDs. He has produced many pioneering masterpieces, such as his work on the ‘Aardvarks IV’ composition machine he built, as well as various other pieces very suited to the modernist age.
While reflecting on Warren’s presentation on Thursday, listening to some of his other musical works from Spineless Books² and reading the descriptions of his albums on Tropicapricorn³, I perceived a re-occurring theme of “randomised melodies” throughout some of the collection and two questions transpired; ‘How many times can you record random sound effects and still be creating a new piece of music?’ and ‘What makes music perceivable in the first place?’

My view is if you have recorded a musical sequence of sounds performed by an algorithm or random generation, any other piece created in the same way would sound similarly random to the original. I believe that the fundamental issue with randomisation appearing repetitive is that while no two random sequences would be the same, it is the lack of comprehension of irregular stimuli that we psychologically connect any two random sequences as similar. For example, a melody randomly being generated using the square root of two, and another being generated by the Fibonacci sequence would be perceived to the human ear that they are both as random as each other, thus concluding the ‘different’ songs are in fact ‘similar’.

In comparison to mainstream music, there are set formulations which help artists to create a composition that would be accepted by the masses as ‘music‘, and while these are just guidelines and are often distorted, the fundamentals of musical composition, including rhythm, melody and/or harmony, is always integrated one way or another. Consider the pieces by Warren that use mathematical equations to create rhythm and melody. While these do conform to a set formulation, I believe a person would not be able to perceive the outcome as music, or discern one random generation formula from another.

An attempt at circumventing the psychological analogy of similar randomisation might be changing instruments or tempo for different pieces, and even running several formulae at the same time. Apart from the cosmetic changes, the perceptible melodic difference between randomised Ö2 and Fibonacci, or any combination, would remain identically inconceivable. It is the integration of visual aids that has shown that randomisation appearing repetitious to the ear has become more apparent to the experimental/exploratory artist. As times have changed and synthesised sounds are no longer the amazing innovation they once were, the presentation of random or incomprehensibly formulaic composition can no longer interest the majority of music enthusiasts on it‘s own technological merit, and so visual aesthetics are added. One such example is when Warren Burt used visual representation of tone (in this case, red circles with a white outline) to explain the difference each formulae made when used in random tone generation. While the visuals did exhibit noticeable diversity for each algorithm, each of the sounds produced was indiscernible from the previous.

Robin Minard’s work on architectural sound shows how visual representation of music can be used to extend the experience sound, rather than be it’s major distinguishable feature. His various works on sound sculptures and productions including ‘Music For Quiet Spaces’ (1984) have exhibited how sounds, not actually following the mainstream musical formula, can still be comprehensible and even evoke emotions when produced by a musical mind rather than musically irrelevant mathematical equations. Robin’s aim to change the perception of space using sound is genius, with the depth of research needed to accomplish such a feat evident in his work. The dilettante ’viewer’ of his artwork may not even notice the aural backdrop, yet would undoubtedly be affected by it.

Visual aid being the distinguishable difference between compositions does not clarify each piece as musically unique, as difference in music is perceivable in the sound and beyond aesthetics. Considering this, sound presented in an incomprehensible fashion is not perceived as music, and it is difficult to exhibit individuality when difference in melody is inconceivable. True ‘music’, rather than relying on experience, understanding or prior knowledge to enjoy it, should revolve around arousing interest with little or no comprehension of the complexities. It should make you think, but not confuse. It should evoke emotion, even if it is not to you knowledge.

World Literature Today Article and MP3s
http://www.ou.edu/worldlit/onlinemagazine/2005mayaugust/WLT_May-Aug05-18Burt.pdf

²www.spinelessbooks.com/burt/

³http://www.tropicapricorn.com/warren_burt_archive.htm

Warren Burt. "Artist Talk – Composing with Technology." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU space, University of Adelaide, 09 March 2006.