yup
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What the hell is this? well it was the score to my most recent release called organ.dump . I drew out the continual lines and added dots where each crossed over. I had no preconceived idea how I was going to interpret the score. I chose 5 lines because I was thinking about perfect fifths and chords (which dont need to have 5 notes but i kinda like chords with more than 3 notes in them). So I started to brainstorm and came up with the following 5 ideas:
1) each line represented a single note melody, if the line went up I would change the pitch up, down I would go down.
2) the rise and fall of the line would correspond to the high or low rocking of my wah pedal. I would pick 5 pitches at random
3) lines corresponded to the amount of feedback set on the tape delay. almost all the tracks were recorded through the tape delay
4) volume. lines would indicate the rise and fall of the volume of what ever note I was playing.
5) i dont remember now. oops
As you can see from the dates represented as the track titles, this took me almost a year to finally finish. No real reaason for the long delay other than I did kinda want to approach this with time to reflect inbetween.
Each track was recorded live and is 5 layers. I kinda wanted them all to be the same length but as there is no time signified on the score each time I sat down a new duration just happened.
I wanted to explore the sound of this chord organ . Gosh is it loud.
i have mentioned this a few times, but damit i love the internet, and more specifically twitter. through the links/tweets/RT etc I somehow meet Samuel (@le_berger on twitter ) and loved his work . a terrific sense of space and density. in the middle of last week he asked for the files of my practice.dump and a few days after he uploaded this
his remix really opens up the track. adds so much air to it and makes it even more fragile then it was originally. I feel that his ear really comes across on this mix, tweaking frequencies to shift the piece into new space.
its also a reminder to me that its worth putting something out there. this release is really just a bunch of practicing around in preparation for the show i did in February. so its nice to see/hear that other people enjoy it (i think its been downloaded a few times and I even sold a digital copy or 2. )
i welcome any and all other remixes, of this or anything on my bandcamp site. even the sketches I upload to this blog. its all free game. just send me a link and make sure its credited in some way.
thanks internet (and Sam!) you’re awesome
setup: the suitcase (mu-tron wah/val – digi whammy – all those delays/mxr phase 100/ modded boss DS-1/line 6 dl4) with one line out to the old fender silver face twin reverb.
SG tuned to CGDcbe (low to high, I have been playing with this tuning most of the year )
alan just had a microphone straight into the PA. we put each speaker at either end and did our best to angle them toward the audience so that they got a decent mix of both.
the problem (and I knew this going into it) is that the human voice and the guitar occupy much of the same frequency range. so at times both were lost in the mud i think. i heard from friends afterward that overall it was not that much of a problem, that it only happened a couple times. i did try to alleviate this problem using the octave up or octave down on the whammy pedal. the only problem there was that I couldn’t hear my amp very well and that the lower frequencies were hard to hear from where I was.
being with out the laptop meant that all looping was happening on the line 6. this meant no picking new starting stopping points without destroying all sound that was there. being that I had to hold up the ambient backing i couldn’t afford to just kill all the loops. so I had to start to plan way ahead. play licks or swells like a minute so ahead so that when the older loops finally faded out the piece could move a bit. not having an immediate auditory feedback on what I was doing with my hands kinda forced me into a trance state. i had to focus on what I think was going to happen. it helps that I really knew the tuning i was using well and I have a feel for how each pedal works in the line-up. it also forced me to go slow, which is a problem I have struggled with while performing live for a number of years.
i wanted to try and ebb and flow with Alan’s words but I think it worked as a slow build-up. I might have gotten to maximum volume to early in each monologue so hopefully it just didnt sound like and overloaded amp just blaring away.
There was video and audio taken. my friend took some and I did too. my project for this up coming week is to sync the audio i grabbed w/ the video I took (which also has audio but not as good). I haven’t done that before, hopefully its not hard. we’ll see.
had to set up the rhodes for a different project. recorded a short sample to test out thing and started to get lost playing around with it in Live. enjoy
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actually its the 18th now. oh well. time for bed but I had to get this recorded before i forgot about it. night night
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enjoy
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i am terrible at this whole real world networking thing. as such i have basically given up the idea of really playing out ever.
for one i just dont have the time. i get up at 5am. home sometimes around 7:30pm (and i still haven’t eaten dinner yet!). so while you all are meeting up for “after work drinks” at 5pm..i am still on a fucking train home. then the gym (because i want to attempt some semblance of being in shape).
then there are shows that kcat and i go to. usually “rock” or “folk” or something of that ilk because that is what we both like. we like to do things together. on nights we dont have shows its nice to spend time doing other fun things (watching movies, listenting to records).
so trying to hit some small house show, or some certain night of the month when a experimental show is happening is very difficult. places that have ambient/exp shows once a month almost always coincide with some other show we already have plans to see. and this loft/house shows are just way to stressful (4 sometimes 5 bands, no real hurry to get shit done because most of the attendants dont have to get up for work at 5am!)
but this job is what allows me to afford to buy the things I use to create the music i do.
oh well.
how can i expect benefit from a community if i cant take part in it. so i wont. going forward i will not be sad i play only one show a year. and i probably wont really try to play any more shows. there are musicians that are working much harder to build a community and they should get those benefits. they deserve them. i dont.
listened to too much modular synth this weekend at neon marshmallow fest and this is what happens.
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2 new things appropriate for this blog. one a quick doodle with this new bent keyboard that i bought at the electronic garage sale this weekend. it was bent by michael una
the other is just solo guitar noodling. peaceful for this warm sticky chicago night. i had picked up the guitar to add something to the keyboard piece but instead this came out.
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i had been holding onto this release for a few months. i sneaked out a few early mixes here and here but my original idea was to release the live recording of this show and have these 4 tracks as download only bonuses. I (stupidly) forgot to record this show. There are a few recordings floating around but I haven’t been able to get my hands on one yet. I didnt want to let any more time pass. If i ever get a hold of the live recording I will just post it on my bandcamp as a free (not even a pay what you want, but a free free) download.
yeah so each of these tracks comes from a practice I did in preparation for the show. in some way they explore the ideas i wanted to play with at the live show. from my foggy recollection the live set was not nearly this structured or smooth. but that is half the fun of playing live. you will notice (maybe?) a few melody lines or motifs that reoccur in a few of these mixes. that is mostly due to that fact that I was interested in using one tuning for this show, which happened to be CGDGbd. I found a few new patterns that I liked and used them a lot in practice in the hope I would remember them on the night of the show. (you and I both will have to wait for the recording to see if I did..i cant remember)
so again this release follows in line with the last. a limited palate (as dictated by my “practicing” and by the tuning I wanted to focus on) one of the main focuses of this show was that I wouldn’t try to play pieces where I did to much all at once and to quickly. after the coachhouse sounds set kirstie and discussed that i just tried to do too much. during these practices i tried to focus on one idea or sound per-practice. it kinda comes through in the mix of each track. I could go back and remix these all over again, maybe even focusing and honing down each piece more (i even think that the 2 mixes I posted earlier are slightly different than what I ended up using on the final release) but at some point I need to put out something you may or may not want to hear.
i tweeted 1 tweet about this and i will quote it again here
i like bits of it..maybe you will too
there was a qoute (that I cant find now) from Lee Ranaldo that I saw on MTV once that went:
there is no such thing as a wrong note, only a new one
which, not surprisingly, has stuck with me for a number of years. I used to draw a lot when I was younger and would frequently turn stray pencil marks into new spaceships or aliens, never just erasing the stray mark. this was mainly due to the fact that erasing the mark would often ruin the drawing more than working around it.
while recording I am equally sloppy. I am usually in a hurry to get something in my head out onto the harddrive. so I forget to do things like close other running programs, unplug noisy external drives or make sure all my gear is securely connected. this usually results in something popping up in the recording that shouldn’t have. in my most recent release there are many mistakes. I knew it when I released it, but I felt happy with the way i worked them into the piece that i was mostly happy with the outcome (i am never completely happy with anything i release but i force myself to let go at some point).
so it has been interesting to read the responses to that release. one that really made my day was from a twitter friend @jkn
jkn|tinyrev :: @cinchel – paginated overflow – highly recommended – guitar ambient drone – @publicspaceslab review
what might be flaws elsewhere on a different album – are perfection here.
that is really nice. it shows that he is actively listening and finding what i didn’t like about the recording. or maybe he is finding new bits that I missed that i could learn from. i would probably be less happy if he just said “its great, no problems here”.
so i bring you a new very imperfect recording.
tons of things wrong with this. its my first attempt at bowing a guitar with a violin bow. my technique is crude at best. its also recorded using microphones and amps in my “office” (ie small spare bedroom in our apt that we have our computers, its SUPER echoey). i cant really turn the amps up loud but i like they way it sounds in the room so i thought i could try to capture that with close placed mic’s. because the amps are not at “concert volume” (because i dont want to get evicted) i have the gain on the mics set kinda high thus picking up every pedal click and general hiss. (for contrast the Public spaces release above was guitar directly into computer, allowing for a very clean sound) i love the sound of my amps and would love to capture that on recording.
but in the end i am happy and if i can keep up the momentum this idea could hopefully become atleast an EP in length (or maybe even a full 60min release…) we’ll see…mistakes and all.
twitter is a pretty neat place. over the past few years that I have used it, I’ve built up a fairly interesting set of connections to ppl. there is the subset of friends I know in person. another sub-set of ppl that i find post interesting for news/links. then there is the sub-set of ambient/exp musicians. i remember a disquite post years back (that i cant find even with google right now..) that was a list of ambient musicians he knew of on twitter. i started to follow the ones that made music i liked. i tried to post my tweets about music i was working on (at the time i was mainly using twitter for general communication or just plain ranting). slowly i started to make friends, we would listen to each others works. more musicians joined, we found each other, conversations grew. sharing happened.
its now to the point that i actually cant keep up with all the stuff i want to check out from this very interesting and international community. its also to the point where i can even keep up with the conversations.
for example @vuzhmusic probably posted about 4 times about a call to remix some of this work before i finally read the post. sometimes its just being at the right place at the right time. i think in this case it had something to do with a conversation we had. i had just posted a fairly different release for me glitch.dump and C. Rieder commented back mentioning it sounded like something he had done a few years back fine failures. i liked it and it was interesting to compare techniques.
during the time period from thanksgiving to about new years i dont really have time to plug my guitar in and make music. so the ability to create without an instrument during this time period is always very tempting. sometimes I will go back over sessions i recorded throughout the year and re-work them. this call for remixing c. reider came during that time period so i figured i would give it a shot. not knowing what to pick from his catalog i went with the album of his that started our connection. instead of remixing a track i treated the album as a whole and created what could be called a sampler of the album, or some crazy collage. i found parts of each song that i liked, fed them through some of my favorite sound tweaking modules in Live and created a nice new place. atleast i thought so.
i sat on it for like a month. mostly because i like to give things time. sometimes coming back to something with a break you find new bits you didnt hear before, or new ideas you didnt think of before. and because i am forgetful. luckily c. reider is very persistent and gave me a nudge “hey how’s it coming”. sometimes that is needed (i am a space cadet, basically).
besides that, i was suddenly nervous. it hit me, i just made a new work out of someone elses art. in some way this is very scared and i didnt even think about that when i volunteered or while i was working on it. what if i destroy the initial ideas/vision he had? what if its so embarrassingly bad he doesn’t want his name associated with it?
i feel my work flow is very nontraditional, i am not trained in any way. i learned Live by trial and error and i am sure there are more automated ways to do some of the things i do. so i worry that what i think sounds fine, someone more trained might go “ha! he made that novice mistake”
i am glad that c.reider enjoyed the remix i made. to cut to the chase here is his post about the whole release Do give them all a listen. it might take you all week but there is a lot of great remixes there that run the gamut of style using source material that also covers a lot of ground. I am happy to be included in such a fine group of musicians.
more fun with another practice sessions samples. more fun with beats created using this autofilter thing in abelton. i know it’s beginning to sound cheesy/samey but whatever. i had fun making it.
20110126
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i recorded some random bits while i was practicing for the show on feb 3rd. this piece is a remix of samples taken during that practice. its pretty banging actually, in a dark/dub kinda way. enjoy
20110125
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i am just going to spill out a bunch of my thoughts on the show i played last week at impala gallery as part of their kaleid series.
first off i would like to say that I appreciated everyone that came and that couldn’t come. Your words of encourage in person or on the twitter/txt meant a lot. The SNOMG that happened just a day and a half earlier really messed up our city. Both the L and the metra were still having problems staying on any kind of schedule even as late as the night of this show. (for non-chicago readers in a nut shell we got ~20in of snow in about as many hours w/ >50mph which made a mess of the roads and train lines.)
So dont take this the wrong way, but each txt/tweet from a friend saying “sorry, stuck, wont beable to make it” did wear on me. coupled with the argument that kcat and i were having that basically it was crazy for the organizer to still have the show (i mean even half of the headlining act, Scott Tuma, had to back out because his car couldn’t get out of his alley/driveway).
i say this only to describe and remind myself what my thoughts were. i am in no way mad about the turnout. in fact in the end the place actually had a pretty decent crowd. minus the 2 ppl that i could hear talking over my set, the crowd were very respectful. its a rarity that I play out so i was happy i was able to play.
hopefully soon i will have the recording of the set to post here. i completely forgot to bring my recorder but luckily the organizers taped it (as well as a friend of mine). until then you’ll just have these roughly collected thoughts. I spent most of janurary practicing with one guitar tuning that i really like (DGDGbe low to high strings) mostly because I dont really get a chance to play much from like thanksgiving until new years. i felt that focusing on one tuning for the month would be the best to have a concise and cohesive set come feb 3rd. going into the show i felt that i had worked out 3 pieces pretty well: a rendition of requiem (which is mostly a drone piece with the aide of plogue bidule providing A LOT of multi-tap delay), an untitled piece, a version of “lullaby bell star” (which i close out my CHS set with). about a week before the show I came up with a riff and dist/tremolo sound that felt totally inspired by Earth. I found it kinda silly but while working with it over a few practices kcat thought it was a good basis for a piece. I had not intended to play this last piece at this show.
i played through my own guitar amp as well as the house PA which is basically a wall of 4 (5?) PA speakers all piled together. because of this i didnt really use any panning effect on the laptop. i had done a quick sound check before just to make sure signals were going to the right place, but i didnt do a check of the level of the amp w/ respect to the level of the PA. requiem went well and since its primarily a piece that focuses on the guitar being manipulated with the laptop I didnt pay much attention to the sound coming from the amp. it wasn’t until about half way through the second piece that I really got lost and while trying to ground myself noticed that the PA was so loud i couldnt tell what was actually coming from the guitar. not being able to hear myself in a useful way coupled with my own over excitement lead to this piece getting somewhat out of hand. (as an aside: the nice thing about all this volume though was that I could really feel the notes. even at my last show, at a rock club with a decent PA, i couldn’t really feel the vibratations. it probably helped that i was standing infront of all the speakers.) there was a direction i wanted to go with it that i had worked on in practice but couldn’t find that night. i managed to reign it in somewhat and it was at this point i decided to just segue into a version of “lullaby bell star” and began the harmonics. beacuse i had basically put to pieces together i felt it was going on to long so i decided to wrap it up. there was still some time, the next performer was planned to go on at 11pm, and i starting into this silly Earth-like riff. i looped it and did some filtering to pull a pretty heavy beat out of it. i felt it provided a really strong foundation and i worked with it for another 8 min or so. now it was closer to 10:45 so i shut off the amp and closed down all the loops. said my thank yous and sat down.
in my next post i will talk about the other 2 performers of that night. both were very good and very different from me and each other.
Yes! First show of 2011 and its kinda awesome. It is the second installment of the Kaleid Series at Impala Gallary in rogers park
The show is Thursday Feb 3rd. I would be most happy if you could attend, but I do understand if you cant make it. If I am not a complete idiot a recording of the set will appear on his blog shortly after the show.
To sweeten the deal you also get to see Scot Tuma & Mike Weis perform. Mike Weis can usually be found in Zelienople and Goodstuff House (which includes Scot Tuma) and both are amazing ambient/free jazz/drone projects that I have loved for many years. Scot Tuma also has a solo record that came out last year on DIGITALIS that is really something beautiful. I am super nervous/excited to be playing a show with them.
I dont know anything about Red Electric Rainbow except that video. Should be pretty neat.
The show is BYOB and I promise to bring something fancy.
Here is a google calendar link if you so choose.
I have been thinking about this post/idea for a while. I hesitated because I didnt want anyone to do it before I could. In reality though, no one reads this and if they do and decide to do it that is kinda awesome.
So the idea: ambient music for a shop/cafe where the sounds are pulled from said space. Using contact mic’s and other sensitive microphones to capture and sample the noises of the space in real-time. Manipulate them on laptop and feed them back into the space. Things like the whir of a refrigerator or coffee machine could drone and modulate. The sound of footsteps, the door opening/closing, the muffled din of cups/plates/coins could provide a constant changing rhythm.
I would love to do this for a day somewhere.
I came to this idea sometime this summer while at a coffee and ice cream place. It was playing the contemporary indie/college hits (think death cab for cutie, BSS, et. al.) on very small tinny sounding speakers. The only other 2 people in the space were immersed in their laptops, both with headphones on. Maybe they didnt like the music playing or you could also assume they were just trying to block out all the other noises that could distract them. So maybe music from generated from the sounds of the space would be more soothing, or could be used to even negate the loud distracting sounds of the space.
It could be a fun experiment.
this is probably the most synthetic music i have tried to make. this tweakybeats iPhone app was just too much fun. Disquiet tweeted about this app and I was addicted to easy access of Alva Noto -like sounds. I composed a number of beat tracks while commuting and then started to loop and mix them on the computer at home. This will probably be a work in progress but I thought these 7 pieces were a goo start. (also kirstie is getting sick of me working on these “video-game like songs” and wants to hear more guitar/peaceful stuff).
The art work is almost intentionally ugly because I have Zero photoshop skills.
If anyone would like to remix these I can send you sample packs via dropbox/http. let me know