Madmusik

Out There… - mp3

Another piano improvisation today. This time, I have left it ‘pure’, so there is no quantisation or additional sound; just the piano as it was played.

What I try to do is go with whatever impulse occurs and then allow ideas to flow from there. It should be apparent that the use of motif, variation, phrase and form are fairly consistent with a more ‘composed’ piece. One idea or sound will tned to spark another in a fairly organic way; then will come the impulse to do something contradictory; then there will be felt a need to bring things back to the original thread; and so on.

None of this process is particularly conscious: in fact, if you try consciously to do those things, then they are unlikely to succeed. So what I try to do is ‘perform’; believe in the moment; trust the act of creation nad enjoy the flow.

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May I Have The Pleasure - mp3

Here’s a little trio of reeds, playing a light but formal piece in 3/4 (waltz) time. There’s something about these instruments that always suggests to me something courtly and arcane, so I picture characters in a costume drama stepping nimbly around one another in neat rows, surrounded by opulent furniture and chandeliers. I make no claim to the authenticity of the music in this respect but those are the images it conjures for me.

The harmony is a little odd at times and I have done my usual trick of sustaining notes too consistently for it to quite sound natural: whereas real players would probably add a little more articulation, so this is something I’ll try to pay more attention to in future.

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Some of My Friends are Aliens - mp3

Another dark one today: note to self – must write something cheerful soon. Actually, it’s probably more quirky than sinister but the little hints of choir do seem to lend an eerie overtone.

I really enjoy this combination of improvised piano with rhythm loops and synthy layers. One of the reasons I started these daily tracks was because I was already in the habit of improvising on the piano in the evenings and wanted to capture some of what was being sent out into the ether. I’m genuinely fascinated by what comes out when normal constraints of form and harmony are removed. In this instance, I don’t include ‘rhythm’ in that list as I have improvised to a click this time.

One of the things that occurs to me when producing this type of track is that it puts the piano back into the realm of percussion instrument (which it effectively is). It’s interesting to play around with rhythms and textures in the abstract and let the harmonic content take care of itself. The ear and brain are remarkably adept at making sense of disparate threads and clusters, which makes the act of listening all the more engaging.

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I Know - mp3

This track was created over a week ago but the weather has set me back somewhat (children off school etc). Anyway, here we go with the first of many for the new year. It’s a quite dark and moody piece, built around an oscilating interval on the piano, with the bass stepping around this interval to create varying levels of tention and release.

The bass is doubled with a deep synth bass and this movement is echoed by some high evolving synth sounds that are also harmonised to give a little extra depth. The whole thing is underpinned by quite open and sparse drums with lots of fills and accents.

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Alien Presence- mp3

This is another piano improvisation with added synths and processing. It is quite similar to other tracks but I like the way the dynamics build and I’ve played around with different layers of synths and effects to create a quite unusual atmosphere. There’s something pleasing too about the juxtaposition of piano, at times playing quite traditional-sounding phrases, against nasty synthetic sounds and echoes.

The shimmering quality of the string-synth patch, together with the delay on the piano lend an air of mystery, whilst the nasty buzzy synth adds the feeling of another presence – perhaps something alien. Where the piano takes off into bold major chords, there’s also a hint of old-school horror as well. The nastiness threatens to take over just before the end but then retreats to leave a kind of unresolved stand-off.

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Take Flight - mp3

Following on from the previous piece, this is also a multi-layered minimalistic piano track but then has loops and synths added to give a little more structure and shape. This time everything fits neatly into symmetrical phrases in 4/4 time, with unchallenging harmony, but with the exception that where the layers build, there is a degree of dysonance created by the overlapping patterns.

I enjoy the sense of something looming created by the dark bass notes and chordal responses in the piano opening, enhanced by the bending/morphing synth tones. The various rhythm loops then highlight the addition of new piano layers and create a nice pick-up where things take off rhythmically. I could see this working very well with choreography, as the elements would translate nicely to correponding qualities of movement. There’s also plenty of scope to develope a longer piece from the various elements and layers.

 

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Busy Bees

Another multi-layered minimalistic piano piece, this one. I decided to play in strict time but not stick to a particular meter, so the parts stray from the normal 4/4 default and whilst mostly playing phrases in this meter do have a degree of randomness built in. The effect of this is to give a piece that has a strong sense of beat but a slightly wayward quality as well. The parts were improvised but tonally centred (as opposed to my more abstract improvisations) and really just play around with different accents, each responding to the pushes and pulls of the other.

Each layer focuses in a different register, with a slight degree of overlap, to create extra ambiguity and rhythmic interest. As it is physically possible that all this called be played at one time on one instrument, I’ve kept to one piano sample (whereas I’ll often use different pianos where more than one performer is implied).

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I Know - mp3

Finally moving away from all-improvised material: here’s something built around a fairly simple piano progression, with loops and synths creating a fluid, rolling feel.

I enjoyed playing with the different synth patches here to bring varying amounts of sustain, rhythm and melodic movement. I’ve used a deep, soft bass to underpin everything, a synth that slowly resolves from a detuned position each time you play a note, another more generic ‘pad’ sound in the centre ground and a lead that has a harmony of a fourth built-in and which has more treble and attack for the main motif.

I like the underlying drum loop that comes in and out of focus. This I’ve backed up with more brittle loops to clarify the beat and add brightness as the textures build. Then this all drops away during the ‘mystery’ sequence before the tune returns. There’s a slightly clumsy break at that point which I hope to go back and fix at some point.

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Paint without Numbers - mp3

I’m beginning to wonder whether anyone else gets any of this. Rest assured, I’ll be returning to more accessible material in due course but whilst I’m barely able to find the time to get into the studio, I’ll continue to throw sounds about with gay abandon when I am in there. It’s quite liberating and does feed back into the more mundane musical material.

I’ve discussed it here before but it’s worth saying again: once you remove the compulsion to stick to conventions of phrase, structure, harmony and rhythm, you are left with the daunting but pleasurable task of trying to make sense of abstract sound. In so doing, one can enhance ones understanding of all those things cited as being removed for the purposes of this exercise because you enable your unconscious mind to reach for connections without the usual crutches. When returning to more formal composition, the choices necessary to bring life to a piece of music, in terms of sound-pallet, dynamics, texture, etc. have been fully explored on their own and therefore become all the more easy to make.

Or else I’m just arsing around… you decide.

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Gremlins - mp3

Here’s another electro-impro. Things are madly tight at the moment, so I’m only really able to throw ideas together for the time being. That being said, it’s not a bad process to go through, just seeing which sounds hang together and playing around with different types of processing.

In this case, I’ve tried to find different synth patches that respond to different elements of the improvised MIDI track, which has been copied without editing. I’ve used a little delay to bind across the tempo (using a tempo-defined delay) and have quantised to a tempo that wasn’t actually played, giving an odd disparity between the rhythm loop and the other material. I thought I’d try some heavily effected flute on here, just for fun. The idea works after a fashion but it would need some work to get it sounding more at home with the rest of the track.

One thing I am paying attention to at the moment is the sonic spectrum; so trying to find sounds that compliment without overpowering one another. In this case, I’d probably want to go back and apply some EQ to the bass and at least one of the synth parts to prevent them bleeding into one-another’s domain.

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