Tag: Experimental music

The music journey – Making an album (week 12)

This week was all about inspiration, I had a coaching session planned and I have been to a festival. And bought myself a musical gift. Even managed to put in a few music making hours as well. A modest but significant succes.

Coaching session

After a few weeks of cognitive problems and a general disfunctional brain this week I planned another session with my coach. It was very good catching up and talking about the creative proces. And what I can do in order to get to finish some music. Limitation being the magic word. Which I thought I had done when setting up the project. But as I got to work with the setup it became obvious that within that setup the options are still almost endless. To get going with a limited framwork we started an Ableton session with a few sounds and now I have to make a composition with just these sounds.

Pretty obvious, but I just could not bring myself to limit the options. I get lost in endless patching without pressing stop on the record button and get on with composition. And with that in mind I got to think about limiting my setup for this project further.

As such that I don’t get overly lost in the possibilities of the larger setup and keep exploring. More often than not I end up just making sounds without any tangible result. Also because my cognitive energy is all gone by the time I start thinking on composition. More on the smaller setup next week. A slight tip of the veil is the gift I bought myself, a Moog Mother-32. A synth voice in Eurorack format. Always wanted a Moog and now I finally got one.

Etmaal festival

Last Saturday I went to the day program of Etmaal festival, absolutely perfect for me, as it is during the day, it wasn’t overly crowded and ample opportunity and space for some recovering in between shows with some food & beverages.

Etmaal had a total of  32 hours and is focussend towards Electronic music with lots of space for performing with modular synthesizers and other unpredictlable musical instruments such as tape loops and so on.  In the night it was more geared towards dancing and during the day more experimental performances.

For me the day kicked off with a performance from Heinbach, who brought a tape machine and various other bits of kit and he changed the tape loops during the show, which for me seemed pretty risky. Very cool and interesting show with lots of beautiful moments coming out of the time & duration of the tape loops. If this was the case or not, perhaps the level of control was bigger, it delivers some very unique and beautiful music and sound timbres.

Time for a spot of lunch and after that it was time for  JakoJako feat. Alvin Collantes. A live performance with a modular synthesizer and a diner. A beautiful symbiotic performance in which the dance seemed controlled by the music. Cool seeing the levels of control a dancer has over their body and execute the movements with such fluidity. The tension on the body is very impressive to watch. The music was great as well. For me the highlight of the day.

A bit of a dash getting in time to the live show by  Rødhad & Vril live, this time not in the theater , but in a club setting. Very good show and for me very nice to see a performance by a duo which music I like too listen too. Very inspirational.

The final show of my day was  Dasha Rush & Schloss Mirabell. Really looking forward to this one, as I love the cello as an instrument and was very curious in the combination with electronics. For me it was the least accessible of the shows I had seen, musically. I couldn’t always keep up, which might have something to do with my mental fatigue at that stage of the day. Some very beautiful moments I got too experience and In other moments I was behind the curve a bit and had difficulty in understanding it (If you get what I mean)

A very cool day indeed and I finally got to see some of my favorite artists, it was a real present being able to go out and experience music again in this way. As most of these things tend to be in the evening or late at night. Hopefully more things appear during the day in such a setting.

The music journey – Making an album (week 11)

Another week flew by, and this week I didn’t do much in the way of working on the musical project that is making the album. My music hours were spent on reading manuals and listening to music. I amassed a fair backlog of music that needs listening or re-listening with focus & attention. I sometimes just listened parts of albums or didn’t really take my time for them. So this week it was all about the Elektron Digitakt & Autechre EPS 1991 -2002.

Elektron Digitakt

The Digitakt has long been on the wish list and I borrowed one for a while to check it out. After my Motu sound card stopped working I went on the search for a small sound card & got the idea to buy the Digitakt instead. It can also be used as a sound card after all. Very handy indeed.

I never dove into the manual as it works pretty intuitive, but after reading and diving into the Machinedrum last week I also started reading the manual for the Digitakt. And I must say, that’s not a bad idea. Especially the bit on the MIDI tracks which I never really use had some nice insights which triggered a lot of ideas for the combination with the modular & sequencing hardware samplers. I haven’t finished reading but I have months worth of ideas too explore.

I never really read any manuals before I got more or less forced into reading them and it’s simply highly recommended, you always learn something and pick up on interesting avenues for exploration.

Autechre EPS 1991 – 2002

I am a big Autechre enthusiast, and I am always trying too complete my collection. So when EPS 1991 – 2002 was released I bought it straight away. But never really listened to it as a whole. Partly because I have some of the EPS’s which are floating around my collection, somewhere. And I don’t have all of them. I have been listening to some of the EPS, but not from start to finish.

The beauty of this collection is you can listen too the development of Autechre’s music trough the years, from the more rave oriented tracks going towards the more abstract work. I really find it very nice how the music despite all the structural shapes retains it’s open and dynamic character. Every time I listen I hear different things or listen in a different way. It really helps sitting down for it and focus on listening. And not just put it on as background music. Although for me it works very well as background music while working. For people just starting out with Autechre and want a nice beginning of a collection this box is an excellent point to begin.

The week

The real work on the album wasn’t for me this week. I did however spent my allocated time for music on music related topics. Working on technical knowledge & inspiration. This keeps the momentum going which is important.

The music journey – Making an album (week 8)

Another week gone by, and this week not much happend in the way of music making. Still have problems with processing sound in my brain. So this week I had to shift my attention back to reading manuals and books on music.

Which is fine but overall progress in my album project is stalled at the moment. As this sort of periods go with the territory of my brain damage I started looking towards ways in which I can write or draw ideas down in a systematic way.

So I can still work on music without the sound. I already write down lots of ideas and draw as well. But my method keeps varying , then when I come back to an idea I can’t always figure things out. So it has to be via some sort of system that works quickly in use and I can recall easily after.

That isn’t as easy as it looks. My second option is working on non sound stuff , in comes Max MSP, which is lot’s of programming without sound necessary and has a systematic way of doing things because of the nature of the program.

I am not yet fluent with Max, but in the period I am currently having , working on Max & the system for writing down ideas is a good alternative to keep going.

The music journey – Making an album (week 6)

Week 6, quite a different week compared to the last few weeks. My brain wasn’t cooperating and I couldn’t stand sounds. Which makes working with music pretty difficult. It’s part of having brain damage so I had to make due. And try keeping busy in other ways.

First part of the week was mostly getting some extra rest in, and after that period I mostly been trying to read manuals. Albeit slow I stil got the feeling I was working on the project. And in a way this was the case.

Hopefully I have recovered enough into next week and I can start working on my music project according to plan.

Autechre – NTS Sessions

As a big Autechre fan I couldn’t resist buying the new physical release of their NTS radio sessions. At first the vinyl release was the most appealing , just I couldn’t justify the expense. So ordered the CD version. The sessions consist of 4 radio shows. Which I missed off course. And due to the intensity of listening to an Autechre recording nowadays I couldn’t have done it in one sitting of 2 hours each.

Autechre makes their music with an elaborate (I think never seen it) Cycling 74 MAX/MSP patch or patches. Which gives you endless possibilities. Luckily the tracks stay within some frame so they are dense but not out of theme. It’s a experiment in sounds and rhythmic structures which you probably love or hate.

I love it, the art of keeping experiments and not go all over the place and make it into just experiments is very well done. It’s very easy getting out of control.

For me the only downside is , it takes a lot of energy listening too it. I have too really focus and get into it and after a while it get’s to be a bit overwhelming. But that’s just because of my brain damage. If you can listen too one sessions at a time and do nothing else, it’s very rewarding. Even in smaller sittings I am highly enjoying it.

If you have never listened to Autechre this can be a bit too much, but I can only recommend starting at the beginning of their work and slowly making your way thru, it has a lot of beautiful musical art in store for you.