music - others

"Mallet Instruments (Orff Var.)" [mp3 removed]

I took out the speaking parts from the Carl Orff piece Wiegenlied bei Mondschein zu singen (Lullaby to be Sung by Moonlight), posted earlier. That left me with about 8-16 bars of music*, which I cut up and overdubbed, letting the differences in pitch and tempo among the fragments create some new melodies. Then, I wrote new music for marimba and xylophone in the same key and tempo (more or less) as the recorded bass-xylophone and marimbaphone parts and dubbed them in throughout the piece, so it's now a new tune, but retaining some of the mood of the original (and that great G-major/d-minor chord alternation throughout).

*depending on how you count--according to the CD liner notes the tempo was 6/8 so I kept that and set the tempo at 111 bpm. My "measures" marking off audio samples and MIDI on-off notes may bear only passing resemblance to the composer's staff--but it worked, I think. (Orff-o-philes--and others!--may hate it.)

"Bliplock" [mp3 removed]

This is piece started as some snippets of Dutch electronic music from the '60s--a Netherlands site called Humanworkshop made them into six loops a bar or two in length each and offered them for download. For this piece I timestretched and edited them further (in some cases into unrecognizability using onboard softsampler FX) and then layered them into counterpoint and harmony with each other to make a "classical" piece. The only thing added are some synthesized drum hits because I thought it needed some beats. This is a remix, fair use blah blah.

"Cursum Perficio (Carl Craig-like Mix)" [mp3 removed]

A midi version of an Enya tune (originally found on Guthrie Lonergan's blog no. 4) done in the manner of "second generation" Detroit techno guy Carl Craig, sort of. The midi track mostly featured piano and string instruments. (Update: one should always Google--I thought the tune was Lonergan's but he was being ironic. Sorry, Guthrie.)

Speaking of Carl Craig, Simon Reynolds wrote about him in Generation E. This is almost mean but really nails the music:

With its open-hearted yearning and twinkling textures, "Elements" conjured up the image of a lonely boy moping in his bedroom studio, mixing his lo-tech palette of tone colors with his teardrops to paint exquisite audio watercolors. There were shades of electro-calligraphic brushwork of Thomas Leer, Japan, and Sylvian/Sakamoto. This wasn't party-hard music but the pensive frettings of one of life's wallflowers. Six Nine's "Desire" features a keening synth melody that soars up and slides down the octave in fitful lurches. Released under Carl's own name, "At Les" is even more moistly melancholy, its trickle-down synth pattern sounding like glistening teardrops rolling down a cheek.

I can barely hit "publish" for my sobs, reading that.

Related: Kit Watkins "Labyrinth" remixed

Thanks to Neg-Fi for including one of my tracks in their guest-DJ mix for (Make The) Product last night on WNYU-FM. The weekly music show features demos, self-released, live and private-pressed recordings. You can hear their set in streaming audio, and here's the playlist. The set features much skronky, minimal, micrometallic and otherwise neg-fi material, I'm honored to be in this company with an electronic "drum solo."

Scratch Ambulance, the CD I collaborated on with earcon (aka John Parker), is now up on CD Baby [dead link -- try this]. The page includes ordering info and a couple of minutes from each track in streaming form. Turn up the volume -- we opted for more dynamics over the usual ear-assault of current CDs.