The Making and Placing of The Escalators
Kynan Robinson (BA, BMus, Grad. Dip. Ed.)
QUT Creative Industries
Master of Arts (Research)
2009
Key Words
The Escalators, Kynan Robinson, sampling, stasis, minimalism, David Lynch, structured improvisation, memory, rule based composition, Australian music, improvising music, linear composition.
ii Abstract
The band The Escalators together with the music uniquely composed for it and a subsequent CD and DVDs was the work that emerged from my period of research. The areas of interest that were investigated were sampling, minimalism, stasis, the work of David Lynch, as well as a desire to produce new and innovative music. The above concepts defined the bands composition and makeup. While each may be regarded as a discreet concept with its own boundaries in my work they seamlessly intermingle resulting in that which is unique to The Escalators sound. The research methodology used for this work was practice led research.
iii
Contents
List Of Illustrations 2
List Of Supplementary Works 3
Statement Of Originality 4
List Of Acknowledgement 5
1. Introduction 6
2. My Work Now, The Making and Placing of The Escalators 7
2.1 Sampling and Memory 8
2.2 Minimalism, Clock Time, Stasis and Repetition 13
2.3 Rule Based Composition/Structured Improvising 17
2.4 Creation of the Atmosphere/Ideas Generated From Investigating David Lynch’s Film and TV Work 20
3. The Process 25
4. Historical Context of My Work 28
5. Conclusions and Moving Forward 33
6. Appendixes 1 Explanation and Evaluation of the Individual Pieces 37
2 Performance Evaluation 40
3 Personal Composition Diary 43
4 Mixing and Recording Notes 46
5A Log Lady 48 5B Uncle Bob 50 5C Blue Fire 51 5D James Boy On A Motorcycle 53 5E The Great Northern 56
7. Bibliography 57
8. Discography 60
9. List Of Works 61 List Of Illustrations
1.0 The Escalators Stage Plan
2 List Of Supplementary Works
1. CD Wrapped In Plastic
3 Statement of Originality
To Whom It May Concern
The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.
Signature:
Name In Full: Kynan Robinson
Date:
4 Acknowledgement List
I would like to thank the following people:
My principle supervisor Professor Andy Arthurs for his continual support, encouragement, direction, tuition and belief in me.
My associate supervisor Dr. Robert Davidson for your advice and tuition.
My family Michelle Robinson and Kalani Robinson for your inspiration, patience and support.
My father and mother Dr. Stuart Robinson and Margaret Robinson for your advice and belief in me.
The members of The Escalators Joe Talia, Lawrence Folvig, Edrian Hakim, Michael Meagher, Marc Hannaford, Lawrence Folvig for your dedication, hard work and your amazing skills.
Kiron Robinson and Annabelle Warmington for your participation in the project.
Andrew Williamson for his support.
5 The Making and Placing of The Escalators
Masters Candidate Kynan Robinson
Supervisors
Principle Supervisor: Professor Andy Arthurs Music, Creative Industries, QUT
Associate Supervisor: Dr. Robert Davidson Music, Creative Industries, QUT
1. Introduction
The band ‘The Escalators’ together with the music uniquely composed for it emerged from a key area of research, sample-based music and its relationship to memory. The strategy of triggering memory with the use of existing musical recordings has been the dominant determining factor of the music. Additionally a number of other interests have been influential. These include: 1. Aspects of minimalism. 2. Structured improvisation. 3. The film and TV work of David Lynch and the atmosphere it generates. 4. A desire to compose in a style radically different from anything I had produced previously. 5. The possibility of creating an ensemble and a recording that would enable me to reach a wider audience.
The above concepts defined the ‘bands’ composition and makeup. While each may be regarded as a discreet concept with its own boundaries in my work they seamlessly intermingle resulting in that which is unique to The Escalators sound.
The Escalators’ distinctive identity is a consequence of crossing once-sacred style boundaries. In using samples, a composer can create hybrids that were previously unthinkable. This has the capacity to produce new, unique and personalised musical identities. The research methodology used for this work was practice led research.
6 2. My Work Now – The Making and Placing of The Escalators
Concept development, writing the music and choosing the musicians for the Escalators commenced in 2007. There are two reasons for the name. Firstly, for me the name elicits the feeling of a constant returning to the same place, likewise, in my opinion, sample-based music also seems to have this effect. It creates memory confusion and a sense of return. The second and less obvious reason was Escalators starts with the letter E. All my jazz/improvisation groups have had names starting with the letter E (En Rusk, Escargone, The Electricians, so now the Escalators). Doing this creates a sense of uncertainty in those who have followed my career, as well as a slight confusion when talking about one band compared to another. The state of minimal uncertainty or subtle confusion is something that has always interested me. The music of The Escalators is permeated with these attributes.
The ensemble consists of Pat Thiel playing trumpet, Mark Hannaford playing piano, Joe Talia playing drums, Mick Meagher playing electric bass, Lawrence Folvig on electric guitar, DJ Element playing turntables/sampler, and myself on trombone.
All these musicians have strong improvisational skills developed through years of training and professional practice. This is important to me as a composer. Joe Talia has worked with many of Australia’s top jazz musicians and is a regular member of multiple Aria award winner Andrea Keller’s quartet and The Adam Simmons Toy Band. He is also a strong voice in Australia’s sound art scene. Marc Hannaford is a piano player who works across a broad spectrum of improvisational music including being a founding member of The Antipodeans, a group which focuses on developing their own improvising language. Lawrence Folvig and Michael Meagher move freely between Melbourne’s avant-garde and pop scenes. They play in bands that include The Black Arm Band and Melbourne pop outfit Near Your House. Pat Thiel is well known in Melbourne’s jazz scene and DJ Element is a prominent turntablist/DJ in Melbourne’s Hip Hop community. He is also a sound sculpture having exhibited in many festivals and galleries around Australia. The diversity of these players’ communities also added to the distinctiveness of the Escalators’ sound. The strong link between them all was their ability to improvise.
At the early stages of development the shared improvising/compositional language that the players possessed allowed me to rapidly explore concepts. It helped me decide what to keep and what to discard. It freed me up from having constantly to produce physical written work that might or might not be kept, thus saving me time in decision making and allowing for a more flexible, responsive approach to the final pieces. The distinguished clarinettist Anthony Pay states “I am the sort of player who is more disposed to start off from the accuracy point of view rather than starting off from the musical point of view. You can with some modern music start off and say ‘I’m not going to pay any attention to the notational aspects of it, but initially I am going to decide what the music is about,
7 the gestures – and language – the sort of thing, if you are improvising, you have to deal with.’ Now, I tend when I’m approaching a modern score, to start off by trying to get, as accurately as I can, what he’s (the composer) actually put down on paper.” (Bailey 1992, 67-68) That premise is precisely what I wanted to avoid.
2.1 Sampling and Memory
The sampler/ turntablist was the key position in The Escalators and in many ways his sound was the most important in the ensemble. Broadly defined, turntablism is a musical practice in which prerecorded phonograph disks are manipulated in live performance. DJ Babu a member of the DJ crew the Beat Junkies introduced the term in 1995. The name distinguishes the turntablist from the traditional DJ, someone who plays records but is not traditionally thought of as a musician. Although turntablists consider themselves musicians their originality is sometimes questioned because they perform on machines designed for automatic playback. The use of the term “ism” therefore, lends weight to the practice, suggesting an art form with a cohesive doctrine. It confers a seriousness that demands respect. (Katz 1970, 115-116)
John Oswald described the art in this way: "A phonograph in the hands of a 'hiphop/scratch' artist who plays a record like an electronic washboard with phonographic needle as a plectrum, produces sounds which are unique and not reproduced -- the record player becomes a musical instrument." (in Cox and Warner 2004, 132).
The choice of a turntablist DJ Element was ideal. He had developed a great number of technical skills through his years as a “battling” DJ 1 but he also had a wide appreciation of art and art practice, sensitizing him to the need for collaboration. Many of the DJs I had previously worked with had developed their own sound and technique or set of DJ tricks and were unwilling to adapt to new ideas presented to them. He was a turntablist that had the capacity to develop new techniques depending on the sounds required from him. Many DJs develop a personalized library of sound sources and are reluctant to move beyond them. These sample libraries are comparable to the collection of “licks” used by jazz musicians. The Escalators project required a DJ that would bring his own library but would be willing to add to it on my request. DJ Element was perfect for this role. We spoke at length about the differing sounds required.
For a number of years now, I have been creating music that is reliant on digital
1 Battling involves each turntablist performing a routine, which is a combination of various technical scratches, beat juggles, and other elements, including body tricks, within a limited time period, after which a panel of experts judges the routine. The winner is selected based upon score and audience appreciation. It is usually a head to head battle. Katz 1970
8 samples, both in a live context and studio context. Katz defines digital sampling as “ a type of computer synthesis in which sound is rendered into data, data that in turn comprise instructions for reconstructing into sound. Sampling is typically regarded as a type of musical quotation, usually of one pop song by another, but it encompasses the digital incorporation of any prerecorded sound into a new recorded work” (Katz 1970, 138). The sampler as a machine has a long history that started with the Singing Keyboard made in 1936, a machine intended to store sounds that could be linked to film, as well as the Noisegraph, the Dramagraph, the Kinematophone, the Soundograph and the Excelsior Sound Effect Cabinet, all machines that employed some sort of disk or other mechanism to store various sound effects and were all put to work in the Hollywood cartoon tape editing techniques developed by film editors (Chanan 1995, 143). Appropriating hundreds of bits and pieces of other peoples work to generate new sounds by remixing them is a technique very common in the hip-hop community. This includes artists such as DJ Shadow who released a seminal sample based album entitled Endtroducing (1995). However, prior to that it is a technique used widely by composers such as Pierre Schaeffer with his musique concrete compositions of the 1950s, Gavin Bryars in his version of a Stockhausen piece Plus Minus which incorporates a collage of the slow movement of Schubert’s C Major String Quartet and Barry Ryan’s pop song Eloise (1969) as well as John Oswald’s seminal recordings entitled Plunderphonics (1989).
My interest in sample-based music arose from my work with Des Peres, a Melbourne based band in which I participate as composer and leader. Des Peres recorded and released a number of albums that are either sample heavy or entirely created using samples that have been garnered from my own and others record collections. Sampled based music is a music that allows for great freedom. A composer can take sounds from anywhere, mix them together and then apply their own touch. The restriction of the samples themselves is offset by the manipulated recontextualisation that can take place. It is a form of music that ignores the rules of genre. Rather it leads to the creation of new genres. Style is placed upon style, classical is placed upon rock beats, folk or country is placed all over jazz drumming, fusion bass lines are interspersed with blues guitar and its all mixed together.
The main limitation with what might happen is the creativity of the composer. One’s limits usually stem from ones imagination rather than one’s talent. It is an idea that seems to build on the statements made by Cage with his piece Imaginary Landscape (1939). His composition consisted of chance recontextualisations using turntables and radios. In his famous essay, Experimental Music he says, “Any sound may occur in any combination and in any continuity.” For Cage the sounds of one environment were meant to be taken out of context and shifted through many new ones.
My interest in sampling with respect to The Escalators has narrowed to its relationship with memory. The questions I am interested in include:
1. What takes place in perception when a person hears a sample?
9 2. What is happening within a person’s memory when sounds that are familiar to them are recontextualized? 3. Whenever a turntablist or sampler is used in music are they making a direct correlation to a memory?
The primary sound source for the instrument is past recordings. These recordings are chosen because of the direct link they have to memory makeup of both the performer (turntablist) and the listener. Paul D Miller states “DJ culture is all about recombinant potential. It has as a central feature a eugenics of the imagination. Each and every source sample is fragmented and bereft of prior meaning – kind of like a future without a past. The samples are given meaning only when re- presented in the assemblage of the mix” (in Cox and Warner 2004, 349-350). The meaning held in memory is being remixed, changed, altered, made new, given new meaning, bettered or worsened.
Furthermore, Miller considers “sample mixes to be mood sculptures operating in a recombinant fashion. Based on the notion that all sonic material can be manipulated with the same ease that computers now generate composite images, the DJ or sample reliant composer combines the musical expression of other musicians with their own and in the process creates a seamless flow of music. The sampler can be seen both as a custodian and questioner of aural history, constantly crashing different voices and traditions together to give a reinterpretation of history (or memory) that is a contemporary and personal commentary” (in Cox and Miller 2004, 351). The choice of the samples is always significant. This was so for The Escalators.
A memory is, in the phrase of eminent psychologist Daniel L Schachter, a “temporary constellation of activity” – a necessarily approximate excitation of neural circuits that bind a set of sensory images and semantic data into the momentary sensation of a remembered whole. These images and data are seldom the exclusive property of one particular memory. So when one hears a familiar sound, for example a two second excerpt from Madonna’s song Like a Virgin (1985), what the memory of that consists of is a set of hardwired neural connections among the pertinent regions of the brain, and a predisposition for the entire constellation to light up when any part of the circuit is stimulated. The sound of a Madonna sample acts as a trigger for the memory that is deeply rooted in each individual’s life-experience and acts as a kind of oral history. Each time it is heard it enforces the constellation of images and knowledge that constitute that memory and each hearing further strengthens the dendritic connections among its components, further encouraging the firing of that specific set of synapses. (Franzin 2002, 8-9). Each human memory is deeply locked into a system of personal referencing, i.e. a network. Ken Jordon states, “Once every sound had a distinct source. A door slammed shut, a horn was blown, a guitar was strummed. Audio came from a discreet event; it was tied to a discernable action. Networked music challenges this notion by displacing sound from its origin, moving audio freely from one location to another, giving it a presence in and of itself” (in Miller and Jordon 2008, 104). Sample-based music is a form of
10 networked music, linking into the networks of the past and creating new networks to be referenced in the future.
The conditioning of each individual through genetic, cultural, religious, psychological, and linguistic information forms a separate and unique unit. These can be known because of their differences and their connections to those outside themselves. Each fragment has its own network with its own intentions, time, space and history. (David Shea Arcana p146). Sample based music connects into this idea as it is music of arrangement rather than direct invention per se. This is true for all acts of creation but sample-based music is one of the more obvious. Sample based music takes its sound sources from an original setting and then places them within a new one. It rearranges the meanings given to the original sound source based on each individual’s network of understanding related to the original sound source.
Bob Snyder in his book Music and Memory states that human memory consists of three processes: echoic memory, short-term memory and long-term memory. He links these three phases with three corresponding time levels of musical organization:
1. Level of event fusion. 2. The melodic and rhythmic level. 3. The formal level. (Snyder 2000, 3).
At the echoic level the inner ear converts sound into trains of nerve impulses that represent frequency and amplitude of individual acoustic vibrations (Buser and Imbert 1992, 156-171). At this moment the data is uncategorized and raw but through processes called feature extraction and perceptual binding the data is perceptually categorized. (Bregman 1990, 213-394) (Bharucha 1999, 413-418). These categories or events are placed into groups based on similarity and proximity. These events subsequently activate the parts of long-term memory, which are activated by similar events in the past.
As Snyder states, “Called conceptual categories these long-term memories comprise knowledge about the events that evoked them and consist of content usually not in conscious awareness, which must be retrieved from the unconscious” (Snyder 2000, 4).
The formal level is where the music for The Escalators is attempting to work especially with regard to syntax. Snyder states that “large grouping of events that occur over a time span longer than the limits of short-term memory constitute the formal level of musical experience. Units on the formal level consist of entire sections of music. This is a broad definition in that it includes both traditions of rules for the use of particular kinds of functional patterns in particular musical styles and relations between patterns that are developed in (and unique to) particular pieces” (Snyder 2004, 200). Snyder continues “primary parameters are central to the creation of syntax because they are the aspects of music by which
11 patterns are identified and related to each other” (Snyder 2004, 200). Musically that can include ideas of expected patterns within a piece, genre or style. Two musical pieces in the same genre share an identity at a specific level of organisation.
Syntax is made possible by categorisation and memory. Musical syntax consists of learned rules that generate certain types of patterns or gestures that in turn can signify specific types of musical functions (Snyder 2000, 201). Sampling is primarily concerned with the syntax within a genre. Genre or style is a syntax that depends on the perception of patterns occurring at different times as very similar or identical.
Sampling through the means of displacement would alter a person’s syntax within their memory. Music provides a sensory experience that activates memory. Meaningful reception of a musical message depends on appropriate context in memory, a repertoire of schemas and categories that are both personally and culturally activated (Noth 1990, 176-180).
In the original choice of samples made for The Escalators a statement is made. I am attempting to influence the listener to make a selection from their memory schemata that is hopefully similar to mine. I am presuming they will all be able to identify the samples from the culture from which extracted. It is through the use of memory principles such as similarity, proximity and continuity that various pattern units are marked out. As higher-level relations between basic pattern units involving long-term memory enter the picture the listener’s personal and cultural schemas begin to have an influence (Snyder 2000, 208). It is in the recontextualisation and displacement of the sample that memory sabotage occurs.
Snyder states that music can be divided into two categories based on the use of memory: 1. Music that attempts to exploit long term memory by building up hierarchical and associative mental representations of large time structures. 2. Music that attempts to sabotage recognition and expectation by frustrating recollection and anticipation, thereby intensifying the local order of the present.
Sample based music falls defiantly into the second category. The continual genre bending of the music creates a kind of anticategorisation technique that creates sounds that cannot be easily framed in the listeners memory system. The rapidly changing samples in new settings create a nuance overload where every sound is a new event and cannot be easily identified as being in the same category as the last sound/event (Snyder 2000, 236). Discontinuities are commonplace in Western art of the 20th century, from the cubist art through to the splicing techniques used in film.
With The Escalators I have injected a significant number of chosen samples into the framework of the music. These samples that play with the ideas of discontinuity and recontextualisation have been sourced from the world of popular
12 culture, things such as pop music, film soundtracks and TV bites. I have also used samples obtained from field recordings. These are to be used as “Sound Markers” (Toop 2004, 94). The field recordings were of sounds such as fire, church bells, doors opening and shutting and footsteps. Each sample triggers preconceived meaning to audience members.
Michael Forester describes “Sound Markers” as certain sounds or sound conglomerates that become lodged in memory as markers of security “The sound of the family moving around the house gives me a sense of security and belonging,” sounds can exert a powerful sense of centeredness, or perhaps push a door open within a darkened mind, offering a faint sense of escape. (Toop 2004, 94). The sounds of the church bell, fire and footsteps were to be my own sound markers to be used within the framework of The Escalators. These common sounds have meanings for probably every member of the audience and would provide a sense of aural security. They also could be manipulated in the context of a musical performance.
What happens when these sounds are inserted into the musical performance while constantly manipulating and distorting them? A sense of the familiar shifted sideways should result. Of the piece Jesus Blood Never Fails Me Yet (1974) in which Bryars sampled the singing of an old London tramp, looped it and then composed an accompanying chamber orchestra score, he says the methodology was ‘the idea of assemblage, and taking iconic things and recycling them.’ (in Toop 2004 161).
The music of The Escalators was to be always creating a sense of the familiar whilst simultaneously always pulling the listener into a state of unease. The recontextualising of memories through sampling will naturally have this effect.
The effect of always shifting things slightly off the axis they are meant to sit on.
2.2 Minimalism, Clock Time, Stasis and Repetition
As the sampler/turntables were the instruments that were the key to the music being composed, the music that was written for all the other instruments had to be subservient to the sound produced by the them. One of the roles of the other instruments was to set up a musical environment that the turntablist could work within or over. While the parts of the other instruments also had other roles to play, those roles could never overrule the sampler’s sound. The idea for the band’s repertoire and performance style was to play a number of quite long pieces (over 20 minutes in length) interspersed by short ones that lasted no longer than about two minutes. (The reason for the short pieces will be better explained in chapter 2.4.) Much of the music written for the other instruments contained the characteristics of minimalist music. These characteristics include the notions of stasis, repetition, nonlinearity and time stretching.
When dealing with memory in composition I believe it is important to create an atmosphere that attempts to play on the notions of clock time. Memory is so
13 placed in a notion of time that providing an atmosphere that alters clock time assists in the rearrangement of those memories (memories that have been triggered by the samples). Music that goes for a long period of time and is of a repetitive nature starts to alter people’s perceptions of real time. What might seem like 5 minutes can easily be 20 minutes. What might seem like 20 can have actually have been 20. As Bob Snyder states, “Time is an abstract construction of the human mind based on aspects of memory and the concept of an enduring self. Time isn’t experienced in the same way that physical objects are experienced. Rather as humans our subjective notion of time is constructed from our perceptions of objects and events and its qualities at a given moment depend on the relationship between these perceptions. Indeed what we perceive in a given amount of time to some extent determines our sense of the length of that time” (Snyder 2000, 212). As humans we tune out behavior to the environments we live in and events within that environment act as clocks for us to synchronize to (Michon 1985, 28-32). Effecting factors on our memory and perception of time include: 1. Duration. 2. Succession. 3. Temporal perspective or the construction of a linear ordering.
In writing the music to be performed by the other instruments (apart from the turntables) I was attempting to work with all three of these factors. Musically there has been much work done in this area with compositions that include all of these concepts. Compositions that are long in duration, compositions that play with the natural idea of an ordering of events and nonlinear music.
Iannis Xenakis Bohor (1962) is a piece that is both nonlinear in construction and works on the notions of duration in an attempt to effect perceptions of clock time. In describing this music Jonathon Kramer says, “ It seems to have adopted the requirements of moments (via stasis) as their entire essence. When the moment becomes the piece, discontinuity disappears in favor of total, possibly unchanging, consistency. The result is a single present stretched out into an enormous duration, a potential infinite now that none the less feels like an instant…Thus I called the time sense invoked by such music ‘vertical” (Kramer 1988, 55).
After reading of Morton Feldman’s Triadic Memories (1981), described as surgery of memory I started to think how I could effectively lengthen my pieces. David Toop says about Feldman’s piece “their organization of lengthy durations is compelling, yet the divisions between notes, those absences we call silence, demand a huge effort of memory in order to retain a grasp of this unfolding structure (Toop 2004, 90). This gives it an accumulative effect of time frozen. This was the effect I was after with the parts written for the other instruments. If I could play with the notion of memories within the structure of the music as well as through the manipulation of samples themselves it would give the music much more strength.
Steve Reich and Terry Riley’s idea of time contradicts traditional Western Music,
14 in which the musical argument is the result of a subdivision of time. A lot of their music is ‘vertical’ in nature. When explaining vertical music Kramer states “ A vertically perceived piece does not exhibit large scale closure. It does not begin but merely starts. It does not build to a climax, does not purposefully set up internal expectations, does not seek to fulfill any expectations that might arise accidentally, does not build or release tension and does not end but simply ceases. A vertically conceived piece defines its sound world early in its performance and stays within the limits it chooses. Respecting the self imposed boundaries is essential because any move outside these limits would be perceived as a temporal articulation of considerable structural import and would therefore destroy the verticality of time (Kramer 1988, 55). In a similar way to these composers I am attempting to move to what Wim Mertens describes as “the idea of time as being an empty one so that a higher level of macro time can be reached” (in Cox and Warner 2004, 311).
For instance I attempted to deal with the notion of “timestretching and memory” in what was composed for the trumpet and trombone in the piece Log Lady. The basic structure is: the brass instruments play a melody and then rest for as long as I, the leader, can mentally hold out before bringing in the second melody. In using the phrase “mentally hold out” I am referring to the onstage pressure one feels as bandleader to move the music forward and to bring in the next section. That pressure can emanate from the audience, the musicians on stage or from ones own self and preconceived ideas of what makes for good music. In the rest period the remainder of the band continues to play as instructed. Their parts are repetitive in nature. They achieve stasis by never altering in regards to intensity of playing and dynamics. Each melody (written for the trumpet and trombone) is an expansion on the last. I took the opening 2 phrases, a B flat leading to C and started interspersing them between each new phrase. The idea of the new phrase is to build in length as another note of the 12-tone scale is added. Each phrase also develops rhythmically on the previous phrase. So I interspersed them with the beginning two notes and always stretched the length of those two notes out as well. Each phrase or melody is referencing the previous phrase and the phrases that have gone before. This gives the listener the feeling of familiarity while stretching that idea and subsequently stretching time.
There is repetition in the melodic structure but only after a long time (approximately twenty to twenty five minutes) and each repetition isn’t quite exact. Log Lady as well as the other lengthy pieces also apply the common “Aleph” type techniques which are a type of texture that transcends time by juxtaposing fast tempi and slow melodies (Trochimczyk 2002, 278). This is a technique used by Louis Andriessen in his masterwork De Staat (1972 – 1974) and De Tijd (1979- 1981).
De Tidj (1979 – 1981) is Andriessen’s attempt to capture the essence of timelessness or where real time stands still (eternity). He devised many techniques in an attempt to replicate this ambience of eternity or timelessness. He speaks of attempting to create a situation of “sustained, glorified musical motionlessness…. A feeling that time had ceased to exist; the sensation of an
15 eternal moment.” (Trochimczyk 2002, 113) . His inspiration for this was the writing of St Augustine. Augustine says,
“ If only their minds could be seized and held steady, they would be still for a while and for that small moment they would glimpse the splendor of eternity which is forever still. They would contrast it with time, which is never still, and see that it is not comparable. They would see that time derives it’s length only from a great number of movements constantly following one another into the past because they cannot all continue at once. But in eternity nothing moves into the past, because they cannot all continue at once. The past is always driven on by the future, the future always follows on the heels of the past, and both the past and the future have their beginning and end in the eternal present.”
This feeling of stillness or stasis is what Andriessen is attempting and what I also am attempting in my music. It is obviously an impossibility but the illusion is achievable.
Referencing some of Andriessen’s investigation’s into time manipulation I have built slight accelerations and decelerations into my drum patterns across almost all of the pieces written for The Escalators. There are moments where the drum pattern pushes slightly in front of the beat and others where it deliberately falls off the beat while the bass is unmoving. The drums circle the beat as it were, but over a great space of time so it is virtually unnoticeable. Andriessen speaks of the need to fix attention, since without attention time doesn’t exist at all. He built scarcely noticeable accelerations into the motion which precisely create the impression that everything remains the same but not quite the same; more in the way cathedral towers are the same and yet not the same. (Trochimczyk 2002, 124)
When talking about repetition in hip hop music Paul Miller states, “The repetitive nature of the music allows for the unfolding of clock time in a recursive spatial arrangement of tones that has parallels in the world of architecture where structural integrity requires the modular deployment of building materials to create a buildings framework.” (in Cox and Warner 2004, 350).
Repetition as a technique is also being used in my music for all the same reasons that many minimalist composers use repetition. Composers such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Phillip Glass as well as Techno producers Derrick May, Carl Craig and Kevin Saunderson who have popularized the technique. By using repetition these composers are discarding and challenging the traditional harmonic functional ideas of tension and release as well as the musical narratives that go with them. It is used to try to eradicate the expression of subjective feelings through the music. It is used to move beyond the linkages of clock time and real life experience with the music. As stated by Ron Rosenbaum, “It is trying to create an extra historical experience of time brought about by discarding teleological and dramatic elements” (Ron Rosenbaum in Cox and
16 Warner 2004, 309). It is attempting to express nothing except for itself. Minimalist music tends to restrict itself to a small number of ideas while stretching those ideas over a long period of time. Kyle Gann says “The length of the work actually underlines the intense restriction of materials: you might write a four minute piece using only seven pitches and no one would notice, but write a 30-minute piece, and the austere limitations become a major phenomenon of the composition. (in Cox and Warner 2004, 299).
In the use of repetitious grooves I am allowing the listener a way in, giving their ear something familiar as an access point. However, by locking the groove completely, almost in the way electronic instruments loop, I intend the listener to move into an area of discomfort. The music becomes vertical in nature rather than linear. This repetition can be found in the way the drums are performed on Log Lady. The ride cymbal was to be played in a fast continual fashion. The drummer was instructed not to move from the original dynamic setting and technique used on the ride cymbal. Only after 10 minutes is he allowed to add a second drum (say the bass drum) and this must then lock in the same fashion as the ride cymbal. While doing this on percussion I want the bass player to play sliding grooves that both move the time and placement of the ‘one’. These types of parameters for all the instruments were set to avoid clichéd ‘groove’ sounds.
2.3 Rule Based Composition/Structured Improvising
It is evident in the traditions of John Zorn, Earle Brown, Pauline Oliveros, Cornelius Cardew, the Fluxus Performance Workbook, Malcolm Goldstein, Max Neuhaus, Anthony Braxton, George Lewis, Stockhausen, La Monte Young, Otomo Yoshihide rule-based improvisation has been with us for a while. When a set of limitations is put in place surprising events will emerge by themselves. For instant, Emergent Complexity, inspired by Darwinian evolution, is apparent in John Conway’s Game of Life, a cellular automaton game that uses counters and is governed by three rules. When speaking of this game David Toop states “With these simple rules of birth, survival and death, Conway and his colleagues have discovered the most astonishing richness and variety in the evolution of certain counter configurations” (Toop 2004, 184). Similar is Daniel Dennett’s concept of cranes (bottom up complexity) as opposed to skyhooks (top-down design) that emerge when there is an initial set of conditions with variation and selection (Dennett 1995). Composers have shown great interest in applying these new scientific organisational discoveries in the form of ‘cellular automata’. Because cellular automata produce large amounts of patterned data and if the assumption is made that music composition can be thought of as being based on pattern propagation and formal manipulation of its parameters, it comes as little surprise that composers started to suspect that cellular automata could be mapped into a music representation in order to generate compositional material. Camus (2001), a Cellular Automata Music Generator developed by Eduardo Reck Miranda is a good example of this. Camus is an algorithmic composition system, which uses cellular automata of the Game of Life to drive the music generating process.
17
There were also a number of other reasons to instil a rule-based system into compositions for The Escalators. Firstly there was the necessity of stimulating personal originality. Up until this time the ensembles Des Peres and En Rusk have been my two main ensembles that I have written for. While the sounds of these two bands were significantly different, En Rusk being an acoustic improvising band and Des Peres being a sample based, electronic outfit, I noticed great similarities in the compositional styles that I was using for both bands. There was a freedom in both bands to have the music rapidly change direction within a piece, attempting to always keep the listener on their toes while at the same time satisfying my hyperactive attention span. While this could potentially create music that was very jagged in nature I used techniques in both bands to smooth these transitions out, almost in a way of deceiving the listener that everything was as it should be. This tended to provide a comfortable place for the listener. While they were aware that the music was moving and constantly changing it seemed to be transitioning in a way that wasn’t too overwhelming or discordant. Evidence for this can be heard in the musical examples Travel A Moment without Fear and Windchimer (En Rusk 1000 Wide 2004)
The compositional rut I seem to have got stuck in started to frustrate me and I was determined with this new ensemble to create in a new way. By applying rules, I was hoping to force a new sound to emerge. I trusted the result would conform to my desired outcomes because the limitations I would impose on myself would be well founded.
Secondly I decided to start with a series of rules to ensure that the musicians in the ensemble always integrated their individual sound into the overall sonic identity of the composition. As improvisers they are naturally inclined, when in performance, to take music and add their own personalities to it. And in most cases this is what the composers would want from such artists. They have the confidence to make the music sound “better” so they don’t look foolish on stage. However it is this “sounding better” idea that I was trying to avoid, as the music had to sit in a pocket that never sounds overly good or bad but rather just inhabits in the same static state. So for this music it was important for me to set boundaries or limits on these musicians early in the process. The use of improvisation is not a mandate for self-indulgence.
Similarly while having to relinquish some form of control because of the use of improvisers and the inclusion of improvising within the musical structure I am not after aleatoric or chance concepts. Earle Brown stated, when speaking of his String Quartet, (1965) “I am vehemently against considering improvisation as chance…I have fixed the overall form but have left areas of flexibility within the inner structures” (Bailey 1992, 60-61) These limitations were a challenge for my musicians as it took away from their natural skills while giving them a feeling of unease. For me that is a positive as it is on that unease I am trying to focus.
Thirdly rules help to establish my previously stated intention of an atmosphere, of stillness, slowness and confusion. The rules can be quite minimal yet ensure that
18 certain states should be achieved and maintained during the continuous process (Nyman 1972, 145). Terry Riley, likewise, has a system of rules for his piece Rainbow in Curved Air (1970).
In most of my previous work there was a tendency to notate heavily and to head towards the natural emotional peaks and troughs to which music flows. In a desire to change my compositional habits the rules I placed on myself for The Escalators were:
1. The music written for the instruments that did not include the sampler was to remain static. I resolved that everything should remain devoid of emotion. There was to be no traditional highs and lows. There was to be no sense of movement. There was to be little tension and release. The music was to be almost static rather than linear. 2. There were to be no volume increases or decreases throughout any piece. Where the piece started was to be where it had to remain. 3. Instructions were given to the piano and guitar players as to where to play on their respective instruments and then how far to move over various amounts of time 4. All the pieces and sounds had to be subservient to the overall atmosphere. There was a guiding philosophy behind every creation rather than merely a series of tunes that could be bent to fit a performance. 5. None of these rules however were to be placed on the turntablist – he could swing emotionally how he chose, he could vary his volume at will, he was to always fly musically above the rest.
This lack of emotional intensity is not a new idea, La Monte Young was a composer who used the idea of stasis regularly in his music. Taking his original inspiration from Webern’s tendency to repeat pitches at the same octave throughout a section of music he stated, “Climax and directionality have been among the most important guiding factors, whereas music before that time, from the chants through organum and Machaut, used stasis as a point of structure a little bit more the way the Eastern musical systems have” (Nyman 1972, 140).
The emotional setting of each piece was to be established with the first sound of the piece and was not to move from that moment until the conclusion of the piece. As stated above this is a challenging process for improvisers. The audience judges their worth as musicians on their ability to improvise. A lot of times jazz players supersede the music. But in this case they had to be prepared to sound “bad” if that is where the music was because nothing was be moved. An example of a rule that was set was that the drummer should start with a fast repeating ride cymbal pattern at mezzo forte and was never to move from that pattern until the conclusion of the piece. Neither an increase of volume was to be added nor a decrease. In this way the acoustic musicians would be removing the humanness of their playing and almost replicating or mimicking the electronic machines.
Of all the performers the drummer was the one who was allowed to improvise
19 least. He was the one who was to have the most mechanical aspect of playing thus pushing strongly to the middle ground I was aiming for. This mechanical style of composition and subsequent performance, features in much of Steve Reich’s phase compositions, Piano Phase (1967), Phase Patterns (1970), Drumming (1971). Reich speaks of this “mechanical” style of performance when he says, “the music is not an expression of the momentary state of mind of the performers while playing. Rather the momentary state of mind of the performers while playing is largely determined by the ongoing composed slowly changing music. By voluntarily giving up the freedom to do whatever momentarily comes to mind we are, as a result, free of all that momentarily comes to mind. The kind of attention that ‘mechanical’ playing calls for is something we could do more of, and the human expressive activity which is assumed to be innately human and associated with improvisation and similar activities is something we could do with less of right now.” (Reich in Nyman 1972, 154-155)
2.4 Creation of the Atmosphere/Ideas Generated From Investigating David Lynch’s Film and TV Work
Atmospheric Music - The overall atmosphere that the music creates is more important to me than individual sounds. Again this is a similar mindset to that of the minimalist composers of the 1960s and 1970s. But unlike the ambiguous relationship to the audience of much of the American repetitious/minimalist music, where pieces seem to exist just for themselves these compositions are intended to have a direct relationship with the audience. It has to have a physiological impact in some way. This is the duel nature of this work. The parts designed for the sampler directly influence the audiences perception, while the parts written for the other instruments are operating in the vertical aspect spoken of previously.
When I was beginning to write the music for The Escalators and formulating my ideas in regards to what I was trying to achieve I coincidentally rewatched Twin Peaks (1990), David Lynch’s T.V series. To my surprise it dawned upon me that what I was trying to create in a musical setting was remarkably similar to what Lynch was achieving with his series. An atmosphere of stasis, ambivalence, confused normality, sideways movement emerges (I am referring to his overall work not specifically the music found in his films which is predominantly composed by Angelo Badalamenti. At no point was I interested in composing in a similar style to Badalamenti or even referencing the music from a Lynch film. I am only really interested in the atmosphere Lynch seems to create and therefore the theory behind his artwork). So I decided to look deeper into his techniques in order to aid my own work.
Lynch is a master at presenting what appear to be normal situations, whether that means the presentation of on-screen scenes that represent what might be considered everyday life experiences that the audience can identify with or using normal filmmaking techniques. It is this over-pursuit of normality that ironically creates the atmosphere of strangeness, or what I like to refer to as slightly sideways. “Through the act of taking normality to it’s logical extreme, Lynch
20 reveals how the bizarre is not opposed to the normal but inherent within it.” (McGowan 2007,12)
This is an atmosphere devoid of the highs and lows traditionally associated with music. It is always to remain in a pocket of emotional inertia. This is similar to some of the music written by Andriessen in the late 70s. As I mentioned previously, speaking of his masterpiece De Tijd, Andriessen said he was attempting to create a situation of sustained, glorified, musical motionlessness (Trochimczyk 2002, 113). While there are many easy “ins” or access points for the listener those same points are what ultimately cause tension and unease. In the same way Lynch pursues normality to it’s logical conclusion. If these easy (or normal) access points are thoroughly investigated, they will create a natural sense of anxiety within the listener. Musical motionlessness is what I am attempting. Music without the overwhelmingly obvious and, in my mind, the tedious need to be constantly providing release, to be constantly spelling out to the listener what they should be expecting next.
My interest in memory and its oft distortion is what initially led me to become interested in David Lynch’s work. Memories are often onion skinned on top of other memories and sample-based music lives in this space. The sample-based composer takes the emotions of a number of other composers and mixes it with his/her own. For the listener the recognition of various sounds placed in new and confusing contexts operates in the same way as human memory. It also triggers previous memories for them while further fragmenting them. Fragmentation of memory is one way I interpret a lot of David Lynch’s work and it is this atmosphere (an atmosphere of fragmentation or “the sideways”) that I am looking to create in this music. While much of this atmosphere can be created by the use of the sampler/turntables it is also created and manipulated through other techniques similar to those used by Lynch. These techniques include the following:
1. As previously stated Lynch has a very good knowledge of mainstream or normally used filmmaking techniques. However, Lynch takes these techniques to their extreme, pushing normality so far it becomes quite abnormal. He develops a kind of hyper-reality. He is, in effect, bizarrely normal. By taking up mainstream filmmaking wholeheartedly, he reveals the radicalism and perversity of the mainstream itself. He is too mainstream for the mainstream (McGowan 2007,12). Through the way Lynch engages in them, behaviors central to the American mythology take on an alien appearance. (McGowan 2007,13).
With my music I approached this by setting up patterns in the drums that were very accessible. This is to aid the teleological listening of the audience (Kramer 1988, 56). Kramer states that most of us listen teleologically – horizontally – given the prevalence of linear values in our society. We listen for and even project onto the music implications and progressions. The piece starts and we first try to impose linearity, storing potential implications out of which to make significant casual relations later in the piece. But as the music continues, implications accumulate with a minimum of consequence, because the composition contains
21 no changes or structural import. We become overloaded with unfulfilled expectations and we face a choice of either entering the vertical aspect of the piece – where linear expectation, implication, cause and effect, antecedents, and consequences do not exist, or of becoming bored (Kramer 1988,56).
An example of providing for horizontal hearing while then transferring that into a linear shape is in Blue Fire (see Appendix 5C). The drummer holds down a steady 4/4 beat that is interspersed with a drum fill comprising semiquavers that last a whole bar, running down the toms and heading for the first beat of the new bar. This is a very common/normal technique in western pop drumming. The listener immediately gets a sense of familiarity with the pattern. However if this is the only thing that the drummer does throughout the piece and the pattern never changes then that same sense of familiarity now moves into that of unease. The listener only feels the familiarity in context of its change. But if no change comes the pattern sounds somehow abnormal, almost like the drummer is playing a sample.
Also in this particular piece the drum fill comes after every five bars (a slightly unusual place for it to fall) and the fill bar is a two four bar. These small things take on much greater importance in the context of there having been no movement at all in the rest of the part. This gives more weight to the unfamiliarity or unease created.
Another example of this technique can be also found in the rhythm section writing in Log Lady (see Appendix 5A). The drummer has fast 16th notes on the ride cymbal (as has been heard in many jazz tunes). However once again there is no change. The bass player plays a groove or rhythmic motive in 4/4. However he is to be constantly sliding the starting point of his pattern so that his ‘one’ (or start of his 4/4 motive) is always shifting away from the drummer’s. This will not provide any obvious clash with the drummer. Because the drummer is not accenting any of his ride cymbal hits, any one of them could act as the first hit of the bar. It only really affects the listener on a subconscious level (unless of course they were counting the entire way through the piece).
The listener has an uncertain sense they are in 4/4 time because of the provided pulse and ambivalence towards the time signature. Another effect that this has is to make it quite difficult for the horn players to get a constant grip of where to start each phrase as their phrases are written in 4/4. Instructions were also given to the drummer to increase and decrease slightly his own sense of time pushing himself in front of and behind the beat. The rhythm section never is quite where they are expected be while paradoxically never being too far off.
These techniques are also being used on a macro compositional level. The initial dynamic range for each piece is to be set in the first note. No movement is to be made after that. There are to be no increases or decreases in volume. There are to be no increases or decreases in intensity.
Lynch’s distinctiveness stems from his ability to exist within both mainstream and
22 independent cinema simultaneously (McGowan 2007, 11). He does this because of his understanding of mainstream cinema techniques and his ability to work within them. In fact it is in this understanding of normality and its pushing it to its logical extremes that Lynch reveals how the bizarre is not opposed to the normal but inherent within it (McGowan 2007, 12-13). Likewise these are the ideas I am trying to pursue through the above-mentioned composing techniques. In using these techniques I am not interested in deconstruction or an ironic performance of them. Deconstruction involves sustaining oneself at a distance from the opposition one is deconstructing. Rather I am interested in those techniques of mainstream/normal music to find what happens when you push them to their extremes.
By providing listeners with normality in the context of what I have composed for the instruments that surround it I am further hoping to increase the role of the sampler, specifically in how it plays on the audiences memories. The intent is that the audience has some sense of familiarity of meaning (the recognizable, normal patterns of the music) and feels a sense of security in that meaning. But if that normal is overexposed it creates anxiety. It is a style of music that is not afraid of the banal, the mundane or everyday. It is music that is not attempting to tell the audience what emotion to think but providing an atmosphere to allow their memories to take over.
Louis Andriessen states “I enjoy the form of expression - and this is true not only in reference to music but also literature and human beings - which does not catch us by the throat but instead creates a situation in which we may discover our own feelings. I enjoy the form of expression created by something or someone who, from a certain distance, exudes a lot of warmth, whilst at the same time is controlled and very conscious. In contrast when I listen to Mahler I hear tears but I am not interested in Mahler’s tears. I would prefer to see someone who has a tear painted on their cheek: this of course also applies to music. When your father dies you cry, but this feeling cannot be expressed in music because it is too banal. Music is too good for an obvious feeling like this” (in Trochimczyk 2002, 137-138)
2. Lynch is a director who constantly pursues ideas of opposite, ambivalent structures in his work (desire and fantasy). He has duel narratives existing in his films at all occasions. Quite often these narratives seem unrelated and are expressed in the relationship between fantasy and desire, a relationship that in most films is interwoven. However, in Lynch’s films he keeps them entirely separate and while as separate entities they make complete sense, when they have been interspersed with each other in the context of being in the same film, it once again for me creates the feeling of unease. The model for most of Lynch’s work is Victor Flemings The Wizard of Oz (1939). In The Wizard of Oz, Fleming creates a division between the social reality of Kansas and the dream world of Oz. In his book The Impossible David Lynch, Tod Mcgowan claims that this idea of separation between social reality and fantasy informs each of Lynch’s films. He learns from the Wizard of Oz an aesthetic structure that allows him to separate two filmic worlds. Similarly the idea of separation informs all of Lynch’s films.
23 McGowan argues that Lynch depicts worlds of desire by emphasizing the absence of the object (the opening scenes of Lost Highway (1997) are shot with very dark lighting and stilted acting and little to no movement. In Eraserhead (1977) characters are deprived of any enjoyment. These worlds are typically sparse, bleak and desolate. He contrasts this spectacularly with his worlds of fantasy. Here Lynch delves into excess and through their excesses the fantasy worlds unleash enjoyment (McGowan 2007, 19).
I have attempted a similar thing by writing a number of short pieces (Uncle Bob and Josie) that run in between the long pieces (Log Lady, The Great Northern, James Boy on a Motorcycle). The pieces with a longer structure set up a mood or atmosphere. It is a mood of calmness and agitation all rolled into one. As I have previously mentioned, it is also a sound that has a fairly lulling effect, which is caused by the repetitions and length of the pieces. In contrast to this are the shorter pieces that intersperse the long ones. They are almost completely unrelated to the larger form pieces and in fact sound like pleasant little lullabies in the middle of the larger strangeness. The effect this has had is to further remove the listener’s ability to completely familiarize themselves with the overall structure. If after 30 minutes of hearing one idea, the idea that was operating on creating unease were to then become familiar these pieces would serve to destabilize that. I am attempting to play on the idea of dual narratives in the form of separation within the larger whole.
In studying Lynch’s work, one factor that impressed me was his ability to have every element in his film focusing on the one direction or the one atmosphere. For this reason I started to think about how I would incorporate lighting, a stage plan film and costume into the overall presentation of The Escalators to enhance the overall goal further.
24 3. The Process
The process comprised three stages. Stage one involved composing the work. Stage two involved rehearsing, performing and reviewing and subsequent recomposing. Stage three involved the recording experience.
Composing the work was done relatively quickly. Concepts were formulated. Parts that needed notation were done. Sketches of each pieces’ ideas were drawn up and 6 works were ready to be placed in front of musicians. The rehearsal performance and reviewing stage was much lengthier in time and has been recorded in much greater detail in the Appendix 1, 2, 3 and 4.
The articulation of the concepts to the musicians took considerable time. The application of the rule structures for each piece took a while before each musicians felt a deep understanding of them and could absorb them into their playing.
Performance was central to the group. In my experience greater learning is always achieved on a bandstand. The early mistakes were ironed out. By the last performance the band had a very organic understanding of the music and it was easier to stretch the concepts (such as lengths of pieces) further and further thus achieving the previously stated deeper aims of the music – to shift time etc. With each new performance another piece of the whole was added. For instance the first performance didn’t include the turntablist, a lighting design was added by the fifth performance, and so on.
Kiron Robinson (a Melbourne based artist) was asked to work on video expression. He was living in Manila at the time so conferencing was done via the Internet. He produced work that fitted in very well. A 45-minute piece that references itself a number of times throughout its duration and which has been slightly time stretched. The video piece plays with the same ideas I was working on in the music, ideas such as shifting real time. It was another small factor in the greater whole of the performance, helping to create the desired atmosphere. So that the video was not overwhelming (nothing must overwhelm anything else and thus distract the audience) it was projected onto a very small surface – the bass drum. Initially the drummer was at the front of the stage but by the final few performances I had moved him behind the seated trumpet and trombone player so that the audiences viewing of the video projection would be ever so slightly disturbed once again adding to the sense of unease that I was attempting to create. A second video piece was also created and placed at the back rear of the stage further creating a slight confusion regarding the presence or absence of narrative within the two video pieces (there wasn’t any). Having a second video also projecting tends to pull the viewer away from focusing on one visual alone and therefore losing focus on the whole.
The visual staging of the show became more and more developed as we
25 progressed. A great sense of stillness was required from each of the musicians so as not to detract from the stillness of the music. To this end everyone was seated. I as bandleader and the guitar player both wore suits with shiny tuxedo jackets. Everyone else wore a normal conservative dark suit. Once again it was to try and attempt to create a costume that added to the atmosphere (individual identities dissolved into the larger identity). The lighting was designed to reinforce the impression of stillness. It simply consisted of one color (red) very gradually shifting to another (blue). There were a number of single bulbs hung over each performer’s heads When turned on they acted as a strange anticlimactic spotlight. One by one these were slowly brought up to full light and then dimmed again almost acting as a spotlight for no apparent reason as there are no standout performers in the group. The slowness of the lighting changes was deliberately done to reflect the slowness of movement in every part of the music.
Piano
Guitar
Bass
Turntables Drums
Trombone Trumpet
1.0 Stage Plan
The process for recording the album involved two days of recordings without the sampler/turntablist (DJ Element) involved. The rhythm section laid down all their parts on day one. They were recorded with separation to give the engineer (Joe Talia) and myself the option to use effects at the later mixing stage. At this stage I was interested in placing effects on the instruments within the same rue structures that I had chosen for the instruments. The trumpet and trombone was recorded on day two. A third day was used to record DJ Element who played along to the mixes of the previous sessions. I decided to do things this way because it seemed to fit with my ideas of the rest of the music being subservient to DJ Element parts. We could record it all and then it could be then used as a base or almost some sort of backing part to his sounds.
The mixing process took seven months to complete. At all times it was agreed that the samples needed to be prominent, never be overwhelmed by any other sound. DJ Element added his own effects at the recording stage. It was decided to leave his tracks alone. The effects he added were deliberate and created a certain sense of space for his sounds within the aural spectrum.
I also decided that at no stage was the purity of the instruments’ sounds to be
26 considered sacred. Each sound was open to manipulation in order to make them bow to the greater atmosphere. If that meant a trombone not sounding like a great trombone sound that was permissible if it suited the overall structure better.
Therefore the horns were mixed quite differently on each track. On tracks like Log Lady they were mixed quite far back in the mix with a reverb and delay placed upon them. This forces the listeners ear away from their line, creating a more dream like atmosphere. In the piece James, Boy on a Motorcycle, they were initially mixed very dryly with distortion placed on them. This piece sits in a fairly obvious zone of aggression and mixing them this way helps them to sit well with the guitar. By the end of the piece their role changed with the composed lines stretching out in duration. Very slowly over the entire duration of the piece, delay and reverb were added to the horns and the distortion was removed. The adding and removing of these effects was stretched out over that duration so the listener wouldn’t notice the transition.
The trombone improvisation in the piece Josie was mixed to make it assist the sample of the seagulls that are being played rather then detract from them with a normal trombone sound. It now sounds more like some sort of conversation with the seagulls. Similar decisions were made with the effects placed upon all the instruments including the aggressive mix of the base in James, Boy on a Motorcycle to the piano playing in The Great Northern.
27 4.0 Historical Context of My Work
In my life as a composer, thus far, I have gone down two paths that I have deliberately kept quite separate. My role as leader and composer for the contemporary jazz band En Rusk (2000 -2006) had led me to compose a significant body of work that was based on improvisation. While improvisation concepts were the key to En Rusk’s sound, there also tended to be a fair amount of notation involved in each piece. When I created the band Des Peres (2000 – 2009) I choose to go down a different path. The three albums that I have produced with this band are almost entirely based on samples. Each bass line, drum roll, cymbal hit, or guitar pluck came from a pre-recorded source following a strong lineage of composers such as DJ Shadow, Kid Koala, RJD2 and numerous others that are weakly banded together under the umbrella of hip hop. At the time of writing, En Rusk has recorded two CDs and Des Peres has recorded three, including the latest “The Adventures of Cowboy and Miniman.” It was completed and released in August 2008.
As previously stated, I have deliberately kept these two worlds apart, (the acoustic improvising world of En Rusk and the electronic sample based world of Des Peres). With this project I was trying to find a way to finally incorporate the two into one unique ensemble. I don’t think joining these two worlds is as natural a process as one may expect because it necessitates dealing with very different acoustic properties. Sample-based music has already been fully recorded mixed and compressed. To blend that sound with the raw properties of acoustic instruments is one of the key challenges.
Like much modern jazz, the music of En Rusk drew from a variety of sources including bebop, free jazz, as well as a more European approach to jazz composition. Through the amalgamation of those sources I have attempted to come up with my own take on the tradition. This was a style that involved heavy notational parts interspersed with improvisation. Rapid movement between different grooves, feels and time signatures changes where constantly present. At the same time I was trying to maintain a consistent flow within each piece. The art of deception was important to me when writing for En Rusk. Deceiving the audience, lulling the audience into believing they were hearing something different. While I was quite taken with the idea of rapidly and constantly changing feels within a piece of music or song I was aware of trying to do so without dramatically affecting audience perception. If the rhythm section suddenly shifted from one feel to another I would ensure that the horns remained where they were, overlapping the change and then finally joining it themselves. This and other similar techniques helped move the music forward, while still giving it a sense of natural flow that wouldn’t be disrupting to a listener.
I was very interested in constantly moving the music to try to avoid the inherent boredom or sameness that can so often be found in jazz. This is at a personal level as well as what can be projected upon an audience.
28 The melodies I wrote were often very angular in shape, quite long and at most times their only relevance to the chord structure passing underneath was their seeming irrelevance.
“Robinson is more than just a highly skilled player. He makes highly individual music full of creative surprises. This album is one of the more auspicious Australian debut albums. It’s a particular pleasure to hear someone so individual. The trombone wielding young Australian is both an improvisatory player and meticulous composer, his music always logical yet often surprising and free of clichés.” (Spencer 2004)
“Trombonist Kynan Robinson’s En Rusk creates soundscapes filled with racing improvisatory duels with other members over repeated quirky off kilter melodies, and dramatic changes in musical direction. While some tunes are rambunctious rhythmic explorations, others have beautiful song structures……adventurous music.” (Leather 2003)
With En Rusk came my initial interest in creating a “band sound”. In so many jazz contexts, the band is merely a tool to enable a number of strong individuals to feature themselves. From an early stage I became more interested in the gestaltan whole rather than the individual. While it is important to have strong improvisers they had always to be subservient to the greater whole. This has been an approach that I have pursued vigorously in all my projects, but none more so than in The Escalators.
In an almost opposite vein to this music was my writing for the electronic/techno/performance crew, Des Peres. Des Peres arose after I had spent some time in Europe, where I was introduced to the then overwhelming world of dance music and dance culture. “This was music as a matter of modifying states of mind, perceptions bodies, brains…. music that remembered the techniques of dance, drumming, rhythm and dance, and anticipated the sense that music has more to do with sound and frequency than with melody and meaning” (Sadie Plant 1999,166). Dance music’s repetitive beats had little to do with the representations and accompaniments of song. It was a music that lacked crescendo or any narrative progression rather it is about a rapt suspension. It was a music that is about removing individual identity and linking it to new communities of dance, rhythm, movement and sound. It was about the loop but more than that it was about the constant, continuous loop. I performed and composed using a number of drum machines, samplers and synthesisers all linked via MIDI.
There was a strong need in me to separate the two musical worlds of Jazz and Techno that I was operating in to further exaggerate the sense of opposites, so much so that the trombone (my instrument of training and what once seemed like an extension of my own body) was never used on a techno gig.
Des Peres performed as a part of a collective of performers, dancers, DJs and live musicians for about two years in the Melbourne underground techno scene
29 before recording its first album Preserved (2004). It was at this point that we regained some of that lost identity. Rather than follow the road of releasing individual tracks on the millions of dance compilations, or anonymously circulating vinyl into DJs hands, we recorded an entire album. As soon as a band does this, they gain identity through the defining statement of a sound of a completed album. If you continually release singles onto compilations there does not seem to be the responsibility attached to actually define your own sound or style. Rather you are free to change it at your whim or according to the prevailing musical fashion of the day. This can be labelled as the ITunes mentality.
It was at this stage I moved the band away from the techno scene into the pub scene. My reasons for this were because I once again wanted to pursue the idea of a complete band approach. I also wanted to sell product. No one buys CDs in the dance culture; it is not the medium of choice. The difficulty of doing this (moving the act into pub performances) was the general antipathy towards driving dance beats within the Australian pub culture from both the venue owners and those who naturally frequent these venues. The Australian pub culture is rock. It was a difficulty I overcame again through musical deception. Over the top of these repetitive, machine driven beats I would layer or mix in samples, recognisable sound bites from the pantheon of rock and roll history. It was this subtle recognition of sound bites that pulled the new audience towards the music. It was as though the audience’s ear found the trigger to what made it happy and then recontextualised the sound that had previously been distressing to it and now made it pleasurable. This was where I originally started thinking about sampling and what it allows one to do and what it actually does.
Other ways I altered the package were by adding a guitar player and three MCs. Musically they gave a more organic sound than the machines I was using. It also allowed me to write sounds that crossed the beat or flowed over the top of it, something that was near impossible with the machines I was previously using.
From a marketing perspective, it was quickly apparent that Des Peres wasn’t easily able to slide into a genre or musical scene and benefit from the luxuries of being able to do this. Rather we needed to create our own scene. This will be further explained in the later section entitled “Where to Now?”. Musically this has been to the band’s great advantage as it has allowed for a plundering of ideas from any musical form that we liked. It allowed us the freedom to create our own musical sound.
“Too many outfits meld samples with live playing and vocals, yet Des Peres seems to effortlessly weave the samples into their sound, existing purely at service to the larger song and the distinctive Des Peres approach to music. Yet what is it? I’ve been listening for weeks and I’m still not entirely sure. A strange form of electro funk? It’s poppy, strangely catchy yet still all over the shop. It’s bursting with energy, cool funky loops over which they rap, spit and get all melodious, it’s colliding with genres, everything from jazz to funk, hip hop, soul, cinematic ambience and electronica, yet it never really aligns itself to any one of these worlds and it
30 is this confusion that maintains the interest. Des Peres have created some kind of confusing yet lovable bastard fusion. Every time you listen it feels like something else. And aside from this confusion you are left with this residue of chaotic energy. What this all means however I am not entirely sure. And that can only be a good thing.” (Baker-Fish 2006)
Three Albums into their career, Melbourne’s Des Peres collective’s modus operandi remains the same – to stitch together sonic tapestries out of seemingly disparate sample sources which somehow coalesce into a cohesive whole, which works on the dance floor. The Adventures of Cowboy and Miniman has ideas flying left right and centre at an alarming rate. Opening track “Sudden Thought” sets the template for the remainder of the record. Massive orchestral stabs underpin musical flourishes straight out of Bewitched before a straightforward electro break chimes in underneath random horns and crowd chanting effects – all before the track hits the 30 second mark. It might sound like a dogs breakfast on paper, but crate digger extraordinaire Kynan Robinson’s attention to detail is nothing short of extraordinary, especially when the edgy female rap id broken up by an old crooner warbling “How did I get this far?” as the track trails off. Its this sort of creativity that fuels Des Peres’s latest album even when it’s at its most well, normal. Not that normal is ever a word you’d ever associate with the synthesised kazoos recalling Terence Trent D’arby’s “Wishing Well” on the retro soul of Dynamite” the Austin Powers soundtrack outtake “Little Man Falls Out Of The Sky” or drunken blues bar bossanova of “Get on the Bus”. At times dissonant, others confounding and always so densely layered another nuance will reveal itself on every listen, The Adventures of Cowboy and Miniman is one of the most startlingly original Australian electronica releases of 2008. And also one of the best.” (Lewis, 2008)
This initial interest in the sampled sound led to a greater investigation when I recorded Des Peres’s second album “Ace Doubt”. Apart from the vocals and some minimal guitar overlays, the album is made up entirely of samples. I decided to restrict myself to a foreign record collection donated to me by a friend. The collection consisted of about 300 albums, some of which I had some familiarity but most of which I knew nothing about. This meant that from my perspective the memory that was encapsulated in a sample was absent. I restricted myself to this collection to provide for myself some structure or limitation with which to work. The reason I pursued this technique was because of the effect I saw the samples having in a live situation. Every time I combined a sample with the repetitive beats being produced by the drum machines it seemed to create a sense of the familiar to the listener. It gave them some access point in which to break down their preconceived notions of dance music (remember I needed to do this as I had moved the band away from the traditional performing venues of dance music into the houses of “real instruments”).
When John Oswald was talking about his own sample-based work he spoke about the state of recognition overload. Sample-based pieces play with a persons
31 “ state of recognition without the ability to identify or put a name on something, which is immediately superseded by further recognitions which in a sense mask the previous memory tendril by writing over one’s short term mnemonics” (in Zorn 2000, 14).
The excitement of sampling for me was the idea that I could take iconic things and recycle them. In my experience the meaning of the icon always changes when presented in a new form even if that change is slight. Likewise, the revelation of an icon always changes the context of where it is being revealed. If I layer a sound bite of Janes Addictions Jane Says over electronic techno drum beats, something happens to both those things in the minds of the listener which I believe allows a greater sense of freedom and acceptance of each.
David Toop states, “Through the intimate interplay between external source material and host composition, sound sampling can be a dissection, subversion and reconstruction of such historical associations. To erase the starting point of the process reasserts an obsolescent cultural hierarchy, as well as ignoring the complex symbiotic nature of the relationship between sampled, sampler and listener” (Toop 2004, 162)
“Make yourself a world you can believe in “ says John Safrin Foer (2001) and that is what I was discovering through Des Peres. I wanted to take this further with the Escalators. The world I could believe in was one that always shifted sideways. While providing comfort it took the very thing that gave you comfort and twisted it into a world that played with confusion and doubt. This was to be the world of The Escalators.
32 5.0 Conclusions and Moving Forward
This process has been an incredibly rewarding and challenging for me. I feel I have achieved and exceeded a lot of my initial aims. These aims can be broken into two related categories, musical and promotional.
Musical The musical aims have all been broadly achieved. The desire to write music that was of a completely new nature I believe was achieved. The music was unlike anything that I had previously composed, free of the heavy notation, very conceptual in nature, and delightfully limiting in regards to playing capabilities. I feel the music successfully creates the atmosphere for which I was striving. By removing the usual clichés of tension and release so common in most western music, the static nature of the music created its own unnerving tension. Audience members reported fluctuating between feelings of mesmerisation and complete frustration while watching the performance, despite the fact that there was little movement in the actual sound. An Audience member in conversation with me after an Escalators concert on April 21 2008 stated that she rapidly moved between states of anger and frustration to bliss.
The use of the samples was very thoroughly explored. How the samples were played, what samples were used, how many effects were added and the lengths of each particular sample were all important decisions that needed to be addressed. They were successfully done through the rehearsal, performance, review and recording stages. The samples assisted greatly in the desired effect of composing music that triggered and recreated various memories in the listener’s minds.
An excellent ensemble has been put together who through the rehearsal and gigging process have all come to understand the requirements of the music well. The ensemble has performed numerous times gaining some recognition in the Melbourne music scene through both performance and media work such as radio play and interviews. Profile has also been gained by acceptance onto festival line- ups including twice playing in the Melbourne Jazz Fringe festival. I have developed a successful stage show integrating the use of minimal lighting and some video work that was created by Melbourne artist Kiron Robinson.
Promotional I feel I have excelled the initial plans by pushing the band into the studio and now creating a CD of the work that can be used as a record of the work, a marketing tool to generate interest from venues and festivals as well as something to sell, thereby gaining the band income.
Through my experience with Des Peres I have created my own label “House of Pow” records. The idea behind House of Pow is to attempt to create a world of which people would want to be a part. No longer is it good enough merely to form a band, record an album and then release it through the normal channels such as radio and record stores. Through the use of the Internet House of Pow is trying to
33 market an experience to those who want to be involved. Giving away product such as free music does this; one or two tracks from every album, plus free downloads of other artwork that I personally create. I also blog extensively in various character forms thus creating an atmosphere that is associated with the label. When producing vinyl copies I create datacards that go inside the record sleeve. A datacard is any removable computer component, approximately the size of a credit card that contains data, The term is a synonym for smart card. The data card will have a piece of code on it that links to my website. The code then allows the buyer of the vinyl to then freely download a digital copy of the album as well as freely download film clips, hi resolution photographs etc. By doing this I am hoping to create a world in which the public will be sufficiently interested in to join.
The House of Pow has a very definite feeling to it that is exemplified in the opening statements I wrote and posted on its website.
DES PERES and the HOUSE of POW
Let me introduce to you the house of Pow I don’t really need to say more, as the phrase itself combined with your more than adequate imaginations should be sufficient I’m sure, but the rules of writing require that I do. The House of Pow is a house full of stolen bits and it might fall down at any minute but for some science defying reason it never does. Rather it continues to operate as a high-powered pleasure provider for young men and women in this crazy old mystical mass we refer to as THE WORLD. In its backyard there is a picnic on a stupendous scale, where the participants are young and beautiful and eat an endless supply of donuts, cakes and chicken pies, whose daily programme of events consist of everything and anything from darts to champagne swimming to camel races to hunting the great lion of Africa to dubbing out under a banana tree to climbing the technological heights to cat burglary to reading of mighty literature to conversations with too many implications. There will be green spectacles and umbrellas, veils for Egypt and rough clothing for the pilgrimising in the holy land, dark coats for Paris and saddles for Syria. Light musical instruments are encouraged. It consists of all the great and bad houses you have lived in seen or read about and none of them at the same time. The gingerbread house, something from Frank Lloyd-Wright, Coltrane’s House, Parliament’s House, William Burrows’ House, Iannis Xenakis’ House, The Art Ensemble of Chicago’s House, Miles Davis’ House and Talking Heads’ House, the house that was built on the rock as well as the one that fell done on the sand and every other house not mentioned that held people together. What was there lacking about that programme to make it perfectly irresistible? Nothing that any finite mind could discover. It was the House of Pow and it is Irresistible
34 So What Is The House of POW
I am no teacher but my father was a preacher so I have seen him show the people. I will try. If you are there you know, welcome and grab yourself a bed. If you aren’t, there are plenty of invites floating around, find one for yourself, put on your best suit, grab a cane, umbrella or taxidermist’s bird (make it a big one) and hail a street car. But make sure you bring a plate, a plate full of big love. Love for all things fast, red, a love of slight of hand, a love of loud sounds when you need them, a love of theft when the object can be better used, a love of all things old but only when presented in a new way, a love of fox skins and a love of that deep, deep POW POW is when you are being held up against the wall by a man much bigger and stronger than you, adrenalin pumping but oxygen leaving, only one thought comes to your head POW POW is when you can take over a back stage after a roaring concert by singing nothing but American work songs unrelentingly and then use the same skill to unload all the band of all their drinks, negotiate your way around a large city, order a Greek dinner delight and then wave goodbye all without dropping a note. House of POW is a lifestyle. If you don’t see the world this way you might never but you must try and try and try. You must Must MUST. House of POW is music. The best music, music you can’t understand but it gets you, gets you in that spot. The spot that fills you with groove and move, fills you with desire, lust, passion, hatred, love, all of the great emotions. Fills you with confusion that says you must have more. POW is when you know everything there is to know and the only thing left is to go POW Des Peres is in the house of POW, Des Peres is its prime minister, president, sultan, and sing-along chief. Des Peres’s just finished the mixing process of the new album which makes it one step closer to being in your hot little hands or on your funky new personalized digital readers or flashing at you from your computers or however it is you enjoy DES. I might even upload some new tracks for you in the next couple of days DES PERES and the HOUSE OF POW
I also ensure that the albums are all uploaded to internet radio stations such as Last FM and Reverb Nation. Social networking sites are all utilised in an attempt to gain an interest and common community around these various bands. These include the use of Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and Reverb Nation. Through the use of my own blog [email protected] I am also able to gain interest in the various projects I run. This is a blog where I write about my ideas on music, and experiences as a musician, as well as review music publications recordings and books. Through linking to other blogs and web
35 pages I have managed to create a small community that is interested in my musical output.
A more controversial method of pushing the acts on the label is uploading the albums to the “illegal download communities” such as Waffle. These sites are file- sharing sites and which will allow the albums to be downloaded completely for free. While this would seem to be counterproductive I argue that it actually increases the awareness of the band. File sharing communities work off recommendations, if one person likes it he/she recommends it to friends and thus interest in the band increases. This has a natural flow on effect for the band, increasing gigging opportunities and opening up new markets. While file sharing is popular the hope is that if they like it enough, people are purchasing music .
The Escalators album will be released under House of Pow records and all these strategies will be pursued.
There are a couple of areas where I feel things haven’t gone to plan which can be further pursued. One of my initial aims was to produce a show that was of sufficient quality and originality to be appealing to festival directors. I am yet to fully approach festival directors with the show. Secondly while House of Pow has worldwide digital distribution contracts it only has physical distribution contracts within Australia and New Zealand (Amphead Music). I would be interested to find physical distribution for the Escalators in new markets such as Europe. This will be done through contacting appropriate established labels as well as utilising the contacts I have made through Amphead. Amphead are an affiliation of The Orchard, which is one of the largest international, independent digital distributers and aggregators, and have offices in numerous countries. These things are all beyond the scope of this study but things I intend to actively pursue.
In conclusion I feel this has been a very worthwhile period of study. It has significantly built on my previous work and stimulated me to pursue new aims. The music which has emerged has been created recombinantly from commonly known musical strands to produce that which is unique and provides a foundation for further expressive creativity.
36
Appendix 1
Explanation and Thoughts About the Individual Pieces
Log Lady
At its simplest level Log Lady consists of a long horn melody that plays over an atmosphere that is set up by the rhythm section. The ride cymbal is to be unchanging from bar one to the end. While the ride cymbal is meant to indicate some sort of pulse that would imply 4/4 time it can be an ever shifting first beat of the bar. The bass player is to play on a 4/4 groove fashion while also moving the start of his bar around. The guitar play is to improvise around a set of preconceived metallic sounds and pitch structures. The intensity of the guitar players volume and style is to be established on the first note and never change. The piano is to play a set of clusters with a considerable amount of space in between each playing. Halfway through the piece the piano player is to bring in a series of notes in a higher range (the fourth octave of the piano) From my initial writing of the horn melody I started stretching it out even further. Taking the idea of giving more space I wanted to added longer notes. So I took the opening 2 phrases, a Bb going to Bb leading to C and started interspersing them between each new phrase. The idea of the new phrase is to build in intensity as you add another note of the 12 tone scale. They also speed up in rhythm So I interspersed them with the beginning two notes and always stretched the length of those two notes out as well. The Idea is a referencing one, continually giving the listener the feeling of familiarity while stretching time. There is one point in the piece, about three quarters of the way through which would be the peak moment of the piece. Here all the band stops on a high F and holds two beats of silence before falling straight back to where we were.
The samples here are really based around footsteps, doors squeaking and some simple vocal.
In performance the aim of this piece is to stretch it out as long as possible. That is usually led by myself indicating where the next horn line comes in. Performances have stretched from 15 minutes to 35 minutes.
The Great Northern
The trumpet is to play long single notes building up to a five note phrase. I have added an Om Pa line in the piano part that comes in at about the 2 thirds mark and centres around Bb. The Trombones low notes also lock into Bb and it seems to force the piece into a tonal centre, which is nice.
Josie - Asian Mill Owner
37
This piece is designed to be one of the short pieces that intersperses between or after a long piece. Every time we have performed this tune we have tended to do it as the very last tune. Probably because it is the only tune with any sort of harmonic movement and that harmonic movement is the most obvious of all western cadences I-V-I in the key of D. This falls in line with the ideas of normality I am playing with. The piano merely repeats that chord structure in different inversions but never playing more than 4 notes in the chord. It has to be kept simple. The Trombone is to solo but in a way that almost directly opposes that pianos simplicity and beauty. The sample is of seagulls. A sound that has meaning to almost everyone and generally illicit some sort of emotional feeling.
Uncle Bob
A short piece to be played in between the longer ones. The strings play a simple melody which the horns solo over. The type of soloing is indicated in graphic notation, it’s to be a glissandoing gentle slide over the instruments. After 2 times through the melody the piano displaces it with his left hand by one semitone. On the fourth time through the horns join the piano players left hand playing in displacement from the guitar and bass. On the next time through the form the strings solo in a similar fashion to what the horn players were doing. The entire time the drum keeps a steady tapping pulse, like a metronome.
Blue Fire
A tune full of clichés, from the melody to the bass line to the drum part. The drum and bass are to be very static in this piece. The horns are to initially play their lines together and are then free to play them when ever they choose, shifting from the A section to the B section at will. As in all the pieces the volume of the horns is set and is to be static, unchanging, almost cold. There is a piano solo in this piece. This piece has an almost elevator music feel to it, catching some of the worst parts of jazz and making them quite strange. The guitar was to play long swelling chords moving from Eb sus9 to Db Maj7 then very randomly dropping in notes that are taken from the horn melody. These notes are meant to sound like a mistake or accident.
James Boy On A Motorcycle
While this piece would seem to be radically different in approach to the others it isn’t really. There is an aggression to it that might appear to be missing from the others but in effect it is exactly the same. The rhythm section follows the same rules, once the sound has been established with the first note there is to be no change all the way through the piece. The drums and bass are meant to imply 4/4 time while always shifting it start of the bar. The base is to have an overly distorted metallic sound. The drums are to play in a constant stream of sound that chops and changes, adding little bits of silence. The piano plays a series of long chord tones in the lower half of the piano, leaving long periods of silence between performances.
38 The trumpet and trombone player a very fast melody that is moving to long chord tones by the end of the piece. This is done by stretching out the duration of notes within the horn melody lines. The guitar starts with a very frenetic sound, that is almost as if he were in another room and completely unrelated to the rest of the ensemble, that moves to chord swells towards the end of the piece. This transition follows the horn melody. The turntablist plays as series of movie quotes that follow the pace of the tune.
39 Appendix 2
Performance Evaluation
Adding a Visual Element
After the initial 2 performances I think its necessary to add a visual content DJ Element also played a lot of David Lynch Samples – I don’t think this is a good idea as it to obviously references what I am trying to achieve, over the course of the performance there should be only one or two actual samples of Lynch played and even they should disintegrate quite rapidly into the overall mix.
I was thinking it would be good to have a camera permanently placed over the turntables with the faintest mix of my head in it as well ----Plus a lot of crows
In the whole of Log Lady DJ Element should make it sound like a narrative with footsteps and walking etc. also with the door slamming and so on
Meeting and Performing with Eugene Ughetti La Mamma Courthouse 2008
I performed a concert as part of the La Mamma Musica series 2008. The concert was in two halves with percussionist Eugene Ughetti and performance art duo The Rollergrooves performing in the first half. From this performance many similarities were noticed between the two shows and we decided to try and find an avenue to perform the concert again. Ultimately we were trying to see if it would be beneficial and viable to sell the two shows as one package to festivals and promoters.
The key components were that this was now moving into a show that could better be pitched to festivals. There was now a very strong visual aspect and it was a far more attractive show. It also opened up new audiences. Eugene and I have meet on two occasions and talked on how to better structure the overall show. We performed a second concert at Forty-five Downstairs. We need to decide on the key concepts and decided that these were the cross art aspect. The very visual aspect of both band’s music and the sense of monotony in both composers work. It is exciting because the band The Escalators is no longer merely an act like any other band but rather it is moving into something that is a larger thing.
Forty-five Downstairs Performance 27/1/2008
After numerous meetings we restaged the work we had presented at La Mamma at 45 Downstairs. The group has become a collective now aiming to produce a single work with 2 halves revolving around the ideas of monotony, stasis and cross art. The group includes The Escalators, Eugene Ughetti the Rollergrooves and Kiron Robinson and Michelle Robinson.
40 We performed at 45 Downstairs (an Art Gallery) This was decided because we think it is important to present the work in non traditional spaces (it gets it away from being just another gig) and a gallery gives more weight to the visual arts component.
In the Escalators rehearsal build up I worked a lot with DJ Element. In the previous concert he had played a lot of obvious David Lynch movie quotes which I asked him to stop. The reason being I thought it was to obvious lacking subtlety and while the music is referencing some of Lynches art practices it makes no direct reference to the content. Maybe as a nice touch he could play 2 samples over the space of the gig but cut them up significantly enough to confuse them. We also looked at “SIGNIFYER SOUNDS” (which work well with everybody’s memory). Sounds such as Church Bells, Fire, Footsteps Seagulls– these also work as a far more subtle reference to Lynch (he uses fire heavily in a lot of films). I am also encouraging him to play a lot more BIG samples from mainstream media such as a Madonna song etc, but he is struggling to know where to put things because of the clash of music on Music. I thought maybe they could be low in the mix hard panned to one side or if we started looking at surround sound they could be placed somewhere, all the base could be taken out and the mid range frequencies turned up. That way they operate as a small floating memory not always recognisable by all. We did the same to some of Lawrence’s guitar sounds adding reverb effects on some sounds and turning the volume down to act as a distant memory.
The restaging of this show forced me to think more about lighting and set up of the instruments. I think it is important I sit for stillness sake. Kiron Robinson also has made some video footage which was projected onto the bass drum. This was done so it wouldn’t be overpowering but merely another element. The aesthetic of projection onto a drum was very effective. I spoke with Kiron about my concepts and had him create under a similar rule structure. I think we really need to time the pieces out however to have his video change perfectly with each piece. In the Log Lady piece and others it could always work to specific time structures and they could be written on the piece. I had the idea to reference a clock somehow in the video but am concerned that this might be to obvious a reference .
The overall show had a few problems mainly for me in the transition between acts. The set up needs to be better thought out. A second issue was in the heaviness of the act. We need to look at ways of lightening it up – maybe through the Rollergrooves. They could also perform a lot more everyday mundane roles such as taking the money at the door. Also it still had the feeling of a regular gig despite it being in a non-traditional venue, we almost couldn’t think outside that box and created a traditional venue. This is a tricky issue because I don’t want to head down the road of a Happening.
The music seemed to fall back into its highs and lows which I don’t want.
41 I’ve also decided to not limit the Escalators to only playing these shows but also getting its own gig. I have written a grant application to try and tour the show in June this year.
There could be something handed to every member of the audience as they enter that has a specific time on it, say 52 minutes and then an description on what will be happening at that moment, for instance trumpet taking a short solo. This further enhances the idea of time and also gives them a memory to both look forward to and take away.
42 Appendix 3
Personal Composition Diary
The sampler / fragmentation / memory
What is the point of integrating a sampler with acoustic instruments? If the sampler had the capacity to do away with orchestras am I limiting its capacity in this context? Yes I think so and that’s a good thing, as severe limitations are also being placed on all the other instruments. It is through the limiting that hopefully a new and interesting sound might emerge.
I need to find the right turntablist/sampler as it needs to be someone who can work within frameworks? Am I going to provide him with all the samples or give him some licence?
I want to set up an environment to allow the sampler to speak, surround it with instrumentation that gives it space but also gives it a tension.
What samples are chosen are important, there must be a repeat of the sample. I could sample in a quotation from the film Cool Hand Luke and then effect it a number of times, in this way creating a number of samples.
Samples play with the idea of memory. What is the way I am trying to play with memory? They also play with the idea of appropriation of intellectual property. But surely there is no intellectual property as every idea is rooted in a previous idea. The whole of our modern culture is based on a development of other people’s ideas. The sampler as a technology has merely allowed us as artists to give a greater voice to some of that appropriation.
Is the sampler the key role in this band?
It is through the sample that memory can be triggered and deeper levels of atmospheric music can be achieved. As Paul Miller talks about it is through the mix that audio alchemy is achieved and the tales of sounds and songs can be passed on in new ways, manipulated into how I feel they should be constructed. Often times I will listen to a piece of music and not even listen to the whole but rather try and listen for a specific sound that I can appropriate to enhance my collage. The sampler can be seen as a custodian of aural history, constantly crashing different voices and traditions together to give a reinterpretation of history that has something to say about today.
I have been thinking that this work should be presented in traditional static settings such as the jazz club. This provides further fragmentation in my work.
Any sound can be you and has meaning to me as well as having meaning to the listener. By presenting old sounds in new contexts you are creating confusion in
43 regards to the listener’s interpretation of that sound and forcing them to recontextualize give new meaning to and try to understand your meaning.
The samples I choose will be integral. Likewise how they get effected and distorted is equally integral. At this stage I am trying to think of samples that have some emotional attachment for people without being to obvious. It needs to trigger something but not have an incredibly strong emotional attachment, as that will destroy my ability to confuse the memory. In David Lynch’s movie Wild at Heart he often will set up a scene with costumes and sets that date it to a particular time e.g. The 1950s he will then move his central characters in their 1950s clothes accents etc and place them in a 1990’s industrial techno club thus confusing ones understanding of time. This is what memory does. It takes things from various times and onionskins them over the top of each other.
Silence or quietness is important in this music. Unlike a lot of my other writing, which is very full, I am interested in the stillness or smallness. Why? Like Cages work it gives more meaning to the sound you hear. Samples that would be interesting would be crowd noises and conversations. The human voice is the thing that creates the most tension.
In the recording situation I could insert periods of silence into the piece or even periods of quiet where I effected a chink with an effect to make it sound like it suddenly moved into another room. Maybe the whole recorded CD could be like a tour of different listening dynamics. Hearing the band from different places.
Toop talks about the concept of a sound marker, a memory trigger that gives you a feeling of comfort, this is something I am very interested in exploring in regards to my own sample choices. I am thinking of using sounds such as walking, fire church bells. Sounds that everyone (audience member and performer) has some sort of relationship with.
Lengthening the pieces
After reading of Morton Feldman’s Triadic Pieces described as surgery of memory I started to think how I could effectively lengthen my pieces. David Toop says about his piece “the organization of lengthy periods of time are compelling, yet the divisions between notes, those absences we call silence, demand a huge effort of memory in order to retain a grasp of this unfolding structure. This gives it an accumulative effect of time frozen.
I need to stretch some of the horn melodies… even referring to melodies from other tunes and also having written material for both horns that is just one note. This could fall in the midst of a solo or anywhere in the piece.
Ideas from Lynch, Feldman and Andriessen
44 Lynch is almost to mainstream for mainstream. Instead of avoiding the mainstream he has totally embraced it. He takes normality to its logical extremes.
In my new tune (Blue Fire) have the drummer play a 4/4 beat with the bass playing traditional rock eighth notes. Use this as a basis letting the piano improvise long slow phrases. It can be considered a piano solo. The horns will have small interjections. This is setting up the dual narratives or even the opposites that are important to me.
Perhaps in one of the pieces the sampler could be used I the context of Goddard, re sampling the piano and horn lines to be played over. Also giving fairly obvious references to Goddard or to the act that the audience is in the audience.
Lynch takes the conservative option/position to its fullest degree. Something I am interested in this music. I want the music to be instantly accessible to the audience. They must feel they have some understanding of it and then that same understanding is the thing that becomes problematic.
My little pieces interspersing the large pieces are an attempt to give the audience the obvious relationship with normality. In the tune Josie the chord progression is D to A (I - V –I). This is probably the most common way to provide tension and release or cadence in music. The insertion of this very obvious statements plays into the concepts of blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. Lynch’s films tend to hold these two worlds, fantasy and reality, separate, as I am trying to do as well. Maybe have no sampler in the little tunes.
Feldman – Sustain the pedal for the entire duration of a piece The delicate touch is extremely important. Work an entire piece on different touch techniques. Lynch - everything in the sensory fields needs to push the audience towards the same atmosphere. It all needs to be working on the same thing
After Reading Andriessen I have been thinking much more about the time stretching things, which is important to my music. If you had three separate melodies that started together but were of different lengths they would phase out of time and come together again at different points. You could have nothing but the drums nailing down the beat to keep I all together and every time they came together would be a strange moment. I’m not sure what the sampler would do.
Andriessen accelerates his compositions especially De Tijd (Time) Maybe I should consider accelerating some of my pieces as it seems to suspend time.
I want DJ Element to cut samples in and out of each other at a quicker pace eg. Christian Marclay
45
Appendix 4.
Mixing and Recording notes
I want to apply a similar structure to the mixing process that I did to the overall compositions. Once a good initial mix has been achieved I want to add effects to various instruments and then slowly alter those effects parameters over the duration of the piece. The turntablist is always to be the most prominent sound in the mix and should have its own defined space.
Josie – Asian Mill Owner
The Trombone needs to be EQed in such a way that it sounds very thin and dry. Almost like it is having a conversation with the seagulls and directly opposing the piano.
Blue Fire
The horns have a heavy reverb placed on them that can decrease over the duration of the piece until by the end they are sounding small and in the distant and quite cold. One note of the trombone (at 3.44) can be caught and delayed heavily until it drifts into the mix, almost like it becomes part of the guitar. The drums and bass should remain completely constant in the mix.
James, Boy on a Motorcycle
The horns need to have a very dry sound, quite present in the mix and quite thin sounding. Almost like they are competing with the guitar. They might have a layer of distortion on them initially, defiantly not reverb at the start. The distortion can be removed over time until by the end they are much more full in the mix. Reverb might be added by the end. Once again the drums and bass need to be constant. The notes of the piano can be captured and have effects poured over them to sound like huge oceans of sounds. The guitar drives this track and needs to be prominent in the mix but not overwhelming the samples. The bass needs to be mixed in an aggressive manner as well, distortion can be added to his sound.
Log Lady
The mix of the horns should be clear and quite present in the mix. Not to washed out. The trumpet sound needs to be present and clean during his solo.
The Great Northern
46 This is a similar mix to Log Lady in regards to the rhythm section. The trumpet sound needs to be very dry and clean. At the very end of the piece the trumpet moves from long held notes to a short fast passage. This phrase can be mixed completely differently to the rest of his mix. I want this phrase to pan significantly and have a delay put on it. The original trumpet line can also be left in the mix on a different track so it can be heard under the effected track.
47 Log Lady KYNAN ROBINS ON J= 80 open repeat till cued ~ fl Trumpet in BP @) ~-u- I~T .g~ I~T'*~ ~ ~ ~ Mf -
bo ~.~ r:a- 11,_ #-'--"-(i'- ~- "">. : : Trombone ..
9 open repeat till cued open repeat till cued ~ fl Tpt. : : @) I~T'*.:J- IpT*~~4__ -e- :!!-~T*J ~__ 1, ____ - ~ -----: ~- #---=---(i'- f±~ -e- -:;. ~_ "fII--""" .:::-- : : Tbn. .. : :
16 open repeat till cued
p p :~ ~f: ::I( en: eatlljj::d, IQ fPen:~ajj:d;i 1:1 pen :~ [~ ~ f r:pea"JI::d::;;*i:::; I: I:~a{ I ::~ ~ ::1 I: f~nr:eatliljl:d is!: f~nr:eattiljl::::*;}1
44 open repeat till cued ::~ ~i::~:I:;:d, 1:@11~,! I;;;;: 11: ~ :11
48 2
Tpt.
Tbn.
56 open repeat till cued open repeat till cued ,,-fA Tpt. tJy- I~T'*~ -e- -e- I~T*~~*# q*~
_b~ .",.. __ ~.",.. -""' ih • .",..r:----~ ..c- - ~ b.",..~ Tbn. : ,
63 ~ () Trombo ne so 0 Tpt. --''- --' tJ ~~-r ~#;J:q=d: -,J' ~T" #~T.~-r '-- - - ..0:. ...0.. ...0.. Trombone solo -~b. .P~b • .fI- • ~M. - - Tbn. : ...
69 open repeat till cued ~ fA Tpt. : tJ PT -6L~ y- !~u- P""~ ~ -Et. - -e- bC1l U1L #- :e- t> • .,.. 1.r A ")., Tbn. : : :
77 open repeat till cued open repeat till cued ~ () Tpt. tJ ~""*~ Ir" .. :iI: ~4____
t>. ~~1'9- t>. ~ _lJ9·~ Tbn. : '"
83 open repeat till cued ~ () Tpt. : : tJ _-e- ;!'" ~..". *..J ~___ fO PU- U-
--:e. ~ b• ..,---"","- .;;--: ~o bri -0 Tbn. : ...
49 2 Uncle Bob Kynan Robinson
5
!I~II::(~) r7 : ::tl}r 7 : ::Zr 7 : :::::<11
Strings start and repeat line one while brass improvise. On the third repeat of the melody the piano is to displace it by a semiquaver with his left hand. After three times through the melody the horns play the melody joining with the piano players left hand. (This is the same melody displaced by a semitone). On the fourth time through Stings move into a solo while brass hold the groove. Drums are to consistently tap semiquavers throughout the duration ofthe piece. The style of improvising is to be with alot of glissando as indicated in the graphic below.
50 Blue Fire [AJ Kynan Robinson all short fJ I b.. I Piano! ~: ==== - Long swelling chords moving from Eflat sus 9 to D flat maj7 Then very randomly drop in single notes pulled out of the horn melody fJ Electric Guitar -.;
""""'- .-"1 l I ~ 5-string Bass Guitar , i' all short " fJ I b. I Trumpet in BP -.; === - ba;.~~~rt p~~ .,. p~ .,. p~ ~~p~ : Trombone ';" "
Drum Kit
metallic sounds with lots of re verb also sample the piano playing the first melody line and replay it with ~ ffects and time stretching
sampler " 4 fl : Pno; !~: : :
fJ E. Gtr. -.; p~ I b' "])'0 - i""':!! ....-! : J r
I;- fJ Tpt. -.; P.... ' -,t -,t' b. ~ .. ~~. • Tbn. : : : i'
-""""""'" Dr. " : : -
Dr. ...
51 2
8 1l
LL @)
~: L.:. ;J. h E. Gtr. I~ @) ~
..i. J. -.b.
fll L Tpt ..LJ --I Q)~ Tbn rq: ~
.- D r. -"-
D r. --"-"-
10
_L'.~ ~ U'!"\ ...!. ~ - tJ
~. 1--1-· I..L-
fl L E. Gtr. -I. :H ~ .... @)
J. ~ JW.. ~ t:!l: :t1 c.::. 11
11 cL -;1 Tpt W @)
~. 1 -...L. Tbn L : , -
.... :u D r. --"
D f. --"__ U : "
52 James, Boy on a Motorcycle Wail till cued Kynan Robinson T~~~~:O~~ ~: :: ::!: I: :: :::::::: : I:::;: :::: 1
:~ ~~ :: :: :::=1 f:r~~;~~~:edll ::=:::::~: :: :1 ~ 3 3
8~ 3 3 open repeat till cued I, ~ ->
:~ I: ~:~: :&:~:: :: 1 : II~rum~t;OlO :II!:: ;~: ::: :::1 ~ 3 3 3 3 12 ::[~=::::: : :::1:::::::: :::1;:::::::: 1
15
53 2 28 .:: [!::: :::: ::~ I:~: :~: :I: ::::::: :::1: :::: I::: ~I
. :~[!~::: fpenr:att}I::: ::I::r:I:::::=:I:::: I
3! 0-8 ~ open repeat till cued
:: ~: I-ii 1[111 r11 11: :: I1-111 1-1111~romb:ne Solo :11 ~ L-3----" L-3 ----" L-3 ----" L-3----" L-3 ----" L-3----"
46 .:: ~ :: ::: :I::: ::~{ I ~ I:::: I: I ~ I~ : :::1
53 open repeat till cued 1:: [!: : I: I:: ::: : I::::: I~: 11: : I : :11
61
::: ~: ::: 11: I: ::: I':: : I
65
54 ro 3 ::: [~:~:: ::::: :I~::: ::::: :: I:::::: ::: :1 '.
76 :::[~ ~:t: ::1::: ::~::~J: :::: ::: ::; 1 82
:~: ~ :-i::::: 1 : 1 : 1 : 1 : 1 : 1 : 1 :, 1 91
:::~ :1 : 1 : 1 : 1 : 1 : 1 : 1 :1 : 11
55
6. Bibliography
Adlington, R. 2004. Louis Andriessen: De Staat. Hants: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
Anderson, C. 2006. The Long Tail, How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand. London: Random House Business Books.
Baker-Fish, B. 2006. Des Peres – Ace Doubt Album Review. Inpress Magazine.
Bailey, D. 1992. Improvisation: its Nature and Practice in Music. Ashborune: Moorland Publishing.
Baum, F. L. 1939 The Wizard Of Oz. Dir. V. Fleming. USA: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. DVD.
Bharucha, J. 1999. “Neural Nets, Temporal Composites, and Tonality.” In Diana Deutsch. The Psychology of Music. San Diego: Academic Press
Bregman, A. 1990. Auditory Scene Analysis: The Perceptual Organisation of Sound. Cambridge,MA: MIT Press.
Buser, P and M. Imbert. 1992. Audition. Cambridge,MA: MIT Press
Chanan, M. 1995. Repeated Takes. London: Verso
Dean, R. 1989. Creative Improvisation: Jazz, Contemporary Music, and Beyond: how to develop techniques of improvisation for any musical context. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Foer, J.S. 2001 ed. A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Joseph Cornell. New York: D.A.P.
Franzen, J. 2002. How To Be Alone. London: HarperCollins.
Gann, K. 2006. Thankless Attempts at a Definition of Minimalism. In Audio Culture, Readings in Modern Music, ed. Cox, C. and D Warner. 299-303. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group.
Leather, D. 2003. En Rusk Album Review. The Age.
Lewis, G. 2008 Des Peres - The Adventures of Cowboy and Miniman Album Review. Time Off Magazine.
Katz, M. 2004. Capturing Sound: How Technology has Changed Music. Berkeley and California: University of California Press.
Kramer, J. D. 1988. The Time of Music, New Meanings New Temporalities New Listening Strategies. New York: Shirmer Books.
Lynch, D. 1977. Erasurehead. USA: Libra Films. DVD
Lynch, D. and M. Frost 1990. Twin Peaks ABC. Television Program
Lynch, D. and B Gifford 1997. Lost Highway. USA. October Films. DVD
McClary, S. 2006. Rap, Minimalism, and Structures of Time in Late Twentieth- Century Culture. In Audio Culture, Readings in Modern Music, ed. Cox, C. and D Warner. 289-298. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group.
McGowan, T. 2007. The Impossible David Lynch. New York: Columbia University Press.
Mertens, W. 2006. Basic Concepts of Minimal Music. In Audio Culture, Readings in Modern Music, ed. Cox, C. and D Warner. 307-312. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group.
Miller, P. D. 2004. Rhythm Science. New York: MIT Press.
Miller, P. D. 2006 Algorithms: Erasures and the Art of Memory. In Audio Culture, Readings in Modern Music, ed. Cox, C. and D Warner. 348-354. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group.
Nyman, M. 1974. Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. New York: Shirmer Books.
Noth, W. 1990. Handbook of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press
Oswald, J. 2000. Plunderstanding Ecophonomics. In Arcana, Musicians on Music, ed. J. Zorn, 145-152. New York: Granary Books.
Plant, S. 1999. Writing on Drugs London: Faber and Faber Ltd.
Reich, S. 2006. Music as a Gradual Process. In Audio Culture, Readings in Modern Music, ed. Cox, C. and D Warner. 304-306. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group.
Shea, D. 2000. One/Two. In Arcana, Musicians on Music, ed. J. Zorn, 145- 152. New York: Granary Books.
Snyder, B. 2000. Music and Memory, an Introduction. Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Spencer, D. 2003. The Daily Planet. Radio National. September 23.
58 Toop, D. 1995. Ocean of Sound, Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds. London: Serpents Tail.
Toop, D. 2004. Haunted weather, Music, Silence and Memory. London: Serpents Tail.
Trochimczyk, M. 2002. The Music of Louis Andriessen New York: Routledge.
59 7. Discography
Des Peres. 2005. Preserved. Melbourne: Shock Records. Sound Recording: Compact Disc.
Des Peres. 2007. Ace Doubt. Melbourne: MGM. Sound Recording: Compact Disk.
Des Peres. 2009. The Adventures of Cowboy and Miniman. Melbourne: House of Pow/Amphead. Sound Recording: Compact Disk.
DJ Shadow. 1996. Endtroducing. Island Records. Sound Recording: Compact Disk.
Madonna. Like a Virgin. 1984. USA: Warner Brothers. Sound Recording: Compact Disk.
Oswald, J. 1988. Plunderphonics. Canada: Seeland. Sound Recorder: Compact Disk.
Robinson, K. 2004. En Rusk 1000 Wide. Melbourne: Newmarket Music. Sound Recorder: Compact Disk.
60 8. List Of Works
Andriessen, L. 1979-1981 De Tijd.
Andriessen, L. 1972-1974 De Staat.
Cage, J. 1939 Imaginary Landscapes.
Conway.J 1970 The Game Of Life.
Feldman, M. 1981 Triadic Memories.
Miranda, E. 2001 Camus.
Reich, S. 1967 Piano Phase, 1970 Phase Patterns, 1971 Drumming.
Riley, T. 1970 Rainbow in Curved Air .
Ryan, B. 1968 Eloise.
Schubert, F. 1820 String Quartet in C.
Stockhausen, K. 1963 Plus Minus.
Xenakis, I. Bohor 1962.
61