Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York
SENDEROS: A MUSICAL JOURNEY TO THE ANDES SUPPORTED BY ROCK AND ELECTRONIC ELEMENTS
Jorge Valencia
MA in Music Technology
Supervisor: Dr. Ambrose Field
August 31st 2010
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Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York
Abtract
The following project intends to give a short duration album showing how to take South
American Andean music into a different level, this task is approached in different ways. By the use of elements from rock and electronic music used to enrich the traditional Andean tunes, in addition to that, some exploration and experimentation with the instruments of the region is being held in order to get new sounds out of them, as well as new ways of mixing and panning them.
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Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York
Contents list
Introduction...... 4 State of Art...... 5 Personal backgrounds relevant to the project ...... 10 The album...... 13 Tracklist ...... 13 Description...... 13 Future works ...... 20 Conclusions...... 22 Acknowledgements ...... 23 Reference List ...... 25 Books...... 25 Articles...... 26 Sound Recording...... 27 Web...... 27
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Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York
Introduction
Folk music, by definition is a cultural expression attached to a determined society, consequently it accomplishes a vital role into the identity of any group of people. In addition to this, the right presentation of folkloric art will always be a firm root for a strong and confident culture.
Despite of being a very wide continent, South America is well known for having very similar people and cultures all over the Andean territory, an area which comprehends from south to north, the countries of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. In music there are several genres that have been shared among these countries for the past century, conforming what we know today as ‘Andean Music’.1
After a very strong bloom in the middle of the twentieth century, a sort of lack of cultural nationalism has made of this music a weaker musical trend for the last decades. There has been no successful counterweight to the effect of globalization over the Andean cultures. The consequences of this have made of this cultural expression a minorities’ expression, almost excluded of massive broadcasting and publishing.
While world musical trends have moved though the years, Andean music has experienced a fairly strong inertia, where a very small amount of evolution have been tried over it, therefore staying as an unattractive genre for younger generations who feel almost no connection with it. A consequence of that, is that this music is experiencing a huge lack of publishing and broadcasting of this material as it is not a mainstream genre and of course not very commercial. Therefore, it is
1 Broughton, Ellingham, Trillo, ‘World Music’, 273. 4
Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York quite natural that there is no gathering of new listeners. All this is really harmful for the genre and actions are required now to keep it alive.
That’s why one of the biggest aims of this project is to gather some modern elements of the music nowadays and introduce it to this folkloric expression, so that any kind of audience can feel identified with what they hear, and we can recover some musical identity through one of our most valuable cultural expressions as the Andean music.
State of Art
It is well known that Latin American culture could be much older than it appears now. It will be never known for sure how much we lost during and after the Spanish conquest in 1492; hundreds of years of cultural development are still a mystery for mankind. In spite of that, there are some things that run in the blood streams that can be preserved for ages and they are part of an unavoidable idiosyncrasy and legacy attached to a determined society.
Andean music could be a clear example of this postulate. This is emphasised since this music is not a very old manifestation in comparison to European or Eastern folk music.
In the middle of the twentieth century, Andean countries went through drastic changes that were a very big influence for arts. Some nationalist revolutions in the heart of South America encouraged the development of the native art, what attracted the attention of many cultural movements interested in revolutionary social changes all over the continent.
Whereupon, 1950’s was the start of a couple of decades that were the summit for the Andean music.
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Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York
The most famous and recognised bands and composers had their most productive era during the 1960s and 1970s. After that, the actual development of our music reached an almost static point, in part due to social reasons against imperialism; one of the biggest paradigms of the main composers at the time, was to keep the music as native as possible. They wanted to try to keep it away from any contact with main stream American and European music; thus no different instruments than the traditional ones should be included whilst all the songs should remain under any of the yet existing genres. Except for some attempts to cross boundaries with it; some of them are either completely underground or very poor productions and some of them had certain success and recognition, namely Los Jaivas2 and Miki Gonzalez3.
Los Jaivas was probably the first band to try to fusion traditional Andean instruments with jazz and classic rock sounds. They have a mixture of own compositions and cover versions of previous existing traditional songs. A very good combination of traditional instruments and rock sounds can be heard on their music as well as some synthesisers and early electronic sounds.
They are still playing and producing interesting material, but their style is the same than in the
1960s and 1970s, no big changes and exploration after their apex forty years ago. Miki González on the contrary has not stopped his musical evolution since he first started mixing Peruvian music with blues, rock and electronic music in the early 1980s, unfortunately, due to the heavy social content of his music, he was continuously censored and banned just like many other Andean musicians before. His last five albums (Café Inkaterra, Etnotronics: Apu Sessions, Iskay: Inka
2 Los Jaivas official website (accesed on 13 Aug 2010) 3 Miki Gonzalez official website (accesed on 13 Aug 2010)
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Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York
Beats, Hi Fi Stereo y Landó por Bulerías)4 show a very interesting exploration and research, where his Andean music gets very well integrated with very electronic sounds and a good production.
In Peru, the bands ‘El Polen’5 and ‘del Pueblo del Barrio’6 also tried an ambitious mixture of native instruments and the Rock and Roll of the 1980s, but perhaps the lack of a good production sank the projects. In the same country by the same time, the band ‘Alborada’7 wanted to get again the ties existing between North and South America centuries ago by taking some elements of both lands and putting them together into a certain kind of North American Andean music, where not only music is involved but also a whole show of dance and visual performances; to be noticed also, that they are one of the few of the bands who sing in Quechua and Aymara, the main native languages of the Andean culture, getting a very nice mixture, but probably the insertion of North
American folk with the Andean one, can turn out in some music where the essence of both cultures are blurred by each other.
The Argentinean band ‘Arbolito’8 is a very good example of a new band that wants to preserve the sound of the native instruments and traditional southern genres with very good rock, blues and pop. In their music, it is possible to find in the same song an Argentinean ‘chacarera’9 passage and suddenly fall into a blues groove and playing it with traditional Argentinean percussion; as well as some rock patterns accompanied by pan pipes. The band has enjoyed good
4 Gonzalez, Café Inklaterra (2004), Etnotronics: Apu Sessions (2005), Iskay: Inka Beats (2006), Hi Fi Stereo (2007) y Landó por Bulerías (2009) 5 El Polen Peru on MySpace Music (Accessed on 16 Aug 2010) 6 Del Pueblo del Barrion on lastfm.com (on 16 Aug 2010) 7 Alborada official website (on 16 Aug 2010) 8 Arbolito official website (on 16 Aug 2010)
9 Lancaster Lloyd, ‘Dances of Argentina’, 13. 7
Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York success in their country with their innovative work and their native tale telling lyrics. They have very well produced albums and excellent performers which make of this band a very interesting point of reference for the evolution of South American genres. However, they have concentrated their energies in only Argentinean music.
In a more international environment, the Brazilian André Matos10 and the Italian Luca Turilli11 have done excellent mixtures of Andean music and heavy metal where both genres coexist together in a very well achieved result. Luca Turilli did it only for the introduction of the song
‘New century’s tarantella’12 obtaining an amazing result that sounds very close of what I tried in a couple of songs into this project. André Matos did some bossa nova13 with his former band
Angra into the 1996’s album Holy Land14 but he went more into Andean Music six years after that with his band ‘Shaaman’ on the song ‘For Tomorrow’15 contained on their album ‘Ritual’ obtaining a good result but not very bold because they play heavy metal and Andean music but not strictly mixed.
When it comes to other countries and cultures, there are some artists who have influenced my work and ideas for the way they have treated their own traditional music with more modern sounds and instruments. One of the greatest examples is in the Czech Republic with the band
‘Cechomor’16; they have made of traditional Czech music an accessible music for everyone in their country, from very young people attracted by the guitars and very well played drums, to the elder generations who enjoy listening again to these old tunes in a better produced way. ‘Gigi
10 Andre Matos on MySpace (accessed on Aug 16) 11 Luca Turilli official website (on Aug 16) 12 Turilli, Luca. Prophet of the last eclipse (2002), track 9 13 Broughton, Ellingham, Trillo, ‘World Music’, 336 14 Angra, Holy Land (1996) 15 Shaaman, Ritual (2002), track 4 16 Cechomor official website (Accessed on Aug 16) 8
Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York
Shibabaw’17 is also a great example with music from Ethiopia; she takes native instruments, native language and writes her own songs obtaining a very modern and new sound. In the United
Kingdom, my biggest influence is the composer ‘Mike Oldfield’; he has done some approaches to traditional British music making it fit into his more electronic and new age sound, a very good example of this is the song ‘She moved through the fair18’ contained on his album ‘The Voyager’ from 1996.
However, although a fistful of bands have tried to cross boundaries with Andean music, there has not been too much exploration with the sound of the traditional instruments. We are talking about instruments such as the ‘Quena’, the Pan pipes and the ‘Charango’ and that is another of the aims of this project, to do some research trying to get new sounds out the traditional instruments, as well as giving them some different roles into the tunes than the usual ones they have always had.
Fig 1. Quena, Zampoña and Charango, the main traditional instruments used in the album
17 Gigi on MySpace (on Aug 16) 18 Oldfield, Voyager (1996), track 6. 9
Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York
As another approach of the project, the final mix of this album is done in surround sound to achieve a different feeling coming from the Andean music not yet done. This kind of mixes have been explored in main stream music for a while and there have been a considerable amount of albums produced in 5.1 format with some level of acceptance among the audience, but this technology has not reached Andean music yet.19
Personal backgrounds relevant to the project
My musical influences can be found in many fields. I was raised with classical musical due to the influence of my father who made me love Ludwig Van Beethoven, Antonio Vivaldi and Felix
Mendelssohn Bartholdy among others, but it was later when I found renaissance music and fell in love with the harmony and melodies from this period. William Byrd, Giovanni Pierluigi da
Palestrina, John Downland and Claudio Monteverdi became my matter of study for a long time and madrigals became one of my favourite forms to listen to. Currently, the influence from the renaissance can be clearly heard in my music. But during my teenage years, most of the time I was listening to music, it was devoted to melodic Metal. Heavy Metal20, Power Metal21 and
Progressive Metal22 were my biggest influences for many years; I played for eight years in a
Melodic Heavy Metal band. As a songwriter it was the first time I was experimenting to put different kinds of music together, I tried to take some of the elements of renaissance music into our hard rock, it was not that hard to do, but it was not as innovative as we would have liked. In the quest for a unique sound among the metal bands around us, we tried also to do some
19 List of albums released in 5.1 audio on wikipedia 20 Heavy Metal in allmusic (accessed on Aug 19) 21 Power Metal in allmusic (on Aug 19) 22 Progressive Metal in allmusic (on Aug 19) 10
Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York integration with New Age music23. In order to understand better the journey we were about to approach, I got more into New Age music; artists like Vangelis24, Mike Oldfield25, Brian Eno26 and Hans Zimmer27 were part of my daily study for a long time. The attempt tuned out well, but was not that successful in our city where metal fans are very conservative and did not appreciate that new sound that much. But all the exploration into sound processing and synthesisers opened a new world for me and at the end of 2006 I left my Metal band to start writing my own songs with my new style. As a performer, playing in Metal helped me a lot to develop my skills as a drummer, which was my first role there and since it is a very demanding genre, these skills have been the basis of a good rock accompaniment in future projects. I also improved my capability as a guitar player since is the instrument I usually use to compose new music and along the computer and the tools it offers, they became my main method of writing music.
Taking the metal out, I had the task to work on my own songs taking basically the same influences than before. New Age music, classic rock, electronic music and renaissance marked the path of my style.
As part of a musicians’ family, many styles of music passed through my ears in my young years. Andean music was not the exception; it was widely heard and performed by some members of my family at the time. I also grew with it and I have felt it as part of my blood my whole life. Bands like ‘Inti Illimani’28, ‘Illapu’29, ‘Quilapayún’30 and ‘Urubamba’31 have been
23 New Age Music in allmusic (on Aug 19) 24 Vangelis’ movements (on Aug 19) 25 Mike Oldfield official (on Aug 19) 26 Eno Web(on Aug 19) 27 Hans Zimmer on MySpace (on Aug 19) 28 Inti Illimani official website (accessed on Aug 20) 29 Illapu Officiall website (on Aug 20) 30 Quilapayun official website (on Aug 20) 11
Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York present in my jukebox since my early years. The first one of these has been a big influence for me when talking about Andean music, first of all because they have been present in the Andean spheres for more than 30 years exploring all kind of South American music genres and instruments; and second because they have arranged plenty of traditional tunes from the region, therefore they have been a big matter of study for me due to the way they approach the arrangement process. Many songs that I have always had in mind to arrange, have also been covered by them in a very nice way, but still they stay with the traditional instruments and forms of the original tunes. Same to say about ‘Urubamba’ and ‘Quilapayún’ but ‘Illapu’ on the other hand have always been recognised not for bringing old traditional tunes, but for writing their own material which have became traditional songs by now. They have been producing Andean music also for almost 40 years and still playing, currently they have had some approaches with pop music after including electric bass guitar, keyboards and drums to their songs.
Taking all these influences and genres together has been a constant challenge in my writing process until the date of today. Mixing sounds and genres has been a passion since then and all the music I have written so far has given me a lot of elements and expertise to approach the current project.
31 Urubamba on allmusic (on aug 20) 12
Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York
The album
Tracklist
1. Arriba Quemando el Sol (3:46) 2. La Fiesta de San Benito (3:23) 3. La Partida (4:30) 4. Run Run se Fue pa’l Norte (4:12) 5. Ocaso (2:13) 6. La Palomita (3:52)
Description
The main product that is coming out of this project is a short length album, containing six traditional Andean songs adapted for rock and electronic music.
Basically I wanted to take some of the most representative songs of the Andean culture and make them evolve into very different sounds and versions.
With the selected tunes I covered four of the most common and traditional genres of our music, they are called ‘Rin’, ‘Carnavalito’, ‘Huayno’. These genres are the accompaniment for traditional dances in the Andean region except for a later adaptation of them called ‘Nueva canción chilena’ (New Chilean chant) where they took the same musical genres and they put on it more social lyrics. These styles that are usually written for guitar, quena, charango, pan pipes,
Andean bass drum and vocals.
Through the album, the listener can hear an assortment of music styles blended along the play time.
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Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York
It starts with the song ‘Arriba Quemando el Sol’, written by Violeta Parra32 in 1960 for guitar,
‘bombo legüero’ and vocals. This is not an example of a festive song, as she shows on the lyrics the hard situation of the miners’ life in Chile. I arranged the song in a more electronic way, but still, it takes elements from the traditional and rock instruments. The second tune of the album is a more rocker example of the work; ‘La Fiesta de San Benito’ which is a traditional Bolivian song widely played in the continent and many times covered by different artists and bands. It is followed by ‘La Partida’ a song written by Víctor Jara33 in 1974 for charango, ‘tiple’34, guitar, quena and percussion, included oh his album El derecho de vivir en paz (the right of living in peace). In the album this song is a mixture of many elements like rhythmic surround charangos, electric guitar and drums solo, electronic accompaniment etc. the fourth song ‘Run Run se fue pa’l norte’ is a good example of a ‘Rin’, written by Violeta Parra in 1966 for charango and voice, arranged for the album in a piano ballad version with a mid tempo interlude containing traditional wind instruments along with the rock band where voices and melodic instruments come all around the listener. ‘Ocaso’ which is a traditional Peruvian song not very well known is the fifth song and I chose it for all the alternatives it brings to be adapted to rock. The album closes with an electronic arrangement of the song ‘La Palomita’, a Peruvian ‘Huayno’ also very widely played by many artists in the Andean region, and still is not very easy to find recorded versions of it; the most relevant aspects of this song is the blend of the synthesisers with a choir arrangement of the song, coexisting also with traditional instruments; a very challenging song to be performed and mixed, where surround sound plays a main role in order to give more detail about all the music going on.
32 Violeta Parra official website (accessed on Jul 30) 33 Victor Jara on allmusic (on Jul 30) 34 Tiple on Cumpiano website (on Jul 30) 14
Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York
The instruments I have used in the making of this album are: electric guitar, acoustic guitar, 12 strings guitar, bass guitar, drums, piano, charango, pan pipes, quena, quenacho and vocals, along with a wide gamma of synthesisers and electronic instruments.
Andean music is not a very challenging music to be mixed and produced, since all of the instruments tend to complement themselves in a right way when we talk about spectral information and type of sounds, but when they are taken into a rock band and their sounds are changed with processing, many issues can appear and then the challenge starts.
The Quena is one of the most important instruments in this music; it is a wooden instrument that produces a sound similar to the flute but more airy due to its construction. Because of this reason, a right technique for its recording is essential, given that all of this air going out of the instrument can produce a very undesirable noisy sound full of high frequencies not needed to capture the essence of the instrument. The instrument has six front holes and a little back hole. It is usually tuned in G, being G4 the lowest possible note with all the holes covered.
The Quenacho is a bigger in size and lower-toned version of the Quena, they have the same kind of construction and the same amount of holes. This one is usually tuned in C or D, being C4 or D4 the lowest note possible with all the holes covered.
The Pan pipes or pan flutes (‘Zampoña’ in Spanish and also well known as ‘Siku’ in Aymara language) are well known worldwide since it’s been widely used by many artists from many different genres all over the world. Again a good recording technique has to be used in order to prevent too much air going against the mics; a pops filter is sometimes recommended for this. As it gets very difficult to do some fast passages with this instrument, it is very usual to find that
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Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York these melodies are split into two players, one plays the upbeat notes and the other the downbeats, the result is usually panned in stereo, one player through the left and another through the right, which sometimes doesn’t turn out into a good result because the melodic sense is sometimes harmed. In spite of that, when some notes from the instrument are taken through the surround system and some processing is applied a very interesting effect can be obtained without harming the sense of the melodies that the pipes want to transmit.
Charango has a mid-high frequencies with a chain of harmonics very spaced from each other, what gives it its unique timbre, slightly similar to the Hawaiian ‘Ukulele’, Russian ‘Balalaika’,
Venezuelan ‘Cuatro’ and all this kind of small-sized stringed instruments. This spectral behavioural gets usually very well complemented by the acoustic guitar, since the range of their fundamental frequencies are almost adjacent. Besides the envelope that charango produces, has a quick attack, decay, sustain and release; therefore, unless played in tremolo, its sound is not constantly fighting for spectral space with the rest of the Andean instruments. For that reason, I wanted to see what could happen with its behavioural when I start playing it in different patterns than the regulars, inserting several coinciding charangos and also trying sound processing with it.
It gets more challenging as more complex spectral information starts coming out of it as well as more spread and overlapping envelopes are obtained.
When mixed with the rest of the rock band and the synthesisers, the music started to ask for a more spread panning while very interesting dialogues started to appear between the different instruments. That was in first place the reason that encouraged the music to go into a surround sound exploration. Making the listener take part of the spatial dialogue turned out as an extremely nice experiment that took the project into a whole new dimension, literal and figuratively. One of
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Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York the main roots of Andean music is that it is meant to be a social chant, music to be enjoyed in a community sharing the same social interests. Making the listener get inside the music can clearly give a sense of that, when the different instruments and voices come and go around. Surround sound was the answer for this challenge within the project.
One of the first decisions I had to make about traditional instruments was if I should get them and play them or just replacing them by virtual instruments or pre-recorded loops. Both alternatives had their pros and cons. The first one will always be better in some aspects; there is a bigger chance of experimenting on what to play and how to play it, also trying different achieved sounds by the use of different recording techniques; it gives a more real sound and the colour that actual played instruments give. The disadvantages of this option were manly two of them, first of all I had to get the instruments from somewhere because I just had a quena with me, and after that, I am still not a wind instruments player and I had never played a charango before. For this reason, the second alternative could look more appealing, I could save some time of rehearsing and recording and money for the cost of the instruments. However, the limitations that this alternative brings are a matter to consider, since a lot of freedom performing the instruments disappears and many new things to be explored with them are not possible; plus, the natural sound that a played instrument gives cannot be replaced for a machine. Considering all these arguments, I considered that the most suitable alternative to adopt for this project was the real instruments one. With this decision made and after buying all the instruments, a rehearsing and experimentation stage started. Not only with these traditional instruments but also the rest of them. Also, since all the music was going to be mixed with electronics, the humanity that performance offers was needed in order to keep in the music the essence of social chant.
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Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York
I had a couple of collaborations in the recording of all the material, the piano and the quena were not recorded by me, besides that, all the rest of instruments were. Drums, guitars, quenacho, pan pipes, charango, etc. had to be first rehearsed while experimenting what could fit better for the different arrangements, and then recorded.
Having a rock band along with the traditional instruments performing the traditional tunes of the continent was acceptable and sometimes sounds good enough to take some pieces into a whole new stage, where it is possible to obtain completely new and unheard experiments out of them. But in some other cases, the songs do not necessarily ask for a rock accompaniment, or if they do, it is not good enough to make it sound something new or not yet made. In these cases, electronics take an essential role. As in the beginning of times for Andean music, where the first performers did not want to accept any new instruments into it, in order to preserve the true nature of the sound, electronics have not been widely used on it either. Apart from the works of
‘Alborada’ and ‘Miki González’ there are not very successful attempts to take these elements into this music. González has been more into experimental music rather than commercial as Alborada does. In my personal opinion, if we want to take music one step ahead and get it into a more modern environment, electronics are absolutely fundamental and that is why I decided to adopt it and use it in my album as a very important element, since it opens thousands of doors for music and gives millions of alternatives to make tunes sound different and innovative.
When I talk about electronics in my music, I am basically talking about two main streams, synthesisers and sound processing. With this last one I did two basic things, processing the already recorded instruments to give them more alternatives in sounds and also processing different audio samples and then inserting them into the music to make them take part into the
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Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York different pieces as new instruments; similar to the role played by the synthesisers used in the project, where several of them were used, messed around and combined to achieve the kind of sounds that the pieces were asking for. Also a good thing about the electronic elements into this music was that it is possible to have good control of them by setting the right parameters and characteristics when the knowledge of how things work is present.
When many complex sounds are obtained by means of this process, a bigger issue is created when it comes to mix some kind of sounds with a very rich and wide spectrum with a whole existing band occupying the same space. A big work of production had to be made to make them all coexist and once more, surround sound was essential to accomplish this task. This mixing technique, can proportion a better way for the listener to appreciate many details that my music is giving when all this elements come together. Therefore, when the music is heard, the listeners do not have to be necessarily in the right position between the speakers, but they can also move around the room in order to get more details of the instrument or sounds that may call their attention, the songs are then, made to be heard several times if you still want to get into more detail about all the presents instruments and sounds.
I would like to mention that for this project I wanted to do a tribute to two of the most influential Andean composers of all times. The Chileans Violeta Parra and Victor Jara. Coming from very poor families and without a proper musical education, they both on their own careers created some tunes that have been the inspiration of hundreds of South American artists, me included. In a further album I would like to arrange more of their fantastic songs as they are a true stamp of the South American culture and art. In the current project it is included a song of
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Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York
Víctor Jara (‘La Partida’) and two by Violeta Parra (‘Run Run se fue pa’l Norte’ and ‘Arriba
Quemando el Sol’).
Future works
The basic idea of doing something similar to the work I am doing, first came to me around three or four years ago, and during all that time I have gathered some ideas for many arrangements to be done yet. There are plenty of songs out there waiting to be arranged in this new style and since the exploration with the sound of the Andean instruments is still a very virgin field, there is a lot of sound processing to be done to quena, pan pipes and charango, as well as all the instruments involved in the music.
Because of the distance and the nature of the instruments it wasn’t possible to use more
Andean percussion, like ‘bombo legüero’ which is a bass drum whose drumheads are made of cow’s or lamb’s skin, ‘cajón peruano’ a box to be slapped of the front while seated on it,
‘llamalluvia’ or ‘palo de lluvia’ (rainstick in English) which is a long hollow tube filled up with seeds or beans that hit some pins or thorns inside of it. Nevertheless, some samples and virtual instruments were used to fulfill this need, however this is not the best way to go and I would prefer to have the real recordings of them for future recordings, and same as the rest of the instruments, process them to get new percussion sounds and make some loops with them in order to get some Andean-electronic patterns.
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Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York
Fig 2. Andean percussion, Cajón Peruano, Bombo Legüero and Llamalluvia
For this specific project, the surround panning of the material is fairly static, done it on purpose to give the listener time to appreciate all the elements involved in the music and to give the sense of being in the middle of the musicians performing the pieces, nevertheless for future works, as long as different sounds come into the music, the panning can be more playful and it could have more moderate movement. Also, a 7.1 mix and more channels could be used for it as more layers could appear.
A natural step ahead for this project would be to take the songs to stage and have live performances. It would absolutely challenging for many reasons, first of all, many musicians would be required in order to do an attractive show where the audience can see at every moment what happens on stage, and also because many of the instruments have to be processed, then the engineering work for the gig would be a delicate job, where the engineer has to be aware of all the panning and the routing of all the instruments in order for them to receive the right
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Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York processing. A later stage of the project could also include some audiovisual material, a mixture of pre-recorded video being modulated or interacting with the music playing.
Conclusions
At the beginning of the project I wanted to obtain a kind of music not yet made, something that can sound innovative, different, and yet to keep the Andean and South American feeling on every single piece.
It was demonstrated that Andean music is full of potential and offers a very wide gamma of possibilities for it to be taken into different levels and dimensions. The traditional instruments showed that they have some characteristics that make them suitable to be mixed with many modern sounds. The soft sound of the quena and the quenacho give a very good contrast to the drums and the electric guitar, whist the charango works as a terrific compliment for the guitars.
Electronic sounds and synthesisers create a very nice atmosphere to be an accompaniment for the vocals, and these melodies by themselves are very suitable to be harmonised with some more vocals.
Electronic resources are a very useful tool when used it carefully, it can clearly enrich a song by giving it a lot more detail, by filling some blanks, by giving some new sounds to lead melodies, by helping achieving some wanted effects, by offering new alternatives to old sounds, etc. But can be something really hard to handle as well, since many more elements may appear and there is still the responsibility of making things be appreciated. Consequently, it may be the start of a very interesting journey with a lot of exploration and experimenting but also the beginning of a lot of problems in the production stage, where very small changes can result either 22
Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York in considerable issues or a great solution, a very thin line is marked and a very critical ear is needed to get the best result out of it.
The project was originally intended to be in stereo, but in the middle of the project I realised that for all the reasons explained above, it was one of the biggest changes to the original idea or at least the one that increased the work the most in the final stages.
One thing to point is that I never really felt like I was exploring the possibilities of mixing genres, I rather felt like giving new elements to a determined folk music, foreign to it so far in its own history. At the end of the day, Andean music, rock and electronic music have many common elements and they can be put together to make a richer music by complementing themselves.
This project is just the beginning of a whole era of exploration, not only because of the music to be arranged and written, but also because technology moves constantly and new tools and elements may appear to enrich the music. For sure this project is not the end of this adventure but only the beginning, as I consider that this job has to be done for the sake of our culture and as I mentioned before, the idea of this project has been in my head for several years and many ideas are still to be developed. I enjoy doing this so much that I know that the exploration will carry on for a long time.
Acknowledgements
Some persons were vital in the development of this project; therefore I would like to thank my classmate Roberto Murguia for his constant support, critic, help and for playing the piano in ‘Run
Run se Fue pa’l Norte’. Salomé González for playing the Quena in ‘La Fiesta de San Benito’ and
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Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York
‘Run Run se Fue pa’l Norte’. My supervisor Dr. Ambrose Field for his constant help and guidance. My father and my mother as they are always my first source of support through all the paths I take in life.
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Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York
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Final Research Project Examination number Y4776846 Dept. of Music by Jorge Valencia University of York
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