Thursday 27th October – Graphical Music Scores

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Jay

This week, I wanted to plan a piece of music I’m writing for my Dreams project. Now, I’m inexperienced (although not ignorant of) traditional music notation as I have always found it a little irrelevant to my needs and ideas. Of course, there’s no denying that it orders things nicely and brings about ideas just by it’s use but when you have an audio scratch-pad like Logic Pro, it’s not the best way to create. So basically, I create and organise using the sounds themselves and the computer visuals (as well as my mind of course). This week, I had various jobs to do so I thought I’d see if my efficiency in making music could be improved by making a more detailed plan than usual.

As I have written about before, my current interests include drawing sound from abstract ideas and creating atmosphere. I have been using a main theme and using descriptive words to describe that theme in the context I want to write about. I then translate these descriptive ideas and words into sound (through the filter of my own perception of course). Notes aren’t important so much as I rely on my playing instincts to provide those, although theory is used when layering and directing the textures.

So, what is a graphical score? Basically, traditional notation is a visual cue and organiser of music. Somewhere along the line, someone thought ‘why don’t we use any picture or symbol to elicit a feeling, note, series of notes, sound etc.’ As a graphical score also deals with atmosphere in an abstract way it seemed very relevant and natural to put my plan down on paper in this way. I had seen a couple graphic scores before although they weren’t accompanied by explanation, but in any case the great thing about them is they are pretty self-explanatory, meaning I felt comfortable trying my own. Just giving it a go also follows part of my ‘ethos’ where you should never be afraid to try something if it is doing it’s intended job.

The piece I worked on this week is called ‘Flying’ and is in the context of a dream (thought I’d start with something pretty obvious to make it easier on myself!). I started by making a list of ideas surrounding the theme. Usually I would go straight to designing the sounds for each theme and sort out the structure once I have those but this time I chose a symbol for each sound and created a structure and map of them interacting over time. This produced the graphical score below:

The next step will be to create sounds for each symbol/symbol section and start weaving them together!

A great thing about a graphical score is that some one else could also use it in their music, or anything else for that matter, allowing for individual creativity within the guideline of the score; making the work so much more than it could be otherwise. This is because, theoretically, it’s full realisation may never happen until every person on the planet has added their perception of it i.e. when there are still options open it remains unfinished. It therefore follows that one idea or score could (potentially) be absolutely huge with an incredible amount of depth after many many influences have contributed to it. You could say this about any score of course, but here the guidelines are far looser than the traditional score and it follows the results would be more varied and richer as a result.

I haven’t yet worked on the music for this score but am very much looking forward to it. It feels very natural and comfortable so I have a feeling the results will be better than usual…. Hopefully I wont be eating my words…

Search the internet for graphical scores. Some of them are normal-looking photographs while others use parts of traditional notation, but they are all designed to the same end: the production of sound derived from abstract thought; or music, if you like…

Thursday 13th October 2011 – Watching the Stars

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Jay

Download:

This week, I have started work on some original bedtime music for children. Those of you that have been reading my blog for a while may know about the EP I released called Bedtime Nursery Rhymes, and this is a follow-on from that. This time, rather than use well-established children’s tunes, I wanted to create something with the same concept of sleep-promotion but with original music and with no association to anything lyrical (to keep the focus on the sounds).

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about the concept I have been using to create sounds and I thought I would talk about my first go at creating this new bedtime music using these ideas. This track was started with just the name ‘Watching the Stars’ which, as you can see, provided me with two concepts: the idea of watching (stars), and the stars themselves.

I started off by creating the stars, as this would be most obvious and could lead to other ideas. I needed a sparkly, shiny sound; which I translated as high-pitched, pure with some kind of quick, defined attack (note onset). The initial sound would also fade quickly but echo as well as move across the soundscape randomly with varying strengths (some stars are brighter than others!). My synth of choice seems to be Logic’s Sculpture at the moment so I created this sound (along with the others used) using that.

Next, I looked at ‘watching’ and ‘watching stars’ in particular. From this I gathered a sense of space, in terms of being outside (better than watching under glass I think!) as well as the enormity of outer-space; a sense of wonder and amazement; and a sense of calm. As another issue, I realised that the piece would need some kind of melody to make it listenable, although this shouldn’t be too catchy or strong as these factors could impede relaxing and sleep. Having some kind of melody would also serve the second concept of ‘watching’. This is because a melody moves and gives a sense of movement and this is exactly what happens when you scan any particular scene; your eyes move as well as the thoughts accompanying them.

The initial melody I used, although calming, didn’t go anywhere and the monotony it created was far from creating the sense of wonder that I wanted, although the intended meditative affect was there. Thankfully, Sculpture has a great envelope function that allows you to change the character of the sound over time which adds some variation as well as a sense of ‘something bigger’. I also thought that things would need to be randomised a little to enhance the feeling of the enormity and again, ‘something bigger’. To do this I accompanied the main, varying melody with other notes created using a slight variation of the same synth sound and made them bolster the main melody but also to confuse it a little.

The final part of the puzzle was to ground the whole piece in a physical space. This was done using reverberation as usual, but also by using a backdrop of sound that I had recorded whilst in Italy over the summer. This is the sound of crickets that I had recorded near Rocco on the Italian Riviera which I trimmed to give a clean file that would seamlessly loop. The recording wasn’t perfect though as there was a bit of wind and rumble from cars, so I just cut out all of the low frequencies. As the noises that crickets make aren’t in the same range as low rumbles, this didn’t compromise the audio too much and it is generally the high frequencies in sound that give you the sense of space that I required. You will notice that the cricket noises aren’t very loud at all and that’s because I didn’t really want the cricket noises as such, but a sense of the atmosphere that the sounds were created in. To achieve this as subtly as possible, I made sure that the noises of the crickets were loud enough to be just heard, but when taken out left the whole piece feeling emptier. Of course, the actual character of the cricket noises do add a lot to the feel of the piece but I feel the setting deserved more attention than this subject matter.

Well, here it is below. Press play to have a listen and let me know what you think! I aim to create other pieces like this for the same concept but using other themes over the next few weeks.

Download:

Thursday 31st March 2011 – Bedtime Nursery Rhymes

Posted on March 31, 2011 by transientmusic

‘Bedtime Nursery Rhymes’ is a little project that I have been working at on-and-off for a few months now amongst all the other stuff that I’m involved in. It grew from a combined wish to work on something that had a more obvious market and also for me to have an excuse to experiment with conceptual sound; playing with sound synthesis is something I have wanted to do more of for a while now.

The idea of the compilation was to choose well-known nursery rhymes that I could use and tailor to work together as a whole to promote calm feelings and aid sleep in children. Also, I have fond memories of certain story books that I read as a young child due to the magical atmospheres they created. If I could create something that would invoke these kinds of magical feelings whilst having a valid use and it also allow me to experiment, I would be very happy.

To create these atmospheres I would need a palette of songs that would invoke visual imagery as well as work towards that calming feeling; the songs chosen were almost of little importance as it was the effect that I wanted to create, however, choosing well-known tunes would have an obvious advantage. So, I ended up choosing: ‘Curly Locks’; ‘It’s Raining It’s Pouring’; ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’; ‘Rock-a-Bye Baby’; ‘Kum Ba Yah’ and ‘Brahms’ Lullaby’ (originally known as ‘Good Evening, Good Night’).

For the sounds I used some synthesizers from the Logic Pro audio recording and production software, the Sculpture synthesizer in particular. Sculpture works on a basis that other synths don’t usually take into account. Synthesizers usually allow you to make various types of sound wave and then merge them together in different ways to produce different sounds. They usually also allow you to manipulate these sounds further using various effects but Sculpture was designed to work a bit more like a traditional instrument. Within the software you effectively manipulate a string like you would do on any traditional, analogue instrument; you get to choose what this string is made from (glass, wood, metal), how the string is being vibrated (plucked, hit, etc) and even how the medium around it is behaving (is it thick like water or thin like air?). Amongst these parameters you also find more traditional synth settings (which I wont go into in fear of alienating the non-musical reader!), some effects and even a control over the imaginary pick-up that converts the string’s vibration into electrical energy (like the pick-up on an electric guitar which enables it to be an electrical instrument). One function of Sculpture in particular that I have not yet talked about is the most interesting for me as well as being important considering the thematic nature of the music: As described, Sculpture allows you to use different types of string manipulation (plucking etc) but you can layer three types on top of eachother and one of these can even be an input from an audio clip. Any audio clip at all can be used to morph your sound and, as will be seen, it is this that formed the basis of some of the tracks.

Now for the actual pieces of music…..

The tune for ‘Curly Locks’ is actually used in various nursery rhymes but I used this one as I wanted to create some visual imagery and I thought a great way would be to make some sounds feel curly… The sounds used here are therefore wavy, slightly pulsating and also move around from one speaker to the other. I also chose to have a bouncing ball effect sounding Sculpture’s imaginary string. Being the most lively of all the tunes I decided that this one should be first.

To enable calm passage into sleep I decided that each track should merge into the next and next up would be ‘It’s Raining, It’s Pouring’. This used the Sculpture synth in a more obvious manner and predictably enough I chose an audio clip of rain to sound it’s imaginary string. I also used a similar idea with ‘Kum Ba Yah’ where I used an audio clip of a fire burning. For both of these tracks I wanted the main melody to be far away from the background noise. With ‘…Pouring’ I wanted to invoke the feeling of being inside , safe and dry behind a window on a quiet evening whilst watching the rain. The rain and uncomfortable wetness that goes with it would be very distant and in real-life it is the rhythmic pitter-patter of the rain on a window that I personally find very comforting. This idea was very similar in the creation of ‘Kum Ba Yah’. For this one I wanted the effect of somebody telling a magical story around the camp-fire before bedtime in a forest that Tolkien may have written about; distant, other-worldly melodies convey the story whilst other background noises emulate the fire and the non-threatening wild-life within the forest. Not somewhere to be scared, but somewhere to excite the imagination.

‘Twinkle, Twinkle…’ was designed to feel like staring up at a clear, silent and soothing night’s sky. I always get a childish wonder and amazement at how vast the night sky is when I look at it and it is this I wanted to capture. Towards the end of the track, the stars even begin to sparkle at various points across the sky. The music then gradually merges into ‘…Baby’ and it is here where I really wanted to step down a gear towards sleep. The rhyme conjures up images of wind in the tree-tops as well as sleep (although I didn’t want to have any mention of any falling cradles!). So, for this I chose noises synthesized to sound like calm breezes and after a while of playing around with the sounds and rhythm, I noticed that I could create a soft, regular breathing noise of somebody sleeping.

Finally, Brahms’ Lullaby makes a soothing entrance to finally lull the listener to sleep with all of the imagery of the previous tracks to fuel wondrous dreams . There was no real obvious connection of sound here for me but I fondly remembered a music box my mum once owned that played this tune so therefore I tried to create a music box tinkle to carry the melody. There are a couple of pre-made music box sounds amongst all the synth on Logic Pro but as they didn’t really hit the spot I ended up creating my own that I felt was delicate enough. The background noise in this track was actually one of the first things that I thought of when I came up with the idea for ‘Bedtime Nursery Rhymes; arguably the most comforting noise we are ever exposed to could be said to be the noise a baby may hear in the womb and I have actually heard a couple of sleep aids that try to replicate this. Of course, I have no scientific basis around choosing the sounds that I did but I could not deny that these sounds really had a pleasing, meditative effect on me. Therefore I decided to create my own version but, as with all of the sounds I created for the collection, I wanted to hint and influence imagination rather than force-feed. The imagination is a powerful thing and above all I wanted to get this working to create fond memories that could even stay with some one into adulthood. I thought that if I could create a special state of mind that would excite and intrigue then I would have achieved what any musician hopes to do. Why should edgy music for adults be needed to achieve this…?

Thursday 3rd February 2011 – Don’t Get Carried Away

Posted on February 3, 2011 by transientmusic

For some reason, over the past week or so people that actually read this blog have been telling me that they take an interest in it and what I do. This is pretty amazing really as up until now it really has felt like I’m writing to the void. In a peculiar way it is quite fitting that this week’s post was intended to be more of a listen than a read…

My newest song is called ‘Don’t Get Carried Away’. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to do with it but my partner in crime for Henry Spencer Project, Pia Berg, said she’d think it cool if we used it. As this song is a bit of a cross-pollination between different interests I would like to talk a bit about it…

Don’t Get Carried Away is the third song that I have written as a solo effort (not taking into account a few singer’s-point-of-view suggestions Pia has made!) My first one is posted on my music page but this one really has been a sort of maturity in my songwriting. Have a listen to Don’t Get Carried Away while you read by clicking here.

First of all, the main guitar part isn’t mine… Lesley Flower wrote this after her first guitar lesson with me. I concentrated on getting her to make sounds and to strengthen her fingers. I find no value in teaching people songs when they want to learn the instrument and actually use it. Replicating a song is for iTunes and technique can be picked up other ways. I was very pleasantly surprised when she showed me the result of her efforts. She was making her own tunes not playing a half-baked Oasis song… However, it seems she did pick up my style somewhat as the melody may even sound at home in a Lunar Rising song! …Anyway, I turned a metronome on and held a mic to the strings and asked her to play… As well as it being a pretty little melody, the awkward picking style only a beginner has lends a lovely innocence to the tune and I feel this really adds to a resulting lullaby feel. Lesley messed around with some midi strings but I used the surrounding chords to see through my admiration for the tune in my own way…

The second influence has been through a development about subject matter. Some that know me realise I’m quite opinionated on stuff that’s close to me (although I hope not in an obnoxious way!). Through chatting to people on Twitter (as well as ‘real life’ friends!) I started to realise that some have the same opinions as me (for a change!). In particular, TheRealBobby004 said something about extremist Islam that really hit home with my beliefs and it was this conversation that led me to convey my ideas in this song. (if you’re on Twitter, follow him, he’s a nice guy and balances the all too popular general/ignorant views of what Islam can be. No, I’m not religeous by the way…).

Lastly, a seemingly minor contribution comes from the synth sound used in the song, especially at the break before the last chorus. This may seem a small aesthetic contribution but it has derived from my blossoming interest in the more artistic, experimental side of sound/music. I designed this sound for the art project I am creating with Lesley and I used the ‘Sculpture’ synthesiser that comes with the Logic Pro sequencer. The sound came from the making of a soundtrack for one of Lesley’s photographs; part of the background in the photo is quite blurry and I wanted to convey this with a sound… Out of context and using different notes, the sound conveys a different notion….. but in any case enough of the waffling… If you haven’e heard the song yet, have a listen by clicking here.