Why do i create music? Noone buys my recordings, noone wants to learn to play my music, and very few people other than myself have listened to more than a few pieces. So, why bother?
Well, it's what i do. I've spent my whole life studying, playing, and creating music. I enjoy it. There is music running through my brain all day and night. Why stop just because i don't get paid for it?
I'm not interested in the restrictions that composing for hire brings, nor am i interested in the cost of producing mass consumable media. I like recording music in my basement and publishing it myself online. I shouldn't have to pay the registration fee to claim copyright, then pay dues to a performing rights association, and keep track of licensing fees, and all of thatt crap to make music, so i don't. You wouldn't want to hear my music on the radio, it's not radio friendly.
I don't need a producer using a $10,000 microphone to capture my silly guitar pieces. I don't need thousand dollar amplifiers, engineers, or mastering. I don't need studio musicians, an agent, or pr. I don't need a band, or a tour bus, or a live crew. All i need is to get the music out of my brain and into some audible format.
You are more than welcome to like it, or hate it, or ignore it. You can even tell me so, and i'll respond in some appropriate fashion. I make music, whether or not anybody cares.
Cheers.
Thursday, December 21, 2017
Sunday, September 10, 2017
why should i like bad music?
I don't think there is such a thing as "bad music."
Sure, there is music you don't like, poorly executed music, music you don't understand, there are people you don't like who make music, genres of "noise," music you are embarrased to admit you that you listen to, music in complex time signatures that you can't dance to, screaming, poorly recorded, formulaic, overproduced, scary, silly, unfinished, boring, ear wormy............
But, none of that is "bad." Bad music would imply harm, psychological torture, physical sickness, not just unappealing but harmful. People are harmful, music is not.
It's a made up ratio, but i'd say music is a 15 to 1 ratio. For every 1 thing you like, there are 15 things you don't. That's not bad. That's just you. Your distaste should not translate to other people. Some people don't have the time, energy, desire, to experience what they don't like in search of a moment of enjoyment. Some people think being a musician is not a valid job. I would argue that a musician is the real life embodiment of the political spectrum. Someone who must compromise their own likes and desires with the world at large to reach a stable relationship. Musicians must play what you say you want, even if they themselves don't like it, and even when it turns out that you didn't really want it. If you abandon them, they must keep going in seach of a new patron.
Some people don't like or think of music as an art form. For some people, music is the disposable paper plate of on the go entertainment. Yet, it seems wrong to deny the lovers of music their pleasure as well. If it's all about money we all lose, but if it's not about money at all we all still lose.
Art and science are two of the many things that don't mesh well with market based capitalism. They require a large degree of blind investment and an understanding of the small but vital return on that investment. An idea is only as powerful or good as the people who turn that idea into a reality, and a lot of people favor immediate pleasure over philosophical investigation.
There is no such thing as bad music, only music that you don't like. That's my opinion, for what it's worth.
Cheers
Sure, there is music you don't like, poorly executed music, music you don't understand, there are people you don't like who make music, genres of "noise," music you are embarrased to admit you that you listen to, music in complex time signatures that you can't dance to, screaming, poorly recorded, formulaic, overproduced, scary, silly, unfinished, boring, ear wormy............
But, none of that is "bad." Bad music would imply harm, psychological torture, physical sickness, not just unappealing but harmful. People are harmful, music is not.
It's a made up ratio, but i'd say music is a 15 to 1 ratio. For every 1 thing you like, there are 15 things you don't. That's not bad. That's just you. Your distaste should not translate to other people. Some people don't have the time, energy, desire, to experience what they don't like in search of a moment of enjoyment. Some people think being a musician is not a valid job. I would argue that a musician is the real life embodiment of the political spectrum. Someone who must compromise their own likes and desires with the world at large to reach a stable relationship. Musicians must play what you say you want, even if they themselves don't like it, and even when it turns out that you didn't really want it. If you abandon them, they must keep going in seach of a new patron.
Some people don't like or think of music as an art form. For some people, music is the disposable paper plate of on the go entertainment. Yet, it seems wrong to deny the lovers of music their pleasure as well. If it's all about money we all lose, but if it's not about money at all we all still lose.
Art and science are two of the many things that don't mesh well with market based capitalism. They require a large degree of blind investment and an understanding of the small but vital return on that investment. An idea is only as powerful or good as the people who turn that idea into a reality, and a lot of people favor immediate pleasure over philosophical investigation.
There is no such thing as bad music, only music that you don't like. That's my opinion, for what it's worth.
Cheers
Saturday, September 9, 2017
the anarchist musical cookbook: a made up faq
You: Hey paul i've got some questions...
Me: Have at it.
Q: Can i enter zero for the price when i download your music from bandcamp without feeling any sense of shame or embarrasment?
A: Yes. I don't know about the embarrasment, though.
Q: Can i burn that downloaded music to a cd and play it in my car, or on my stereo?
A: Absolutely.
Q: Can i burn 100 cds and try to sell them to my friends?
A: That seems like a whole lot of work, and i'd be willing to bet that you don't make any money at all.
Q: But, let's say i did. Are you going to sue me?
A: Let's just say, i can't afford a lawyer, so probably not. Can i have 30%?
Q: I work for a record label. Could i download your music, give it to a transcriptionist, have a studio band rerecord it, file for copyright, claim it as our own, and sue you for copyright infringement?
A: I guess you could. Again, that seems like a lot of work, and i don't have lawyer money, so whatever. Can i have 30%?
Q: how would you like a recording contract?
A: Do i have to live in a van, get yelled at by strangers, or spend a significant amount of time outside of my basement? If so, no thank you.
Q: Do you want to be famous?
A: Holy hell, no.
Q: Are you a member of ascap, bmi, sesac, etc.?
A: Please go away, and leave me alone.
Q: Do you want to be in my band?
A: My minimum fee is $40 an hour. If i have to put up with bullshit, it's $75 an hour. If i have to live in a van, it's $350 per day, cash, no exceptions. So, probably not.
Q: You suck.
A: Not a question, but thanks for noticing i guess. Please go away.
Q: Can i give you some money without demanding anything more from you?
A: Absolutely, we're friends now.
Q: Do you play live?
A: Only for a lot of money, so no. I play for free in my basement every night, record the non-terrible stuff, and give you the option to download it for free on bandcamp. I think that's a pretty sweet deal, considering i make no money.
Q: Do you shred?
A: No. I think we can all agree that what i do is the opposite of shred. My solos are known to induce narcolepsy.
Q: Why are your videos pieced together from stock footage, or focused on your fingers?
A: Because A) i don't have a decent video camera, B) i like syncronizing small gestures to music, and 3) i think it's funny.
Q: Are you serious?
A: Rarely, and always.
Hope that clears up anything you weren't sure about.
Cheers
Me: Have at it.
Q: Can i enter zero for the price when i download your music from bandcamp without feeling any sense of shame or embarrasment?
A: Yes. I don't know about the embarrasment, though.
Q: Can i burn that downloaded music to a cd and play it in my car, or on my stereo?
A: Absolutely.
Q: Can i burn 100 cds and try to sell them to my friends?
A: That seems like a whole lot of work, and i'd be willing to bet that you don't make any money at all.
Q: But, let's say i did. Are you going to sue me?
A: Let's just say, i can't afford a lawyer, so probably not. Can i have 30%?
Q: I work for a record label. Could i download your music, give it to a transcriptionist, have a studio band rerecord it, file for copyright, claim it as our own, and sue you for copyright infringement?
A: I guess you could. Again, that seems like a lot of work, and i don't have lawyer money, so whatever. Can i have 30%?
Q: how would you like a recording contract?
A: Do i have to live in a van, get yelled at by strangers, or spend a significant amount of time outside of my basement? If so, no thank you.
Q: Do you want to be famous?
A: Holy hell, no.
Q: Are you a member of ascap, bmi, sesac, etc.?
A: Please go away, and leave me alone.
Q: Do you want to be in my band?
A: My minimum fee is $40 an hour. If i have to put up with bullshit, it's $75 an hour. If i have to live in a van, it's $350 per day, cash, no exceptions. So, probably not.
Q: You suck.
A: Not a question, but thanks for noticing i guess. Please go away.
Q: Can i give you some money without demanding anything more from you?
A: Absolutely, we're friends now.
Q: Do you play live?
A: Only for a lot of money, so no. I play for free in my basement every night, record the non-terrible stuff, and give you the option to download it for free on bandcamp. I think that's a pretty sweet deal, considering i make no money.
Q: Do you shred?
A: No. I think we can all agree that what i do is the opposite of shred. My solos are known to induce narcolepsy.
Q: Why are your videos pieced together from stock footage, or focused on your fingers?
A: Because A) i don't have a decent video camera, B) i like syncronizing small gestures to music, and 3) i think it's funny.
Q: Are you serious?
A: Rarely, and always.
Hope that clears up anything you weren't sure about.
Cheers
Monday, September 4, 2017
the independent artist (why most bands average less than 2 records)
I am an independent/diy recording artist. Usually when you hear those terms it means "not a subsidiary of a major record company," but i mean not a part of the business side of music at all. I don't have an agent, or a pr person, or a bar where i can play my weird music regularly, or friends who like to hang out and jam with me, or money to go to a real recording studio, or money to pay other musicians, or money to buy better gear, or a video camera to make regular youtube videos, or any people i don't know visiting my websites. I am literally a guy in his basement making music because i like to do so. I have to physically burn cds from my laptop, watch the progress bar progress while music uploads, buy one 100 dollar piece of gear at a time.
None of that should be taken as sounding bitter, or pitiful. I'm happy and productive, and have zero control over whether or not anybody cares. I don't beg for money, or expect anybody to do my work for me. What i do want is to expess what i dislike about the "music business," and tell people where their money really goes when they buy a cd or record (which i myself do quite often, hypocritical though it may seem).
What does your 16.99 really pay for? It pays for the record company's investment, the recording engineers, the manufacturers, the truck drivers, and the arbitration of taste. When you buy a shrink wrapped, bar coded, security tagged album, you are not really supporting the artist, you are supporting the assembly line that brought that artist to your attention. Is that necessarily bad? No, i don't think so. The bad part comes from believing that that's automatically better than going to a bar to hear a local band, or listening to your neighbor's kid practice in the garage, or spending an afternoon sifting through bandcamp/soundcloud pages. The bad part comes from thinking that record companies, tv, radio, etc. are a legitimizing force in the musical world. It's the "call me when you're famous" syndrome.
That mentality costs way more than mere money. It means that perfectly normal people have to travel from city to city in a van that keeps breaking down, never knowing if they will actually get paid at the next gig. It means that there is no middle ground between shitty bar (no offense to your bar), and 1000+ capacity arena (and the opening band still makes no money). There's no middle ground between hauling your own gear while eating peanut butter sandwiches and full on travelling show company. It means that a guy in his basement recording his own music because he loves it can't make any money at all. It means that you can't play your favorite cd over the intercom at work, that you can't hire a cover band without fear of ascap/bmi trying to take money from you, that there are no real djs on commercial radio anymore, that every other commercial on tv features a cover version of a famous song.
Now, the complicated part. Your 16.99 was vitally important to the store. People stopped buying cds and real record stores folded. But, they weren't replaced by diving back into the real world of music that surrounds you. Instead, they were replaced by streaming subscriptions and digital downloads. Tower, hastings, etc. were replaced by amazon, apple, and spotify. And, this only served to devalue the act of making music even further. That band you like no longer has physical shelf space; they may or may not randomly appear on an ever changing list of things to click on; they might get a front page feature for as little as 3 hours before whatever new thing catches the eyes and ears of the general public. More than ever it is vitally important for an artist to flood you with advertisements, and facebook posts, and crap interviews, because he or she who shouts loudest generates the most clicks. All because you have no physical engagement with the music they produce (who among you still buys actual recordings, plays an instrument, reads notated music?).
The arbiters of taste were not originally the bad guys, but we let them become the bad guys. The music business is now the business of keeping the machine alive. A record company can't produce physical music without investing huge amounts of money, and they can't invest that money without making an even larger amount of money first. That's how the machine works.
Which brings me back to the basement where i create music because i enjoy it. I'm not begging for your money, but i am saying that 10 bucks means a whole lot more to me than it does to the machine. It doesn't mean that i deserve it more than anyone else, but it does mean that i appreciate it more. If you're in the market to "support the artist," consider handing your money directly to them, rather than handing it to 300 other people and hoping that some of it makes its way to the artist. If you like physical cds/records, go to a store and buy them (they do still exist, and i myself do so when possible). If you like filtered mainstream music, pay the subscription fee. Just stop thinking that you're not allowed to like "amateur" musicians, and are prohibited from spending a small amount of money to buy them a better brand of peanut butter, or maybe a hamburger...
... feel free to comment or say i'm an idiot.
Cheers
None of that should be taken as sounding bitter, or pitiful. I'm happy and productive, and have zero control over whether or not anybody cares. I don't beg for money, or expect anybody to do my work for me. What i do want is to expess what i dislike about the "music business," and tell people where their money really goes when they buy a cd or record (which i myself do quite often, hypocritical though it may seem).
What does your 16.99 really pay for? It pays for the record company's investment, the recording engineers, the manufacturers, the truck drivers, and the arbitration of taste. When you buy a shrink wrapped, bar coded, security tagged album, you are not really supporting the artist, you are supporting the assembly line that brought that artist to your attention. Is that necessarily bad? No, i don't think so. The bad part comes from believing that that's automatically better than going to a bar to hear a local band, or listening to your neighbor's kid practice in the garage, or spending an afternoon sifting through bandcamp/soundcloud pages. The bad part comes from thinking that record companies, tv, radio, etc. are a legitimizing force in the musical world. It's the "call me when you're famous" syndrome.
That mentality costs way more than mere money. It means that perfectly normal people have to travel from city to city in a van that keeps breaking down, never knowing if they will actually get paid at the next gig. It means that there is no middle ground between shitty bar (no offense to your bar), and 1000+ capacity arena (and the opening band still makes no money). There's no middle ground between hauling your own gear while eating peanut butter sandwiches and full on travelling show company. It means that a guy in his basement recording his own music because he loves it can't make any money at all. It means that you can't play your favorite cd over the intercom at work, that you can't hire a cover band without fear of ascap/bmi trying to take money from you, that there are no real djs on commercial radio anymore, that every other commercial on tv features a cover version of a famous song.
Now, the complicated part. Your 16.99 was vitally important to the store. People stopped buying cds and real record stores folded. But, they weren't replaced by diving back into the real world of music that surrounds you. Instead, they were replaced by streaming subscriptions and digital downloads. Tower, hastings, etc. were replaced by amazon, apple, and spotify. And, this only served to devalue the act of making music even further. That band you like no longer has physical shelf space; they may or may not randomly appear on an ever changing list of things to click on; they might get a front page feature for as little as 3 hours before whatever new thing catches the eyes and ears of the general public. More than ever it is vitally important for an artist to flood you with advertisements, and facebook posts, and crap interviews, because he or she who shouts loudest generates the most clicks. All because you have no physical engagement with the music they produce (who among you still buys actual recordings, plays an instrument, reads notated music?).
The arbiters of taste were not originally the bad guys, but we let them become the bad guys. The music business is now the business of keeping the machine alive. A record company can't produce physical music without investing huge amounts of money, and they can't invest that money without making an even larger amount of money first. That's how the machine works.
Which brings me back to the basement where i create music because i enjoy it. I'm not begging for your money, but i am saying that 10 bucks means a whole lot more to me than it does to the machine. It doesn't mean that i deserve it more than anyone else, but it does mean that i appreciate it more. If you're in the market to "support the artist," consider handing your money directly to them, rather than handing it to 300 other people and hoping that some of it makes its way to the artist. If you like physical cds/records, go to a store and buy them (they do still exist, and i myself do so when possible). If you like filtered mainstream music, pay the subscription fee. Just stop thinking that you're not allowed to like "amateur" musicians, and are prohibited from spending a small amount of money to buy them a better brand of peanut butter, or maybe a hamburger...
... feel free to comment or say i'm an idiot.
Cheers
Thursday, April 6, 2017
the question i can't answer - artistic narcissism
I actually do get asked this question about my music: "what are you most proud of?"
I can't answer that question; i usually say whichever of my albums pops into my head first, or try to guage what the questioner would be interested in hearing. But, that is not a real answer.
The truth is that i am proud of everything and nothing all at the same time. I'm proud of every single piece of music i create, because so much is thrown into the garbage during the creative process. Every piece you see in my discography represents the abandonment of countless takes and other projects. Everything that makes it throught my self editing process is me, exactly the way it is supposed to be. The frequency of my creation is at odds with what i'm doing; i have music running through my head all day every day, unused music from 20+ years sitting on my hard drive/written on faded manuscript paper/lurking in the back of my mind, waiting patiently for a context in which to manifest.
Yet, the feeling of pointlessness sits there too. The vast majority of all music and art is mindless filler. Sure, we can aim for supposed pleasure or intellectual fulfillment, but there is ultimately no clear reason for what catches our imagination or gives us pleasure. Fame is simply the coincidental appreciation of many people all at once. It makes no difference if others love/hate/ignore what i create, i have an impulsion to make whatever music flows from my fingers.
I suppose i could point out 4 albums that i feel best represent who i am: the slumlord ep, the uncollected, feeble, and album of death. I could imagine being happy if those 4 albums were my entire discography, considering that alone is more output than most bands get the chance to produce. Some musicians don't have any tangible recordings at all.
Thus, the narcissism and deprecation live side by side; i am immensely proud of realizing my goals, but ultimately uncertain about their validity.
I can't answer that question; i usually say whichever of my albums pops into my head first, or try to guage what the questioner would be interested in hearing. But, that is not a real answer.
The truth is that i am proud of everything and nothing all at the same time. I'm proud of every single piece of music i create, because so much is thrown into the garbage during the creative process. Every piece you see in my discography represents the abandonment of countless takes and other projects. Everything that makes it throught my self editing process is me, exactly the way it is supposed to be. The frequency of my creation is at odds with what i'm doing; i have music running through my head all day every day, unused music from 20+ years sitting on my hard drive/written on faded manuscript paper/lurking in the back of my mind, waiting patiently for a context in which to manifest.
Yet, the feeling of pointlessness sits there too. The vast majority of all music and art is mindless filler. Sure, we can aim for supposed pleasure or intellectual fulfillment, but there is ultimately no clear reason for what catches our imagination or gives us pleasure. Fame is simply the coincidental appreciation of many people all at once. It makes no difference if others love/hate/ignore what i create, i have an impulsion to make whatever music flows from my fingers.
I suppose i could point out 4 albums that i feel best represent who i am: the slumlord ep, the uncollected, feeble, and album of death. I could imagine being happy if those 4 albums were my entire discography, considering that alone is more output than most bands get the chance to produce. Some musicians don't have any tangible recordings at all.
Thus, the narcissism and deprecation live side by side; i am immensely proud of realizing my goals, but ultimately uncertain about their validity.
Monday, April 3, 2017
aleatoric music - a treatise...
The full title: aleatoric music - a treatise on compositional techniques and procedures for the practicable realization of indeterminate aural experience.
Aleatoric music is commonly defined as music in which one or more parameters of the composition remained undetermined by the composer; that is, ultimately left for the performer to decide. However, from the viewpoint of the audience, the auditory experience is fully at the determination of the performer, as the average listener has little or no basis for comparison on issues of expression, tuning, tempo, orchestration, mistakes, etc. Outside the realm of rigid integral serialism realized by computational methods. Thus, this definition of aleatory falls short of the artistic goal of various indeterminate musics.
It would therefore be better to define aleatoric music in terms of its opposition to traditional art musics. Whereas traditional art music historically seeks to converge toward the total realization of accurate performamce (oral tradition to notation to serialism, to integral serialism to computer music), aleatoric music seeks to pull back from such determinacy such that a given performance is objectively indeterminate is some way. Yet, at the same time, there must be an opposite boundary, beyond which lies fully indeterminate, chance, chaos, and meta-compositional philosophy.
Furthermore, a piece must have some recognizable identity for the average listener in spite of it's aleatory in order to be "a piece" in the traditional sense. A lack of all coherence between various performances would call the nature of the piece into question, and ultimately lack credibilty as a repeatble performance. Therefore, aleatoric music requires a written or potentially writable score that reliably documents at least 1 "unbreakable rule." That is not to say that failure to obey this rule is anachronistic to a particular piece, but that the rule must be in effect (known to both performer and listener) such that "disobedience," or better failure, are recognizable as such, if desired by either participant.
Several potential procedures come to mind immediately: what i call "music for sight reading" in which the performer must perform at sight some notated score. Such a procedure produces a satisfactory aleatoric experience for the listener by containing only one known unbreakable rule: "attempt to perform this piece of music." Even if not immediately tangible, the listener can accept the presence of consistent source material among various performances. A second category can be defined by the blatant removal of traditional performance instruction: no notated dynamics, articulations, rhythms, pitch, insttumentation, etc.
This is not a new concept, works like Bach's Art of The Fugue are defined by their lack of instrumentation, many of the piano works by Liszt and Chopin (among others) bear the marks of favoring physical/visual observable performative gestures over strict adherence to standard notated articulation. Yet, the distinction must be drawn between these proto-examples and a distinct class of aleatoric music in which the uncertainty is an intended component of the performance.
In order to build such a body of work, a composer may choose to work from small experiments toward larger solo and ensemble works, such that both the works themselves, and the repertoire built from them form an aleatoric evolution with the composer as the only unifying force. Or multiple works may take the same predetermined material as the starting point for radically different performance settings. In any case, the overreaching goal would be a more engaged audience for both live performance and recoded media. Such a project may very well help to reinvigorate the financial and creative support we as artist frequently lack.
Aleatoric music is commonly defined as music in which one or more parameters of the composition remained undetermined by the composer; that is, ultimately left for the performer to decide. However, from the viewpoint of the audience, the auditory experience is fully at the determination of the performer, as the average listener has little or no basis for comparison on issues of expression, tuning, tempo, orchestration, mistakes, etc. Outside the realm of rigid integral serialism realized by computational methods. Thus, this definition of aleatory falls short of the artistic goal of various indeterminate musics.
It would therefore be better to define aleatoric music in terms of its opposition to traditional art musics. Whereas traditional art music historically seeks to converge toward the total realization of accurate performamce (oral tradition to notation to serialism, to integral serialism to computer music), aleatoric music seeks to pull back from such determinacy such that a given performance is objectively indeterminate is some way. Yet, at the same time, there must be an opposite boundary, beyond which lies fully indeterminate, chance, chaos, and meta-compositional philosophy.
Furthermore, a piece must have some recognizable identity for the average listener in spite of it's aleatory in order to be "a piece" in the traditional sense. A lack of all coherence between various performances would call the nature of the piece into question, and ultimately lack credibilty as a repeatble performance. Therefore, aleatoric music requires a written or potentially writable score that reliably documents at least 1 "unbreakable rule." That is not to say that failure to obey this rule is anachronistic to a particular piece, but that the rule must be in effect (known to both performer and listener) such that "disobedience," or better failure, are recognizable as such, if desired by either participant.
Several potential procedures come to mind immediately: what i call "music for sight reading" in which the performer must perform at sight some notated score. Such a procedure produces a satisfactory aleatoric experience for the listener by containing only one known unbreakable rule: "attempt to perform this piece of music." Even if not immediately tangible, the listener can accept the presence of consistent source material among various performances. A second category can be defined by the blatant removal of traditional performance instruction: no notated dynamics, articulations, rhythms, pitch, insttumentation, etc.
This is not a new concept, works like Bach's Art of The Fugue are defined by their lack of instrumentation, many of the piano works by Liszt and Chopin (among others) bear the marks of favoring physical/visual observable performative gestures over strict adherence to standard notated articulation. Yet, the distinction must be drawn between these proto-examples and a distinct class of aleatoric music in which the uncertainty is an intended component of the performance.
In order to build such a body of work, a composer may choose to work from small experiments toward larger solo and ensemble works, such that both the works themselves, and the repertoire built from them form an aleatoric evolution with the composer as the only unifying force. Or multiple works may take the same predetermined material as the starting point for radically different performance settings. In any case, the overreaching goal would be a more engaged audience for both live performance and recoded media. Such a project may very well help to reinvigorate the financial and creative support we as artist frequently lack.
Saturday, April 1, 2017
notes on my 12-tone works
I have a fondness for 12-tone (not necessarily serial) composition, and there are several such pieces scattered throughout my discography. I don't follow a strict academic approach (the historical arguments for and against Schoenberg's techniques and "rules" have always seemed childish and non-productive to me). For me, given my interest in improvisation and non-rigid tonal/harmonic structures, the unique characteristics of composing from a tone row allow greater focus on gesture and sequence, as opposed to "correct" voice leading or harmonic structure. In other words, tone rows are one way to avoid getting bogged down with questions of tonal coherence and note/pitch choice; the notes simply ARE and one can focus on how to best express them.
A list:
Variations on a Tone-row
Piano Music Volume 1
Scenes from a Row
Haiku for the Seasons
Sym12 (#4 from 5 Little Pieces for Piano)
Album of Death
No More Daisies Down
NCLASP Vol. 2
Sonatina for violin and piano
I don't want to go into minute detail, but i do want to generalize how they relate to each other.
No More Daisies Down, Sonatina, and Sym12 all use the same row (57t0123468e) in various forms. Sonatina uses Sym12 as it primary section. Daisies is the first (but not the last) truly improvised piece based on a row. Each of the other pieces uses its own row in various creative and non-standard ways. I was known to use them in teaching analysis to show students how to recognize when a particular analytical procedure/system stops working and requires a different approach, but does not invalidate the original analysis (i.e. the "rules" can change without warning as a feature of the piece).
Some day i will find a simple way to make scores available without having to invest in costly self publishing or data storage.
A list:
Variations on a Tone-row
Piano Music Volume 1
Scenes from a Row
Haiku for the Seasons
Sym12 (#4 from 5 Little Pieces for Piano)
Album of Death
No More Daisies Down
NCLASP Vol. 2
Sonatina for violin and piano
I don't want to go into minute detail, but i do want to generalize how they relate to each other.
No More Daisies Down, Sonatina, and Sym12 all use the same row (57t0123468e) in various forms. Sonatina uses Sym12 as it primary section. Daisies is the first (but not the last) truly improvised piece based on a row. Each of the other pieces uses its own row in various creative and non-standard ways. I was known to use them in teaching analysis to show students how to recognize when a particular analytical procedure/system stops working and requires a different approach, but does not invalidate the original analysis (i.e. the "rules" can change without warning as a feature of the piece).
Some day i will find a simple way to make scores available without having to invest in costly self publishing or data storage.
my approach to ambient looped guitar
In my last post, i mentioned that the individual pieces are often improvised during the recording process. But, i also want to preserve a similarity between pieces composed with the same "recipe." If you've listened to multiple albums, you most likely thought that, for example, save us from someone, dreaming down a half-step, and the whole sounds you can make album all sound very similar. Part of that similarity is harmonic, but part of it is also their shared method of construction. I use a lot of variation within the process, but the overall recipe is always the same:
1 - choose a complex sonority (a chord, or a cluster of notes that form a harmonic backdrop), and a scale or mode to work from over that sonority
2 - create a looped background (usually non-metrical and impossible to tell where the loop point actuall is; unless there is a consistent rhythmic phrase like morning coffee or girl with the pearl)
3 - improvise one or more lead parts over that background loop.
If you opened most any of my ardour sessions you would most often find only 2 tracks: "rhythm" and "lead." Some of the looped pieces are 1 continuous take (built from the ground up all in one go), but that can be really frustrating on bad days, so i generally build a "rhythm track" then solo over it.
For me at least, i find the first thing that comes out of my head and fingers is the most interesting/pleasing/creative thing to work with, whereas laboring over an idea or structure in a more traditional way produces boring predictable music that i am less likely to actually finish. If nothing is flowing, i just walk away and come back later.
All of this is not to say that i sit down at the computer and noodle around for 45 minutes and mix every sound i produce down into a mindless 3 minute track. Rather, i compose and edit the same way anyone would, i just try to condense that process into a short and efficient workflow that eliminates all of the second guessing or needless sound tweaking. Sometimes the results are mediocre, terrible, or fantastic, but my goal is to finish the piece as quickly as possible, not to be the most awesome artist/guitar player/composer ever.
I make a plan, i execute it as best as i can, and i let the end result be what it is: eventually everything finds or inspires a suitable context for itself.
Some tracks come together right away, some take multiple sessions, or mulriple days. I've found myself in the middle of recording 8 or 9 different things at the same time, and feeling very lost. So, my only goal is to try to finish 1 thing every session (i could have anywhere from 1 to 8 or 12 sessions in a single day). The "thing" could be coming up with a catchy riff, creating a looped background, recording two bars of a solo line, mixing two or three parts, whatever. Once that thing is finished i either walk away, or move on to another thing i know i can finish. I never waste time on sething that just isn't clicking, and it lets me get a lot more done. Whether it's "good" or other people like it isn't really the point.
1 - choose a complex sonority (a chord, or a cluster of notes that form a harmonic backdrop), and a scale or mode to work from over that sonority
2 - create a looped background (usually non-metrical and impossible to tell where the loop point actuall is; unless there is a consistent rhythmic phrase like morning coffee or girl with the pearl)
3 - improvise one or more lead parts over that background loop.
If you opened most any of my ardour sessions you would most often find only 2 tracks: "rhythm" and "lead." Some of the looped pieces are 1 continuous take (built from the ground up all in one go), but that can be really frustrating on bad days, so i generally build a "rhythm track" then solo over it.
For me at least, i find the first thing that comes out of my head and fingers is the most interesting/pleasing/creative thing to work with, whereas laboring over an idea or structure in a more traditional way produces boring predictable music that i am less likely to actually finish. If nothing is flowing, i just walk away and come back later.
All of this is not to say that i sit down at the computer and noodle around for 45 minutes and mix every sound i produce down into a mindless 3 minute track. Rather, i compose and edit the same way anyone would, i just try to condense that process into a short and efficient workflow that eliminates all of the second guessing or needless sound tweaking. Sometimes the results are mediocre, terrible, or fantastic, but my goal is to finish the piece as quickly as possible, not to be the most awesome artist/guitar player/composer ever.
I make a plan, i execute it as best as i can, and i let the end result be what it is: eventually everything finds or inspires a suitable context for itself.
Some tracks come together right away, some take multiple sessions, or mulriple days. I've found myself in the middle of recording 8 or 9 different things at the same time, and feeling very lost. So, my only goal is to try to finish 1 thing every session (i could have anywhere from 1 to 8 or 12 sessions in a single day). The "thing" could be coming up with a catchy riff, creating a looped background, recording two bars of a solo line, mixing two or three parts, whatever. Once that thing is finished i either walk away, or move on to another thing i know i can finish. I never waste time on sething that just isn't clicking, and it lets me get a lot more done. Whether it's "good" or other people like it isn't really the point.
Thursday, March 30, 2017
compositional paradigms across my discography
My music is published as individual "albums," each assembled according to a specific concept (some obvious, some not). As i have alluded in previous posts, i don't necessarily consider the individual pieces as an end to themselves (or particularly important for that matter), they are simply necessary for my larger, more abstract, artistic goal: i call it "assemblage."
I am fascinated by the interpretation of constucted meaning of sequential experiences (a wordy way to say the way two things next to each other create a new meaningful relationship, an interesting detail of semiotics). Had i finished my PhD, that would have been the framework for my dissertation.
In other words, in order to have material to play with, i have to create as much actual music as quickly as possible (sometimes at the expense of technical dexterity and tone quality). Whether obvious or not, much of my work draws from the world of electronic dance music and DJ culture, a world defined by stringing together disparate sounds and pieces of music. The titles, cover art, and release notes all try to approach the unifying concept of each album, some more clearly than others. Like painting, i want the total end product to "speak" about its creation in some tangible way. Each album reflects my auto-biographical chronology, similar to the way each successive track builds upon the overreaching concept.
There are, however, several compositional paradigms that transcend this segmentation. In other words, you could trace the chronological evolution of a particular style across my entire output, a much more normal musicological topic. In some cases, doing so would result in much more familiar/traditional ways of constructing an album stylistically.
Some of these paradigms are:
Fixed composition vs. Free improvisation
Loop pieces
Traditional genre works (rock/metal/blues/folk/etc.)
Ambient/non-metrical soundscapes
Rhythm/lead pieces for guitar
Academic scale/harmonic systems (tonal/modal/12-tone/gesture)
Sectional vs. Through-composed formal structures
Contrapuntal relationships
So to sum up, i think of the album in its entirety as a larger piece of music with multiple movements. Likewise, a group of albums that share similar characteristics point to an even larger structural relationship.
My current project is a group of albums centered around the process of creating albums with only my left arm due to shoulder surgery (that's a real life thing, i'm not insane enough to preemptively orchestrate that as an artistic scenario). What type of album would you create with one arm? How would your choice of project be influenced by staying home alone all day? Would you find yourself thinking about the past? Would you finish old projects or plan new ones for after recovery? Would you re-orchestrate older pieces? Those are the kinds of ideas i'm addressing by creating new synth realizations of my old pieces. Volume 1 is published and volume 2 is nearly complete. I've planned a 3rd volume, but i can't guarantee it will properly materialize...
I am fascinated by the interpretation of constucted meaning of sequential experiences (a wordy way to say the way two things next to each other create a new meaningful relationship, an interesting detail of semiotics). Had i finished my PhD, that would have been the framework for my dissertation.
In other words, in order to have material to play with, i have to create as much actual music as quickly as possible (sometimes at the expense of technical dexterity and tone quality). Whether obvious or not, much of my work draws from the world of electronic dance music and DJ culture, a world defined by stringing together disparate sounds and pieces of music. The titles, cover art, and release notes all try to approach the unifying concept of each album, some more clearly than others. Like painting, i want the total end product to "speak" about its creation in some tangible way. Each album reflects my auto-biographical chronology, similar to the way each successive track builds upon the overreaching concept.
There are, however, several compositional paradigms that transcend this segmentation. In other words, you could trace the chronological evolution of a particular style across my entire output, a much more normal musicological topic. In some cases, doing so would result in much more familiar/traditional ways of constructing an album stylistically.
Some of these paradigms are:
Fixed composition vs. Free improvisation
Loop pieces
Traditional genre works (rock/metal/blues/folk/etc.)
Ambient/non-metrical soundscapes
Rhythm/lead pieces for guitar
Academic scale/harmonic systems (tonal/modal/12-tone/gesture)
Sectional vs. Through-composed formal structures
Contrapuntal relationships
So to sum up, i think of the album in its entirety as a larger piece of music with multiple movements. Likewise, a group of albums that share similar characteristics point to an even larger structural relationship.
My current project is a group of albums centered around the process of creating albums with only my left arm due to shoulder surgery (that's a real life thing, i'm not insane enough to preemptively orchestrate that as an artistic scenario). What type of album would you create with one arm? How would your choice of project be influenced by staying home alone all day? Would you find yourself thinking about the past? Would you finish old projects or plan new ones for after recovery? Would you re-orchestrate older pieces? Those are the kinds of ideas i'm addressing by creating new synth realizations of my old pieces. Volume 1 is published and volume 2 is nearly complete. I've planned a 3rd volume, but i can't guarantee it will properly materialize...
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
my recording setup - specs, recipes, and signal chains i frequently use when recording
In my last post i listed all of the gear i frequently use. This time, i'm going to focus on my basic setup and describe some of the ways i patch it all together.
There's no smoking gun or secret special hardware, just a common laptop. Some specs:
HP G60 Pentium
KXStudio
64-bit Ubuntu 14.04
Kernal: 3.13.0-24-lowlatency
Buffer: 512 samples
Frequency: 44.1kHz
Latency: 11.6ms
CPU Scaling: on demand
I don't remember how much ram or storage it has, but it was straight off the shelf in the mid to late '00s. It came with windows 7, but everthing is accessible from the linux side (dual boot), and the very few windows programs i need to access work passably well with Wine. I have several other computers, but the laptop is the only one i use for recording. As for the specs above, the 512 sample buffer at cd quality is perfectly fine for me. My physical accuracy is only a tiny bit better than 11ms, so it doesn't need to be better (i don't play fast enough to feel it and my margin for error at the ictus probably ranges from 9 to 15ms at my sharpest; just a guess).
I do get the occasional xrun or cluster burst, but only when i've left a lot of child processes running or forget to close everything down when i leave for several hours. I just make a habit of closing everything down when i stop for more than an hour, and restart the jack server every session (and whenever dsp load gets too heavy in-session).
Very few of the programs i use are prone to crashing, but some do occasionally crash or freeze and force a hard reboot. Muse (midi sampler/workstation) is probably the least stable, but it's usually my own fault.
I've used many modular trackers, recorders, environments, etc., but my current DAWs of choice are Ardour 3 for multi-track recording, and Audacity for wave editing. I was a long time cool edit pro 2 user until Adobe bought it, but i've grown to like Ardour's internal data approach (no wav files hogging hard drive space unless you manually export them). It's a minor nuisance to export from one to the other then import back into the mix (i prefer destructive editing over bussed real-time plugins).
I'm not a very good or thoughtful recording engineer, so none of my tracks get labeled properly, i change layering and arrangement mid session, i detest effects/group busses (i like to mixdown old school 4-track style and only when absolutely necessary), i leave empty space and muted fragments lying around everywhere, and i make no effort to crossfade or splice segments properly. Remember kids, i'm a hack and i wouldn't even dream of handing anything i do over to a professional. I do all tweaking up front and build my sound from the final playback. What you hear is pretty much what i heard while recording; i occasionally tweak eq on the final mix while normalizing/compressing but 90 to 95% of my sounds and levels are dialed in before i even hit record.
Everything i do either uses internal samplers and software synths, or else gets converted to digital by mixer via usb, and everything gets dumped into one or more tracks in ardour. Sometimes i use a lot of external gear, sometimes i just plug straight into the board.
Most often, i plug guitars and bass into an acoustic amp, take the pre power amp d/i output from the amp to the mixer via xlr into the mixer's mic preamp and adjust gain levels as necessary. I like the hot signal it gives me (my knobs and faders get turned way down but it means i can drive any component into clipping if i want the distortion it makes). It also means that if i really try to shorten cables and keep early stages clean i can significantly reduce the final noise floor without algorithmic reduction and the inherent loss of tone that brings. For example, some of my poorly constructed signal chains produce a powerful 4k-ish hiss by the time it reaches the DAW, which just so happens to be where my pick noise and attack are most prominent; so, the softer i try to make the hiss, the less brightness and clarity in my guitar parts.
My power supplies are also dirty: i can get distinct hisses and hums at 40hz, 60hz, 100hz, and their harmonics if i try (cool if you want it, horrible if your sound source is an unamplified violin or acoustic guitar more than 1 inch from a mic).
I don't use outboard or pedal effects very much. I run most every sound source through Guitarix.
As for what actual gear i use for a particular recording, i just plug some things together and see where it leads. I'm interested in the act of creating recorded music itself, not so much the end product or performing a score. I think of the recording process as the actual artwork. Think of it this way; a painting isn't the names of the colors, the brush and canvas material, and the subject, the "painting" is a person acquiring the materials, mixing paint and additives, physical gestures, and interpretion of a visual or imagined scene, bundled up into a visual artifact. Likewise, my "music" is piecing gear together, making up notes and rhythms and counterpoint from the sounds of that gear, and bundling it all up into a reproducable aural experience. That's part of why i favor cheap, easy to acquire gear.
It's also, i think, the major source of confusion about my music. I am (like most musicians) an introvert and an unrelenting perfectionist. If i went about writing music the normal way, nothing would ever be good enough for other people to hear; i would throw away everything i write or perform. In order to get it out into the world, i have to create an environment where i have no control over the minute details: i have to pick an unchangeable tone,
improvise, plan, and execute the recording all in one go so that there can never be a "better take," (if i can't remember what i played, i can't agonize over timing articulation inflection etc.). The mistakes are important as well: my compositional process (the looping in particular) forces me to either accept the mistakes as part of the piece, or risk losing the entire feel and shape of the piece because i can't remember the really awesome parts during the next attempt and the evolving synth patches won't produce quite the same timber/character each time. Basically, every piece is a live realtime improvisation for an imaginary audience and all i can do with the end result is make it as interesting and non-painful to listen to as possible.
I got off track from my original topic, but i always do that. Thanks for reading.
There's no smoking gun or secret special hardware, just a common laptop. Some specs:
HP G60 Pentium
KXStudio
64-bit Ubuntu 14.04
Kernal: 3.13.0-24-lowlatency
Buffer: 512 samples
Frequency: 44.1kHz
Latency: 11.6ms
CPU Scaling: on demand
I don't remember how much ram or storage it has, but it was straight off the shelf in the mid to late '00s. It came with windows 7, but everthing is accessible from the linux side (dual boot), and the very few windows programs i need to access work passably well with Wine. I have several other computers, but the laptop is the only one i use for recording. As for the specs above, the 512 sample buffer at cd quality is perfectly fine for me. My physical accuracy is only a tiny bit better than 11ms, so it doesn't need to be better (i don't play fast enough to feel it and my margin for error at the ictus probably ranges from 9 to 15ms at my sharpest; just a guess).
I do get the occasional xrun or cluster burst, but only when i've left a lot of child processes running or forget to close everything down when i leave for several hours. I just make a habit of closing everything down when i stop for more than an hour, and restart the jack server every session (and whenever dsp load gets too heavy in-session).
Very few of the programs i use are prone to crashing, but some do occasionally crash or freeze and force a hard reboot. Muse (midi sampler/workstation) is probably the least stable, but it's usually my own fault.
I've used many modular trackers, recorders, environments, etc., but my current DAWs of choice are Ardour 3 for multi-track recording, and Audacity for wave editing. I was a long time cool edit pro 2 user until Adobe bought it, but i've grown to like Ardour's internal data approach (no wav files hogging hard drive space unless you manually export them). It's a minor nuisance to export from one to the other then import back into the mix (i prefer destructive editing over bussed real-time plugins).
I'm not a very good or thoughtful recording engineer, so none of my tracks get labeled properly, i change layering and arrangement mid session, i detest effects/group busses (i like to mixdown old school 4-track style and only when absolutely necessary), i leave empty space and muted fragments lying around everywhere, and i make no effort to crossfade or splice segments properly. Remember kids, i'm a hack and i wouldn't even dream of handing anything i do over to a professional. I do all tweaking up front and build my sound from the final playback. What you hear is pretty much what i heard while recording; i occasionally tweak eq on the final mix while normalizing/compressing but 90 to 95% of my sounds and levels are dialed in before i even hit record.
Everything i do either uses internal samplers and software synths, or else gets converted to digital by mixer via usb, and everything gets dumped into one or more tracks in ardour. Sometimes i use a lot of external gear, sometimes i just plug straight into the board.
Most often, i plug guitars and bass into an acoustic amp, take the pre power amp d/i output from the amp to the mixer via xlr into the mixer's mic preamp and adjust gain levels as necessary. I like the hot signal it gives me (my knobs and faders get turned way down but it means i can drive any component into clipping if i want the distortion it makes). It also means that if i really try to shorten cables and keep early stages clean i can significantly reduce the final noise floor without algorithmic reduction and the inherent loss of tone that brings. For example, some of my poorly constructed signal chains produce a powerful 4k-ish hiss by the time it reaches the DAW, which just so happens to be where my pick noise and attack are most prominent; so, the softer i try to make the hiss, the less brightness and clarity in my guitar parts.
My power supplies are also dirty: i can get distinct hisses and hums at 40hz, 60hz, 100hz, and their harmonics if i try (cool if you want it, horrible if your sound source is an unamplified violin or acoustic guitar more than 1 inch from a mic).
I don't use outboard or pedal effects very much. I run most every sound source through Guitarix.
As for what actual gear i use for a particular recording, i just plug some things together and see where it leads. I'm interested in the act of creating recorded music itself, not so much the end product or performing a score. I think of the recording process as the actual artwork. Think of it this way; a painting isn't the names of the colors, the brush and canvas material, and the subject, the "painting" is a person acquiring the materials, mixing paint and additives, physical gestures, and interpretion of a visual or imagined scene, bundled up into a visual artifact. Likewise, my "music" is piecing gear together, making up notes and rhythms and counterpoint from the sounds of that gear, and bundling it all up into a reproducable aural experience. That's part of why i favor cheap, easy to acquire gear.
It's also, i think, the major source of confusion about my music. I am (like most musicians) an introvert and an unrelenting perfectionist. If i went about writing music the normal way, nothing would ever be good enough for other people to hear; i would throw away everything i write or perform. In order to get it out into the world, i have to create an environment where i have no control over the minute details: i have to pick an unchangeable tone,
improvise, plan, and execute the recording all in one go so that there can never be a "better take," (if i can't remember what i played, i can't agonize over timing articulation inflection etc.). The mistakes are important as well: my compositional process (the looping in particular) forces me to either accept the mistakes as part of the piece, or risk losing the entire feel and shape of the piece because i can't remember the really awesome parts during the next attempt and the evolving synth patches won't produce quite the same timber/character each time. Basically, every piece is a live realtime improvisation for an imaginary audience and all i can do with the end result is make it as interesting and non-painful to listen to as possible.
I got off track from my original topic, but i always do that. Thanks for reading.
gear rundown
What's hiding down in my studio? At some point I'll try to describe how I use it all, but for now here's a quick rundown:
Electric Guitars:
'95 fender strat (mexican)
Ibanez rg
Epiphone lp studio
Acoustic Guitars:
Yamaha F-335
Ibanez
Takamine
Bass:
Ibanez Gio
Violins:
Knilling
Academy
Electric
Banjo
Amps:
Fender Champ 600
Marshall MGFX
Crate GT 2x12
Fishman Loudbox Artist
Fender Deluxe 85
Mics:
Sennheiser E385
Peavey 100
Shure SM 57
Mixer:
Behringer Xenyx QX1002 usb
MIDI Controller:
Arturia Minilab usb
Pedals:
Boss DS 1 Distortion
Boss LS 2 Line Selector
Ernie Ball Jr. Volume
TC Electronics Mini Ditto Looper
TC Electronics Polytune Noire
Various computers, cables, and stereo equipment
Everything i own would be considered "cheap, consumer grade," but serves its function very well. I have a passion for the best of the worst, so to speak.
Electric Guitars:
'95 fender strat (mexican)
Ibanez rg
Epiphone lp studio
Acoustic Guitars:
Yamaha F-335
Ibanez
Takamine
Bass:
Ibanez Gio
Violins:
Knilling
Academy
Electric
Banjo
Amps:
Fender Champ 600
Marshall MGFX
Crate GT 2x12
Fishman Loudbox Artist
Fender Deluxe 85
Mics:
Sennheiser E385
Peavey 100
Shure SM 57
Mixer:
Behringer Xenyx QX1002 usb
MIDI Controller:
Arturia Minilab usb
Pedals:
Boss DS 1 Distortion
Boss LS 2 Line Selector
Ernie Ball Jr. Volume
TC Electronics Mini Ditto Looper
TC Electronics Polytune Noire
Various computers, cables, and stereo equipment
Everything i own would be considered "cheap, consumer grade," but serves its function very well. I have a passion for the best of the worst, so to speak.
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
a semi-thorough taxonomy of my recordings (so far)
Over the last few years I have released an enormous amount of sonic vomit onto the internet. I have decided to use http://paultompkins.bandcamp.com as my exclusive platform for a number of reasons, mainly it costs no money for me, the streaming audio quality is indistinguishable from my master recordings to my own ears, and you can choose to give me money or not, download or not, etc. However, because i am not constrained by ANY commercial or artistic restrictions, it is impossible to guess what you are getting into without actually listening to the hours of music i have published. So, this post is meant to be a rough guide as to the wide range of styles/genres that comprise my music. I'll go chronologically through the albums and give a general synopsis of what to expect, as well as provide a direct link to each album.
The Slumlord EP - http://paultompkins.bandcamp.com/album/slumlord-ep
Electronica/synth pieces composed somewhere between 2003-2005. All tracks were made in jeskola buzz with various vst instruments. The desktop computer that these tracks were made on died many years ago, and though i have some of the original .bmx files, i no longer have the VSTIs or a computer that can render them properly. The rendering process was actually highly unstable, and several tracks took multiple attempts before a satisfactory recording was obtained.
The Build Me Something Experiments - http://paultompkins.bandcamp.com/album/the-build-me-something-experiments
Tracks made while learning to use Cool Edit 2.00. These include sample/loop pieces, reverse playback, time stretching, and effects. These tracks were also part of an unreleased album entitled
"7 Meditations."
Variations on a Tone Row - http://paultompkins.bandcamp.com/album/variations-on-a-tone-row
Each track is actually the same 12-tone piece, but the VSTIs used were dynamic in nature and produced radically different outcomes. Only the finished audio still exists.
Piano Music -
Piano miniatures ranging from counterpoint and programmatic pieces to 12-tone and aleatoric.
Sonata for Flute and Piano -
I think of it as a pseudo-Ivesian, modal sonata.
Daphne and Apollo -
A song cycle for guitar and voice. Alternative folk i guess.
Insertions -
Mostly guitar duets of various types. I imagine them popping up randomly throughout your large mp3 collection (hence the title).
Sounds you can make with things that make sound -
My first dip into the waters of improvised ambient guitar. Heavily influenced by the physical nature of composing with the tc electronic mini ditto.
Not Every Thought Can Be Congruous -
This is sort of a junk drawer album. It has new stuff and old stuff and things that didn't fit right on other albums. It also starts my tendency to use whatever track wasn't finished when i released an album (i get impatient sometimes) as the starting point for the next album.
The Uncollected -
I had a bunch of rock/metal guitar riffs stuck in my head and decided to make the album itself the process of writing and recording each track one at a time.
On A Porch -
Another old/new junk drawer album, this time worked into a single piece in 4 movements.
Fifth Year -
Songs written in my teens and 20s. 1:17 was the basis for Daphne and Apollo.
Contrapuntus ad libitum -
I adore counterpoint and wanted an entire album of arrangements for guitar and bass of various pieces (some i wrote myself). So, i made one as a christmas present to myself.
Simple Pleasures -
My biggest junk drawer album yet. Literally everything i love to do: old, new, reworked, looping, improvisation, electronic, ambient, noise...
The New Blue -
More guitar experiments; looping, duets...
Air -
Like i said, i get impatient, and i finished these a day or two after i published the new blue. I spent a day trying to figure out what else to put with them, but ultimately decided they stand on their own. Am ient blues?
An Evening In The Echo Chamber -
Serious messing around with reverb, echo, looping, and delay. Probably the least structured noise album in my discography.
For the record, i want the next 3 albums to be officially labled the start of my "left-hand period." Feeble, Album of Death, and Difficult Sounds were all recorded in the weeks before shoulder surgery when i had very little control of my pick arm. There's rock and blues and jazz and noise and cheesy synths aplenty.
I'm currently working on synth versions of pieces no one has heard, perusal recordings of classical/academic pieces written over the last 20 years. I gave up on copying links in favor of just finishing this post, so just go to my main bandcamp discography page....
Cheers
The Slumlord EP - http://paultompkins.bandcamp.com/album/slumlord-ep
Electronica/synth pieces composed somewhere between 2003-2005. All tracks were made in jeskola buzz with various vst instruments. The desktop computer that these tracks were made on died many years ago, and though i have some of the original .bmx files, i no longer have the VSTIs or a computer that can render them properly. The rendering process was actually highly unstable, and several tracks took multiple attempts before a satisfactory recording was obtained.
The Build Me Something Experiments - http://paultompkins.bandcamp.com/album/the-build-me-something-experiments
Tracks made while learning to use Cool Edit 2.00. These include sample/loop pieces, reverse playback, time stretching, and effects. These tracks were also part of an unreleased album entitled
"7 Meditations."
Variations on a Tone Row - http://paultompkins.bandcamp.com/album/variations-on-a-tone-row
Each track is actually the same 12-tone piece, but the VSTIs used were dynamic in nature and produced radically different outcomes. Only the finished audio still exists.
Piano Music -
Piano miniatures ranging from counterpoint and programmatic pieces to 12-tone and aleatoric.
Sonata for Flute and Piano -
I think of it as a pseudo-Ivesian, modal sonata.
Daphne and Apollo -
A song cycle for guitar and voice. Alternative folk i guess.
Insertions -
Mostly guitar duets of various types. I imagine them popping up randomly throughout your large mp3 collection (hence the title).
Sounds you can make with things that make sound -
My first dip into the waters of improvised ambient guitar. Heavily influenced by the physical nature of composing with the tc electronic mini ditto.
Not Every Thought Can Be Congruous -
This is sort of a junk drawer album. It has new stuff and old stuff and things that didn't fit right on other albums. It also starts my tendency to use whatever track wasn't finished when i released an album (i get impatient sometimes) as the starting point for the next album.
The Uncollected -
I had a bunch of rock/metal guitar riffs stuck in my head and decided to make the album itself the process of writing and recording each track one at a time.
On A Porch -
Another old/new junk drawer album, this time worked into a single piece in 4 movements.
Fifth Year -
Songs written in my teens and 20s. 1:17 was the basis for Daphne and Apollo.
Contrapuntus ad libitum -
I adore counterpoint and wanted an entire album of arrangements for guitar and bass of various pieces (some i wrote myself). So, i made one as a christmas present to myself.
Simple Pleasures -
My biggest junk drawer album yet. Literally everything i love to do: old, new, reworked, looping, improvisation, electronic, ambient, noise...
The New Blue -
More guitar experiments; looping, duets...
Air -
Like i said, i get impatient, and i finished these a day or two after i published the new blue. I spent a day trying to figure out what else to put with them, but ultimately decided they stand on their own. Am ient blues?
An Evening In The Echo Chamber -
Serious messing around with reverb, echo, looping, and delay. Probably the least structured noise album in my discography.
For the record, i want the next 3 albums to be officially labled the start of my "left-hand period." Feeble, Album of Death, and Difficult Sounds were all recorded in the weeks before shoulder surgery when i had very little control of my pick arm. There's rock and blues and jazz and noise and cheesy synths aplenty.
I'm currently working on synth versions of pieces no one has heard, perusal recordings of classical/academic pieces written over the last 20 years. I gave up on copying links in favor of just finishing this post, so just go to my main bandcamp discography page....
Cheers
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