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...

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.

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.

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

pointlessness

2016 has been the year of pointlessness. Political, fiscal, environmental, social, interstellar pointlessness. Coincidentally, it has been my most artistically productive year. I have taken some amazingly serendipitous photographs; i have drawn, knitted, skated, cooked, performed, and recorded, all for no grand purpose, no monetary reward. I have reconnected with old friends, made new friends, insulted people with kindness, given pleasure through public displays of misery, suffered reflexive criticism, been given false credit, made money, lost money, made noise, remained silent, cried, laughed, smiled, frowned, used semicolons in an inappropriate manner; none of which matters.

I believe that everything we do is inherantly selfish, for good or for bad. I, personally, strive to take as little as possible, to be indebted to noone, so that i may have as much time as possible to revel in the joy of pointless action. My life burdens noone, and therefore i am happy...

art and our interraction with it

Not to get bogged down in the philosophical questions of the nature or origins of art, but to think about our interraction with it. That is, of course, an intentionally incomplete sentence (and no i shan't explain it).

Too often, when we think of art we think of the product of art: the painting, the song, the series of photographs, the dance. But, as art is in essence the creative process itself, we may forget the act of creation, the individuality of both the artist and ourselves, the path we travel to reach a conclusion or interpretation.

We look at a painting by Van Gogh or Kandinsky or Rembrandt as an irreplacable remnant of a time passed, a monument of another world that can never be reclaimed. A product, the replication of which is relegated to mere technical facility, an achievement that can or must never be rivaled, but against which we determine the merits of contemporary art. Yet, to what purpose does anyone draw a mountain, a figure, a cafe at night (a rhetorical, but vital question)? To what purpose does anyone interract with a noise making machine? The answer, i feel, is to actively engage life, to ponder the nature of experience and imagine alternative possibilities; to share the experience of life and encounter new ideas. That is, invariably, the path of the artist.

So why not the spectator? To look at, say, the expressionism of Pollock or listen to integral serialist composers without questioning the why of their creation is absurd. What is it about figurative painting that restricted or failed to reflect the creative desires of so many artists? What is it about common practice tonality that repelled so many composers? What inner predjudice causes me laud one artist while disparaging another?

Conversely, cannot a new form of expression cast a dubious loathing of the past? Are we not in turn equally nostalgic for and embarassed by stylistic tropes of past artists? Does our flippant perception of art bear any relation to the art itself, or are we engaged in the process of self evaluation by proxy?

Again, i think we focus too much upon the art product rather than the art. It is not the product, but the process of the artist that speaks of grief, or loss, or beauty, or catharsis, and the act of expression that interacts with medium and style.

My language is dense, formal, my sentence structure complex, my conclusions indefinite. It must be so. I am writing to the concievable universe. My thoughts are fragmented by nature, but in the act of writing them i must also consider the reader. I must try to predict someone elses interpretation of my writing, must communicate my intentions as well as my ideas, leave space for contemplation and rebuttal. It matters very little that i expect few people to actually read this essay; i am engaged in the act of writing, the act of expression, the art of language.

You, the reader (real or imagined) will see only the product. Will you judge me a bad writer for my opening sentence fragment? Will you note the irony of my parenthetical untruth? Will you contruct this prose as a flippant rant, a carefully constructed illustration of my idea, or something else entirely?
For what purpose would anyone write an essay on art and our interraction with it?

musical taste and criticism (a personal essay) - part 1

I recently told a joke on my personal facebook page about my deep respect for music as an art form, and how my determination to understand and respect music that doesn't readily appeal to me comes from a desire to better myself be eradicating ignorance and prejudice from my thought process. The punchline was that i hate nickelback, but it made me reflect on my listening habits. As a result, i want to share my process for finding and listening to new (or at least new to me) music and the reasons why certain songs, pieces, bands, etc. stick with me while others do not.

I consider myself a connoisseur of listening. I am an academically trained musician and poly-instrumentalist. Decades of my life have been spent translating musical sounds, feelings, and thoughts back and forth from one to another. I hear music in my mind all day and night. Listening to music is not a static, passive experience for me. My body physically mimics the actions that produce what i am hearing, my mind connects disparate ideas to on another and develops fragments in interesting ways, transposes and translates sound from one instrument to another.

All this means that i naturally gravitate toward music that physically connects to my life at the moment. When i write, i write music that feels right, that follows a logical sequence, that alludes to the references i have accumulated. Thus, i am motivated to listen for new ideas, new connections, things i haven't thought of yet.

But, how do i do that? Well, for starters i may be one of the few people left on earth who actually reads the liner notes (the boring parts where a band thanks their families, and friends, and recording engineers, and tells you who actually wrote the song, and mentions other bands. I've spent hours following youtube rabbit holes of associated videos. Back when record stores existed i would buy at least one new album (sound unheard) and listen to it a dozen times before adding it to my collection or trading it in for something else.

What i've found is that no matter what genre, there is at least one artist with whom i connect, at least one piece or song i like by any artist. That one moment is the point at which our experiences cross and the place from where appreciation and understanding begin.

I also spend a great deal of time re-listening to albums in my collection, sometimes for pleasure sometimes to find new or forgotten ideas associated with that music.

I plan to write more on this subject, but this is a good introduction to my approach to music.

Until next time, cheers.