Nocturnes part 1.

Thought I'd share this on here. So I've talked about my "Aubade" project on here a fair bit. I've been pretty happy with it so far, and we've nearly put the whole thing together (we being Glasfrosch), and will try to commit it to tape(bits) mid year. I've started working on the mirror image to this project now. Nocturnes will be 5 tracks and follow (more or less) a similar form to Aubades, but in the mood of the night. I've really started to think about how to make this record stand out and be different, not just to the Aubade music, but in general, to how I usually approach sound/composition entirely. I realised this week (while watching the Monroe film of the same name) that I'm having a musical 7 year itch - it's been about 7 years since I embarked on the journey that has become Glasfrosch, and I'm totally wiping the slate clean and flirting with ideas, sounds, and processes that I haven't before tried. In a way, Nocturnes brings me full circle, back to the new music to fall asleep to... days. But in the same sense, it's also a digression to new territory. I'll be approaching the night in a new way. A lyric I'm playing with sums it up, "the world is not the same place that you woke up in", which will probably be the subtitle of the first piece (mirroring the title format of "Aubade/after each sentence, another beautiful mystery"). Sonically, I thought I'd try some things that stem from things I've been exposed to since starting art school, and just play with new sounds, and try to find my voice in them. This little track is basically drums, two layers of a synth arpeggiator (one bass register, one higher), and a baritone guitar progression, drenched in reverb and tremolo, two types of delay and some distortion. In fact, everything is pretty heavily drenched in reverb. I can honestly admit that two things that have sunk into me from school have been My Bloody Valentine and HTRK. Obviously, this doesn't really develop any sense of form, but it's early days. I need to explore it over a month or so to really figure out where it's going to end up. I have lots of riffs and things that fit in the same/ related keys/close tempos, but I want to steer away from using existing ideas for this tune, and writing it all from scratch. Not that my existing ideas wont make there way into a tune in the end, but I need this challenge to fulfill some kind of progression in my art. That's all for now.

Volume (a dream of a thousand cats)

I originally came up with the main musical motif for this piece about 6/7 years ago. It was originally just an acoustic guitar loop, one that I had named something like "cat prints in wet cement" or something. Anyway, I never used it for anything, never did anything more than just sit and play it hypnotically in around the house on my guitar. When the volume assignment came around, I knew deep down that this was the music I'd work from. Even though I tried a few other things, I still came back to it. The title is from the Sandman short story of the same name. I wanted to keep the cat vibe going, and since we haven't had Sashimi around for a while and I was missing her so much, I thought this was a nice way to keep the original theme, but take it somewhere new (actually, until the writing of this post, I had forgotten the former title, all this is upon further reflection, just post script justification).
So even though two days ago I was bitter and depressed and totally uninterested in this project, and also felt like it what I was making had failed/was worthless, after spending a little more time with the idea (and getting my Sashimi back) I feel like I've done something great.

I'd still like to develop the music further. Maybe make the volume/dynamic extremes less polar, and change around the sounds a little to make it a bit dreamier. I'd like to find a way to combine the main piano figure with some other sounds, morphing it and switching between it and a synth or something, giving that slow looped phrase a melting, surreal quality. Also, underplaying the dirt and noise a little more, mixing in more variations in the "clean" sounds, and making the whole thing a bit shorter.

I'll probably rework this a number of times. I think it has potential to make both a really fun structured improvisation, and eventually a B side for a future Glasfrosch single.

Here it is as submitted for assessment.




*nb: Sashimi is my cat <3

Week 7 t&p, things.

Strange things, strange feelings, a bit depressed this week. I'm not sure how I felt about the class. I guess so much work is piling up, and it's all getting a bit weird and full in my head. It was nice to listen to, and recap on the improvisation topic. There was some really interesting things going on, some beautiful music happening. I've really fallen for Mamoru Fujieda. Gorgeous work. I've been trying to find his work, but nowhere stocks it. I'll be glad when I finally get my unlimited broadband connected and can start downloading music from home (uni internet is SLOOOOOOOW). The Burundi music was great too. I'm totally way more into hearing music from non western cultures than hearing shit like The Necks. The Necks kinda bore me. All my friends get off on that shit, but I feel like it's a bit of a farce. I don't mean to say that they're bad improvisers, or bad players, just their music isn't interesting to me. In fact, it's tiring and self indulgent, and I think they know it. Their music just feels arrogant. I'd much rather be in the audience for that Fujieda work. That was really engaging and there's a modesty in his work that connects with me. It feels inviting. It has a surface element of self indulgence, but it allows you to find space to enjoy it, rather than just pushing along without care or context. The Burundi music was just fun. Felt like being part of a ritual, or party, or party ritual. That elasticity is something I've always wanted to achieve in my old Glasfrosch tune Requiem. That, in the recorded sense was always really metronomical (like all our stuff) and structured, but I'd love to be able to do that piece with more elasticity, and just build it organically. The organic/elastic debate, and the reference to scale has a real impact on what I'm making right now. I'm trying to make sense of it all, there's so much I've absorbed and trying to be aware of, but I'm still really struggling with these new pieces. So I'm trying to focus all my energy on the Volume project for T&P, and Ableton project in Audio tech, and hoping that if I use these as "study works" then maybe all these things I'm pouring into them consciously with reveal themselves in my process.

Something that has happened this week that has really helped me to make sense of where I'm at at the moment, is a fresh perspective on the band and making music for/in a band. I've realised that I've been trying to see the music as the "work", and the band as the "artist", but really, the band is part of the work too. In fact, really, the band, Glasfrosch, is the art, and the music is just the smaller elements of that. When I think of it like this, it makes more sense. In the way I conduct the group, the collaborative process with visual artists, the imagery of the band, what it stands for etc. It's an ongoing, multifaceted, multimedia artwork unto itself. Then, if I am the artist, and the band is my creation, this view helps me see a context for different sounding work outside of that work. These things can still inform each other, but suddenly don't clash in the way i had been prioritizing them in my mind. I'm still figuring out how this all works/fits together. I've been writing in my vocabulary journal a lot about sounds and actions and things that are "Glasfrosch" things, and have made some great discoverie/revelations and such from the process. Hopefully this will help push me through to the next level, and I can get out of this slump that I've been in this week. We're finally moving our cat into our apartment, and that'll help cheer me up.

So I've become pretty dissolutioned with the Volume project. I've made some stuff that i really liked. Then I hated it for a while. I made some more, liked it, hated it, liked it again. Today I hate it. I'm just not interested in making music like this. It feels like a waste. Like I have to make a piece that ignores everything I value in music. Similarly with Audio Tech's Ableton project, I'm just not enjoying it. I want to focus more energy on making something that's me. So far I've made one piece this year that I value, and it's all happened completely outside the course. I understand that these projects are here to help us in our larger work, but if we're just making study pieces in every class, I'm gonna get real bored real quick. I've been talking to the students in some of the other studio areas, and they make so much and share it all the time. Their practical workload and folio requirements are huge and sound really inspiring. I've got 4 subjects worth of reading and writing to do every week, and a couple of tiny little practical assignments. It feels like my practice more or less dried up and died in the first half of the semester.
This dissolution is totally a phase though, probably part of my depression, because I didn't feel this way last week. Last week I was super positive about it all. I know these are the challenges of art school, and hope that i'll be in a better place soon emotionally.

So now that that's all out of my system, I can talk about the interdisciplinary music we looked at. There was some really cool examples of film music and other stuff played in class. Let's start with the reading: Tarkovsky. I liked the reading. It was easy to digest. I don't really agree with him, but at least he's clear. He seems to think that music in film is unnatural, and hence unnecessary. I think film, like all art, shouldn't try to be a perfect representation of life/the real world, and style - for example, the choice of sound/music/etc in film - is what makes the film's impact on the world/audience. I think it's a totally valid and valuable approach to film, to only use diegetic sound, but perhaps not the only way. I loved seeing how he uses sound in his work (The Mirror), but I don't think this is a universally relevant approach. Example, the shmultz of Badelamenti's love theme in the scene from Wild At Heart that we watched. I love the way Badelamenti scores. He's a master of creeping in out of nowhere and drawing you into a particular moment. Like Tarkovsky says, his music isn't there to always push the feeling down your throat. Much of his work in Lynch's movies is there to sustain the suspense and confusion. What could possibly be happening? Twin Peaks is a great example of that. Often long drones accompany scenes that are quite quirky, or light jazz themes play around the characters, creating relationships that may or may not become relevant/apparent for ages, but the speculation becomes open. In this scene from Wild At Heart, the music is an obvious emoticon, but I refuse to accept that as bad thing (what's with me today? I'm in such a mood of extremes).
I was really into the Altered States title sequence. Gotta track down that film. My local video store is shit and doesn't have anything. It's good to be thinking about film/visually accompanied music. It's really where I see myself headed (outside the band pursuits). I've been trying to befriend as many visual and film artists this year as I can. So I can build some new relationships and make interesting new work. I feel like there's a wall up around me with signs on it saying avoid this guy, he's no good. I mean, is that stupid or what?!? I need therapy.

Daisies. Well, weird film. We can all agree on that. I would have loved this 10 years ago. The sound was amazing. I'm definitely going to track this one down for my collection. I want to get back into doing improvised film soundtracks again. I used to do it regularly. I'd love to approach this kind of sound score with a improvised band, live on stage. It's a wanky art school word, but the juxtaposition of sound on narrative is a really interesting thing. Approaching it in music (non film music) is an interesting idea. Something like the work David Shea does, like in Hsi Yu Chi or Satyricon, sample collage/narrative. I used to be so in touch with this stuff, but it feels like all I'm in touch with now is pop. I'm interested in trying this out in something, but what it is I don't know. I reckon this week would have been a great week to have a semester break. felt like we had it way too early, but now I really need it.

I don't know if this blog is really anything worth reading, but it's been cathartic to spew it out today. My plans for the week are to finish some projects and make some new Glasfrosch demos, get our remix EP mastered, and book some gigs. Booking performances is a depressing process. Hopefully by next week I'll be a little more positive.

Improvisation. Week 6 T&P

I feel like I had it easy this week. I come from a massively improvised background, and although it's been ages since I got to participate in a large group improv, it's still definitely a subject I'm comfortable with. I'm trying to get my greasy mitts on the Derek Bailey Improvisation book, because that was a most inspired read. I was totally stoked that James picked some North Indian Classical music to listen to. I've been a big lover of Indian music for years now. I fell in love with it from reading about ragas in Bailey's book back in the late 90's, and then through the Indian/jazz/dance/electronic fusion musics I was discovering from studying at Monash and Box Hill tafe's jazz course, from Shakti to Tabla Beat Science. The latter got me interested in tabla music, and I learned tabla for several years which deepened my connection to improvisation (as a side note, I've maintained my love for Indian classical music, and have several works old and new that exploit these sounds and forms. In particular, the new aubade/nocturne series I'm working on, as mentioned in last week's blog, the ambient segues that I'm composing to join the pieces together are based on morning and evening raga forms, and will be improvised).
The other track that I loved was the Beta Erko. I loved it. I love the Vulk's hip hop style. I was really impressed with how it sounded, but even more impressed when I found out the process behind it. That sort of live processing thing is really hard to pull off well, especially when it's a group improvisation. Great sounds.
So I'm reading through my notes from class, and there's a lot of names this week, and not much else. Things that I really liked and need to check out more of. Particularly Sonic Youth/ Jim O'rourke (both of whom, I love, but only know small amounts of their work - I am in love with Jim O'rourke's project Gastr del Sol).
I loved the Guitar/bird installation piece by Celeste Bourgier-Mougernot (animal cruelty aside), although I make a distinction between chance music and improvisation, in fact, I see a massive difference between them. What I mean is, the sound being created by chance by the birds constitutes more of a chance composition than an improvisation. I think improvisation needs to be more active.

The group improvisation we performed together was great fun. I'm really glad I recorded it (will upload/post links soon). I listened back and found it really interesting (although the sound mix/levels etc wasn't flattering or evenly spread for coverage of everyone in the room). I made the choice to use my voice and a megaphone over bringing in an instrument. I considered bringing my guitar or a bunch of stuff like theremin/waterphone/melodica, but i figured that with voice I could express and experiment more, and since I don't really have a "main instrument" anymore, and consider myself "multi-instrumental/vocalist", it seemed only natural to sing. I tried to avoid standing out as sounding like a "frontman" in the music, although there are times when I did, and it worked, and I tried to experiment with a few different approaches to voice. I avoided actual words, and went for nonsensical syllables, reverse sounding stuff, etc. Another reason I chose to use voice is that it's an incredibly physical expression of sound, and I like to get really physical when I improvise, really make the sound part of my body.
There are a couple of particularly emotional moments that stand out in my memory. One was a soft moment, when I started singing melodic phrases unamplified, and the music built up around me. The other was a much more violent moment that became intensely physical and emotional for me. James had stood up near me, bowing a cardboard box, and i was convulsively attacking the megaphone, playing it like a saxophone (I had a flash of seeing Zorn live as I was squealing and squarking and muting the end of the megaphone against my leg - something Zorn does with the bell of his sax), as things started to calm down, I was making a quite gross, guttural, sick/vomit sound, and started to (in some kind of method acting way) increase the realness of these convulsions to a point where I was actually almost puking. Which hurt, and started making me really emtional. Listening back to this section is really powerful, especially when the tears and sobs and coughing start. It being real and not mock sound effects, being really in the moment with the music, and being so viscerally connected to the sound at the moment, listening back makes me kind of squeemish. In the moment, I really felt part of the music. The room and everyone had disappeared completely. All the was left was the sound.

Motive - Week 5 T&P reflection.

I think it really took me the whole 4 hour class to figure out and absorb what the hell motive even meant. I felt pretty stuck in my ways after it all. I have definitely had plenty to focus on during the break as a result. The unfortunate thing is that I was still moving in to my new apartment during the week and we still don't have the internet on. I feel so disconnected. I've pretty much used the time to be distraction free and just focus on making stuff and using my notes from class as reference/points of focus. We've definitely listened to plenty of cool stuff again. Chion's Requiem has been massively in mind as I've been working on new pieces. I've been really thinking about the motivic development of my own work. I have put the big list of motif things we made in class next to my work space to give me something think about. It's helped a bit.

I am working on a series of pieces at the moment, 10 pieces in fact, 5 morning and 5 evening pieces. These will be 2 separate Glasfrosch EPs. Aubades and Nocturnes. The Aubades are nearly finished. and the Nocturnes are still in early development. The means of releasing them into the world will be via BandCamp, and then eventually as a double CD. Each track is around 10 mintues long and serves to capture some kind of early morning ambiguity/romance. The main motifs outside of the concept of the works are the use of polyrhythms, the reverse glockenspiel and toy piano textures that colour much of my work. Dynamics and colour are big focuses in this work, as always for me. There's an aquatic vibe about it all too, which is another common motif of my work. I tend to work with concepts of dreams and sleep, the sea, other nostalgic things. As I put each individual piece together, and focusing on each as a stand alone, live performable song, it's becoming increasingly pertinent to find ways to keep them tied together. Two tracks in particular have a lot in common musically - track 3 Water Tricks, and 5 Still Life (standing on the beach) are both built on similar musical foundations and stem from some really old ideas that have developed over about 10 years. the first track, Aubade/after each sentence another beautiful mystery connects to these other pieces less directly, but still uses some similar sounds and harmonic characteristics. Amphibian and Gyokuro are the even number tracks in the series and they stand out as the most different. Amphibian is a more forceful track with momentum to spare, it represents the monotony of the day and the double life we all tend to live to get through it. Gyokuro is probably the most diverse and is the Zen like alternative to Amphibian, focusing on the sweeter details of life, and nature, and finding a connection to it all. Between each track I'm composing little ambient segues, pieces that can be improvised live to join the music together. These segues will be another motif that repeats and serve to encapsulate the themes of the music.
When and as the Nocturnes form, the same process of connecting the music will occur, but this time I will be more conscious of how it all happens, and can compose the tracks to specifically mirror the Aubades, extending the same motives into new moods.

Volume, and other musings.

Volume. Dynamics. Space. All these things have been really penetrating my process over the easter break. I've been working on some music for Alice's dance class, and some more Glasfrosch stuff for our new EP. The piece I'm working on for Alice's dance class is also something I'm submitting for Spacial Practice. The piece explores specifically space and physicality, but it's also a exploration of colour, volume, process, and rhythm. The jist of it is this: I spend a few hours in the dance studio woth the girls during their class, and recorded the sounds they made in the space during their warm ups and improvisations. then I found the parts that had a good natural musicality to them and made little phrases from them as the foundation for the rhythm. Then I cut up some individual hits and assigned them to an impulse kit in Ableton Live, and set about programming the beats. I used minimal fx, filters and EQ mostly, let the natural reverb of the space be the only reverb sound, I reversed some parts and panned them around the space and then set about using volume - dynamics - to sculpt the form. I'm going to go back to the space with y toy piano later this week, and record a little passage in the space to add some extra tonal colour to the end of the piece. The whole thing is sounding like a total Autechre rip off, but I don't mind. So what does this have to do with Volume/Techniques and Processes?
I guess this Spacial Pracitce piece is kind of serving as a precursor to the volume piece we've been set to compose for T&P. I've started paying particular attention to the dynamics and relationship to space in my process, and thinking about "volume" as we did in class last week (the jug analogy) I feel like approaching a volume piece needs to involve these two parameters. Volume isn't just about dynamics alone. Or at least, since last weeks class, I can't see it that way anymore. Volume = the dynamic relationship to the space it is in. So things like loud and soft aren't absolutes, but particular to perception within this contextual relationship. On Good Friday I went to the Gasometer to see some friend's bands play, the space upstairs there is tiny and the speakers/pa system is massive. The sound was so loud, I stayed downstairs for most of the show. It could have sounded so good and still loud at half the volume, and would have been more enjoyable, but this was painful. That same system at the same setting would have sounded tiny in a bigger space, but the room size made the whole thing seem louder.
The piece I've started for the volume experiment uses three main parts. A little repetitive plinky loop that will stay soft for the whole piece, but change tone ever so slightly across the piece to change the ways in which it stands out from the rest of the sounds.  a deeper less frequent part that will expand and grow in volume each time it arrives, and a third, long, growing layer that will take the entire length of the piece to reach it's peak. It is my aim to reach a point of absolute engulfing sound before the end, which will be very difficult to do.

Studio Piece 1 (work in progress) by Glasfrosch_Justin