NO MOBILES ON THE DANCEFLOOR, PLEASE

David Byrne on How Music Works

Music tells us things — social things, psychological things, physical things about how we feel and perceive our bodies — in way that other art forms can’t. It’s sometimes in the words, but just as often the content comes from a combination of sounds, rhythms, and vocal textures that communicate, as has been said by others, in ways that bypass the reasoning centers of the brain and go straight to our emotions. Music, and I’m not even talking about the lyrics here, tells us how other people view the world — people we have never met, sometimes people who are no longer alive — and it tells it in a non-destructive way. Music embodies the way those people think and feel: we enter into new worlds — their worlds — and through our perception of those worlds might not be 100 percent accurate, encountering them can be completely transformative.

Reimagining in Wagga Art Gallery

Western Riverina Arts' Reimagining the Murrumbidgee exhibition is now open at the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery.

My contribution is a soundtrack composed from recordings of the River, as well as photographs in the catalogue which I also designed.

If you can't make it to Wagga, you can download my Reimagining soundtrack and a copy of the catalogue from Bandcamp.

No Junto

Missed the Junto last week and will skip it again this week. In part it's because there's a video I should be editing, but also because last week's exercise involved remixing some tracks I found kinda headache-inducing and this week requires interpreting a weekly calendar. The latter isn't something I keep but is an interesting idea, wish I'd had time to prepare for it but, yeah, I should be editing a video.

Amazing tongue twister

Brian Eno Visual Music

Been enjoying reading Brian Eno Visual Music by Christopher Scoates. It's a lush book filled with many examples from throughout Eno's education and career, as well as discussing his influences and exhibitions.

The text on the bookmark ribbon comes from the Oblique Strategies developed by Eno and Peter Schmidt, which is a nice touch.

P.S. There's an interview where Eno reflects on the book and his work here.

Disquiet Junto Celebrating Burroughs

The Disquiet Junto this week celebrated what would've been the 100th birthday of William S Burroughs, who popularised the cut-up technique of composition in literature and other media.

This Junto really excited me because it was something I'd been meaning to try out. My partner has been making cut-up poetry in recent months, ahead of an exhibition that opens today. She hadn't considered this would coincide with Burroughs birthday, as she was drawing her inspiration from Tristan Tzara.

Funnily enough, I'd suggested to her on Friday morning that we could create an application that would automatically compose cut-up poetry from text. She argued against the idea, saying the process of putting together a piece using the technique relied on editorial judgments but also human intent. This is the sort of argument I'd expect from Burroughs, who promoted the technique as a kind of magical process. So it was curious to end up doing something similar following Marc's instructions.

My local newspaper is The Irrigator and their lead story concerned a couple of botched break-ins that happened in the main street of Leeton on Thursday morning.

At first I wasn't sure about the lyrics I'd composed following the Junto email, when it arrived on Friday afternoon. But I liked the chorus better than the third line in the lead story from The Area News that day, and settled on a chord progression before my partner arrived home from hanging the exhibition. I thought the verses were crap though and she suggested I consider a more punk delivery.

Since I wasn't going to be able to play the guitar fast enough, I decided to MIDI the track and ended up with this electro-sorta hardcore. When I got to recording the lyrics on Saturday morning, I'd forgotten the melody I had in mind. So I belted them out a couple of times while getting the microphone levels right. What you hear is my third take.




P.S. Here's a cut-up I made at Jo's exhibition.

Dads Best Friend

Clint Mansell on scoring

I truly just work. The mystery is not really a mystery. There's no secret. It's all about doing it. There are days when you get it right and, there are days when you don't. It all starts with my senses, when things speak to me. Sometimes I write for days, and nothing really works. But then I write one piece. ONE, which finally gives a meaning to all that rest that I've been writing. Everything you do is leading you somewhere, even when you are not aware of it; it's like a puzzle. Quite often I get into a movie knowing what I am after, but not what it is. I look at what I do very much as a William Burroughs kind of work, very random at first, not linear whatsoever. But then, as you get more pieces, things start to get together and I begin to see the bigger picture, the symphony. Every melody always starts with one note, after all.

Pulling the chain

There's a piece I've written about the new Remix Chain album on Cyclic Defrost, click here and learn more.

Mario Caldato on recording

Sometimes mistakes can sound really good. Instead of putting the mics where everyone else puts it, put it somewhere else and face it in the wrong direction, run it through something and see what it does. Start hitting buttons, you might surprise yourself. Shit, run it through Tapco EQs, run it through some garbage. Run it through some Radio Shack stuff, just be open. There's no rules, nobody says you have to do this or that. You know what? You got a Yamaha compressor? You got an Alesis? They all sound good, they're all different. Don't be afraid. Try dumb stuff, put the mic in the refrigerator, put it in the closet - try weird spots. If you're gonna do drums, set up your usual mics, kick, snare, overheads. Then tack one on the wall or facing the other way, go as far as you can in the room, try to get some depth on it. Open up the door and put it in the next room. Put it outside, get some ambience. We set up a mic and I did vocals in a tree on a still night, and it sounded great. We were pullin' in some helicopters - they came in at just the right time in the song. The little bugs and birds and bees added so much life and texture to the song. It was really amazing.

Eclectic Method's History of Sampling

A Brief History of Sampling from Eclectic Method on Vimeo.

Read more about some famous samples here.