Bassling blog: May 2017

Naviarhaiku177 – Eastern guard tower

The haiku shared by Naviar Records this week forced me to consider the pleasures that come with lying in the sun, just as weather turned cold.

Once again I've turned to my gated effects rig, this time with my Nashville-tuned guitar. It's a simple chord progression based on a variation of BDAE recorded on the weekend, now EBDA.

Was thinking I'd record a bass part to accompany it but have competing deadlines at present. Only had time to record a single take.

Cause and aphect

Ian Brennan on the origins of good music

“It’s a very Western idea that input equals output. It’s wrong to assume that in order to be a good musician, ‘I have to listen to this person and that person, or I have to be taught,’” he explains. “Good musicians are good because music comes from inside of them.”

Disquiet Junto 0282 Berio’s Bach

The Junto this week draws on Luciano Berio's observation that part of the attraction of some of Bach’s music is in its clear distinction between which notes are “structurally significant” and which are “decorative.”

I didn't spend much time thinking about the notes and distinguishing them, instead I had a chord progression in mind and fumbled about on the fretboard once I started recording.

The result could use an edit but, again, I didn't spend much time on it.

Drummer Jaki Liebezeit's E-T system

Although Leibezeit never considered himself a teacher as such, he became the centre of the Drums Off Chaos collective, a group of fellow drummers who gravitated towards him, attracted by his system.

It was one the group's members, Gero Sprafke, who transcribed the system, making it a matter of record. Leibezeit's system, which is roughly analagous to Morse code, is referred to as E-T, the E and the T coming from Morse code to represent the dot and the dash. It has four basic rules:

Dot means a hit with one hand. Dash means two hits with one hand, with the duration of two dots.

Dots and dashes are always played by alternate hands.

The second hit in a dash is always quieter than the first, even to the point of silence. It can be almost as loud as the first hit but never as loud or louder.

Accents are only possible after a dash.

Naviarhaiku176 – lonely stillness

This haiku shared by Naviar Records this week was an opportunity for me to record a second take of the track I'd made while responding to the Disquiet Junto.

The timing of the palindromic loop was a bit wonky and, while it spiced the track by shifting the repetitions, I thought I could do better. Then the camera battery ran out while recording the bass part, so I looped it.

Quick exit

Disquiet Junto 0281 Pattern Interruption

Create a pattern, loop it, and intersperse alterations.

After watching Soundgarden videos this morning, I decided to use a chord progression from one of their songs. It's EBC made a palindrome as EBCCBE.

Initially I used MIDI instruments in Live to try the notes and played with the idea of using delay to intersperse alterations. Then I thought about the gated effects chain that hasn't been used for a week.

Art without constraints

Art without constraints ceases to be art. The trick will lie in finding the balance between here and the infinite.

Naviarhaiku175 – sound of rain

The haiku shared by Naviar Records this week suggested something percussive.

After rumaging around my hard drive, I found the bass and ukulele parts for a song that wasn't finished. Then added the drums from 'Smoke'.

Jonathan Safran Foer on bumbling

The art of the creative process is not seeking and finding, it’s bumbling.

Disquiet Junto 0280 20170514

The Disquiet Junto this week requests "please use new musical things to recreate some old musical thing."

The new musical thing is Shiver Me Timbers, which is the two-string upright that I bought last month (despite saying I wouldn't buy new musical equipment this year). It's been a lot of fun playing this fretless acoustic bass.

The old musical thing is Ice-T's 'Reckless', which came from the Breakin' soundtrack. The video above has the song with excerpts from the breakdance-themed film from 1984. I remember having a copy of the soundtrack on cassette and transcribed the lyrics for an English class activity in year seven.

Today I found a few notes that suited a slowed delivery of the lyrics, rehearsed a couple of times and recorded the vocal and bass. A Shure SM7 can be seen being used for my voice, while a Rode K2 is being used on the bass off-camera.

Vito Acconci on noisy systems

Although poetry and performance permeated his teaching, he prioritized architecture. I know he taught in architecture programs at other institutions, but, to me, his teaching hit its stride when he trained artists to think like architects. He pushed them to think lyrically about the real conditions of culture and the lived environment. His prompts instilled in them a wariness of authoritarian constructs. One student told me of his exhortation to “introduce noise into the system.”

Naviarhaiku 174 -- chilled light

On a recent chilly morning I shot footage of the clouds moving against the lightening sky.

It seemed appropriate for this haiku.

e.e. cummings' The First Of All My Dreams

Tried recording another poem by e.e.cummings accompanied by Shiver Me Timbers.

The Devil's Music

Disquiet Junto 0279 Word Interiorities

For the Junto this week I've manipulated the word "disquietude" -- if it is a word.

My voice was recorded using a SM7 microphone, as well as a Nikon D5100. The result was manipulated in Ableton Live using loops, some treated with gates and Beatrepeat, as well as Valhalla Shimmer reverb and Ohmforce Ohmboyz delay.

I also experimented with "onomatopoeia" but the loops didn't really grab me. I thought the rhythm would work better.

Nick Cave on intellectual convenience

“The idea that we live life in a straight line, like a story, seems to me to be increasingly absurd and, more than anything, a kind of intellectual convenience,” he says. “I feel that the events in our lives are like a series of bells being struck and the vibrations spread outwards, affecting everything, our present, and our futures, of course, but our past as well. Everything is changing and vibrating and in flux..."

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