I've a lot to be thankful for and spent Friday wondering who or what to focus on. Then on Friday night I visited my friend Alicia Boyd's Tumblr and liked her prose 'Liberation Please'.
While the theme isn't exactly gratitude, it does pick up on a few themes for me. I met Ms Boyd at Burning Seed, an event which has changed my life, and she recently appropriated a line from one of my haiku. So I thought I'd show my gratitude for her interest in my writing by appropriating some of her's.
This morning I experimented with making the words sit on a chord progression and then quickly recorded this take.
As far as constraints go, I didn't have plans to go anywhere this week and asked my partner to drive to the op shop while I attempted to make up something musical.
I'm not sure it's successful. My mate Paul pointed out there's a discordant note.
The Junto this week asks for three loops of different lengths drawn from an archive of Sri Lankan music, then made into a song.
My loops came from "Aadarayai_Karunawai" and "Sri_Maha_Bodhimulehi" and "Umba_Kiya_Kiya" but they ended up being relatively in sync.
When I settled on these samples I was using a different percussion part from the last of those songs, which had a 6/8 riff.
Then I got tired of the musical part over the top of that rhythm and found there was a 5/4 break in the track, so I settled on using it.
After doing this I looked at the other two loops, a horn I think and three bell chimes, tweaked their lengths only a little and found they were 20 beats, 10 beats and the drums were 5 beats.
Then I started a drum part to accompany them and realised it was 4/4, which was a shock as the bass part I'd been jamming on was 3/4 and a bit similar to 'Money' by Pink Floyd.
So I played the bass a bit more and found a kinda disco part that seemed good for a chorus.
This video explains some of the frustration I've had with arbitrary sound choices.
For me the question first arose when numerous friends shared this video with me:
I understand the tree rings are triggering the piano but it seemed like sleight of hand when they suggested I was hearing the tree.
Then there are the contact mic apps that use the sound source to trigger a sample. Again it's a somewhat arbitrary process to suggest the object being struck is creating the musical result.
I think sonification is an interesting process but one that would be better described as a musical metaphor.