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EXPLAIN your 10th Anniversary Birthday 30 second tune
I just went to Krispen's site for the 10th Anniversary 30 second looping
project
and was really blown away at all the really interesting and cutting edge
music
I hear there.
I thought it would be very educational for everyone to explain how they
put
their
particular piece together.
I record a lot of my live improvisational shows and for the last
seven years I have only improvised live and not done any compositions
(though
I revisit sets of instruments and will have set scales/modes/rags/maqams
and
rhythms that I'm in love with for a while).
Frequently, I'll go back to those shows and hunt down loops that I do
want
to use
in my abstract electronica CDs (I have a tendency to alternate composed,
computer
driven abstract electronica recordings with live looping recordings).
I did the same with this particular piece, throwing it into ACID to
manipulate the loops
I 'sampled' from my self.
Anyway, this particular track was from a one off theme show that I did (I
love to do
theme oriented shows just once or twice) called 'Weird Kalimba" where,
for
the
first time since the turn of the millennium I used only traditional West
African, North
African and Middleeastern instruments and did a very avant garde show with
them.
On this piece I used just West African rattles (several different kinds
from
bamboo rattles
to seed pod gourds to even a South African set of rattles made out of the
husks of
Moth chrysalises).
I then used the Echoplex with INERT equaling SUBSTITUTE (one of my
favorite
techniques)
and rounded to 8th notes so that singing long tones in a particular scale
the EDP would
grab individual 8th note values of long tones I was singing, randomly.
I love to play this game randomly because the piece starts sound really
weird and without form
and the more you play the game, the more all 8 notes (or however many you
choose) will fill
up.
By singing in falsetto, I can effect a loop that sounds as if the
Pygmies
of the Ituri Forest
had accidentally drunk some on LSD spiked punch.
The 'melody' is just me using a couple of different extended vocal
techniques (warble singing and trill singing)
along with a couple of interesting technique where
1) I pound rhythmically on my chest with my fist which causes
very quick comb filtering effects to change the timbre of my voice as I
also
manipulate the overtones
of my falsetto notes and
2) where is grab the loose skin just above my adams apple and shake it
rhythmical which causes a very
interesting modulation effect on the voice.
both of these techniques look really strange (as it does when I play my
Filipino nose flute or manipulate the overtones
of my horribly phallic looking toy voice changer) and the audience will
sometimes laugh when I do this but
I think it produces really cool vocal effects.
yours, Rick Walker