THU20, further progress

Last weekend THU20 spent another day at EARLabs studio. We have been working on a piece that will be part of the Zelphabet series that is released by GX Juppiter Larsen. The first session (January 11, 2009 see blogpost there) we recorded live and input the result directly into the computer. This session we started to construct a composition based on the live session. We actually used a visual score for playing: a photograph of a part of my table cloth. How inspiring!!

So this Sunday we used Reaper to go through all of the tracks and decided where we want things out and where they come in and what needs to be shifted back and forth. By the end of the day we had a piece which you can hear in this section

[ Start ]
[ Middle ]

The end of the composition hasn't been touched yet.
On Tuesday I decided to give the start piece another go because I thought the start was sounding flat, despite the (intentional) chaotic atmosphere. The result of this session you can hear in the following sample

[ Start 2 ]

Mind you: this second mix is also just something provisional. It is definitely not the final mix!!! As we are extremely difficult to get in touch with having our own busy lives, I have no idea when the next session will be. It is our intention to make that the final one and finish it up. Stay tuned.

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More of something else

I haven't been writing at this blog for a while. That has to do with pressure on other fronts. In the mean time I HAVE been working on stuff, but it's all experiments in the same line as I talked about in my previous posts. I don't expect real works to be coming off it. As I am a project freak all of my etudes have gone in a folder called "easylistening". Funnily I am experimenting with easy listening stuff. I can tell you: it's definitely not easy to construct something that is easy to listen to.

For the time being I'm in the phase where I copy the works of other people (most notably that of Brian Eno, but also more modern stuff, and 80's stuff, etc). In the meantime I work with structure, schemes, chords, twiddling synthesizers, rhythm machines. I suppose that in due time I will find a version that feels like it's mine. And then the real work begins. Or it doesn't; if I'm fed up. And maybe I'll return to my difficult listening music.

Oh, before I forget: I also did some nice tape experiments. But the results have gone in the folder "tape experiments" and will be used in a future project.

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Something entirely else

I suddenly feel like I shouldn't make the usual things. I want to do something else. Because I'm reading this Eno biography (almost finished) I thought I'd do something in that ambient direction. So I hooked up my keyboard and dived into the softsynths that I have collected ( I made use of the Korg Polysix and Stillwell's Olga here).
Learning to deal with MIDI in Reaper was fun. Works like a charm, quick and easy just like the rest of this application. I have tried loads of rhythm (reasamplomatic5000), melody, ambience and today came to something that actually gets somewhere.

It's got no name, it's not nearly finished (needs sound balancing and lots of other stuff), but it's something that gives a hint about the direction I'd like to be heading for a while. It's got rhythm, it's got a melody, it's got atmosphere. Ha!

check it out [ here ]

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