The Naada project: first sketches, part 2

Below is another new sketch from the Naada project I am currently working on in India (see this previous post for more of an introduction).

Like the previous track, it takes natural, 'ambient' sound as its starting point and gradually develops into a musical piece. In this case the original sound world (or 'Naada') is rain. It also takes as its inspiration a story from Hindu mythology of the saint Swati hearing the very first music as raindrops fall from the sky onto a pool of lotus leaves.

Naada Sketch 2: Rain/Swati/Nine by rustyjoe

The piece moves from the sound of a gradually softening rainstorm to more discrete raindrops, which then eventually develop a 'tonality' and become gong notes. I chose the sounds of gamelan to reflect the sound of falling rain, and the resultant piece is in a big 9-beat rhythm pattern (see if you can count it out). It also plays with an even bigger 6-beat rhythm that can be played across the 9 by counting groups of 3 quavers. Using Indian Carnatic rhythmic structures helps with the process of developing new work with the dancers at Darpana who are predominantly Bharatanatyam dancers, and for whom Carnatic Rhythm is a mother-tongue.

There is a missing part which is played live in this piece, featuring the ancient South Indian Master Drum, the mridangam. This represents (along with the gongs) the 'first sound' of the Swati story, exploiting the mridangam's amazing ability (much like the tabla, its north Indian cousin) to make water-like sounds.

Max/Ableton/Sound Design Nerd alert: The process of modulating the sound from raindrops to pitched percussion/gong sounds was done using the new 'Corpus' plugin as an insert effect in Ableton Live. I basically tuned the settings for each raindrop sample with the dry/wet mix at 100% until it became a gong-like sound with a clear pitch and percussion envelope, and then automated for the plugin to move from 100% dry sound to 100% wet sound. Pretty simple effect really, but not possible without the soundshaping possibilities of fab Corpus plugin.

Akin do a soundtrack...

Akin Soundtrack Highlights Combo by rustyjoe

Above are some highlights from the soundtrack for an as-yet unreleased short film that Akin (Gemma Turvey on piano along with myself) have created the music for in the last few weeks. It's so unreleased that I can't tell you much more about it, other than that it is being produced in Melbourne. It features some of my favourite sounds including gamelan and bowed piano (incidentally on offer as great boutique sample libraries from soniccouture.com). Enjoy.

New Akin Sketches

Akin_LittleRadioMix by rustyjoe

In January of this year my dear buddy from Melbourne, Gemma Turvey, came to Perth to play a show with me under our duo moniker, Akin. We intended to do more recording together in the time that Gemma was here, but alas, we kind of ran out of time and spent just a day in the studio playing some stuff. Furthermore, we lost a whole lot of the recorded data for a particularly good 30 mins or so of playing due to a dreaded computer crash. The particular piece that we were working on was an 'extemporisation' on Hans Eisler's To My Little Radio, originally a setting of a poem by Bertolt Brecht. Some of you may recognise this melody from the setting that Sting made of the piece in his beautiful song, The Secret Marriage.

We ended up with only about 2 mins of piano recorded to tape in the end. Nevertheless, I thought this was some of the best work we did together, and something about being surrounded by the hustle and bustle of India inspired me to do a remix/reworking of our recording, framed with a kind of subtle proto-electronica (almost sci-fi) feel. I feel I can hear the sounds of technology (including little radios) everywhere I go in Ahmedabad, and I was thinking a lot of the way Vangelis' soundtrack to Blade Runner (now approaching 30 years since its first release) uses radio and sounds of voice transmission in a really beautiful and sad way. The original story for Brecht's Little Radio has a similar melancholy to it, and a poignant reminder of the role that media plays in our lives (from songfacts.com):

To A Little Radio was written by Bertolt Brecht as he reached exile from the Nazi regime in 1933 and listened daily for news of the war.... Prophetically, in 1926 Brecht said, "Radio is one-sided when it should be two. It is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out. So here is a positive suggestion: change this apparatus over from distribution to communication. The radio would be the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it knew how to receive as well as transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a relationship instead of isolating him."

This second example below is another tune that we were working on, and is actually the first incarnation of a tune of mine called 'the seeker', which features in two guises on Taal Naan's Rhythmbred CD. It has a much more jammy, stream-of-consciousness flavour.

AkinJam_Jan09 ('The Seeker') by rustyjoe

The Naada project: first sketches, part 1

Naada Sketch 1: Breath/Krishna by rustyjoe

I have been lucky enough to be working in India in the city of Ahmedabad for the past 7 weeks, as part of an Australian Government Asialink grant. I have been doing most of my work here as an Artist in Residence at the Darpana Institute for Performing Arts and Culture in Ahmedabad, headed by the great Mallika Sarabhai, a dancer of the highest calibre by trade, and a formidable public figure whose works champion social action and social change for a predominantly Indian audience.

I have been given the task of writing the music (and creating the sound design) for a new Darpana Dance Theatre production, called the Naada project, to be staged for their main annual arts festival in Dec 09. Without going into too much detail, the Indian (from Hindu Mythology) concept of Naada is, in a broad sense, all about the origins of sound and music. It is interested in the concept of the 'first sound', which is one of the conceptual starting points I have chosen when creating new musical material for the piece.

Thus far, the music is structured as a series of vignettes (and this form may change once the performance material is created) which feature a particular instrument and sound world. At my disposal I have the resident musicians at Darpana, who are basically a Southern Indian Classical 'Carnatic' Ensemble - a singer, 2 percussionists, a violin player and a flute player. Along with myself on percussion/live electronics and effects we make up the band for the production. I am really also into the idea of using live processing of sounds (using Ableton and Max) to create a sense of magical realism, where a known and real sound (the featured acoustic instruments) becomes something unbelievable and magical. I like to think this can tie in well with the elements of Hindu Mythology in the piece also. Enough talking already, onto the music.

The first example (player above) is a mock-up of an opening introduction piece featuring Darpana's Rajesh on flute. It takes as a starting point the length of one breath, and the simple idea that the piece emerges from one breath/one note and gradually becomes a new, magical world of sound. It is trying to create/emulate the natural ambient sound of the wind first, which then gradually becomes a single note sound, which then is layered to become a harmonic sound. In this case, the harmonic layers built up are pretty static and modal, over which Rajesh then plays an Alap, or slow (almost timeless) improvised introduction.

For those Ableton/Max nerds out there... the live processing going on is the live clip recording in Ableton of a single flute note played by rajesh, which is put through 4 granular delays, whose 'pitch' setttings are automated by a simple max patch. The patch follows the envelope of each note, and then changes the way the single note is treated harmonically by moving on to the next preset 'chord' of pitch automations for the granular delays. This auto-harmoniser-like effect is then looped as a ~1min long clip over which Rajesh then plays his alap. The whole time this is playing I am sampling what Rajesh is doing in a simple way using the looper plugin, and then finally adding rhythm to the wash of sound made by processing the sampled sound through the autofilter and beat repeat plugins. A single granular delay (which is automated/changing pitch) is constantly processing what Rajesh is doing live.

Bhaji Smugglers w Dane Alderson and Marcus Perrozzi

We recently played a show at the Subiaco Arts centre, featuring a couple of very special guests, Dane Alderson on bass and the ubiquitous Marcus Perrozzi on percussion. One new thing that we did was play a version of 'Bhaji Smugglers', a tune heavily influenced by northern Indian tabla rhythms, but with the electric bass added in. The piece was originally written for drums only, so it was great to have the bass add some pitch and tonality to an otherwise really rhythmic tune. Dane's virtuosic playing was the perfect way to approach these kinds of rhythms which are at times very fast! Check out the video below, the mix for the vocals is a bit low so you miss some of the detail in the konnakol, but you get the idea...

Taal Naan w Dane Alderson, Marcus Perrozzi play 'Bhaji Smugglers' from taalnaan on Vimeo.

Kalimbas to Marimbas with Michael Askill, Greg Sheehan

When Taal Naan was in Byron Bay recently to work with Michael and Greg, we did a lot of improvising. One piece that came out of this was the one performed in the following video, filmed at the Byron Community Theatre. It is performed on a pair of kalimbas looped and processed through Ableton Live, followed by an improvisation for four players on one marimba, loosely based around the many different ways that we could play a Greg Sheehan number 'triangle' -

7 7 7 7
6 6 6
5 5
4

Taal Naan with Michael Askill, Greg Sheehan - Kalimbas to Marimbas from taalnaan on Vimeo.

One from the Archive: Taal Naan and special guests with Fritz Hauser

In July, 2008, we were lucky enough in Perth to host the master percussionist/soundmaker Fritz Hauser. Together with our great perth buddies Louise Conroy and Daniel Susnjar, we put on a show that had a loose form (in 5 parts), but was on the whole improvised. The result was a resounding sound and a resounding success, thanks in no small way to Fritz's amazing ability to draw our audience into the sounds he was making.

The show was called 'insert space here...', and was performed at the WA Academy of Performing Arts Round Theatre, 21/7/08. Editing/Postproduction was by Derek Ho, filming was by Derek Ho / Dirty Stylus productions.

Below is a little showreel of some of the highlights from the performance (remember you can hit the 'HD' button and go to vimeo to watch it in HD if you have the bandwidth)

We hope to eventually post a full video of the whole performance.


Taal Naan and friends with Fritz Hauser from taalnaan on Vimeo.

'Laura' - with Greg Sheehan

One of our most favourite instruments is the Hang drum - you just need to listen to our Rhythmbred CD to hear that it has a big influence on our 'sound world'. Greg Sheehan, with whom we worked with over two weeks in July 09 in Byron Bay, has a beautiful Hang drum that is tuned to a C minor scale. He has written a number of tunes for this instrument, one of them being 'Laura', named in honor of his partner.

Below is a video of us performing this tune with him in a performance at the Byron Community Theatre at the end of our two weeks with both Greg and Michael Askill, another legendary Australian percussionist. It has an improvised middle section - in this version I play a marimba (a tuned wooden percussion instrument) and Steve plays an Udu, which is basically a clay pot which has a range of lovely tones, including a deep bass 'boom'. Don't forget that you can watch the whole thing in HD if you follow the link in the video to vimeo, or watch the smaller, faster version here. Enjoy.

'Laura' - Taal Naan with Greg Sheehan play Greg Sheehan.... from taalnaan on Vimeo.

Body Percussion with Greg Sheehan

Another one of our favourite ways to make percussion music is using body percussion. Greg Sheehan is a bit of a pioneer when it comes to the use of this kind of music in teaching and performing, and we hope to have some lessons up on the site soon where you yourself can start working on your claps, mouth pops chest slaps and 7-7-2 number diamonds! (some of the things we are using in the following piece). For now - check out the video below as a great example of how it can be used in a challenging and fun way.

We were lucky enough to work with Greg in Byron Bay for a couple of weeks in July 09, and Greg came up with this piece for us to do quite quickly once he had shown us the basic moves. Enjoy! (n.b. if you have the bandwidth and want to watch the video in HD click on the "HD is off" button and you can go to the vimeo website to watch the HD version)

Taal Naan with Greg Sheehan, Body Percussion Jam from taalnaan on Vimeo.

'You and Me' (arr.) video, Rhythmbred CD Launch Jul 09

One of our favourite things is making music without any (large & heavy) instruments. Konnakol (or South Indian Vocal Percussion) is a great way to make percussion music. Here's a little demo of Steve and I doing my own arrangement of the Selvaganesh tune, "You and Me" from our recent CD Launch at Kulcha.

Taal Naan perform 'You and Me' (arr.), Rhythmbred CD Launch, Jul 2009 from taalnaan on Vimeo.

Rhythmbred featured on Radio National's 'Weekend Planet'

Taal Naan's new album is being featured by Doug Spencer on this saturday's (Aug 22) edition of the weekend planet at 10pm. See this page for a pre-show playlist, and to listen to the podcast after the broadcast. It looks like they are playing just about all the tracks and getting their full value out of our new release. We're really proud to be featured on this show which is an Australian world/folk music institution... Doug Spencer says of the album:

'Taal Naan's debut album Rhythm Bred offers delicious/excruciating puns...and much more. Primarily percussive, inventive and globally-inclined, Josh Hogan and Steve Richter are a playful Australian duo whose vast instrumental array includes the studio itself.'

Taal Naan on Radio National

New Labels

This is the blog post where I create some of the new online lesson labels...