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.