well, dave asked for it, and now you’ll have it – my ‘official’ notes on the summer recordings posted here, such as they are.
polyrhythm + guitars: this piece was recorded on my four-track cassette recorder with the drums recorded first, then the rhythm guitar, and finally the lead guitar playing little bits of pentatonic melodies here and there, all in the key of E. everything was in one take and improvised, because (as is often the case when I have time to record), I usually have some general idea of what I want to do, but have not planned out the details before hand. Because drum recording time is always incredibly limited (I have OTHER PEOPLE trying to relax in the rest of the studio, erm, house!), I just don’t have the luxury of fussing over mistakes. Fortunately, this track came out pretty clean, although its more a demo than a well-developed recording.
The intersting point of this recording is really the polyrhythm, which as dave notes, is 2/3. This is really the most basic of polyrhythms, and is found in all kinds of really cool drumming around the world. It’s also incredibly soothing to play and is used in some cultures as a ‘beat’ of meditation. The rhythm itself is contained in the phrase, ‘cold cup of tea’, and that’s a handy little mnemonic to remember if you find yourself listening to polyrhythmic music in the future.
Influences for this track – the band formerly known as the Boredoms, does a lot of cool rhythmic oriented music these days, and the track House of Sun (which you can listen to here) is a more developed take on modal electric guitar playing. Steve Tibbetts is really the master of this kind of thing though, and if you enjoyed this little clip you probably will love all the playing and drumming (by the great percussionist Marc Anderson) on his most recent records. One day these demos are going to sound as cool as those guys…
Pop Song like GH – another demo, this time with a pop-oriented song in mind. again, I tracked the drums first, then the rhythm guitar and finally the ‘bass’ which is really just my guitar playing the bass line with the treble knob turned way down – you make do with what equipment you have!
a couple of (possibly) interesting things about this demo – first, the jangly rhythm guitar is strongly reminiscent of an early beatles-like arrangement (although George Harrison was who I had in mind specifically). because the rhythm instrument is so treblely, it sits in the sound field and ‘fills up’ the recording in a way that a more muted instrument would not be able to do. this is a common trick three and four piece bands use to make their arrangements sound ‘larger’ than their limited instrumentation might suggest, and i use it here. the bass line in the ‘chorus’ parts of the song is a classic boogie woogie bass line that comes up frequently in pop music, and the line that transitions the song back to the verses is another classic descending motif that i’ve heard in a number of tunes both new and old. finally, you’ll notice in the chord changes leading up to the chorus a strange harmonic twist in the second to last chord before the chorus – that’s an F chord that is not in the major scale of the key this song is written in, and it kind of gives that transition a little extra ‘edge’ – that is a classic george harrison song writing move – introducing an unrelated chord into the harmony of a song to create dramatic tension and that’s how this fun little tune got it’s name!
Influences for this track: Early Beatles, late george harrison.
Harmonized Guitar: Just another simple pentatonic melody idea, harmonized to give it a little bit of a different flavor. this is a good example of the kind of ideas that run through my playing all the time that are mostly forgotten, but could eventually turn out to be good tunes – i think this line would sound great harmonized with a brass section (Calling all horn players!?) in a kind of jazzy arrangement.
interesting points of note – check out the cymbal playing during the harmonized lines – do you notice how on the fourth hit in each measure the cymbal sound ‘bends’? i learned that trick from watching a bunch of twentieth-century european classical percussion concerts – you can bend a cymbal sound by submerging it in water! although it’s kind of pointless in this context (i recorded it more out of curiosity than anything else) it does sound cool. How did I do it? By filling up my bathtub (!) standing the cymbal over the water, playing along with the track and then trying to dunk it into the water to get the right sound all without trying to knock my microphone off it’s stand into the tub! it was a lot of fun, even if it didn’t really come out to great effect…
Influences for this track: well the allman brothers, sort of, for the harmonized guitar idea. the kind of semi-related drum part at the end has a chord progression that is similar to one of the instrumental interludes on a garden show i sometimes watch on PBS – just realized that on second listen – so also a PBS garden show…
Drone in G : More of a sound experiment, I recorded this one at my apartment on my mac with cubase and a presonus firebox. i recorded the drone instruments first, then the more rhythmic guitar and banjo parts later on.
the idea here was a kind of instrumental sound collage – droning away once again in one key – that had a bunch of really interesting timbres coming from the variety of acoustic instruments being played. all the actual musical ideas are super simple, but together they make a more complex whole. this kind of thing would have sounded a lot better if it could have been recorded live with different people playing all the different instruments – i wish i had a group of readily recruitable friends to come over and jingle bells and such for recording like this, but alas, that’s not the case – so, we’ll all have to settle for multi-tracking instead for the time being (interested bell-ringers, violinist and others should send me a note in the comments – i’ll hire you on the spot for future projects!) this is also the recorded debut of my Tibetan singing bowls!
Influences for this track: without a doubt, the wonderfully named Vibracathedral Orchestra. These folks specialize in super complex droning instrumentals – check ‘em out for a heady dose of psychedelic drone! Also, all kinds of north indian classical music – some nice sufi oriented stuff here – and more 20th century classical composers like Terry Riley (check out those crazy web graphics!). All really cool stuff.
Somewhere: Just a part of the classic melody, played here on my roommate’s Yamaha student model classical guitar with strings that date back to the Mesozoic Era. Its a bit halting, but i think that gives it a nice, quiet, unrushed feeling. Double-tracked and those with bat-like hearing will notice a bit of spotty intonation towards the end of the track – its the strings, i swear…
Influences for this track – french guitarist Noël Akchoté, just a fantastic player and the master of the delicate guitar instrumental (among many other things).
Finally, the classical guitar tracks. I should just mention that dabbling in classical guitar is like dabbling in being an NFL Linebacker, one shouldn’t do it without the proper training and coaching! however, i do it anyway because i enjoy playing the compositions, even if i have no (formal) training to do so. having said that…
minuet in G: a rather complicated little tune, with some neat counterpoint stuff going on in the bass register, adapted for the guitar. this is just an okay version of it, i had only been working on this tune for about a month which is not nearly long enough to really nail it, so there is a bit of fumbling here although it’s not really noticeable. bach can be kind of formulaic at times, and this piece is no exception to that minor complaint, but it is also a blast to play. this is take 7,345 of what felt like a million takes to get this tune right. did i mention that classical guitar is not easy?
lagrima – this is a classical guitar standard, a gem of a piece, perhaps a little too romantic but i’m not going to count that against it… more fumbling here with some serious hesitations and a major fumble in the ‘minor’ section of the piece but i improvised through it and i guess it sounds okay. again, it’s a decent crack at a deceptively simple piece of music that needed another couple of months of work before i really could nail it. i suppose it has a kind of amateurish beauty though. this is also take five thousand of about one million. recorded at my apartment (notice crappy non-verby room sound) with the firebox and cubase.
and that’s it! as you can tell, I’m listening and playing all kinds of music these days because i love playing and doing a bunch of different things keeps me interested. whether it’s rock, jazz, experimental, or classical music, I’m down for it all as long as I can keep playing.
now i just wish I had more time to play and record and practice and a bunch of other non-guitarists to play with! but that’s a whole other story. till next time, enjoy the music!
