A Virgin Musicians's ITP
[with a nod, once again, to MD]
Technical line: learn to play instrument(s)
Formal line: write songs and see how all the parts go together
Vitalist line: jam and improvise
Contemplative line: practice MD's tone yoga, or write songs from a
meditative/open mindframe
Theoretical line: study music theory and music science
Critical line: study music criticism (contemporary and old school),
also listen to and deconstruct music
posted by Paul S. at
12:26 AM
10 Comments:
This seems like a good setup, Mr P. I'm excited to see this!
Are you working alone or with others on songwriting?
my brother chris and i, he's a Beatles freak and i love indie-noise, and between us we have enough ex-girlfriends to write 18 albums and an EP.
you won't really have a catalogue until you do the unrequited love concept album.
so which of your five lines/modules feels the most natural, and which the least natural?
most natural: tie between music criticism (i used to write a lot of it) and formal line (similar to writing in other veins)
least: technical, but i just gotta practice!
What about an avant-garde 'musictrust' project similar to the 'phototrust' project [http://www.almostcool.org/pt/index.html]
also similar to the Jimmy Tamborello/Ben Gibbard Postal Service situation, whereby one member starts with a theme, a riff, or whatever, and
sends it to the other, letting them doodle with it, which dissolves the my part/your part tension of being in a band, and can lead a collaboration into bizarre new territory. You can set certain parameters (limiting software to frooty loops 3.0) or specifications (working within a certain genre).
Any takers?
the process seems to work: that Postal Service album is amazing! and i'd be down with something similar, IF i wasn't vehemently anti-digital at the moment. blogging and design are fine to do on the ol' iBook, but tunes for me should be analog for now....
Why anti-digital at the moment?
p,
One tie-in between a vital module and the technical module would be the useful experiment to sing along with the melody you play simulaneously on the instrument.
for example, if you play bass, vocalize (with an 'ahhh') what you pluck or strum on the instrument. take your time. play/sing long tones. don't rush.
it is better to let your voice lead just slightly when you want to change notes, with the bass notes just slightly behind. make a natural heirarchy with the voice in the preeminent role, always.
the voice is the purest melodic instrument known to man. to ape it with your bass means that the music from your bass reaches beyond mere finger capacity. even if your singing voice isn't too hot, there is still a fullness to the human voice that instruments don't by nature have.
one major problem of approaches to instrumentalist technique is that they advocate a kind of gross reductionism and flatland - i.e., technique is strictly quantifiable, all about speed and number of notes. but such technique makes music of only a very narrow variety. this has made the practice of instruments a very boring affair, when it fact it can be deeply enriching and a lot of pure fun.
so for this form of tone yoga:
experiment one is simulaneously sing/play a single long tone; held on the instrument for the duration of a single breath.
experiment two is to add a second note, above or below, also for the duration of a single breath. take your time. at every turn, ask 'what does this sound like? what does this note feel like?'
experiment three is to add a third note. now you sing/play three long tones, each held for a natural breath.
and then experiment four is to speed up the tempo. now two notes to one breath, and the third for one breath. then all three in one breath.
all subsequent experiments add notes and increase tempo within breaths. but don't rush to these. take the first couple slowly. enjoy what a single tone feels like. the sonorities can be rich, as rich as you have the ears and awareness for. enjoy the challenges each note presents to achieve and sustain fullness, in your voice and in the instrument.
all in all, tighten the connection between tactile instrument and your human voice. what is forgotten in the modern age is that instruments are extensions of consciousness, and extensions of the human voice.
just like it is difficult to absorb the communication of people who talk at 800 mph in their conversational speech, it is difficult to really absorb the music of instrumentalist who insist on playing fast all the time.
what is lost in speed is the power of music's barest sounds, through the medium of the musician's consiousness. and in our woodshed time and space, there is no better environment to slow everything the fuck down.
for the reason we are musicians is because we love pure sound, evoked for its own sake. music comes when we realize the sound (and its interior correlates) that frightens us, and then explore those fears in tone.
there are no direct answers. just what we hear, feel, and embrace as the voice of our discreet vibrations calls us deeper, deeper, and still deeper.
way cool, i'll have to try this! also, got any ideas for "rhythm yoga"?
well, the first thing to account for is how distant and non tactile the creation of rhythm has become in the technological age. more and more, people use drum machines, rhythm tracks, and even samples to create beats for music. thus the generation of rhythm in these cases is largely an intuitive affair at the mental level.
another major point is that light is sped-up tone, which is sped-up rhythm. thus there is a continuity between tone yoga and rhythm yoga that depends upon the rate of frequency.
all of that said (which raises many potential points of tangent and digression, but that will be later), the thing of rhythm yoga is to make the creation of beats a tactile, contemplative affair.
materials:
two pencils
one table
constant inquiry:
what does this rhythm make me feel like?
experiment one - unison rhythm
on a table, attempt to simultaneously tap the pointy ends of each pencil (one in each hand). choose a slow tempo - about 60 beats per minute. bring your awareness to an intimate embrace of each tap. recognize when one is slightly off, or when you have what seems like a rhythmic unison. really listen. release into the beat, and try to match it with both pencils at the same time.
btw, if you sped-up this 1:1 ratio (of right hand hits to left hand hits), it would sound like a tonal unison.
experiment two - double time
one pencil continues to hit at about 60 beats per minute - or once per second. other other pencil hits at twice this rate. now time has been split into two units. the ratio is 2:1. sped-up, this would sound like an octave. as an exercise, again notice when you can create a simultaneous hit, now on every other hit.
experiment three - triple time
one pencil continue to hit at about 60 beats per second. the other hits at three times that rate. once you achieve this rhythm - 3:1 - then double the tempo of the slower pencil. this gives you a 3:2 ratio. Three hits of one pencil for every two hits of the other pencil. If you sped-up this ratio, you would have a perfect fifth interval.
experiment four - 2 over 3
keep one pencil at about 60 bpm. the other pencil hits at a slower tempo - two of these slower hits for every three of the 60 bpm hits. if you sped-up this 2:3 ratio, it would sound a perfect fourth.
experiment five - juxtaposition
take each of the rhythmic ratios thus far - 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, 3:2, 2:3 - and start to imrprovise with them. you can keep one pencil at a steady rate and thus only change the other one to create the different ratios.
the only rule - start and end with the 1:1 ratio, for completeness. the nut - virtually all known rhythms derive from these five. the only major one that doesn't is the difficult to execute 5:4 (which, sped-up, becomes a major third interval).
if you master these rhythms, then free rhythms become an exercise in playful and imaginzative variation.
And all the while, pose the inquiry - what does this feel like?
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