guitar edition

The latest addition to my project studio is my new Fender Squier Bullet, antique white.

In the midst of a tenure review, a chronic sinus infection, teaching, advising, meetings, ecclesiastical orderings, being a father to two toddlers: I have been able to rock out, and that has, in part, kept me going.

I had enough money to get a simple electric guitar and I am so happy. I have been sampling every channel strip setting in Logic endlessly. It is nice when it sounds like you have a wailing stack right next to you but it is just your computer and some headphones.

I've even been working on some tracks that now actually sound like rock music. Dance punk is on the way.

I'm still here, I've still eked out some time for creativity. Nothing could be busy than this semester. I'll be hanging out with folks at the SXSW monome meet up this Spring Break. And I will be sharing sounds and tracks.

Thanks for following, and thanks for the support.

Seraphic hymn

I worked on the following track on new year's afternoon:

This is an attempt to render a musical setting for the Eucharistic Prayer (the "canon of the mass" if Roman, the "anaphora," if Eastern), in this case, prayer "B" of the current American Prayer Book.

(For those not familiar with the Eucharistic Prayer: it is the oldest and most unique Christian prayer. It is the prayer at the Christian liturgy whereby the congregation, through the voice of the presider, offers themselves sacrificially in the sacramental elements of bread and wine, and whereby Christians believe that the sacramental elements are made the body and blood of Christ.)

It is my first attempt at full-fledged sacred music. Here is what I was trying to achieve:

• Something simple enough (even "minimalist," even "sacred minimalist") that a real congregation could memorize it and do it from "folk-memory," without need for written music or even words if they come to the Divine Service frequently enough
• Something that allowed the clear word of the prayer to be heard and shared in by all while also, in a quasi-Eastern style, having over-lapping voices simultaneously singing, a kind of music of the spheres where the harmony is so simple that the words are not obscured but enhanced
• Even though going quasi-Eastern, I wanted it to sound like Western chant and not simply be an Eastern-envy kind of thing

That said, the track is just a sketch. All the voices are mine, multitracked. I recorded it on my lap top with its own internal microphone, so, nothing fancy. I sing both sides of the opening dialogue (I had no one with me to be the "congregation"). The "ah" that I sing is really supposed to indicate a "drone-tone" hummed, closed-mouthed, by the entire congregation. The entire "congregation" then joins together in singing the Sanctus et Benedictus.

After the Sanctus et Benedictus, the other voice that enters would be the deacon (or, if the deacon can't chant, a cantor), in a single voice, continuing to chant the main tenor melody line of "holy, holy, holy," over and over again until the memorial acclamation. All join in singing the memorial acclamation (in the case of prayer B "We remember his death, we proclaim his resurrection; and we await his coming in glory"). After the memorial acclamation, the deacon then chants, to the same melody, "maranatha," aramaic for "come, Lord."

At the doxology, the deacon then simply joins the congregation in the drone-tone. Then the entire congregation sings the Great Amen in a three-fold form.

It is all my own voice, of course, so my voice cracks. I make noises as I move around. I don't have an Altar-Book with me, so I don't have the written music version of the chant. So the priestly chant is actually done from my own "folk-memory," and, for those of you familiar with it, you will notice where I goof up. I also chant the part of the prayer after the preface and up to the doxology to a simple collect tone.

I decided not to try to make it perfect, but to leave these mistakes in, in order to allow it to show how a real, living congregation might actually enact such a prayer, rather than trying to make it sound like some perfect, studio choir with no blood in its veins.

A brief aside: a question for Logic users: as I continued to add more vocal tracks, I started getting some real latency issues: even when other tracks were off, not monitored, and when there were no audio regions on those tracks. (You will notice that this causes me to chant more slowly towards the end: I keep hearing myself delayed in the headphones, and this slows down my chanting -- which should be fast and vivacious.) By the time I got to the Great Amen, I was also getting lots of glitchy artifacts. But when I bounced it, they seemed to disappear, more or less. What was going on? What could I have done to have prevented that? I would like to be able to do more of these kinds of liturgical sketches in the future.

Finally: what do you all think? Have I achieved my goals? Is it too ______? I invite constructive criticism and comments. My hope, as always, is that this can be a real meditation, and something working towards a truly minimalist and contemplative liturgical act.

Thanks for the encouragement. Peace

the epic and the pop song

There is a statue of King Geser in Ulan-Ude, Buryatia. It is really quite impressive in person, I might add.

King Geser was a legendary, well, that is to say, epic, in the literal sense, King of medieval Tibet. His epic has spread wherever Tibetan style tantric Buddhism has spread - including what is now the Buryat Republic of the Russian Federation.

Check out the Wikipedia entry on Geser. There are something like 140 living Geser epic singers. They know the entire epic by heart, with only the expected regional variations. It is an oral tradition. Some of the singers are "illiterate." It is one of the only living epic traditions in the world today - the way the Iliad and the Odyssey would once have been living oral traditions in ancient Greece.

Then there is pop music. We have no living epic in our modern western culture like King Geser. I used to think about this in a negative way. Something like: pop songs are a dime a dozen. Pop songs are trite, meaningless. How many pop songs does the world need? When I would set down to write one, I would ask myself: does the world really need my poor amateur pop song added to it?

I now think this kind of thinking is all wrong. The famous structural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss said that modern western art music ("classical" music) has filled in the vacuum left by the evacuation of myth under the conditions of modernity. I think there is a depth to this insight that I fundamentally agree with and that is too huge for a blog post. But I think that there is an analog here: the endless generation of pop songs on the same template but with a near limitless number of finite instances fills for us in the modern west the pre-modern art of epic singing in the same way that art music fills for us under modernity our lack of pre-modern myth.

How do those epic singers remember all of it? They have a form, a template. They have an over-arching narrative. They have tones and sound structures within their folk-music theory. And from this they generate the epic over and over again. The almost infinite form gives birth, over and over again, to new finite instances.

And isn't this what we do when we make a pop song? Four instruments: rhythm, bass, treble, and melody. A few basic chords. One basic structure: intro-v-ch-v-ch-bridge-break-v-ch-coda. And we have a narrative: a story to tell. Even if we are trying to obscure it by being "alternative."

So, when I ask myself: does the world need one more pop song? Does the world need me to fill it with my silly attempt to craft another ditty? The answer is now more subtle. No, the world does not necessarily need my pop song. But I need to do it, because this is how I share in the epic.

Thanks for following. Peace

Days and Nights: New Track

In my last post I indicated that I was away in Siberia. Well, we've been back about a month now, and in that time I have been able to cobble together my first shareable pop song.

It is inspired by the 10 extra days in Siberia we were not expecting to have to stay that we did. We waited for our new daughter - and were away from our little son at home. The song reflects the heartbreak and resolution that we had that got us through.

Lead female vox is my dear wife. Horrible male lead vox at bridge is yours truly. It does not sound cheesy to me, because my heart was poured out into this. However, I don't need to share this stuff with the world if it is not worth sharing. Please gently let me know if I should just stick with electronica and ambient, or if I should just try harder next time. If you like it, but have some advice, please share that too!

Days and Nights by Tetramorph

This month marks a year since I received my monome 64 and since I began sharing my creative avocation via this web log. I have so much to be thankful for. More posts to come!

Thanks for following, and thanks for the encouragement. Peace.

siberian outpost

I am away from my project studio. I am away from my laptop. No synthesizers. No midi. I had to travel light. We are gaining a new member of our family in the midst of Siberia. So my familial duties have drawn me away from my avocation for a time.

I know that, however, upon my return, I will enjoy making sounds and laying down a few tracks to share. These kinds of adventures are always inspiring.

Above please enjoy a photo of the most popular Soviet Analog Synthesizer of the 1980s: the Formanta Polivoks. Peace.