ZODIACROBATIC

Background Music for the Twins

Unlike the rest of the melodies in the Zodiac project, Erik and I aren’t adding any sort of beat-based material to Gemini. The overall feeling will be very rubato as the fragments of the melody are passed back and forth between Erik on melodica and yours truly on soprano sax. Gemini comes right after Taurus, which in our heavy metal setting will conclude with guitar smashing and feedback (okay, just feedback). Emerging out of the feedback, Erik will set up a feedback-y loop on melodica based on pitches from the Gemini melody and I’ll add the following synth part based on pitches from the accompaniment to further augment the texture:

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Gemini improv

Last night I was experimenting with recording directly into clip slots in Ableton, a method that should prove very useful for sampling and looping in the live performance. In the Session view, you simply record-enable an audio track and then click on the box that would trigger a particular clip to begin recording. Your recorded clip can then be looped or triggered instantly. In the fascination of the moment, using this method for the first time, I recorded a few tracks of melodica playing Gemini. 2 layers are devoted to the static, harmonic accompaniment, moving between and sustaining the tones freely. I shifted the accompaniment to the higher register while placing the melody lower. Different audio effects were applied to the individual tracks, such as Beat Repeat- which adds rhythmic stutters in somewhat unpredictable ways.

Here is a composite of what I recorded:

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Jon described the video component he is planning for Gemini as a series of split-screen portraits of peoples’ faces. Duality, the two faces, is of course a symbol of Gemini. I am thinking about how to work that into our approach to timbre in this piece.

Instrumental pallette for Gemini: melodica, violin, synth, soprano saxophone.

Any suggestions?

A new toy (piano)

There is a project in the works, the details of which will not be divulged until June 12, which I’ve purchased a nice new red Schoenhut to get cracking on. (Hint: It involves Erik and 12 melodies.) Here are a couple of the melodies we’ll be working with—Cancer (Moon) and Gemini (Mercury):