Libra: The Balance of the Scales, The Time-Keeper
Jon, our video collaborator, described to me an image he had for the film footage that would accompany Libra: a large tree as the symbol of balance, along with a clockmaker or someone repairing old pocketwatches to represent the keeping of time (maintaining the order and balance of humanity). This suggested to me a certain Baroque aesthetic in the music, a reinforcement of clock-time, and a connecting different musical time periods. I began working on a sequenced track for Libra that would contain the accompaniment that Stockhausen wrote, yet extracting a new melodic line that would suggest something like a basso ostinato. For this I chose a harpischord type of timbre (actually a blend of sampled harpsichord notes and synth: using NN-XT sampler and Thor synthesizer, for all you Reason geeks). The synth layer contains all of Stockhausen’s notated accompaniment while the sampler harpsichord layer extracts a new line from the chord sequence in octave-doubling:
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I’m thinking of adding single-note and trill samples from Baroque ensemble music to reinforce the pitch center on B. I have an image of Brian playing a bass line on baritone sax, embellishing what the harpsichord layer is doing. After that is established, the actual Libra melody might be played through a kind of timbral call-and-response between soprano sax and melodica. To illustrate the image of the scales, the Libra symbol, the piece could have something of an A-B-A form. The middle section could be more rhythmically open (more of a subjective time experience rather than clock-time). The end would bring back this basso ostinato idea.
Any other ideas?