I’m thinking about an image of intersecting highways and other technological networks of movement in our treatment of the Scorpio melody. This was suggested to me by Jon, who will (I believe) be using aerial footage of intersections in the video portion for this one.
The melody is one of the more odd-ball that Stockhausen wrote in this cycle, featuring many glissandi, melodic fragments interspersed with rests. Brian and I had decided to feature theremin and slide whistle in the performance of this, along with some other toy instruments, giving a somewhat silly flavor to something that Stockhausen probably took very seriously. I will probably also play some glissandi, vaguely imitating the melody, on violin as well. I’ve been feeling that maybe we need to place the sillier-sounding things within a soundscape that gives it a little more depth, adapting the written harmonic accompaniment into something suggesting vast interconnections. I chose a combination of a “Comb” patch on the Malstrom synth in Reason (processed in various ways), to play the cluster-based chords, with several sustained tones on the central high C, and a loop of short glitchy sounds in the ReDrum.
Here is a taste of what I was working on for the background (no melody included):
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As I was importing this into iTunes to convert it into mp3 format, I happened to notice a song in my collection that I hadn’t noticed before: “Scorpion” by The Budos Band, an Afrobeat group. I put it on and tried playing some of the Stockhausen melody with it, and you know… I felt a little bit of syncronicity (in a slightly silly way). I think it might be cool to sample a little portion, chop it up, and incorporate it into the ending of Scorpio. After playing the theremin in the live performance, I could then scratch with some of the harmonic background over a morphing beat based off of this. Drastic micro-looping of segments with the Kaoss Pad. Hmm, I’ll have to wait and hear what Brian thinks about it. B?
