ZODIACROBATIC

I have never made a Death Metal drum track before, but it seemed the best fit for the sound world of Taurus that Brian had proposed. I had heard enough bits of music by Slayer, Pantera, White Zombie, etc., to have an inkling about what to do: something heavy on the cymbals, with plenty of 32nd-note fills on the bass drum, favoring the low toms more than the snare. I interpreted the rhythm of Stockhausen’s melody (written without bar lines) as following a mixed meter sequence of 3/8, 3/4, 3/8, 2/4, 5/8, 2/4, 5/8 (x2), 3/4, 7/8, 3/8, 3/4 (x2), 2/4, 3/8, 7/8 (x2). That became the framework for my non-subtle drum track that I sequenced in Reason:

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My initial plan goes something like this: in the full piece, Brian will first create a series of “chord changes” through multiphonics on the bass saxophone (as heard in Brian’s previous blog post “Heavy Bull Shit”). The drum track by itself will accompany him from the beginning. Once this multiphonic layer has been looped, Brian will play fragments of the Taurus melody on electric guitar while I chop up the drum track in various ways and scratch with a sample of an electric guitar drone on F-sharp, the central note of the piece. The full melody is then played on electric guitar, after which Brian picks up the bass sax again and produces some Death Metal vocalizing through it, while this full version of the track plays (with the addition of Brian’s bass sax multiphonic layer):

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