ZODIACROBATIC

Assembling the Live Set

I have begun the process of assembling all the audio samples that I am going to use in Zodiacrobatic. Through doing this I have been gaining a better understanding of Ableton Live 8, the core piece of software that I’ll be using in performance. For triggering of audio clips, the program’s vertical Session view lets you organize groups of samples into “scenes”. I recently learned, through the advice of our friend Todd Reynolds, that by renaming scenes with BPM and/or meter included you can trigger an automatic change of tempo or meter by launching a particular scene. This is a fantastic breakthrough for me, as elementary as it might be, since each Zodiac melody has a different tempo. I was previously concerned about having to remember to manually change the global tempo setting for each section in the performance. Here are a couple of images showing how I have been organizing scenes in the Live Set that I’ve begun putting together:

Aquarius Scribbles

Erik asked me to compose some short licks to help augment the texture for the Aquarius beat. Above are my chicken scratch scribbles, written with the aid of my trusty M-Audio KeyRig 25 while on the bus somewhere in Texas. Here’s the original audio of the samples, mistakes and all, recorded in my hotel room with the Recorder FiRe iPhone app:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sagittarius Beat (UPDATED)

Sagittarius follows Scorpio, a movement built upon glissandi. When Sagittarius begins, the downward glissando figure is segmented into discreet pitches with a decidedly swinging rhythm. It definitely felt to me that a jazz-leaning Hip-Hop beat would hit the mark here. After establishing a drum sound and pattern that followed the metrical changes of the written melody, then extracting a bass line (bass-register marimba) from the accompaniment, I just started vibing with it and matching selected samples to the central C-sharp. I drop some samples from a gu zheng improvisation by Du Yun, and a single tone from the 1968 Soviet Armenian film “The Color of Pomegranites” by Sergei Parajanov. I like the bending string sound of the gu zheng, which I relate to the pulling back of the string on the bow of the archer Sagittarius. In the live performance, I am imagining Brian and I playing fragments of the melody on 2 toy pianos. We’ll have to figure out how to transition into Brian’s starkly spectral, multiphonic chorale that begins Capricorn.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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?

Virgo Beat

Taurus: Stockhausen Meets Slayer

Aries Initiation

Pisces Drums

Pisces will begin with a soprano saxophone cadenza, what Brian has planned as a type of perpetual-motion texture built on the 16th-note figures found in the melody and accompaniment, using delay or live looping in Ableton. Once this is fully established, Brian will cue me to drop the first beat as he begins his first statement of the melody in full. Brian thought that something light and treble-y would fit the character of the piece.  I immediately thought of a beat I had made back in 2005 called “Badasht” (heard on my Dubble8 “Tompkins County Organic” release). Tinkering with this beat in Reason, I gradually replaced about half of the sounds while developing a new pattern in the tempo of Pisces (134 bpm), opting to focus on a triplet division of the beat- in polyrhythm with the 16th divisions of the melody. An ending still needs to be worked out. Here’s what I have so far on the percussion layers:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Aquarius Evolution

While Brian is away on tour, we have been exchanging ideas and files through email and Dropbox. The first step in this long-distance stage of our collaboration was to shape the sound world of the first piece in the set, Aquarius. We had already conceived the accompaniment as a sort of calliope music, played by recorders (with some music box mixed in). To this I have added a glockenspiel line with beat-repeat effects in Ableton. For the melody, I decided to use a combination of melodica and violin, which ended up sounding a bit like an accordion (my violin playing evokes in my mind a tipsy fiddler in an old Balkan tavern). These parts will be played live first and then triggered in sample form. Brian came up with the idea of incorporating fleeting soprano saxophone licks, which he wrote out on his tour bus, recorded and sent to me. I think we have arrived at something. A great opener, I think (while the initial “calliope” accompaniment starts up, we will be playing various toy instruments on top). Enjoy!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

First look at Leo

Here’s a video of Erik and I performing “Leo” at Mobtown Modern’s Out To Lunch concert back in May. The performance served as a preview for the full Zodiacrobatic arrangement.