by Doug Balliett
Alison Fletcher, voice
Doug Balliett, bass and voice
Mollie Marcuson, harp
Elliot Cole, harmonium

Download, share and enjoy. Where are we performing next?

I could be (mostly) happy anywhere, in a chair, with you, sheesha, assir manga, and more shai bi naana shukran!

Sheesha – water pipe for flavored tobacco
assir manga – fresh mango juice
shai bi naana, shukran! – tea with mint, thank you!

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Stuffed crocodile on Elephantine Island, Aswan, Nubia. Directly below was a glass box with a little water and a small, live crocodile in it. Tourists buy them, we were told.

What’s sadder than a croc in a box? It’s a tourist taking it home.
Does customs have a form for this? NO!

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Brad’s written a terrific libretto, and I’m beginning to produce some sketches. At first I was, stubbornly, going to try to build everything in MAX/MSP myself, but at Steve Nalepa’s Ableton workshop at Caroline, I caved. I wouldn’t use it for most things, but it’s just right for this project. As long as I’m smarter than it. So these sketches are also my self-tutorials as I learn to use new software.

And I’m going to share the sketches here. Whether they’re awesome or embarrassing isn’t really the point. I’m toying with establishing an iterative heuristic for the sketching process, some kind of genetic algorithm thing; stay tuned.

Some feedback would be great. Especially angry messages about how putting classical music to a beat is some kind of travesty — they’ll be perfect in my collection of Boring Ideas that Everyone Has.

Here’s the first one. Samples from Ravel Miroirs, and Berio Glosse.

But hearing covers – interpretations, variations, remixes – affords a cognitive experience that original songs don’t offer. We hear one piece of music through the prism of another. There’s a zone between faithful imitation (transparent, uninteresting) and perfect anti-imitation (opaque, uninteresting) where each sound can be loaded with commentary, relationships, surprises. We experience something similar, though less concretely, when we hear music stretch a style.

Here’s a rough sketch of my version of If I Fell:

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Mediterranean City
where the corniche is pretty
take me to proud old Alexander’s

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Listen: Download

For some reason, my family has produced a lot of songs about cats.  I can count five or six, I think, between my sister, father and I.  Ava has a new cat named Tabatha, and we sing this round for her:

Tabatha, you have no remorse, and you’ve not a shred of compunction, do you?  Do you?

Tabatha, You Have No Remorse

Kate and I stayed a few days at a Red Sea resort called Lilyland. After two weeks of $2-5/night hostels, it was a huge relief. But our first morning began with a man trying to get into our room.

Lilyland Man, why did you open up our bedroom door,
disturbing us at eight o’clock in the goddam morning?

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Then we found the ants.

You are in
Oh you are in
in the embrace of the history
you are
you are

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Tumbling was put together in one wild night last December. I’d spent all semester building some software in MAX/MSP that would, basically, slice up sound into small slivers and transpose each slice (to fit it into a scale). I should have told someone what I was imagining; they might have told me that its called ‘granular synthesis,’ its pretty much Modern Computer Music 101, and I could have downloaded a patch lickety split. Sure I had some cool stuff going on, like you could mic a speaker and use a Wii to play the feedback like a wild instrument, but I was basically re-inventing the wheel. I used it to gradually unhinge a round.

I made Canopy this morning. While I did use a little granular synthesis on the drums (this time with a patch designed by my friend Ken Stewart), the thrust of the study was another technique entirely — yet the result is similar. I set up a switch that would turn on and off the vocal tracks, and then I drove that switch with the audio from the drum track itself. When the drums were loud, the vocals turned on, and when the drums were quiet, they vocals turned off. The result is a stuttering that is both regular and erratic. It is also a study in the kind of smooth, slow transitions I’m attracted to.

I know I’m late to the game, but I’m really fascinated by that technique — using sound from one track to drive an effect on another. Our opposition between material and technique is revealed to be an artificial one. Material can be recognized to be a technique. Forms are forces. There is not a simple causal relationship between the Technique/Method/Creator and the creation — the creation itself has creative potential. When that self-referential relationship is cultivated, feedback loops begin to drive the creation with a natural momentum. When that relationship is optimized (as in Contact Improvisation), generation becomes effortless.

This is where much “process music” gets it exactly backwards. All music is process music, but “process music” effectively flattens that fertile, generative nonlinear dynamic into a one-way textile mill.

[Thanks to Marsha Russell for making me care.
Historical psychology courtesy of Julian Jaynes.]

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How come it’s so, so sad?

The B/Bb cross relation (really B/A#) was gutsy but unsuccessful. I’ll step to the Bb next time, maybe try to get an F in the middle voice. So much to learn!

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Let me do it
on my own, please.
I don’t need your constant
help. Give me back
my bags, and get out of my room,
and don’t you take my plate
until I’m done.

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