Arbeit Macht Frei / side b |
[Feb. 20th, 2005|01:07 am]
|
My very first finished recordings, presented as Eve, were assembled with a big stack of LPs, a Casio SK-1 sampling keyboard, a really really really crappy guitar, and the strung-together guts of several consumer stereo systems. Between then (1994) and now, I've mostly done live instrumental recordings (though generally one track at a time, in a multi-track setting) and eschewed automated assembly strategies. Mainly from ignorance of and/or inability to afford the technology, rather than out of any mere (!) aesthetic objection. I am a classically trained pianist, and fall back on my reflexes. Though I've worked with computers and networks for a decade, I've never been able to get my head around the confluence of digital machinery and the creative impulse.
Arbeit Macht Frei is my first collection to consist entirely of 'edited' sound -- absolutely no live playing at all; though some of the samples and loops that were used here were birthed from scraps of live samples created in my studio, or from pieces of my old songs, bent towards the future.
Soon, I will be posting an illustrated (photographed, that is) explication of the process behind the creation of 'The Chinese Room.' No two songs here emerged through the same method.
Finally, bluecalico wrote, with no knowledge of the tulpa or its significance, the following prose while riding in the car earlier this evening, listening to the final track of the finished album:
it self animates then collapses called up from the rhythm dreamed background
trees, empty of life, grass still as night false sky
empty of life but sound it breathes artificial life then dies realistic death
Arbeit Macht Frei / side a
creative.commons.attribution-noncommercial.2.5
* license
|
|
|
|
Comments: |
I'm relatively new to computer music (about 3 years). I still remember having a horrible time trying to record when I first bought Cakewalk Home Studio. I was recording tracks onto themselves. Doh. Now I find myself playing with software synths, wondering how I got along without them.
I started out with my stereo monster, which at one point nearly caused a fire when the un-enclosed power supply threw sparks onto the carpet in my bedroom. I then progressed to a four-track cassette recorder, and eventually on to a series of digital multi-tracks. I've used Rebirth, FruityLoops and Cool Edit (which became Audition) to either originate percussion tracks and tweak the results slightly, but overall have done very little all-computer work, over the years. | |