audiot

hi there. this is only a short note to let you know what’s happening regarding the new project (see categories). right now i’m up to my neck in technical literature that should help me out of some programming issues. usually i would have played the instruments myself, but now programming and automating is the only way as i still can’t use my right hand.

i’ll keep you informed…

this question came to me yesterday as i started working on the new project (check out the last entry: “everything you can think of is true…”). i was thinking about how to transfer a song written as a straight hardrock tune into a relaxed, Henry-Mancini-like-jazz-thing, completely based on electronic instruments. i felt like the make-up-guys of star trek as the boss comes in to say: turn her into a weird alien, but no matter what, keep her beautiful!

so the first thing i tried to apply to the song was a different groove and it became a different tune, but trying to keep the straight rock groove and changing sound and dynamics instead made it quite terrible. well, that’s not too weird because groove is one (if not the) major factor in defining a genre or style.

so the question stands: when does it become become a different song? think about movie soundtracks – the older ones before they became chart-shows… there were a few different themes, one for the good and one for the bad guy and maybe the girl got hers as well. and for each music including scene there was a variation of one of those themes (as soon as i find out how to include paid advertising i’m giving some examples, ha!). so the song remained the same (sounds familiar) but it was tailored to fit into the very moment of the film. now all in all those variations weren’t too different from each other. different instruments and dynamics, maybe a different mood and tempo and there you go. but i can’t think of a movie that a techno-, a funk- and a mozartesque-version of the exact same song. i can’t even think of a movie with three totally different music-styles at all for that matter… might rip the movie apart, moodwise – so no help here.

i’ll keep on trying, maybe i’m just too familiar with the original version of the song. i just wanted to keep you updated and ask this question: when does it become a different song ?

that’s a title of a Tom Waits song. but not only that, it kind of sums up what music is about. when i’m working on electronic based music it all seems to be about signal paths, amplitudes, control voltages and so on – i forget sometimes what it really is that i’m doing there – and i know i’m not the only one.

music is an artform and we should treat it as such, no matter if it’s handmade or the sum of digital signal processing, it’s art. and that means it’s about inspiration, creativity, feelings and not just zeros and ones. when one sits behind a drumkit or plays a guitar it’s a lot easier to remember what he/she is doing – it seems more real, at least to me. creating music on a computer, sitting hours and hours staring at a screen is more like a deskjob and it’s hard to stay inspired and creative.

but then again does it even make sense to compare these two methods of making music? what do they have in common at all?

“music is math”, i heard that many times and the more i think about it, the less it seems to be true. you can write down a whole song as combinations of frequencies, amplitudes, timecodes and whatever else and it might even be a precise reconstruction of the tune itself. but is that it? is that all there is?

what about an artist’s touch on the instrument? how would one calculate that? and what about the choices the artist makes. that’s an important point. come to think of it i’d venture to say that music is rather about choices than it is about numbers…

and that leads me to another interesting thought: right now i’m working on an album. half of the songs are written and i should be in the process of recording them by now but a carpal tunnel syndrom (to be precise it’s something similar but i don’t know the correct term in english…) got in my way, so i can’t use my right hand for at least a few weeks. and because this was meant to be a hardrock album (see the last entry about genres…) there’s just nothing i can do except waiting. at least that would be the normal reaction to the circumstances. remebering the title of this post though gives me another idea that might be worth a try:

did someone ever record the same songs in different ways? i’m not talking about covers. did someone write a song and then arrange and record it as a funk-, jazz-, rock-, hiphop-, blues-, metal-, electronic-tune? the same song? usually in music it’s more like ‘everything you can think of……..has already been done by somebody else’ but who cares? if someone’s been there done that (and i’m quite sure of it) so what? i’m gonna try this anyway although i have not the slightest idea how to do it. at least i know i’m gonna start with the computerbased version because that’s the only one i can do with one hand…

maybe i should make up one category in this blog dedicated to this project – stay tuned…