So I’ve been working on the Joan gig since January but I have to admit not really getting into the groove until the last few weeks. There’s always some other thing that needed attention, and there still is, but I’m sufficiently shit-scared to concentrate on getting this thing tamed before it gets too late. The idea of a concert, in a concert hall just messes with my tiny mind. Witness:
- Can’t just play a ‘set’, with ‘tracks’ – I guess you COULD but that’s not the rules of the game here, you have to figure out an emotional flow that takes the whole duration. I have only ever written stuff that intends to be a ‘song’ and so this is puzzling.
- Do NOT want it to end up like the Low Symphony. That is an entirely gruesome bloaterfish of a thing and a clear warning about the perils involved.
- I guess that the more conservative members of the community aren’t going to come but still I would like to make something they WOULD enjoy if they did
- which kind of throws out any ‘beat’, well not rhythm that’s OK, but just not ‘beat’. This is not a bad thing, because everybody has to try throw away the security blanket at some point in their life.
- I just wish it wasn’t right now, when I have to learn how to curate an art exhibition as well. Anyway.
Part of the problem comes from creating music without a score. Most of the things I’ve done over the years were documented by the recording. For example Pour Chiens Moyens was created in FL Studio, but only as a sequence that powered various random things, of which I only have the faintest idea how they worked. And so the tracks have to be reverse engineered…
Oh I mean I know how they worked in theory, but not the tiny tweaks that happened at the point they were recorded. Often I destroyed the mechanism to prevent exact replicas of that singular event – that sounds odd but I wanted there to be a unique piece. Congratulations, big success.
I think segued in there will be: Chiens, Walrus Guitars, Ken Burns Effect, Ghosts of Lunches (the video for this has turned out great), December 13, Nigella, probably Gates from Aerodrom, Starts with K, I dunno, still fussing over some others, like things from Barbara Island, but how without a beat?
Anyway it’s coming together, Ableton Live is looking like a good choice. Much as I love Fruity, it has a spasm when loading big slabs of audio and just isn’t reliable enough. Might need two copies of Live to avoid pauses and gaps. I’ve tested MIDI time code running between the music PC and a Mac Laptop running VDMX, don’t quite know how that’s going to work for a whole concert yet. The video will have to respond to the music (and so all key frames) and has to be 720p and no delays and God help me…