#33 SoundBow and Groove
One of the cool things about doing this weekly composition for so long is that I have ended up forgetting things about why I started it and what I set out to do. It occurred to me today that I tend to enjoy the final product of these experiments the most when they are a combination of ideas from disparate sources. The more elements that go in to the blend, the deeper and fuller the piece feels. This all hinges on whether I can cram the ideas together in a seamless manner. And then I remembered that this is why I called the project Chimera in the first place, because I’m curious about what happens when odd musical ideas are smashed together.
Chimera Definition
1a: a fire-breathing she-monster in Greek mythology having a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail
b: an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts
This week I set out to combine an improvisation on the SoundBow app I mentioned last week with some sort of groove and melodic element. Firstly I worked on the grove element. I was stranded at Sydney airport on Wednesday after returning from LA, tooling about on Facebook. A trailer for a Tyler the Creator documentary grabbed my attention and I was really in the song that played over the last half of the clip. I googled the lyrics “So in love, I give it all away” and was surprised to find out it was a Beyoncé song called Party from 2011…anyway, fricken loved the groove and set about mimicking my favourite elements – the Voyager synth bass line and on-the-beat shaker line. To give it a “me” twist I changed the time signature to 5/4. I developed an A and B section, with the B section being more melodic and containing an arpeggiated Juno riff.
2: an illusion or fabrication of the mind; especially: an unrealizable dream
“a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayer” — John Donne
“His utopia was a chimera.”
My next experiments came on Friday afternoon whilst hanging about at VCA. Sitting in the (very quiet) library I recorded a whistle and a hum into the SoundBow and performed a couple of improvisations. This was very intuitive and straightforward, I didn’t think very much. It took me a couple of goes to get a hum that was loud enough and I may have pissed off some studiers next to me.
3: an individual, organ, or part consisting of tissues of diverse genetic constitution. A hybrid created through fusion of a sperm and an egg from different species is a chimera.
I put both elements together on Sunday. I doubled the synth melody in the B section with Saxophone, which added some life to the part. It wasn’t a case of just whacking the impro over the groove from here on; I had to mess around with how to fit everything together a lot. In the end, the first minute or so of the piece is the impro over the groove, then once the Saxophones enter it is mostly groove with parts of the impro slotted in (hopefully) tastefully. I effected the impro in Ableton Live with my favourite max patch the buffer shuffler. I hope you enjoy the piece and thanks for reading!
