Today, I'm sufficiently well-versed in the solo works both Eno and Budd to be able to discern what each of them brings to the table when they work on an album together. I have to say that Harold Budd does not get enough credit for these works, grossly overshadowed by Eno's name. Still, Eno is a critical component, supporting, magnifying and, above all, listening. There is something lacking in Harold Budd's follow-up Eno-less works 'Luxa' and 'The White Arcades'. He simply does not have Eno's ear for electronic production.
This is irrelevant when Harold Budd chooses to work with acoustic instruments. 'Avalon Sutra' and 'Perhaps' are stunning works of beauty and simplicity.
Harold Budd tends to favor pentatonics, and the natural modes with lots of nines. I'm also guilty of this. Straight-up Ionian is dull-sounding, so when I want to express joy, I tend to reach for Lydian. In my mind, Lydian is hyper-major. It is almost Citalopram-happy. Elfman uses Lydian a lot, but he seems far more fixated on the tritone aspect; not exploiting the delicate beauty that Harold Budd wrings from the mode.
'An Arc of Doves' is a good example of some Budd/Lydian goodness. If you take a wobbly piano sample, cut off the highs, carefully apply some feedback delay, you're basically there. It is a beautiful sound.
But, to be fair, Harold Budd doesn't have an exclusive right to improvise on piano in Lydian, even if the addition of live resampling brings the whole a bit closer to 'Arc of Doves' territory. This is the first time I've worked with tehn's mlr. I've seen fantastic uses of mlr in a wide range of styles. It is the signature monome application.
A while back, a programmer friend at work opened up the source code for a freely-available application, modified and recompiled it to serve his needs better. This stirred some feelings of envy in me as a non-programmer. How great would it be to take a mature application and make a few tweaks to make it perfect for your needs? Well, if you're familiar with mlr, you may be able to tell I made a few tweaks. Huge thanks to Brian Crabtree for making such a great application and keeping it open.
audio only here
Where Abundance Lies by Matthew G Davidson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
8 comments:
BEAUTIFUL piece. Really nice. Thanks for such a good start to my day. This song is going on the iPod :)
Pray tell, what "tweeks" did you make to MLR?
Peace.
I added a flashing tempo LED, and brought the buffer selection and record 'go' button to some unused buttons in the top row of the 256.
Whenever I'd go to trade shows, I would get the same comment over and over from people, "Digital Performer is GREAT, but if it had this ONE feature, it would be perfect."
Well, the problem is, that one, usually simple, feature is different for everyone I talked to.
It takes a lot of work to create a sophisticated application, but it is impossible to be all things to all people. I've looked inside mlr and it is a marvel of Max development. I couldn't have made it. But, I'm certainly capable of making a few quick modifications that will personalize the application for my purposes.
I think we need more high level environments like Max, and more open source application development.
Lovely. I'd love to download the audio-only version, but the link is broken.
oops. sorry. link fixed.
this music is music to my soul not just my ears
we have something in common that is not important.
we have had the same name given to us....kinda cool
your a badass man keep it up
How would you feel about sharing your tweaked version of mlr that you used for this?
I'd love to have the added shortcuts on the unused buttons.
I'm not sure I still have it. The mods I did were very simple.
bummer. I'm gonna see if my friend can figure out how to re-create it. If it pop's up, sharing is caring and it can be done.
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