Oh, hai! I'm releasing a new album.
After recording Where Abundance Lies, I left the audio interface and microphones in place. Recording loops of the piano and playing over it felt pretty good. I know how to play inside my own lines and I wanted to do this some more. Additionally, my studio was being painted so everything up there was offline.
The trouble is, I only have thirty minutes a day to record. There is a very brief window in the morning when my wife drops the kids off at school that I have the place to myself. So, as soon as I put the kids in the car, I walk back, open the piano lid, stick the mics in and start recording. Additionally, school is ending for the Summer, so the window itself evaporates. So this is how the major defining parameters of the project came to be: a half hour of recording time a weekday (10 days total... well... 9 as the garbage trucks scuttled one recording session) over a two week period using only a piano. Go.
For the technically-minded, I used a MOTU Ultralite with the on-board pre-amps, a pair of Neumann KM184 mics, a Yamaha C3 grand piano, MaxMSP, monome 256 and Digital Performer running on a G5 iMac. There is only one preset on a piano. However, that didn't stop the synthesist in me from attempting to simulate orchestration by processing elements to shape the sound into something ensemble-like. I used EQ, reverbs, delays, phase-vocoding, creative fading, reversed audio, etc... It isn't processed to the extent of something like One of the Most Interesting Kinds of Sounds, but the uninitiated may think I sweetened with synthesizers. I didn't. Just the piano.
In addition to the work-window constraint, there were other technical limitations. I'm not working with MIDI data where I can easily quantize timing, change the pitch of a flubbed note or remove a note in the middle of a sustained phrase. I don't have a proper sound-isolated studio space, so I'm at the mercy of birds, lawn equipment and cars passing by. When recording loops, these elements add some character. On linear solo lines... not so much. In the past, I may have obsessed over this and other matters like how the piano isn't perfectly in tune to the point of postponing the project into oblivion. Not today. It is what it is, blemishes and all, and I'm not going to diminish the imperfections to the point of sterility. The result is different from what I'd normally release and about as raw as I'll ever allow.
So, here it is: an collection of piano improvisations.
Recorded May 27th - June 11th 2008 between 8:20 and 8:50am
I'd be curious to hear what you think it sounds like, what conscious or unconscious influences informed the music, what kind of mood it puts you in.
DOWNLOAD (four options)
Band Camp (including lossless versions)
Jamendo
Torrent at legaltorrents.com
Direct server dowload
A Towering Achievement of Indescribable Beauty by Matthew G Davidson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
17 comments:
** crickets **
Matthew
This is a really lovely album.
FYI - I posted a link to this from Synthtopia. I hope this helps people find out about your music.
Thanks for sharing this.
My sincere gratitude for the kind words and the link. I can use all the help I can get and synthopia is a huge boost and one of my favorite sites.
I am listening to it right now. Good stuff.
I am amazed that you could record in 30 minutes intervals. It seems like you would be stopping as soon as you had a groove going. Mad props!
After five years of parenthood I think my brain has reconfigured itself to take advantage of fragmented time.
I didn't think I would be functional on any level in the morning before I've had my tea, so, yeah, that part was unexpected.
Sounds fantastic.
Thank you, Heath!
Beautiful stuff, man. The sound is very spacious, both in recording and mood. I love the understated textures and the meandering melodies. The music doesn't fit your description of when and where it happened, which I find amazing. Thanks so much for making this available! And go Cambridge! (I grew up just over the BU bridge in Brookline)Thanks again.
Great album, Matthew! I blogged it here: http://www.thisisnotalabel.com/talk.php?bp=505
Lovely stuff, especially the more pointillistic pieces.
I could never write in 30 minute intervals. I need a whole day, which only happens in the weekend. During the week I just keep up my playing skills.
V.
Greetings Stretta and Happy New Year! Can I ask you a couple of questions about ATAOIB? You said you recorded it over a series of 9 or 10 30 minute sessions. What about production/mixing time? Is that part of that or was that some additional work? If so, about how much additional time? I ask because I too am kind of new to the parent thing myself - we had our first child in May of 2008 - and my "window" is similar to yours. I guess I am just curious as to how other people are dealing with this time issue.
As to the pieces themselves, I think they are really very nice. I really respect what you were able to do using just the sounds and relatively basic processing techniques to achieve great results. (I think I left comments on some of these works(?) at SoundCloud. Glad to see you put more stuff up there btw.)
Lastly, enjoy the blog very much. Thanks! George (aka "nk_e")
...oh and also plan to mention ATAOIB on my own blog in the near future. I'll let you know when.
Cheers.
nk_e, this is a great question.
The 30 minute window I referenced strictly applies to the 'open mic' time in which I recorded. After the kids are in bed for the night, I'm able to put on some headphones and mix and tweak.
However, in keeping with the spirit of the project, only minimal editing was involved as I wanted to preserve my original performance and feel. These days, I feel perfection is easier to attain than a compelling performance, so for a recording to stand the test of time, it is the little quirks and mistakes that give it character and lasting appeal.
Most of the post-recording time I spent on crafting the DSP spaces you hear. After that, there isn't much to mixing as there are not many overdubs and tracks to deal with. As far as the time spent, I think I spent far less time fiddling with ATAOIB than Brood XIV and you can see that I was completing a piece a day on average.
Thanks for your comments and CONGRATS on the new addition. Juggling the demands of being a parent with exorcising creative impulses to stay sane was really a matter of mating the kind of project with the slices of time and working methods available. There are projects I'd certainly like to undertake that are simply not possible. The key is to work with what you have.
"Thanks for your comments and CONGRATS on the new addition. Juggling the demands of being a parent with exorcising creative impulses to stay sane was really a matter of mating the kind of project with the slices of time and working methods available. There are projects I'd certainly like to undertake that are simply not possible. The key is to work with what you have."
Well said. I will definitely keep that piece of advice in mind.
Thanks. :-)
Clicked on the link to this album randomly 'cause I liked the image. listened to it, loved it, bought it. This album helped me find a moment of clarity during a work related mental meltdown. Thanks for that. It's beautiful.
patchen
thank you, patchen
Evening my fellow human companion.
I'm a bit late... But even so, this is fantastic. I found "Nothing Comes From Nothing" especially warping. Perhaps the fact that I have just taken a powerful antihistamine contributed to this 'warping'.
Either way, human, your music is now amongst my playlist of 'Sleep Music'. Thank you greatly.
- The Sad Mountain
P.S. I've been listening to Amnesiac for a while too and noticed that you (Maybe. Maybe not.) had written a bio for it on last.fm. Is Amnesiac your project? Thank you again if it is. I have enjoyed it on levels one can only experience.
Post a Comment