Category: Portfolio One

By this point, we’ve now made four instrumentals. And I really like all of them. For this last one, I sampled again another record and added some Bossa Nova drums over the top. I kept it more minimal to allow for rapping over it. I’m curious to see where this will go. To help with an organisation I created a folder on SoundCloud to upload my instrumentals to start feeling like it’s coming together. To check it and see it build up.

Anyway here is the most recent instrumental.

I also scratched vocals over the top of this record, turntablism inspired. I want to develop this and add more music concrete style sounds. When I was jamming again with tape loops I discovered that attaching contact mics to my tape machine while it was operating sounded really interesting. There are also a few more things in my instrumentals that need tweaking. Adding bass etc but right now we are at the demo stage.

I decided to create an instrumental revisiting my attributes exercise I did with the J Dilla beat. I found a record in my collection which was a soul type of record that felt really nice at the start. I played around with it, doing similar techniques I had read in the 33 1/3 book. Using and chopping the drums within the record and allowing the production to work around that.

Then I did the more chopped-up style that was apparent in this record.

After this response to the attributes exercise, I think I need to move forward and finish 99% of the beats by the end of this week. Start with vocals next week. Move with reading and more thinking about what I’m doing critically.

I want to plan a drum session recording. And explore this idea of creating digging, rapping and using vocals, turntablism? A few journals. And then finish and finalise. It feels that we are approaching the halfway point

I decided to read into experimental music, and this book stood out to me. I was looking into Brian Eno’s work throughout my prototype and this made me want to read this. Overall I think this book gave me a good understanding of experimental music and the types that exist and the processes involved within it. As well as the main artists who pioneered this. I am curious though why it’s focused on USA and UK, I get that perhaps the writer was intrigued by this, just was strange to me.

A few things that stood out to me, were number one graphic scores, and notations of music. Which I will try when recording drums next week. Number two was the idea of separation between the actual reason why an object was made, for example, a piano. And instead, use it as a sound-emitting source.

I overall didn’t totally enjoy this but It has guided my ideas and will impact my process going on forth when making music. As always here are some quotes.

a feeling that music should be something more than that which could be contained in concert halls or on records, that it must somehow extend itself into our lives.

A written foreword by Brian Eno, I totally agree with this statement. I think in any sort of left-field music that lends itself to Field 3, the spirit. Shares this common idea that music is more than something to commodify and capture on a record or just pay a ticket to go watch, it is part of our lives and existence.

It made a point of being more concerned with how things were made – what processes had been employed to compose or perform then – than with what they finally sounded like. It was a music, we used to say, of process rather than product.

Again this interested me, being more concerned with how things were made rather than the outcome. I can also say I am definitely interested in the outcome. But also some of my favourite work is heightened by the process. How are things made gives immense context to pieces and their meanings, something I considered from the book 33 1/3 on Donuts.

On the one hand, we applauded the idea of music as a highly physical, sensual entity – music free of narrative and literary structures, free to be pure sonic experience. On the other, we supported the idea of music as a highly intellectual, spiritual experience, effectively a place where we could exercise and test philosophical propositions or encapsulate intriguing game-like procedures. 

Music is free of literary structures, a purely sonic experience. Nail on the head of what I am trying to capture.

So if this was ‘experimental music’, what was the experiment? Perhaps it was the continual re-asking of the question ‘what also could music be?’, the attempt to discover what makes us able to experience something as music.

I liked this as it made me consider my own ideas, if I am trying to make ‘experimental music’ what is the experiment? what am I trying to do, what can music be? Am I trying anything new or just following inspirations.

If there is a lasting message from experimental music, it’s this: music is something your mind does.

Again similar to the last book I read, music lives in field 3, the spirit. Something that your mind makes, the music itself and sound aren’t created and given meaning by just existing.

Experimental music exploits an instrument not simply as a means of making sounds in the accepted fashion, but as a total configuration – the difference between ‘playing the piano’ and the ‘piano as sound source’

Playing the piano and the piano as a sound source is a really interesting duality. Can I do the same with my turntable? I’ve been enjoying it so much recently.

So lastly here are a few things that captured my attention,

Pendulum music,

Swinging mics over speakers.

Morton Feldman Graphic Scores

Between 1952 and 6 Cage worked on two large projects – Music for Piano 1-84

Marvellous Aphorisms Are Scattered Richly Throughout These Pages.

I think overall this has given me something new to consider within my own music creation work, not that I have to go to the extremes presented here, but also conforming what I think music is or should be, alongside what I think music creating devices should be used, and the ‘correct’ way of using them.

After buying my new turntable and deciding this first project would be something more musical perhaps? Or require me to be working more at home instead of university I decided I needed to do the Mise En Place Excercise once again.

Firstly repositioned my studio space in my bedroom, moving my vinyl shelf thing closer towards my desk and organising the SP404MK2 closer so the cables fit, I’ve also bought two Van Damme microphone cables and two Neutrik TRS cables as I don’t have any balanced cables for my SP404MK2. I’m going to solder them allowing me to go into my interface instead of USB C outputs. Finally going and organising through my vinyl collection which has sat stagnant for ages, before I buy anymore and go crate digging I want to go through all of them, or as much as I can to organise what I have and what I need, I also need to buy a mic stand so I can record at home for now. Perhaps re-record the demos at university once I’ve managed to finish them.

I had a second beat-making session exploring the vinyl records that I currently have and following this everyday practice of making beats and sampling to hopefully get better towards the end.

In this specific session, I concentrated on taking drums and sounds from records. Playing with the 16 levels pitching section of my SP404MK2. I think currently my focus is making beats on the SP404MK2 as it’s a practice and a different way of working than Ableton. I will eventually make some beats on DAWs as I want to have a varied practice and not just hip hop either.

Again this was just a goalless exploration, although I really enjoyed this beat. I need to factor in writing sessions as well.

I did a catalogue of attributes exercise on my prototype project and it really helped me to identify which areas I was interested in and what it was about someone else’s work that captivated me and then how I can these elements and create my own piece of work that centres around the techniques rather than attempting to copy them.

The song I chose to analyse is called Dont Cry after reading the 33 1/3 book about this album it really connected with me. As well as this, before reading this book, this song, in particular, is very famous, and the composition is often admired by several of his peers.

Firstly the introduction of the beat uses samples of vocals and a lovely happy instrumental. Looping up weird sounds of vocals gives an abstract soundscape feeling. Musique concrete esque. Along with some scratches.

Then it slowly fades into the second intro, which is just the song playing. “I can’t stand to see you cry” Dilla allows this section to play and doesn’t do too much. Again sample choice is what is going on here.

Then once the introduction fades, the chopping really starts, as if Dilla is saying, “Oh you thought that was good? Check this.” Micro chopping and performing the beat with the individual hits with snares and drums, vocals.

Then fading in again to the middle section which was the introduction. Which then goes back to the chopped section.

I think this track speaks volumes on something I’m passionate about which is sampling, and composition, in this sense chopping or the lack of as well. And the abstract compositions involved within this sort of sample-based music.

Key attributes are:

Rugged

Simplistic

Chopped

Sample selection

Abstract

Emotional response

Reflective

I think these attributes are things I want to attempt to capture within my own work for this project. I’ll go back to making music with this response. Following these attributes.

I decided to read this book on sound speech and music as the blurb spoke about the idea that sound posed a strong inclination to the evolution and behaviour of humans. I was interested as currently, I’m investigating music and its properties of it within a sound arts lense. If my focus is not on the musical aspects, being production rhythm etc then how can I analyse music and sound together?

Overall I found this book a bit hard to read, some big words I had to research the meaning of some. But otherwise, it made some great points that I myself agree with, being that there are three fields that exist. 1, 2 and 3. Being Mind Body and Spirit. Music is more within the third field, being the spirit. And that the third field is the best one to be in, how can music help us get to that field? Here are some quotes I found interesting that spoke to me.

To the ends first of communication and second of entertainment. 

When speaking about the voice and music the book states this, something I agree with. The voice is primarily communication and secondary entertainment.

My thesis is that the distinctiveness of human beings as a species—in particular their capacity for free-wheeling and wide-ranging thought—is to a great extent an outgrowth of the distinctiveness of the way they use sound, itself distinctive in a number of ways among the senses.

I think that describing sound as the key element within free thinking and wide-ranging thought is really interesting to ponder. Using sound in interesting ways that other species haven’t. Give us this existence which we have, the way we think, act and exist.

In its earliest stages, in fact, the project that has produced this book was a quest for an ontology of music.

I found it a good quote because it does discuss this change perceptively which was originally the ontology of music, but now towards speech and sound, realising that they co-exist and how important the voice and speech are alongside music.

Field 2 is the domain of reason and of madness and violence 

Again this idea of three fields, the second here being that of the mind, thinking and rationality. It creates violence, madness and reason. Thinking too much does no good.

In field 1 the view is the view from here; in field 2, the view from anywhere you can name or imagine; in Field 3 the view from everywhere, of an undifferentiated everywhere. Field 2 and 3 can be thought of as ways to transcend the limits of bodily existence in Field 1, and Field 3 also offers relief from the pressures of living in Field 2.

Field 3 is the way to combat a lot of issues within field 1 and field 2. Creating an idea that music is the easiest way or perhaps the only way of reaching field 3 can offer us something important.

My thesis is that sound has played a massively liberating role in human evolution, the key role in the development of what is most distinctive about humans as a species; that sound was indispensable to the elaboration of field 2 and to the parallel opening up of field 3. 

So sound and music and our use of it helped us open up field 3, and field 2, the ways of thinking came from sound and music, speech and communication. I wonder if there is a field 4?

The sound, like the touch of a hand moved by a will other than my own, is not so easily ignored: I cannot shut nonexistent earlids. Sight draws me out, sound finds me here. And sound goes beyond touch, which respects the perimeter of my skin, and beyond its degree of intimacy in seeming to be going on within me as much as around me. 

Non-existent earlids, we do not have ear lids, sight draws us out. Sound is very powerful, it goes beyond the external skin from which we shield our fragile internals. Sound penetrates it, this is why sound is so powerful.

We are all of us listeners before we are viewers. An unborn child may startle in the womb at the sound off a door slamming shut. The rich warm cacophony of the womb has been recorded: the mother’s heartbeat and the breathing are among the earliest indications babies have of the existence of a world beyond their own skin. 

I’ve heard this argument before when watching a sound design film, in which they were attempting to indicate the powerfulness of sound, we hear before we see. In fact the entire 9 months we are in the womb, we only rely on sound as a tool of understanding.

This book proposes two alternate models, fields 2 and 3, to accounts for both the freedom and the constraints special to verbal and musical thinking.

Again what the book outlines, is that fields 2 and 3 are the sole reason for the freedom but also the constraints of verbal and musical thinking.

Seeing is like touching, hearing like being touched; except that the touch of sound does not stop at the skin. It seems to reach inside and to attenuate, along with the distinction of field 1 between here and there, the biologically still more basic one between within and without. In this way sound can ease some of the tensions that goes with the duality of the organic condition. 

Again how transparent sound can go, between all fields is powerful, beyond the skin. How it can ease some of the tensions that come with duality.

Background sound, the sound that is the unconsidered by product of everyday comings and goings in the world around us, gives the world a texture of micro activity.

This idea that silence is death, deadly quiet is a saying. The reason why we turn on a TV, sound is life and co-existing in an environment. I consider this the same with music that is too clean, the reason why we love a vinyl crackle, and why we want more music sounding warm than clean digital signals.

Pendant to whistling in the dark is singing in the shower: in situations that are secure to being with, self-generated sound may function as self-celebration. The shower stall is a warm moist womb where it is safe to be naked and open and its inhabitants may regress to the infantile stage when they were everything.

When we feel secure or dangerous singing or whistling is something that we engage with, I never considered this before but it is completely correct.

An aphorism by Chazal states that “we speak with our lips to explain, with our throats to convince.” Music can be convincing without benefit of explanations, even without the participation of human throats.

Something I and others agree with, music can convey meaning without explanation. It does not even require the participation of human throats. How can music do this? So beautiful and yet powerful, we can hear notes and instantly feel a connection and understanding of the writer and their emotions beautifully encapsulated.

a way to be free of the flutter of verbally sustained images and attitudes and left to the devices of music alone.

Another great quote is what music can do for someone who engages with it, to be free of the flutter of meaning and verbal discussions, to hear notes and instantly feel a connection.

It gives the participants a sense of themselves as individuals with a central responsibility for the creation of they own provisional worlds;

When making music, this is how it feels for someone, it’s world-creating. You’re in the third field, no longer something physical but something that exists just because it does.

The social acceptability of humming to oneself as opposed to the unacceptability of talking to oneself. Rooted in an acknowledgement of otherness and others, speech is essentially dialogical, so that talking to oneself is publicly and absurdly a matter of engaging with phantoms. But since the basic materials of music, pitches and durations, contain no direct reference to a surrounding world, music has about it a self-sufficiency that can either take or leave the interlocutor. 

It argues that music is a communal thing, when you sing or hum and listen you are both the listener and performer. When speaking to one’s self you are speaking to phantoms. Since music is in the third field, you are not communicating through or with basic physical materials.

(Nietzsche wrote of the ear as the organ of fear). An article by Kohl and Levarie suggests that music represents an attempt to establish control over the fearful side of sound. But music has its own fearful side: it can induce feelings of overwhelmedness and ecstasy and states of dissociation that may shade over into trance.

I loved this quote as it spoke to me, I suffer from anxiety and depression and describe the ear as the organ of fear. And that creating music is an attempt to establish control over the fearful side of sounds spoke volumes. If music and beat making is attempting to create my own world, take control of my soundscape and take me into the third field, is it an escape from the first and second field?

Sound shaped into music is perhaps the most direct way into field 3, and field 3 is a way out of 1 and 2 and the strains within and between them. Field 3 forgives merriness and mortality. Action here turns back on itself and converges on stasis. When Field 3 is fully realised, there can be no friction between part and part, part and whole—there are no parts, and so no particulars, and no partiality. There is no possible disorientation, for there is only one possible orientation, and that is to be one with the whole.

This was the final summary of the book, something I really enjoyed. To consider music in this field of spirit is really interesting and using this musical productiveness and composition as a way of escaping fields 1 and 2. To continue using the fields that helped us get to the third one and eventually leave them behind and just be in the third field.

I really enjoyed this book and I’m going to apply this idea to my composition. What is it to exist in the third field and create sounds that take control over my organ of fear?

Since my last beat-making session and finishing the 33 1/3 book on Donuts, I started going through my old vinyl records and found that my current turntable was not working correctly. The speed was adjusting and made it difficult to even realise what is playing. I thought it was cool to use for something creative, but that I needed a new turntable. As I want to create dig and sample vinyl on this musical project that I’m making, influenced again by the 33 1/3 book that discusses how J Dilla broke the rules and sampled everything, and also how vinyl has very rare records that are difficult or impossible to find online.

I ordered this new Audio Technica LP120X, it is a Technics 1200 MK2 clone but still very good quality and much cheaper than a real Technics.

After setting it all up, I realised that I lack the correct cables to get it going straight into my interface, and then into my monitors. I then did a workaround where the output goes into my SP404MK2 and then out of its USB C output, which then connects to my mac and that goes through my Apollo Twin X.

I spent a few hours listening to records that I own, discovering new samples and digging through a collection I had not tinkered with in ages. I collected a few ideas and samples into my SP404MK2 and just prepared the idea for what I need going next.

I think I need to do the Mise En Place exercise again and reshape my studio set up in my home studio, currently, it does not allow for quick working and efficiency. I also realised I need new cables two TRS cables in order to record the output of my SP404MK2 into my audio interface as it is having issues operating correctly. I’ve ordered two Van Damme cables and Neutrik connectors which I will use to create them myself as I can’t afford good cables so I’ll make them instead.

After this point, I need to locate a few record shops, read into crate digging and then go digging and create more beats. I think a good schedule going on forth is constantly making beats and music, and then simultaneously reflecting and researching. Hopefully ending by March 17th end of term, before our break with a finished musical project. Mixed and Mastered. Including artwork.

Also at the same time, I was using the turntable creatively to manipulate things on it, I’m curious to look at turntable works and consider how I can do things before going into the sampler? Can I create a turntable piece of work maybe, perhaps on a song on the album?

Going forth from my production reading into session and further research into artists I decided to have a production session due to the studios being free on Tuesday and to attempt a few sampling techniques.

I wanted to explore the idea of free form beat making, committing to the production phase and against this idea of commodification. What is clean in production and palatable?

Since I’m always crate-digging and exploring music, I had a few saved for sampling to flip and change into a beat or instrumental. This specific song from KPM library was made to use in film and cinema.

I added it into my SP404MK2, started chopping the machine, and figured out different loops and sections or “fragments” I wanted to take and reposition.

I also had some drum sounds from previous beat-making sessions during the summer so I quickly began chopping, resampling, structuring and positioning the drum sounds.

After layering some drums and adding FX, I started jamming the samples with my drum kit. I found it really sounded nice, at first I just looped the sounds and after that, I added more creative ideas instead of loops and re-performing the sounds as an instrument. I then created a loop and a small intro section with the loop playing slowly and being time-stretched. Here is the outcome on SoundCloud.

https://soundcloud.com/dereckdac/wonk/s-qWHYthWEaKW?si=e71bd21a72c746e78cce87beca1324d8&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

I’m curious to see where this progresses, I do find this was a blind session but I really enjoy the instrumental and my process.

I can say firstly that this book was highly motivating, to read something that analyses an artist and their work to such a high standard. As well as the historical and contextual ideas of their final work called Donuts, something they created whilst terminally ill. Something the writer called late style, based on other philosophers’ works who also discuss this as something that occurs such as Beethoven. When artists become aware that the end is near, what work will they make? Here are some quotes I found really interesting.

“Dillas’s tracks were done in a pro studio and Dilla himself was a scientist of sonics, whereas Madlib was a self proclaimed “caveman and a beast” who didn’t care for separating his tracks in the recording process”

The relationship between Madlib and Dilla is heavily mentioned in this book, and I thought this comparison really interested me as I love both of their work, on one side Madlib was a self-proclaimed caveman, treating his work roughly and not thinking about engineering. On the other side, Dilla was a scientist, making sure all his recordings were captured properly. This is interesting as it makes me consider how those ways of working are just processes that enable an artist to operate.

I like to think that Donuts was Dilla’s quirky, totally creative record specifically for stones throw which expanded upon the blueprint of madlib’s beat konducta Vol 1 EP

Again this album was heavily important, a real standout in Dilla’s discography. Something I consider to be a masterpiece and a huge influence for this portfolio piece of work, it’s interesting to see that he left major labels and enjoyed the process of working with the independent label Stones Throw.

His use of technology is only to accentuate the emotions of the music, not overpower them.

This description of his sampling and composition process spoke hugely to me. He does not overpower them, he’s using technology and sampling as a way to accentuate the emotions of what he’s already hearing.

He knew the records that went into constructing Donuts inside and out. If it’s accepted that Dilla made his final work a record about death, the question becomes, why did he make this record about death?

Consider that if someone knows everything about these records, inside and out. Are they trying to convey something through their music?

While music typically precedes vocals in hip hop song craft, T3 and Baatin had an ear for flowing in and out of the grooves of Dilla’s accents and melodies in a way that wasn’t typically seen from MCs

Something that also captured my thoughts was the idea of riding the beat. Most rappers want to stand out and take the beat and instead in this context slum village rode around the beat, letting the composition really stand out.

The entirety of recorded sound became the producers toolbox, and they attacked and pillaged their record collections,The entirety of recorded sound became the producers toolbox, and they attacked and pillaged their record collections,

Record collections and sampling became something of a toolbox, no longer were drum machines or a lack of musical knowledge a threat to anyone, especially for hip hop producers.

Ethnomusicologist Joseph G. Schloss took pains to outline them in his 2004 book making beats: the art of sample based hip hop. Based on numerous interviews with producers and DJs, Schloss breaks the rules down to sux commandments: No biting, no sampling from anything other than vinyl, no sampling hip-hop records, no sampling from records one respects, no sampling from reissues or compilation albums, and no sampling multiple instruments from the same record.

There are a few rules that appear within this book around sampling, to dictate that not everyone goes as far as Dilla. In this case, things such as sampling hip-hop records and biting styles or sampling multiple sounds from one record were seen as negative, further on after this, it speaks that Dilla broke the rules of all of this, the exception was that he did it well enough that no one hated him.

Much of the music people are interested in sampling is never released digitally’ it only exists on vinyl copies that have since gone out of print.

Something the book argues about when sampling digitally is, that most of the stuff people want to sample is not available online. I agree but also consider the dual approach of both online and vinyl. Combining both Is the best.

In an era of digital, this rule might seem archaic and unreasonable, but its origins are twofold. For one, digging for records is considered by most producers a rite of passage, how up and comers develop their musical knowledge base,

Something I will try myself is digging for records and attempting to gain my own knowledge, I have spent a lot of time digging before and I do also see this as a right of passage. I’m going to Brighton this weekend and will attempt to crate dig for some records.

As with most guidelines, taking multiple sounds off of the same record is considered lazy, and limiting: What new elements is the producer adding if he or she takes components that were already designed to fit together? 

Something that is also key when sampling, is being lazy about what you are doing? Some of the smoothest and simplest beats or instrumentals actually had a lot of micro-chopping and other elements to combine together for such a smooth listening experience.

Critics W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley posit in their essay “The intentional Fallacy”: “The poem is not the critics own and not the author’s (it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it). The poem belongs to the public.”

Something again about claiming the ideas of your work, once you release something to the public, that is it. It is not yours to consider or control what people think about it. People will interpret their own ideas from your work.

It’s isolating, being a genius. To devote that much energy to your craft, to obsess over it, to commit to the Gladwellian 10,00 hours and master it in the way that Dilla had means there are large parts of yourself that other people, even your close friends, are never going to understand, part of you will always remain unknown. 

Something I’ve always felt frustrated about is my lack of dedication at times, but it is isolating. Being a genius takes hours and hours of dedication all for the love or the dream. You can sometimes lose the sense of what you are trying to achieve, is the dedication worth it? Success and grind culture really what we are attempting to do?

But what does one “see” as the source of the sounds on Donuts? They flicker across the mind as a collage of images, colors, and mood. It’s hip-hop as musique conrète.

Hip-hop musqiue concréte is something I agree with completely when describing this album. I shall take this all on board.

I want to attempt some Dilla-type beats and workflows shown in this book.