Post-rehearsal thoughts

Amazing work today, all.

But something wasn't quite sitting right with me after our rehearsal: Although we've nailed a form for Cosmic Vibrations, there was a vibe floating in the air that aspects of the tune (or the way we're playing it) are "cheesy." Specifically, I think there was some discomfort with the confluence of rock, funk, and techno. The suggestion of listening to Cybotron's Enter as an aesthetic reference point is a good start. But I wanted to offer some other reference points that I think are important. Admittedly I don't think they'll necessarily directly inform specific parts for this tune, but I think it's important to recognize that funk, rock, and electronic music have touched each other in many different ways before. And we're treating "techno" itself as a reference point with the understanding that what we're doing (16 musicians! playing live!) is never going to be exactly "authentic" techno. Here's how I would triangulate this question with great music, off the top of my head. So, I suggest taking time to listen to:


Gap Band:



Prince:

(Kudos to Prince, he has removed almost all traces of himself from the Internet. Be resourceful.)

Chic:



Daft Punk:



I'd love hear your responses, too.

Hey everyone! This is what Paige and I have come up with so far for the poster. Please leave comments/suggestions so we can make it perfect. Thanks!

Vocal Thoughts

I've been thinking of some different ways to enhance my vocals. I really hate that I have been having issues with the latency in Live. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Also I found this article on enhancing vocals in Live.

 https://www.ableton.com/answers/what-kind-of-tricks-can-be-used-in-live-to-enhance-lead-vocals

Picture of a laundry machine

I was just thinking about repetitive appliances . . .
I like this picture of a laundry machine because it looks like kind of a camera lens.
A repetitive industrial object as a lens into being.
I live above a cooking fan and sometimes I dream in rhythm with it as I come out of sleep.
are there any important appliance rhythms in any of your lives?

Takumi recommended this video of a brick in a laundry machine. Can we emulate this process in our music, with our new instruments? The visible destruction of rhythm?

The Stone Roses - Fools Gold

While I was home over break my dad showed me this song (one of his favorites). He remembers this being the music played at raves (what a hip guy amiright?!?!?!) before it all went electronic. This song was released in 1989.



It's similar to techno in that many elements gradually evolve over the duration of the song, and I love how mesmerizing and captivating the song is for the full 10 minutes. I also like how the song is mixed so that the vocals blend into the song and act more as an instrument than as a soloist.

Techno => now;

Motivated by the possibility of using ChucK as a techno instrument, I have been using the composition assignments in PAT 462 as a platform to create a suite of tools for techno composition in the ChucK programming language. This piece, In Inertia, is a draft I made in Ableton of a composition that I developed in ChucK. The piece is intentionally simplistic as expressing musical ideas in a programming language as low-leveled as ChucK can be burdensome without a great deal of abstraction. The piece itself is inspired by the idea of possessing physical inertia in an empty three-dimensional space void of outside force. In such a space, an initial impulse would cause you to float in one direction forever, taking your body on an infinite adventure beyond the known reaches of space.