bar music

[Matthias Grob <matthias@grob.org>]

Recent thirst for knowledge about use of functions for looping makes 
me think that with the following kind of post, we can stimulate each 
other and inform in a more relaxed and practical way about technical 
things.


An old friend asked me to play in a culture bar he recently opened, 
so I could not say no as I usualy do since I find a silent ambient 
necessary for the music to evolve. And here in Salvador its so humid 
and alive that you hardly can use carpet and foam, and people have 
strong voices. So there is no way to play over the noise, the louder 
you play the louder they speak.
But music is usefull anyway and live is allways better and I had fun, 
yesterday:

In the afternoon I programmed my first funny patterns into the HR16 
drum and took it along in the evening.
I connected it as slave and put the EDP to Sync=Out.
I discovered the folowing ways:

The groovy way:
Select a drum pattern and hit RECORD twice at a speed you feel in the air 
;-).
Probably 8 or 16 8th/beat for a loop of 1,5...4 seconds.
Listen to the drum. If that pattern sounds horrible at that speed, 
select another.
Soon lay down a base with OVERDUB or rather MULTIPLY.
Keep it simple because complex overlaying will not be audible and 
increase the ambient noise.
Then melody and/or solo. Catch the eventual eyes looking at you and 
talk with them through the instrument. Use distortion or brass sounds 
because they are clearly audible in the noise, even at a non 
disturbing volume.

The romantic way:
Mute the drum and start the song with a sequence of harmonies and 
overdub a bass and maybe a short crying note (like a brass chord...) 
at the end of the loop. Try to find how many bars you played and 
calculate the 8th/beat necessary. Or be courageous and guess 32 and 
open the drums a bit. If it sounds horrible, change 8th/beat. Grow a 
bit with some intro melody and then fade the drums in or grow some 
more and bring it up as a surprise.

Combined:
Set to 8 8th/beat, mute the drum and record a short loop with some 
marking (but harmonically not defining) noise in it. Or set the drum 
to mark discretely. Then Multiply the harmony sequence over the 
marking noise. It becomes more acurate and you can play any number of 
bars of harmonies without disturbing the drums.

Now here is what I want:
A drum machine that has a tap for tempo and adjust it to the 
MIDIclock coming in.
And before I tap, its silent. Just like a MIDI EDP, once again :-)



At some stage you can overdub a lot and throw in a lot of reverb to 
simply drown the room, chop a short part with MULTIPLY-RECORD and end 
up in some penetrating effect queeks that spill over into a big bassy 
harmonic wave of sea that calmes down. There is a chance that the 
listeners pay atention for the next minute, so thats when you can 
really send your message... ;-)

A traditional trick to get atention is to break (no, not that bar, 
not for a drink, you are in a bar :-) and then continue with impact. 
But to me it sounds old fashioned, not flowing.

I turned out pretty rocky for ambient music...
Case someone wants to hear the result: I taped it but its horrible, I 
wont show it to anyone. I had almost the same bad listening 
condictions as the public, which is usefull to create the correct 
sound mix and find an understandable way of expression. But then, on 
the recording, you hear all the unwanted noises and inacuracies, so 
forget that.



Some list members must have a lot more experience whith all this, so tell 
us!


          ---> http://Matthias.Grob.org