ABSTRACTS
This project
was started in Janary 2010, completed in March 2011 and uploaded to
LastFM. Subsequently it was discovered that LastFM appeared to have
discontinued this service, and it was re-uploaded to this server 13th
May 2017.
This
was another sharp stylistic break. It was the first project to be
produced with Logic Express on a MAC, instead of with Music Creator on
Windows. It was the first fruit of what was a large cost investment in
music - well into four figures.
Vocals
return, although about two thirds of the CD
is instrumental. It's quite a bit longer than anything I have
produced before, with a running time of around 71 minutes. As usual the
tracks form a sequence of sorts.
The music on this CD is necessarily experimental. I was working out
what the software would do and what I would do with it. Hence we have
for instance Eastern mist
(a
personal favourite), Synthetic lines
and The bass place.
There was a concept of sorts - I would be deliberately writing about
things that were difficult to put into music. This ambition gave rise
to The
colour red for
example, and Asia.
I also wanted to have a go at songs with lyrics, as I intended doing
more of these in future projects. I already had lyrics for two future
projects and didn't want to touch those. I was still writing new lyrics
at intervals, and during the long 14 months that it took to complete
this project my six year relationship with Oona ended. This was
inevitably always going to lead to lyrics revolving loosely about how I
felt or had felt, and since these were as good as any and I was
experimenting, I used them. I wasn't deliberately trying to put across
a message about relationships; I just used relationships lyrics because
I had them and they weren't earmarked for anything else. Hence we have Bittersweet
for example, written
while the relationship was in the process of ending; Farewell words,
which was the last
song to be recorded for the project and represented what is clearly
looking back at the event from a later perspective; and Your own way,
which is clearly a
looking forward to a better future and moving on.
The pace is much more varied than it was on Beach sounds. There are
more hard, fast tracks like Sweeping
up for example, and I
deliberately added more of these towards
the end of the writing stage as I felt that they sounded particularly
good.
I spent a very long time editing these tracks - about four months - to
try and make them as good as I could. The whole
of my first project in 2006
had only taken four and a half months. I won't say that the result is
perfect, but I am very proud of it. The only problem is that it might
be a hard act to follow.
I
expect to have a small number of CDs of this project available for a
time
if anyone who knows me
cares to ask for one. This album has been re-uploaded to this server
(links to individual tracks follow).
1.
Idly wonder
- this was the first piece of music written with Logic Express. It
started as a test piece called Tune 1, at that point consisting of only
a piano and strings. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to
produce it. I hadn't particularly intended using it, but I liked it, so
I did some more work on it, in the end quite a bit to make it sound
right at this length. The title comes from the stressing pattern of the
main rhythm used, you'll hear it if you listen for it.
2. Asia
- this was an attempt to be exotic, and I deliberately used Asian
instruments for it. I wrote it quite oddly, and it is possibly the most
obvious example of a very experimental track on this CD. Being
non-commercial does have advantages, and one of them is that I can
please myself what I write without having to worry about what anyone
else thinks of it. I do have to admit however that one 'Asian'
instrument was a bit of a cheat - it was actually an accoustic guitar
with a slide inserted at the beginning of the notes!
3. Just
noodling
- I was indeed 'just noodling'. This track is based on a number of
guitar loops. Very unusually for me I have four guitars going
simultaneously here - I do use guitars but they don't normally
dominate. I had to edit it quite carefully to avoid it sounding
aimless, so rest assured, noodling or not, it has been thought about.
4. Synthetic
lines.
This was one of a number
of tracks that explored the capabilities of the synthesisers supplied
with Logic Express. By the time this was recorded I was around two
thirds of the way through writing Abstracts. I was using the fairly
anonymously titled ES1, also even more anonymously known as synthesiser
1, a peculiar green coloured thing. I experimented with what appears to
have been a stepper, although the synthesiser appears to refer to it as
a filter pad, and
also noticed a patch that had a different tone to it depending on the
frequency of the note. Late on this track acquired an echo that
emphasised the stepper. This was one of several fast tracks that I
listened to quite a bit just because I liked hearing it.
5. Farewell
words.
Although this comes early
on in the collection it was actually the last song to be recorded. The
reason is that it's actually a later perspective looking back on an
earlier event. I was trying to explain why I was unhappy about what was
said and how I had felt about it at the time. It took a while before I
realised that this is actually an angry lyric. There is a lot of
sentiment in it, but the essence is the contrast between how I had felt
at the time, and what was actually said; it was the sort of abrupt
stark
contrast. This song was going to have a gentle, syrupy type backing,
with soft strings and so forth. Some of that is still in the finished
track, but after a time I realised that given the anger in
it this
song
needed some teeth. As a result it ended up as a mix of different
styles. It also features what you might call a virtual duet, although I
did take one of the vocal tracks down in the mix. This song would have
been even angrier had I not toned down the lyric (twice).
6. Don't blame me.
It just so happened that
while working on Abstracts I had been to one of my favourite haunts,
Tate Modern, which is at one end of wobbly bridge in London. I find
modern art entertaining, although I can't help feeling that a lot of it
isn't actually terribly artistic. The lyric on this song is nothing to
do with relationships - it's a (fictional) modern artist explaining his
latest work. Although I clearly don't share this character's
perspective, I did give him a good argument. He says near the end, "I'm
not conning anyone, they all get what they see" i.e. nobody has to
purchase modern art if they don't want to. True, but I'm not sure that
excuses it.
7. Bittersweet.
This one was written
quickly, as I remember it while the relationship was breaking
up.
For some reason I felt
that it matttered tremendously to get this song right, and I worked
very hard
on it with a strange sort of fierce determination. At times I was
wiping away tears while working on it. After having done a fair amount
of orchestration, I felt unhappy about the tone of it, scrapped almost
all of it and started again. This time I used a short snatch of melody
(just eight notes) that had been going round and round in my head for
ages, months as I remember it. I flogged this absolutely relentlessly,
partly to get rid of it. If you listen to the backing in the background
you can hear it going round and round, as it did in my head until I
wrote this song. I was expecting the recording of the vocal to be very
emotional, as the writing of it had been, but to my great surprise it
really wasn't. I felt very calm while I was recording, and even had to
act some emotion in order to get it into the vocal.
8. The
colour red.
This was literally an attempt to
musically recreate red. I felt that it was a brash, eye catching
colour, it grabbed attention, but it could also be elegant. The track
therefore starts with a trumpet fanfare and a very ostentatious drum
rhythm. Trumpets feature very prominently, before the mood calms near
the end. There does appear (though I didn't know this) to have been a
track called Red
previously,
apparently a rock piece composed by Robert Fripp, and even another
composed by Andre Previn and performed (late in his career) by Frank
Sinatra. There's a song also called Red
(I assume a different one) on
you
tube,
performed by Daniel Merriweather, but that one isn't trying to do the
same thing as mine, it's about a relationship, Red is just a title.
There doesn't appear to have been a piece of classical music called Red.
9. The
bass place.
This was another synthesiser
experiement, this time with "ES M" the "monophonic synth". The strings
are ES E (the ensemble synth), the drums are drum kits, everything else
is ES M. The first twenty bars, or about 39 seconds, are a
sort
of rolling organy sound. This was what I originally intended the whole
thing to be like, but I felt it would get too samey and needed more zip
to it. After another ten bars there is a very abrupt change.
At
bar 103 there is a return in a manner of speaking to the original
theme. For some reason I had problems with the drums and had to use a
denoiser to remove a hissing noise. Originally there was no bass after
bar 30, but given the title I felt there ought to be, so I added some
during editing.
10. What
isn't going on. Some
while
earlier I had heard Marvin Gaye's album What's going on,
the cover notes to
which even included the statement "this is sacred music". However, I
felt
that despite the artistic ambition involved - he was I gather trying to
comment on the state of the country (the USA) at the time - it was a
tiny bit pretentious, it didn't amount to quite what was claimed for
it. (My rather sarcastic paraphrase of it was, "Lots of stuff on how
the place has changed".) At work there were a couple of conspiracy
theorists that used to
talk at length about how almost everything under the sun was a
conspiracy. One of them even seemed to say that the whole world is
secretly run by a retired American politician (who he named) who led a
conspiracy financed by the (American) banks. I was never entirely sure
if they were just winding me up, but I got sufficiently irritated to
get my notebook out and write a lyric that is part satire on Marvin
Gaye and part sideways swipe at the conspiracy theorists. I wrote it in
an Indian style - I've always liked doing Indiany music - and having
listened to authentic Indian vocals I tried to emulate them, although
the result (on the lead vocal) is probably a cross between western and
Indian vocal styles. (There are also backing vocals, one of which was a
determined attempt to sound Indian.) I spent some while working on the
drums to try and get the right amount of punchiness. This track
features an Erhu which has a lovely vibrato in it. This was inherited
from the MIDI loop it got it from - it's actually the same note copied
and pasted into different places as different notes. The effects on the
lead vocal were a late addition, and took a lot of fiddling to get
right.
11. The
tune.
This was a slightly sarcastic parody of my mother's usual response to
my music - apparently only 'great composers' write 'tunes'. Anything I
write can't be 'a tune' because I'm not 'a great composer'. Why am I
not a great composer? Why, because I don't write tunes of course. (Yes,
I know.) I deliberately wrote the backing in a classical-type style. As
of this writing, I don't know whether mother thinks this is 'a tune'
but I doubt it.
12. Sweeping
up.
This was another synthesiser
experiment, this time with ES P (the polyphonic synth). One of the
factory presets on this synth is called big sweep - hence the track is
sweeping up. Apart from the drums and the strings, there are
only
actually four instrument tracks on it. In case you're wondering, the
fast strummy guitar type sound is a Brazilian
Cavaquinho.
The meandering metallic-sounding wail is actually synthesised strings.
I was deliberately trying to make different sorts of sounds.
13. Do
you? This is another song from a
later perspective. It's not quite
about a relationship; it's about the aftermath of one. She's probably
never going to see him again, it's definitely over, time to move on...
and yet, he can't help wondering - does she ever think of him? How does
she remember him and their time together? Perhaps she remembers him
warmly, or perhaps she is scornful of him. Perhaps she's just totally
indifferent. He'll never know of course, she'll never tell him, but he
just can't help wondering about it.
14. Trying.
This used several synthesisers. The idea was to write a piece of music
expressing an earnest attempt to do something - an abstract, in fact. I
was quite concerned about this track for some time, and if I'd had to
drop one from the CD, this would have been the one. Late
edits
made this crisper. There was a wrong note in the strings track towards
the end for quite a long time until I fixed it while editing.
15. Buzz
me. This is the one that took
around two months to write. It was
another synthesiser experiment, this time using Evoc 20 PS, also known
as Vocoder Synth. Buzz was my characterisation of the sort of sounds I
was getting out of the synth. Buzz me of course might mean
call
me, give me a ring on the telephone, so I felt it had a nice ring to
it. I seem to remember struggling with this for some while to get the
sound right. I also ummed and erred a bit about precisely how loud the
trumpets should be in the mix; arguably they're still a tiny bit too
loud. This track is a good example of a track that crucially depended
on the sound and feel of each instrument, rather than just on the notes.
16. Get
down (to the doctor). This is an
odd one that is entirely
fictional. Oona was always fascinated by medical programmes, especially
people having operations to fix odd ailments. I had been watching
television and had happened across some medical programme or other.
While I was having a shower, I thought about Oona and her medical
fascination and I must have chuckled over it. Quite idly, I thought
that there wasn't a rhyme with the word doctor. However, I then
proceeded to think of a few ways of rhyming it, and shortly decided
there were enough for a lyric. Then I started wondering what sort of
lyric it would be. At this point it was just idle pondering in the
shower, I wasn't intending actually writing anything. However bits of
lyric started to come together in my mind, and when I got out of the
shower, I went for my notebook and the lyric came out. Your guess is as
good as mine as to what it means, though I do have a theory. I should
also add that in a way it was eerily prophetic, but I should probably
draw a mysterious veil over why.
17. Eastern
mist. This is my personal
favourite, I love listening to it. It was
an experiment with eastern sound loops. The only parts of it that are
actually written as such are the flute and one of the two choirs.
It also features three mandolins, two sitars, a tanpura, a
berimbau (which is a bit of an imposter being Brazilian rather than
eastern) and two tambourines, however these are all assembled from
loops and effects. There are a lot of vocals on this. There are two of
me on there, but mixed fairly quietly. I think I added these on
impulse. There are also two other male vocals. The loud one at the
beginning is officially titled Eastern Storm Voice 03. The whispering
one is Eastern Storm Voice 01, and no, I have absolutely no idea what
the whispered words mean, I'm just hoping that it isn't something
embarassing. There's also, crucially, a female vocal assembled from
Eastern Gold Voice 06, Eastern Gold Voice 04, Eastern Gold Voice 03,
with Eastern Gold Voice 01 thrown in now and again. There are heavy
effects applied to the female vocal, no less than ten plugins,
including in particular two lots of reverb, a flanger and tape delay
(that is, echo). I realised after a while that the female vocal is
acting as a bassline and holding the whole thing together. I had some
difficulty with the choir. I had problems with the timing of the
African choir, and switched it for a church choir. Unfortunately this
then sounded too plain, so I added effects to it. It then sounded too,
well, mangled, so I toned them down. When I heard this version I felt
my hair stand on end and knew I'd cracked it.
18. Getting
together. This was another
synthesiser experiment, this time using
ES E (the ensemble synth). As it was synthesising ensembles, that is
groups of instruments, they were (so to speak) getting together (boom
boom). This is another one that I was quite worried about for a long
time. Getting the percussion right helped it a lot, but it didn't
finally click until I took one of the synth parts out and replaced it
with a heavily distorted guitar.
19. Cedric...shutup.
This was yet another synthesiser experiment, although this time there
was a concept. There is a character, Cedric, who drowns out interesting
conversations that other people have by plastering his words of wisdom
all over them. Cedric is the beebling noise that starts off in the
background and gets louder and louder. Every now and again the rest of
the backing can be 'heard' saying "Cedric, shut up" and "For God's sake
shut up". I didn't immediately realise that I was actually writing
about Oona's nephew (in real life called Ross). Ross and I didn't hit
it off at all. Oona wasn't entirely happy on my take on this, and felt
that I was being too hard on the wee lad. Our disagreement about Ross
wasn't the reason we split, but it did have something to do with it.
20. Your
own way. This is
obviously a very late take on a past
relationship, expressing a realisation that what's done is done and
it's time to move on. I deliberately wrote the backing just
the
way I heard it in my head. A lot of songs I write I either canibalise
what I originally heard, or write something quite different, but I kind
of liked the way I heard this, so I used it, just the way it was. I had
to work at the orchestration, especially in the middle section. I was
concerned about it because I felt the middle part was too long and
samey and the beginning and end were too pedestrian. The choir, which
was a late addition, helped a lot. In the end I was reasonably happy
with it, but it wasn't my favourite track. I felt very good recording
it, I felt it had gone well and that I'd done a good job with it.
21. I
was just thinking. The title
came first. I wanted to write another
instrumental based on the rhythm of a phrase. I thought "I was just
thinking" would be a good phrase and a good title. I never have a
problem with this kind of thing, if I want them tunes come, usually
very easily. I can't believe it's particularly a gift, it just comes,
it's almost like tuning in a radio. I did have to do a lot of
experimenting with the guitar to get the right kind of sound. I didn't
want it too prominent, but initially it came out too bassy and I kept
not being quite happy with it. The whole thing is obviously based on a
sort of back and forth interplay between the piano and the guitar. Near
the end there's a round, with different instruments chasing each other,
although I did have to fiddle with it a bit here and there to get it to
work. I feel quite proud of this one, it's one of the best written
pieces I've done.
cover which was designed
using Disk
Cover by Beelight
Software.