"begin to howl" (& now NEW Howl, 2.1): piano/drums/electroacoust./up.bass

[jancivil]

it totally is.

as well as to
threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time

thanks

[ChameleonMusic]

I bought a whole book about that stuff. By the late Peter Alexander. I never had the resources to use it really.

"How MIDI Works" - that one - 2001? It was a standard text when I was teaching A level Music Technology...Great on all the basic techniques, but a little bit out of date in some ways by the time my students were using it, but VERY useful for the 'History of Music Technology' module!!!

I'm sure some of the orchestration books used for the Music A level were also by PA...can't 100% remember? In hindsight, I should've nabbed all those texts as additions to my home music 'library'...the higher level courses were ALL closed down when a Private Trust took over the place and all the music / music tech resources were apparently put in a bloody skip!!!

[jancivil]

that one, yeah

I think this was before there was any Native Instruments Kontakt. The days of Emagic Logic and OS9 in Classic Mode.
The first VSL thing I ever bought was called something Exotic Percussion, which to get into Kontakt on the Mac side you had to go through Logic's EXS sampler and translate. (Gigastudio did not run on Mac.) VSL still sell versions of it.

[vurt]

it totally is.

as well as to
threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time

thanks

damn im cultured! got the ginsberg reference.
however, bit embarrassed i totally missed the dylan/hendrix reference

[experimental.crow]

love your use of absynth ; specifically here , but in general as well ...
theo bikel has been strolling through my dreams of late ...

[jancivil]

thanks

the title comes from the Absynth passage in isolation after the sort of loud climax. I just called that audio clip HOWL.
I don't recall hearing it after I'd made it, a week or two weeks or something and I just wasn't happening. I come back to it and WHAT THE FACK IS THAT. I could look at the controller lanes and the Performance tabs in the instrument, and analyze it and try to know what it is but I have no f**king clue what I did really.

Then the last section (which is the most delicate and fragile bunch of MIDI I've ever dealt with; a very low percentage of outcomes is even tolerable. I have a single 'perfect'-ish render of that last section I plan never to revisit), I don't remember most of it (it also sat there for weeks fading from recognition) and it was set way over to the right, out of the way out of sight/out of mind.

[jancivil]

OK, there is a spinoff of begin to howl, finished. It's a part 1 kind of thing, it initially was going to go somewhere that's no longer viable, as a serious change of affect or emphasis occurs where I had a whole thing planned and now the stupid ending I'd belayed for 16 ms or whatever is non-sequitur, and not so worth I want to construct the lead-up to it anymore (let alone the fact that I didn't even make 16 ms).
It's very short, it's like a titles music sequence to a movie or TV series but with one of my <hanging sonorities and fade> deals, which doesn't happen with a TV theme probably. But not song form or like that, one thing after the other, it's always somethin'.

Motifs and such will likely recur in a Part 2 (I know for sure which) but the aesthetic is direct, short statements 'and NEXT', propulsion uber alles. A lot of the same harmonic idiom is going to inform it

https://youtu.be/HHIWQ7W4his

Oh, forgot, credits: additional sound design out of found sounds, and Yamaha Motif, Scott Brazieal

[StudioDave]

OK, there is a spinoff of begin to howl, finished.

The brevity here reminds me how much meaning can be discerned in a nuanced glance or a moment's glimpse of a beautiful object.

Like Webern's music, yours compresses significance. It's not merely "a lot of things happening in a small span of time". A very few things might be going on while the nature(s) of their relationships can be very complex.

As usual, your sound choices and mixing chops are first-rate.

Best always,

dp

[jancivil]

thanks very much, Dave

I'm hyper-focused in the zone where things happen like this, on top of it being 'hear a line and get it executed while it's hot', so something like this, which I think is phenomenally brief seems like a much longer span of time than it does when done. In the end I think this works... but one wants more of it or not kind of this ruined orgasm, and in this case I'm one who does, so there will be more to the Howl story.

Also as a younger musician I'd read 'Webern concentrate' and 'Varese, free themes in succession rather than motivic development' which stuck. Also my background is in improvisation, goal was to get something in real time that's a definite keeper, which one does not enjoy a terrifically high batting average for but again, 'while it's hot', which is where the fun is for me rather than a lot of plotting. I won't soon forget this one line in a crime flick, "A plan is a list of things which don't happen".

[jancivil]

TBH, i think these mixes are right, but one mix follows the last, from templates; so it accumulates, it's not doing all that much eventually.
This soundworld, however took a lot of doing because there were several new things, things which are designed to really stand out, where one probably usually bases a mix in that dominating sound design. A pragmatic reason for staying with it, these VE Pro projects contain multiple worlds now. I like doing sound design but it's a diff. hat, takes a long time.
With a less robust machinery for the job, it would be several projects or not hearable in real-time.

[seismic1]

For what it's worth, I liked the mixes of both of these pieces (Begin to Howl, and Infernal). Looking forward to part 2.

Good work

[jancivil]

thanks for saying so

These are far from purist mixes, the piano for instance would be impacted in a live situation in the room more, here I can afford best of both worlds. I carved out a fair bit of space for it but in reality it wouldn't be this bas-relief; sort of hyperreal. (it's in the same virtual room as the orchestra only by a different method, the orch in MIR Pro Synchron Stage wide, the piano not, but in Synchron Piano 'surround to stereo wide'.). MIR Pro itself is surround only post facto, the mics don't do that. The mics in the Synchron Stage line which are surround are Omni and very particularly set up.

And putting the Absynth in that room is no good, it's in a long narrow monastery in the back as wide as possible which somehow works. I don't really know why that is more transparent.
The drums are not in the room at all, the cymbals in a mix bus are, with the main, overheads and ambient/room mix ie., the BFD instrument channel turned way down. In reality here would be some real problems to sort I don't have to.
I'm reminded of Chad Wackerman with the LSO and all the unique mic'ing FZ did with that room, weird room too. COST A LOT OF MONEY. One record then cost an order of magnitude more than my entire setup.

[frank1985]

Typing as i listen....

Very avante-garde....i like your style. Nice use of silence. Whimsical, with an undertone of deviousness.....I love the soundstage. This would fit perfectly in the indie horror genre....do you compose for film? Would love to have heard it build up to a huge crescendo. Sounds like you're micing up a real acoustic piano rather than playing samples...am i right? Edit: yes i am...sounds beautiful

[jancivil]

I've composed for a couple of films, but not movies, little things independently for business, promotion, or just an underground film. I'm probably not dispositionally suited to be that service-oriented to a director, or to be able to do a great match for their temp score or preconception.

it kind of did build to a crescendo and end dramatically, but I inserted 16 bars in at where that stupid beat comes in, planning a 'beat' section to extend but the first thing I did w. the piano took me quite elsewhere and getting back it wasn't as interesting anymore.

Actually no, all that mic'ing talk regards virtual mics, this is a sampled piano. a 138GB piano but smoke 'em if you got 'em.


thank you, frank