 |
        |
 Back To Ampersand Index PAGE 12 - Boolean Mortality (Track 6) - The foundation of this track was originally written for a different project I was producing for a friend in mid 2004. It started with the construction of the drum machine pattern that starts at 0:50. This ended up as the B section of the tune. It is created out of many different polyrhythms whose particular pattern resolves after 15 measures, so I wrote a harmonic progression for it lasting the same length. The second drumbeat I created turned into the A section, which enters at 0:17. You can hear them with the drums and bass here: boolean_rhythm1.mp3 The percussion loop on the left is another thing that was constructed from recordings of the VCR I tore open. Here it is isolated: boolean_sampleloop1.mp3 There is a three theremin choir as well as an ARP String Ensemble from the beginning of the track until 0:16. The text used in this track is Matthew Chapter 4, Verses 1-6: the first half of the Temptation In The Wilderness story. All of the other voice recordings on the record had text which was selected carefully to match the music, and did not necessarily have to retain any of their source continuity. This was slightly different because I wanted to present the text as a whole (even though I ended up muting certain words for musical phrasing purposes during mixing). In order to get the entire passage to fit correctly in pitch, while also choosing to only slightly slow it down, I used various tools to first stabilize the pitch of the voice, then convert all of the notes to ones in a pentatonic scale (which is a sort of all purpose musical framework), and then I manually went through and added pitches that were outside of the pentatonic scale. The theremin enters at 0:20, and the Minimoog at 0:30. I did the same thing to the Minimoog here that I did to the string orchestra in November Frontlines. I ran it out of the computer through a broken cable to mess it up a bit. The background arrangements on this track are comprised of Mellotron guitar and organ, as well as the Chamberlin string quartet I described in the bottom layer overview. At 1:19, some guitar soloing comes in. This is actually a solo I did as an alternate for The Tundra, but I just felt like putting it in here and I thought it sounded really good in this track. Here it is by itself: boolean_guitarverse1.mp3 At 2:41, right at the transition, there are 21 milliseconds of complete silence in the track that I inserted to give it a much more intense transition and make it sound like a splice of two tracks, despite that it's not, and was written this way from the beginning. I also put a large instrumentation difference on both sides of this virtual splice. Past that point, the drum machine loop is still going, it just has effects on it that turn it into the bubbling sound in the left speaker. Now the guitar solo that just finished is played backwards, but with the delay applied when it was forwards, which creates delays leading up to the original notes, instead of trailing after. Here is that guitar sound isolated: boolean_reverseguitar1.mp3 The instrument soloing on the left is my Carlo Robelli fretless bass. A recording enters on the right speaker of the audience at that Paul Wertico Trio show in September of 2004 that the pictures of my two basses came from. I was using my MP3 recorder to bootleg the show, and I just left it on between sets. This recording goes through til the end of the song. (Side note: That same MP3 recorder has been employed as a major part of my "weird electronic sounds" rig that I've been using for the last 2 years with Paul Wertico Trio.) You can hear a bit of it here: boolean_pwtaudience1.mp3 From 3:18 to 3:23 I decided to copy the string part onto an additional track and offset it so that the stereo image and phase coherency were temporarily thrown off. The voice that becomes more audible in the audience sound at 4:28 happens to be my friend and great drummer that I've played with since 1998, Steve Michels, who was attending the show. Just as the tune ends, at around 7:00 the Mellotron Halfspeed Brass sound and the static that are used in &hearts enter the track, chopped into skewing pieces. At 7:02, the two eBowed guitars from Sinking of the Zenobia enter, as well as the acoustic from &hearts. Instead of reversing the entire acoustic track to give a backwards effect, I wanted to maintain the same chord progression of the form from &hearts, so I chopped it up by chord, creating many tiny clips, and then reversed each one. At 7:25, the choir from Sinking of the Zenobia enters as well. Here is an August 31, 2004 version of the track, that still has some old synth sounds in it, as well as a stand-in drum loop and theremin sounding synth: boolean_archive1.mp3 Take out the instruments in the background of the end guitar and drum soloing, and you have a real jazz record: boolean_drumsandguitarend1.mp3 And here's a more revealing look at the background instrumentation of the first half in a few locations: boolean_arrangement1.mp3 Back To Index |