organisch

[rachmiel]

this is the kind of companion piece to hard listening:

www.rachmiel.org/kvr/organisch.mp3

i used similar techniques to create both and the grooves/melodies in each are genetically related.



enjoy. :-)

[runagate]

I downloaded this song, too, my friend.

So what are your current extrakvricular musical activities at the moment?
I've no idea what sort of attack plan you've got going nowadays.

[xolax]

Again - cool stuff. Similar feel to your other piece, and is quite groovey with all the tweeps and blurps. Very nicely done. Cheers.

[rachmiel]

So what are your current extrakvricular musical activities at the moment?

well i just finished my first electronic music album, Vortex Engine, 16 songs (all of which i've
uploaded in some form to kvr over the past months). it's supposed to be released by an obscure
russian label Dars: 50-100 CDs and the rest online mp3s. i loved making the songs. but i have to
admit that the final mixing and mastering was quite painful. way harder than i thought, probably
because my ears are ahead of my abilities; i know what it should sound like, but can't always get
there (easily). knowing me, i'll renounce the mixes somewhere down the road and redo them all,
but at the moment they sound reasonably satisfying to me.

i have gobs of new (unreleased) pieces, some from before Vortex Engine, lots from after. i'm in
the process of finishing them (mixing and mastering) ... at which point i'll have to decide if
i want to release them myself (online probably, to save cd production costs) or if i want to try
to find a label open to my music (challenge). perhaps Dars will want more from me?

in terms of music i'm having great fun creating splintered grooves: repetitive structures whose
events align, to some extent, with the grid ... yet thwart the grid at the same time. and i'm
not just talking about added beats, changing tempos, polymeter ... rather a fluid approach to
a non-fluid organization principle: the metronomic grid.

much much harder for me, really challenging, is coming up with foreground material: melody, or
the equivalent thereof. the sound of tonal, chromatic, diatonic, modal, even microtonal scales
just doesn't work for me in electronic music. at best, it can create a serviceable foil to the
skewed complexity of the grooves i'm creating: sanity in the midst of chaos. but the sound just
doesn't excite me. same with almost all synth patches that are based on the harmonic overtone
series, which again is scales.

so i've been creating these dense and chaotic tapestries of audio snippets that, when taken
as a whole, yield a sense of melodic line. in theory at least, though people seem to equate
what i call melody with barnyard ululation.

[rachmiel]

thanks xanax! :-)

[Klemperer]

Strangely enough I can't download? Mozilla gives me a 284kbit mp3 file and says "ready", in opera i get a html-file for download, and as I click this html to look into rachmiel's Reich I get a file not found (which of course doesn't mean there is no musical wonderland of some form there )

[runagate]

So what are your current extrakvricular musical activities at the moment?

well i just finished my first electronic music album, Vortex Engine, 16 songs (all of which i've
uploaded in some form to kvr over the past months). it's supposed to be released by an obscure
russian label Dars: 50-100 CDs and the rest online mp3s. i loved making the songs. but i have to
admit that the final mixing and mastering was quite painful. way harder than i thought, probably
because my ears are ahead of my abilities; i know what it should sound like, but can't always get
there (easily). knowing me, i'll renounce the mixes somewhere down the road and redo them all,
but at the moment they sound reasonably satisfying to me.

i have gobs of new (unreleased) pieces, some from before Vortex Engine, lots from after. i'm in
the process of finishing them (mixing and mastering) ... at which point i'll have to decide if
i want to release them myself (online probably, to save cd production costs) or if i want to try
to find a label open to my music (challenge). perhaps Dars will want more from me?

in terms of music i'm having great fun creating splintered grooves: repetitive structures whose
events align, to some extent, with the grid ... yet thwart the grid at the same time. and i'm
not just talking about added beats, changing tempos, polymeter ... rather a fluid approach to
a non-fluid organization principle: the metronomic grid.

much much harder for me, really challenging, is coming up with foreground material: melody, or
the equivalent thereof. the sound of tonal, chromatic, diatonic, modal, even microtonal scales
just doesn't work for me in electronic music. at best, it can create a serviceable foil to the
skewed complexity of the grooves i'm creating: sanity in the midst of chaos. but the sound just
doesn't excite me. same with almost all synth patches that are based on the harmonic overtone
series, which again is scales.

so i've been creating these dense and chaotic tapestries of audio snippets that, when taken
as a whole, yield a sense of melodic line. in theory at least, though people seem to equate
what i call melody with barnyard ululation.

I'm quite glad I asked.

Tell me when I can buy this CD? I suppose that Russians don't mail CDs to the USA.
But I want one.

Speaking of which I'm getting closer to asking you and a couple people to be involved in some way in whatever it is I'm working on for this winter, though strangely I'd totally forgotten about it til I read your post.

Foreground as melodic or some other uncategorizable thing is to my methodology as structure is to yous: possibly the main thing I concentrate on, though I'm not always aware of it anymore. Certainly that explains the cat-and-mouse way I tread fx mixing on my "lead" parts.

I miss these discussions.

[rachmiel]

download should be fine now. :-)

[Klemperer]

much much harder for me, really challenging, is coming up with foreground material: melody, or
the equivalent thereof. the sound of tonal, chromatic, diatonic, modal, even microtonal scales
just doesn't work for me in electronic music. at best, it can create a serviceable foil to the
skewed complexity of the grooves i'm creating: sanity in the midst of chaos. but the sound just
doesn't excite me. same with almost all synth patches that are based on the harmonic overtone
series, which again is scales.

this sounds very very interesting. As I am, well a writer, and not a musician like you, always try to find what you call foreground material which suits to complex other musical forms. I don't find for myself that it could just be a "serviceable foil to the skewed complexity", and (as I wrote in maybe bad words to you 2 years ago) I even think it is too easy thought to name every tonal, chromatic melody "sanity". Nor is complexity always "chaos" for me. Well, just lame thoughts you might say, as I am far far behind sending any music to show what I mean . I just find that some music that calls itself complex (not yours, to be sure, but you knwo that) is in danger of being an outworn cliché too.

Okay, I give up as that must sound too stupid. I sometimes when listening to your music get the feeling you stand in your own way with sentences like the above, meaning drink 4 glasses of wine, play foreground until it starts not to bore you to death, and when sober again listen to it. Or so....

I sat in modern classical concerts [edit: atonal music composed in the last 20 years] with 100% people bored to death. We'd all say "well they don't understand a thing, they have no feelings, no emotion". Might be, might be wrong (I guess it is wrong in some cases). Turn that upside down - maybe some "foreground" music would (certainly ) bore you to death. But surely not all...
I am really interested (you owe me a mail, you know, just kidding...) which melodies you found/find still haunting in your life? Is it possible that a structure of a poem, say by Rilke, starts to bore me because I might find it not complex enough any longer, whereas you'd maybe like to quote it (Rilke or Hölderlin or whoever just being an example, meaning nothing in reality, I surely don't find them "easy", he he... - you get the picture); and that runagate or you can't maybe bear a melody that reduces me to tears and I maybe AM in a time where this was brand brand new?
Errm. Sorry if this is annoying or nonsense to you.

[runagate]

Certainly not annoying nonsense to me, and truth be told 90% of what you just said above mirrors rick and my opinion about much of modern music.

I have more to say about that but don't want to hijack you and rick.

[rachmiel]

wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich den aus der engel ordnungen?
und gesetzt selbst, es nähme einer mich plötzlich ans Herz:
ich verginge von seinem stärkeren dasein.
denn das Schöne is nichts als des schrecklichen anfang,
den wir noch grade ertragen,
und wir bewundern es so,
weil es gelassen verschmäht,
uns zu zerstören.
ein jeder Engel is schrecklich.

[runagate]

• Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
  hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
  pressed me against his heart, I would perish
  in the embrace of his stronger existence.
  For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
  which we are barely able to endure and are awed
  because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
  Each single angel is terrifying.

First part of "The First Elegy" by Rilke for the multilingually impaired like me.

[rachmiel]

> Okay, I give up as that must sound too stupid. I sometimes when listening to your music get the feeling you stand in your own way with sentences like the above, meaning drink 4 glasses of wine, play foreground until it starts not to bore you to death, and when sober again listen to it

stand in my own way? of course. and not just in music. it's the very definition of neurosis. self blockage.

> I am really interested which melodies you found/find still haunting in your life

they're out there ... but hardly any of them are in groove-driven electronica, unless you count the groove as foreground.

[rachmiel]

i like the translation because it's more of a transliteration than an attempt to emulate rilke in english, a task that often fails horribly.

but i would do this:

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me to his heart, I would perish
from his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror,
which we barely endure, and are in such awe of
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every single angel is terrifying.

[runagate]

Just the sort of thing I'd expect from someone quoting that particular book in their sig.

Self-blockage seems to be the lot of those exposed to musical academia, whether they then go out and fight it relentlessly or try to justify the current highfalutin' paradigm that they were conditioned with by their favorite professor. I wonder what on earth happened to the people that studied under rachmiel himself. I've often pondered it, but I simply can't imagine. Except for me, but I took the internet correspondence class for no credit.