The Ondes Martenot
Like many (not all!) musicians of my age, I was introduced to the ondes martenot through the music of Radiohead, and specifically by the work of their guitarist Jonny Greenwood. The instrument was developed around the time of the thermin. In fact, Leon Theremin with help from Soviet research funding, developed and patented the theremin in 1928, which, according to wikipedia, is when Maurice Martenot invented his instrument. The ondes took a back seat while the theremin amazed specators with it’s magical means of touchless pitch manipulation. The two instruments can sound very similar, owing to the fact that both employ simple, clean oscilators for producing the sound. More importantly however is their shared characteristic of prominant glissandi and portemento. For those unfamiliar with Italian, this means musical notes that slide around to each other. Skilled performers of both instruments try to minimize it when they don’t want it and maximize it when they do. But is almost always there. For it is their voice. To the uninitiated, sliding tones can be comical, like a birthday whistle at a kid’s party, or to parody the movement of an animated charcter in a Looney Tunes episode. All valid and wonderful uses to be sure. But for a deep-dive into the waters of glissando and portamento, and some of the stunning ways it is used in both Western non-Western music, their is much music to explore. The American born, German-based composer Gloria Coates probably is the high royalty of the slider. In non-Western music, the giant wealth of Indian music, and specifically for my taste, Indian slide guitar. And Tahitian choral music. Oh my, that stuff moves me heavy.
One Western composer clearly loved the ondes, Olivier Messiaen. He wrote for it specifically, but also, many of his melodies for other instruments seem to fit nicely on the ondes. I played all the parts to one of his most beautiful short pieces for a choir. O Sacrum Convivium.
Henry Cowell and bus rides, and a new piece of music.
New Musical Resources by Henry Cowell is one of my favourite books. I remember circling paragraph after paragraph, jotting notes and ideas wherever I could find free space, the ideas seemed to spring out of nowhere simply from reading this small old classic. I wrote all through that book, most likely in a lovely pencil manufactured by the Lee Valley company of Great Britain, that I had purchased from a bookbinder I had worked with. She knew all the cool tools. I still have a few of those Lee Valleys left.
Most of that scribbling was done on the public transport of Montreal to and from the University of Concordia. Bundled in winter-wear, I began, reading that book, and from its words, to feel the beautiful bumps and valleys that arise out of the layering of sound units who occupy different temporal realms. It seemed more natural, in the sense that it related actually to nature, quite more so intact than the human-being constructed marches and waltzs and boom-baps, and 4s to the floor. The resulting 'chaos' of overlapping time units seemed much more in accordance with birds flying over trees, who in turn are surrounded by bushes, who then underneath have a line of ants parading their way to achieve some task. Of course none of this is scientific, it is just my internal impression put upon me by the texture of time.
That book was the greatest to me at the time. Henry Cowell was a pretty cool guy, who helped other cool guys like John Cage become cool. I like that.
Here's a new piece most definitely indebted to those cramped pencil handed bus and metro rides through the province of Quebec, when some ideas came.
The Crash is Coming
Recently, there has been a couple of films, subject matter both grim, that had as a supporting roll, the boundless North American rural landscape. I am of course talking about The Revenant and The Hateful Eight. What is it about vast grand, empty visual space that can evoke both, contrasting, sensations of freedom, awe and a sense of impending doom? Does space/silence in music contain similar affecting qualities?
I am lucky to often travel the AC 7 flight, leaving Vancouver for Hong Kong at 12:10PM, where it then heads north along the coast of Canada up towards the Bering Straight, where it curves, and comes down along the coast of Asia. The redeeming quality of this prolonged bout of air travel, is that it remains in daylight for the entirety of the journey. While the cabin lights get turned off, and the window shades dropped, I can't help but lift the shade up for a peak every five minutes, often being hypnotized and starring out to the most spectacular, remote, daunting, yet pleasing, visions of the enormity of our planet. Or conversely, the minute nature of our person. In particular, once passed the Bering Straight, and heading due south, the view becomes an otherworldly almost interstellar landscape that only few (those who take a specific flight, departing at a specific time, with optimal no-clouds weather conditions) will ever witness.
Yesterday, I discussed with some friends, the good-old conundrum of the finite-infinite debate of the Universe. I mentioned how as a young boy, the thought of infinite space scared the hell out of me, yet also, filled me with excitement and energy without compare.
So, again, does musical space contain the characteristics of free-falling joy and relative insignificance?
The Crash Is Coming, for Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello, Clarinet, Crotales, and Glock. If you would like to read along with the score, click HERE.
And is dedicated to my dear friend Cheng Pui Mei.
Messiaen:Synesthesia:Kubrick
Olivier Messiaen is widely known to have had synesthesia. For those unaware of this fascinating neurological phenomenon, it is a condition where an individual experiences sensory stimulation from a source other than the principle one being activated. As if the smell of a pineapple, as well as being sweet and tangy, also elicited the colour purple in the persons visual cortex.
Much has been written about Messiaen's condition, and suffice to say, it was no flippant proclamation. While many of us, if not all of us, have emotional connections and responses to music, and in turn can lead to an approximate translation into another sense, weather tactile or colour. Messiaen's condition was true in the most quantifiable of ways. Where as you or I may, may hear a solo guitar and voice funeral blues, and, obviously associate the colour blue, or possibly black to the music, or alternatively, a smoking hot Cuban band with blistering trumpets and sex rhythm evoking wine red, or maybe a scratchy contemporary violin figure makes us itch, to this end, we all experience some sort of syhesthesia. However, in the truest sense of the word, the individual in question can reproduce matching responses over time with more detail than the average person. It is very well documented that Messiaen could consistently reproduce not only colours, but minute gradations and shades, when hearing harmonies of a highly complex nature. Different inversions, and transpositions with similar interval vectors would produce a slightly different shade, but yet remain in the same family.
Anyone who has studied the work of Messiaen, or even simply listened to him with a discerning ear, can clearly accept that his harmony was of a highly complex and individual style. The ability to identify colours, throughout all the possible extrapolations of musical material under his control, and his ability to remain consistent in his declarations, is marvellous and awe inspiring. It is worth noting that, as some have argued, that sound/colour synesthesia could be reduced to simply a matter of an individual possessing an extremely acute sense of perfect pitch, and then assigning a colour to the varying sonorities. This in itself is a marvel and a admirable talent, but one that is more akin to an razor-sharp and prodigious memory. In the case of Messiaen, I believe he contained the condition of synesthesia in its truest and most magical form.
His primary musical, and arguably philosophical, influence was Debussy, who, while not known to have synesthesia per se, was one of the first composers (along with others of the so-called impressionists) to compose music with the idea that harmony was stemming from a source of colouration as opposed to function. A rejection of the narrative oriented romanticism of the previous generation This idea, concept, procedure, would ripple changes through the coming century of music. (Aside from contemporary Classical music, Jazz musicians would adopt this perspective, and it could be argued that a majority of Rock is all colouration as opposed to function.)
By definition, as a filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick, composed with colour. As this recent montage shows, his marvellous attention and awareness of the emotional, psychological, and most likely physiological effects of colour on the person, was of a masterful level and one that he treated with utmost importance.
Would it not be a wonderful exploration to investigate the scoring used by Kubrick, in scenes displaying a prominent focus of a certain colour? Or how about taking various chords from Messiaen's palate (which he has labeled according to colour) and scoring some of the Kubrick scenes with the corresponding material? If only there was more time in a day, in a lifetime.
Or how about science does us all a favour and just figures a way to make them revenants, so they can come back and work together.
Arvo, Velvets, and Drone.
This is a bit of writing I did for one of those rare charming occurrences on social-media, where you get nominated-by-a-friend, and you have to post a best-of list. In the end. Some people found it a short, fun read, so here it is:
Album Influence: day 1
Drones
To make this a little more interesting and self-reflective, instead of just posting one record, I’m going to use this album-influence trend to investigate an aspect of sound that has shaped my musical life. Giving two examples, of superficially contrasting nature, that helped illuminate and point the way towards my seeking the experience of magic in music. Cause that’s all I care about really, magic that is.
I was never going to be a hippie, I liked fistfights and eau de toilette too much. However, my admiration and wonder for psychedelic/religious mystic experience in music held firm, and a big player in the construction of that sound was the presence of a gravitational, birthing, mother-tone. A drone. As a young fellow, I hadn’t yet found anything in the Western traditions that gave up the aesthetic garments of hippie-fashion, yet retained the trip. Coltrane and modal jazz was to come later.
I had a feline sleek, cool cousin, and after a visit to my house in 1991, she left a mix-cassette which included the song ‘Heroin’ by the Velvet Underground. I was so lifted by it that I purchased ‘The Velvet Underground and Nico’ the next weekend. Imagine my musical brain melting as a young teenager when ‘Venus in Furs’ begins, and the out-of-tune-on-purpose viola of John Cale wailing in anti-drone drone. That is, a centre that was not trying to be perfect. An unpretty core. And I for sure, in no way, was prepared for Nico. Although she is singing different pitches in ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’, her voice was received as a drone. Whether it was her delivery, timbre or state of being, I was enamoured, hypnotized and totally in love. This is not even to mention the masterpiece of ‘Heroin’.
What is there to say about Arvo Part’s ‘Fur Alina’ that hasn’t been said? I found it in my dad’s collection, and I liked the colour of the cd case (baby blue), and the instrumentation (minimal, piano, violin, cello). Arvo mapped out a sound that is at once, as precisely designed and heavy as the Sagrada Familia cathedral, and at the same time as light and delicate as a petal. His iconic works were all constructed around a singular triad, and the divine-design mathematical permutation of a scale. He realized, it seems, that many things can put us into states of spiritual trance (in his case, influenced by the Russian Orthodox tradition). A drone need not be one note. It can be an idea/ideal. The sophisticated, effortless repetition of a triad, and the swirling around of it’s relatives, can lead to trance experience, possibly an even deeper one than served by a single tone.
Other observations:
-Both these albums for better or worse, fed my already-present slight suspicion of virtuosity. Imagine the conundrum when later in life at music school I tried, and crashed and burned, to play bebop.
-Guitar tone. Vox amps. Anti-Clapton.
-Representation of experience; does the music included in these albums strive to gift the listener a fasttrack to the assumed states? (Arvo, oneness with God. VU, injecting heroin), or does it simply aim to display them? I don’t know, but these albums sure began my bad-habit of asking too many questions.
-While I love the Grateful Dead, the cuddly image of teddy bear Jerry Garcia, and later on rave-culture, was the farthest thing from from psychedelic for me. I wanted ‘serious’ psych. More Gurdjieff rather than Leary*. These albums showed me at a young age that maybe, although we share similar paths, there are alternate routes. That was important.
Influ-meter: 10 out of 10 Discmans
*A friend and scholar, Randolph Jordan, pointed out that I had an incorrect reading of Timothy Leary. Leary was less tuned-in to the hippie movement than I had thought. His adoption by the movement, led me to presume that his perspective was in-line. Which I guess it wasn’t.
Musical Influence of Books
this is an in-process discussion I’m having with myself examining some of my favourite literary experiences and how, and what did they influence or add-to, or carve out in my journey as a musician.
Moby Dick - Biblical, dream-like, a bit whackywild in form. Epic and personal simultanously
For Whom The Bell Tolls
The Wind Up Bird Chronicle/1Q84. Murakami, for me, has always been David Lynch with Japanese aethetics. What more needs to be said? (I only say that Murakami reminds me of Lynch because i was introduced to Lynch when I was a teenager, and came to Murakami later. It could easily be said that Lynch is Murakami with Amercian sensibilities). Dreams. Again.
Unbearable Lightness of Being
Zen and The Art of Archery
A-Di-Da-Phat Phase
While living in Vietnam, every Saturday morning from across the small street in front of my house in Hanoi, before some wide steps that descend in Ho Tay, the famous Weslake of the city, I wake up to the peaceful chant of a small group of folks paying their respects to the Buddha. I sit and have coffee beside them, but am too put-off by the idea of photographing them. Even recording their prayers felt as if I was imposing. I finally got over the recording hesitation, however I did it from my balcony, on an iPhone.
I have always wanted to make some music utilizing the phasing technique introduced by Steve Reich (It’s Gonna Rain and Come Out, Clapping Music) but similarly, felt hesitant. It’s Reich’s thing. But then, there I am with this recording, and what are you gonna do?
Those Saturday mornings were something special.
