Candle Dance
By onezero on October 19, 2014 4:15 am
This week I had a gig accompanying belly dancers--I've worked with them in the past, but this was the first show we've had together in a while. I worked up a number of rhythm patterns, combining traditional Mediterranean dance rhythms (lots of 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13 in this region) with more techno-derived beats, and used them in combination. This particular piece was a bit slower, since it came second in the set and the dancer I was working with danced while holding candles upright in her palms. (A bit tough to do that during a fast piece.)
There's an elzaffa rhythm here (3/4), combined with more 4/4 stuff. Samples used were single hits on a drum I have from India, a free tabla and free hand clap library, samples of a doumbek in there, and the usual 606 and K3M. Guitar is the Moog on the piezo pickup for the clean parts (fingerpicked), and on the bridge pickup through the Reuss Repeater Fuzz for the distorted/wah parts. There's some send-channel chorus into simple delay and a parallel reverb. (I'd wanted less of a chorus and more of a subtle tape-wow pitch-bend sound on the send, but the Eventide UltraChannel was crashing Live in rehearsal, so that was out.)
I had the rhythms grouped in session view in roughly related clusters, so I could choose from compatible ones quickly, and change them up a bit from time to time. I didn't have guitar lines decided going in, so this is all improvised (though looped during performance for layering over the bass), explaining any floatiness and unresolved structure. Edited down from an original length of 10 minutes to just under 5--you get the point. People seemed to enjoy it.
If you're looking to get into these rhythms, I highly recommend checking out this page for reference: http://www.khafif.com/rhy/
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