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WeeklyBeats.com / Music / Lyons's music / Present and Past

Present and Past

By Lyons on February 14, 2016 11:51 pm

This track is an arrangement of samples I recorded in back in May 2015. It's all double bass with delay and reverb!

At the time (May 2015) I wanted to create an electro-acoustic duo with FX/instruments and improv but the other person didnt really care about playing/gigging so it ran into the ground and I was left with a lot of musical material.

It sucks when you try some project and the other person is not as involved as you. Been there, mate smile

Anyway, for what I hear, you've got enough material (and talent) to take those fragment and come with tracks like this one. It's very dinamic and full of things going on both musically and sonically. Very cinematic, also, as your late work.

I'm really digging this direction, Lyons

sounds cool

I really like this one. In fact, more-or-less I'm liking all your work this year. I do think you need to focus on developing the ideas into longer tracks, but that's okay. You'll get there. This is absolutely wonderful, really great use of the samples and putting them together.

Well done.

vinpous wrote:

I really like this one. In fact, more-or-less I'm liking all your work this year. I do think you need to focus on developing the ideas into longer tracks, but that's okay. You'll get there. This is absolutely wonderful, really great use of the samples and putting them together.

Well done.

Aww man! This I'm finding to be incredibly difficult! Developing material seems to be the killer for me. I pushed and transformed a lot of ideas in this track while trying to keep it tangibly related to initial ideas. I do think your aesthetic is a bit brutal on my creative capacities but I'm not complaining.

laguna wrote:

It sucks when you try some project and the other person is not as involved as you. Been there, mate smile

Anyway, for what I hear, you've got enough material (and talent) to take those fragment and come with tracks like this one. It's very dinamic and full of things going on both musically and sonically. Very cinematic, also, as your late work.

I'm really digging this direction, Lyons

I feel like this style is conveniently located to double bass playing in general but I'm looking to push outside the envelope. Need to get out of the comfort zone!


george bowles wrote:

sounds cool

Thanks man big_smile

Lyons wrote:

Aww man! This I'm finding to be incredibly difficult! Developing material seems to be the killer for me. I pushed and transformed a lot of ideas in this track while trying to keep it tangibly related to initial ideas. I do think your aesthetic is a bit brutal on my creative capacities but I'm not complaining.

It doesn't sound like you're having trouble developing the material. I know that really you're quite capable of developing material with your strong intuition as an improvisor, which I can vouch for from first hand experience. If I were to scrub to any section of this, it would sound good. It's good material. It's well-arranged and well-treated in terms of how it's transformed from its basic elements. It's produced well. I can't fault your development. The issue it sounds like you're running into is not how you deal with your materials on a micro scale, but rather a macro-scale. I.e. form.

If you want to shoot for larger scale works and you're stuck, work methodically. You've already go a pile of materials, so you can set them aside and think about what you want to do with them. Take out a pencil and paper and do a time map. Create a space on the page to represent the length of time and the kind of sonic/musical space you need to occupy and plot out how you want it progress. Use symbols, words, lines, or whatever means something to you. As long as it gives you some idea as to the architecture of the work and you can treat it as an abstraction of piece and its musical content, it's right. Just be specific as to the timing of things. Not rhythms, but rather what you imagine hearing at say 2'10" and how that changes at 2'45". That kind of thing.

Then from there, you can use that as a skeleton onto which you can overlay your materials and develop them. Quite often the micro-structure issues you're facing are actually more to do with macro-structure issues. If you get stuck with anything, move onto a different section that you've mapped out and you'll often find that when you come back to the bit you were stuck at before, it makes sense again. If your intuition then begins to override the structure, that's fine too, trust it and let it make adjustments to your initial plans. Just be methodical.

That's my approach if I struggle drawing a work out, anyway. YMMV.

Sounds completly developed to me. I don't know if people have just been conditioned by the length limitations of 78rpm records, or if 3-4 minutes are some kind of psychological attention span, but that appears to be pretty much universal (at least in most western music).

Anyway, I really really like your stuff

I like the track. Beautiful.

I agree with Jim Wood, you could have told me that you had developed this track for months and I'd believe you -- but then again I'm partial to mood and texture over classical technique and form. It's all subjective right? Anyway, I wouldn't change a thing, this is beautiful.

Lovely harmony here, the panning adds a lot... a trick that I use for structure is to create a climax near the end - roughly 4/5 through - with a note that is higher than all the others in its space. I think of it as a new voice even if it is a pre-existing one - like a bird that appears to show off its unique call. Your work is a different dynamic, not wrong by any means, and I enjoy each piece you've made this year.

Wow, you make sounds with your strings that are just amazing. Not that I'm the expert, but I think you developed this piece just about perfectly.

I would buy this record. The double bass sonorities are always an attraction, and the multiple voices going on here are extremely rich.  I really like what sound like extended techniques (or at least harmonics) in the upper registers, and the contrast between those and the more straightforward harmonies.  Outstanding.

I agree it's pretty convincing as-is. On the other hand, I hear you. I second Kevanatkins' suggestions about pencil and paper and some form of notation. The other thing is, what are you trying to say? I always find that picking a title or a theme helps me develop a narrative for a piece. The piece in the end may be totally opaque to others, but as long as I feel I condensed that word or phrase into the piece, or vice versa, it is a "piece" and a "unit" or an entity of some kind. Just my 2 cents. Still think the piece rocks tho.

This is really cool, it sounds like violins. It reminds me a bit of the Far Cry 2 soundtrack, and of the piece Something Dark is Coming by Bear McCreary.

Very nice

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