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Nairobi

By Suhpos on February 25, 2024 4:36 pm

My sister brought me a small hide drum from Kenya. I wanted to make a track with as it has kind of useful resonant sound. The idea was to make kind of a phasing composition inspired by Steve Reich. I started with kind of chord structure using pitch shifting and time stretching. Then i decided to add kind of a beat reinforcing the tempo of the lowest note in the chord structure. At this point the whole minimalist mindset kind of went out the window and started solving problems just by adding more stuff.

I made up a phasing line with the alto recorder. Initially i wanted it to be a bit longer, but my recorder playing/composition skills were my shortcomings here, and i was unable to come up with a line that had this kind of magic perpetuality (like the line from Reich's "Piano Phase".) So i decided to just record kind of a improvisation on top of it (in multiple takess..) to try to tie everything together. I think it kind of worked in the end, but the whole composition maybe feels a little bit clumsy...

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Very cool! Love the the drum sound and how it kind of turns into a percussion version of "Pendulum Music". The way the melody comes in as all the drum hits come into phase is really powerful. Great sound on the lead too.

v0 wrote:

Very cool! Love the the drum sound and how it kind of turns into a percussion version of "Pendulum Music". The way the melody comes in as all the drum hits come into phase is really powerful. Great sound on the lead too.

Thanks! Somehow I had never heard pendulum music. Really impressive how he can make patterns appear out of seemingly nowhere. Found myself wanting to go back and check that they hadn’t “cheated” somehow haha…

WOW! I love the first part that feels more like artsy fartsy music but then I love even more the african chaotic thing that happens in the second part! You are making such amazing unique music, I love it!

This is really cool. Sounds super chill, and is also kind of simple, but really captures the attention. The recorder is also lovely, with the edgy distortion

Did you see Virtual Riot's recent experiment into complex polyrhythms? Some parts of your intro  reminded me of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SthcxWPXG_E

Re: clumsyness - I dunno, it doesn't feel clumsy. It feels loose. Kind of musical wabi-sabi.

I really like phasing songs. This one came together really well. I made an ambient peice with a similar technique last year with a gong I got from vietnam.

horatiuromantic wrote:

WOW! I love the first part that feels more like artsy fartsy music but then I love even more the african chaotic thing that happens in the second part! You are making such amazing unique music, I love it!

Hey thank you! Artsy fartsy music was exactly what I was going, haha. No clue how much it has got to do with africa, I mean I guess the sound of the drum is african don’t know about the rythm. The name was just the best thing i could think of.


naught101 wrote:

This is really cool. Sounds super chill, and is also kind of simple, but really captures the attention. The recorder is also lovely, with the edgy distortion

Did you see Virtual Riot's recent experiment into complex polyrhythms? Some parts of your intro  reminded me of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SthcxWPXG_E

Re: clumsyness - I dunno, it doesn't feel clumsy. It feels loose. Kind of musical wabi-sabi.

Thank you! I think I had actually, at least it seemed familiar, maybe i had seen just a short or something. But it’s basically the same thing, just with less notes i guess. Virtual Riot’s piece is very elegant, also super interesting to see it visually on the midi roll. Been using the klanghelm IVGI plugin for distortion, works well for a lot of things.

ENC_ wrote:

I really like phasing songs. This one came together really well. I made an ambient peice with a similar technique last year with a gong I got from vietnam.

Hey thank you! Listened you’re piece from w26 2022, very interesting, I think I’m even more  enthusiastic about phasing songs now haha, thank you!

the low sounds that come in on that last third are so nice!

jwh wrote:

the low sounds that come in on that last third are so nice!


Thank you for listening! they were the same drum track just pitched down.

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