cracklebox

While it only arrived this morning, I'm enamored with it. I brought it to work in my bike bag, and so far Steve has proven the master of low-end gurgling sounds. Moses is working on his pinky technique.

In short, the cracklebox is a portable noisemaker from STEIM. When you touch the metallic parts of the printed circuit board (including both the stems and paddle like parts), you complete the circuit. Each person's sound is different, and even the same person cannot recreate exactly the same sound.

My main sound is closest to that of a kids toy grenade launcher sound (minus the little granulated explosion at the end).

Having spent half of my lunch hour with the cracklebox, I find I can get a droning midrange tone using three or four fingers at the same time. Happily though, it didn't play along when I tried to steer the note toward a conventional, Western pitch. The echo of our nearly empty fourth floor added a lot to the sound.

Also, the first two one/one tapes are finished. If you read this and you're interested in one, let me know.

delay

In writing about music this spring, I looked for a space between audiophile tendencies of some listeners and, for the lack of a more concrete term, the listening for distraction of others. I guess this stance could be scene as a justification of my own place as someone who listens to a lot of music but has neither the funds nor the inclination to put together a high-end stereo.

That said, I find myself staking out a similar spot when it comes to playing and recording. While I understand those who prefer analog equipment with its warmth and limitations over digital and its perceived flatness and nearly endless possibility. I won't be sketching out a whole argument here; I'll proceed with an anecdote.

A few weeks ago, I sat in my living room talking with a close friend of mine about his painting and my playing. His work impresses me and even more so, his ability to work with little feedback on it.

In explaining my music to him, I realized something that I hadn't articulated before. I play with a digital delay pedal so that I can hear what I've just played back several times with some space between repetition. Those repetitions and that space together allow me to hear and react to what's already there. It slows the process down.

The pause the pedal creates allows me to interact with my own playing in a way that seems far from the impersonal, cold tags that analog fans put on digital technology.

set-up thoughts

Is it alright to say that the only clean tones I like are the ones that come from my guitar? I've had a phaser for a little while now, but it's about to go in favor of either an eq or another distortion pedal. Staight delay I can deal with and, in fact, use as one of the main elements of my sound, but choruses, tremolos, and, I now can admit, phasers leave me unsatisfied. Also, I had been staring at small noise synths online, but I decided to stick with contact mics instead.

The first one/one tape is nearly done. The process has been slow, but it has made me rethink my set-up in productive, more utilitarian terms.

one/one tapes

Six months or so ago, I left off with a show review from a band I love to see live. Strangely enough given the number of times I've seen them in the last year, I haven't seem them since. Sammy Bananas has made his way onto a Scion ad though.

I've been talking with friends for a while now about a concept for a tape label and project: one/one tapes. Each tape will be a twenty minute creation played and crafted by me with its recipient in mind. No doubt there'll be some overlap in themes, phrases, and more, but that speaks to my limitations as a player more than anything else.

The tapes are temporarily on hold while I get back into playing regularly and hopefully figure out a workable recording set-up. The equipment's there, but the trial and error has yet to get underway.

For now, here's a list of the materials at hand: clarinet, tenor sax, trumpet, mbira, tambourine, contact mic, delay distortion, fuzz, phaser, amps, glass slide, bass, guitar, hand drum, drum machine.

When each tape is made hopefully they'll become part of a musical, creative dialogue or perhaps start a new one. The first batch by the end of September?

Miss Fairchild - Now Bass Heavy

If I sat here for a few more minutes, I could count up the number of Miss Fairchild shows I've seen in the past year, but that's not really the point. Roughly speaking, I've seen five or six, all but two at Great Scott in Allston. As the Great Dunlap, Daddy Wrall, and Samuel P-Nice have honed their stage show, several props have come and gone. At first, I missed the large cell phone and onstage break-up call. More recently, I missed the posterboard prompts for "Love you like a sister / So you could never be / Younger than my sister / So you can't get with me."

That said, the most recent incarnation of the Miss Fairchild Show is by far the tightest and most club-rattling, not that there is now or ever has been any sense of menace or even the slightest tinge of bad-ass posturing. Now, Trick Johnson's bass and Todd the Rocket's drums ground the whole show with a rounder thump. Maybe the removal of the turntables has helped shift the balance down from treble toward bass. The keyboards, flute, and sax are still there, and Daddy Wralls vocals come through as manic and flexible as ever.

These adjustments along with several heavily re-worked versions of their earlier material have left me craving another show and the drenched sweaters and suit jackets that come with it.

You can find their website here.

Travelling Back to the Womb with Your Atlantic Citified Guru

Last night, I went to the New England Conservatory to hear Rakalam Bob Moses's birthday concert. For him, the highlight was playing with Tisziji Munoz; for me, the highlight was Moses's use of what looked like a tipped over djembe on steroids as a second kick drum. As he built toward a crescendo, Moses would play with polyrhytmic bass hits that seemed almost warped because of the contrasting timbres of the two drums.

Having read Moses's glowing praise for Tisziji, his "ego-less" guru, I was less than impressed with the slight correlation between the man's physical presence and what I'd gleaned of his ideology. He's a virtuoso guitarist and pulls a bright, clean tone out of his semi-hollowbody Gibson that would sound fine on many uptempo fusion (and Joe Satriani) tracks. Maybe the Satriani comparison is a bit unfair. Tisziji did seem closer to Sonny Sharrock's more melodic playing than to the Silver Surfer.

Maybe it says more about me and my prejudices that about Tisziji, but when I read that someone has "no licks, no style," I don't expect a top of the line guitar and amp set-up along with a place over and above every other instrument in the mix. The two bassists, John Lockwood and Don Pate were inaudible for most of the set, and while John Medeski's piano fared better, he was still buried from time to time.

I don't adhere to the idea that acoustic playing is inherently more earnest or "real" than electric playing. Tisziji could have come onstage and banged out his parts with a beat-up, cheap electric guitar, and I would have been more convinced. Also, when I read "no style," I don't want or expect anything smooth. I wanted feedback, distortion, and waves of melody-less sound. Yeah,
that's more about me than him I suppose.

P.S. While I'm elaborating on the disparities between my expectations of a guru and Tisziji, there's one last thing that deserves a mention. I can't do his near-pompadour and mustache combo justice. Let's just say that it was present.

Current musings in Vermont

I'm up in Vermont this weekend for New Year's Eve festivities. Now, you all my know my dislike of christmas and most things that come with it, but you may not be familiar with my dislike of romantic comedies. I'm not going to explain why I dislike them, because this isn't the space for that, and really, isn't it obvious? Anyway, to avoid watching a combination of those two things (oh the horror of Love Actually) I'm being antisocial and listening to music in the loft.

Long ago Mr. H the 3rd lent me John Coltrane's Ascension. I just finished listening to Edition II, which seems to have been first on the CD. I enjoyed it thoroughly and am currently listening to Edition I. Now, I feel the need to write here in the context of having read this article linked to from aldaily earlier today. Perhaps that article is even what prompted me to take on such a lengthy listening exercise.

So yes, I listen to a lot of contemporary rock and such things that could be called pop. However, I like to think I also have the patience to actively listen to lengthy pieces. I really enjoyed this track which weighed in at 40'57". The thing that I'd like to comment about here is my (admittedly less than well educated) opinion about the construction of this music. Derek Bailey's life work aside, I understand that improve does not happen in a vacuum, and that this piece was performed by people with a context of working together, who likely had an overall feeling/plan/idea of what they would like to do in this particular span of playing.

What makes this music particularly challenging to me, is that I'm not sure this music was meant to be consumed. By that I mean I don't see it being performed for the purpose of having people listen to it passively. In having this arrangement of context rich musicians moving towards (or was it away from?) a general idea, I believe the conversation metaphor is most appropriate. Yes, there are ideas being passed back and forth and they all relate to each other in various ways, but the overall outcome cannot be known until the conversation has been had. This is akin to standing next to a group of fairly interesting people at a party, and purposefully eavesdropping on their conversation. There is no grand idea that the group as a whole is struggling to convey to a rapt audience, and most of the work seems to be done in spite of that audience. So yes, this is a challenge to me, and it takes patience, because I feel like I'm fighting to keep up with this organic evolution of the music, having only what is immediately present to assist in what to look for next.

In writing that last paragraph, I began to wonder, perhaps witnessing the struggle is what the performance is all about? Is this a group of people inviting you to watch them engage in an active process, and not to be as a witness to their storytelling? I could scrap the entry with this new observation, but I'll leave it in hoping it may foster future conversations. (More music theory research, or perhaps even the liner notes may stifle such wonderment on my part entirely, but I'm enjoying the naked speculation.)