Here it is a cold and dark night in Portland,
... and I decide that I will believe what I read in the paper and check out this new electronica series at a local bar. Since one of the cars is out of commission and we are running around anyhow, B drops me off and goes and does some shopping for an hour while I check it out.
Turns out its not just one band but two, one in the front area of the bar, and the other in the rear area. OK, I think, two bands for five bucks, how bad can it be?
Pretty bad as it turns out.
I poke my head in the front room of the bar, and I see a guy kneeling over a rather substantial rack of equipment – two moogerfoogers, a couple of mixers, a rack full of fx, a Les Paul, an ancient GR-1 guitar synth, a Red Sound DarkStar and an electrified oud. I thought, wow, that could be amazing, since there was another guy next to him with a rack with an E-bow on the top and a home built looking modular synth to boot. Did I mention the theremin? It looked like they were setting up though, and all I hear was some background noise so I went to the back room.
In the back room there was a real stage, unlike in front where everything was pretty much splayed around on a spot cleared on the floor.
There was even more gear back here. I saw more than this: two Kaos pads, some sorta Electrix FX box, another DarkStar, some DJ equipment, several mixers, a couple of racks of fx, an oxygen keyboard and of course the obligatory laptop. Tons and tons of great shit, and I really couldn’t see all of it. Oh yeah, and about five different circuit bent mutated kids toys – a real collection of them.
I settle in with my beer and wait for something cool to happen. Three guys on the stage, one way behind the laptop, one buried in the middle and the third stage front, messing with the circuit bent stuff.
Throbbing bass line and drum loops, plus noise from the toys for lets say a long time. Eventually, another drum loop and a slightly different drum beat. I’m getting restless, ya know? And its not like there are 100 people in here getting grooved out.
After about 20 minutes, I think, this is really going nowhere, I don’t hear much development in the music and I am bored watching the guy in front bending over to mess with the circuit toys. I think – maybe the band in front is ready.
Out I go and lo and behold, a change: on of the guys in the front room is bending down over the gear on the floor and is twisting knobs. And twisting knobs. I hear a low throb, not really a beat, and long slow pulses of electronic sounds. The bendover guy keeps twisting knobs, not much changes and finally he gets up and walks away. And the sound continues on without much change.
Meanwhile his partner is messing with the banana plugs on his modular synth, alternating that with playing with the E-bow he has set up on top of his rack, banging it and scratching near it, and the echo/reverb just fills up everything.
This goes on for a very long time. I get and drink another beer. Its not like I am missing much, and neither are the five other people there, probably friends of the band out to be nice, ya?
I keep looking at my watch, thinking, at least the beer is good or thinking, maybe I just don’t get what they are doing or thinking maybe I am just too old or thinking if I had a gig here someone could be just a bored watching me………..mostly I’m thinking, at least the beer is good, and if what I was watching/listening too was 1/100th as good as the beer, life would be A-OK.
But who am I kidding? To me, this stuff just sucks, unless I was chemically influenced by more than alcohol and I’m not. I don’t wonder that many people think electronic music cold and uninviting – I just don’t get off on the non-performance aspects of this, especially when the music, such as it is, just bores the piss out of me. I mean, when is something gonna happen????? Where the hell is Yello when I need them????????????????????
I am again at my usual: a pretty good idea for a song but ...
At some point in the creating of my songs, I always have my best set of ears - Barbara, my wife's ears, that is, listen to what I am doing. For those of you new to these scribbles, let me say she has a great set of ears. B was a violin player for some years way before I was on the scene, so its not like she doesn't know anything about music.
Good for me, she is also extremely honest in her opions, so I pay attention to what she says. Much of the time, if I have doubts about a piece, she will reinforce them.
So last night I am working on a song that as usual for me has been in process for far too long. B listens and besides some comment on the mix, has a real problem with the synth used for doubling the melody. I will note here that of late, when I write an instrumental melody, I seem to come back to it at some point and come up with lyrics. Ah, the mystery of creation!
In any event that is what happened here, so now I had this nice vocal line being echoed by the original synth sound. B says, its too thin and doesn't really work with the rest of the song. There were some other comments about the drum sounds too, but what I want to concentrate on here is the never-ending seach for the golden tone, if you will, in any piece of music.
I can remember playing in rock bands for so many years, I would spend endless amounts of cash and time trying to get "that" sound out of my guitar - every experiment I could think of. Of course, everyone I played with was also attempting to get the best sound out of their instruments.
In those days, I would simply write out the structure of a song, bring it to the band and then we would work on it. In the organic way these things happen, the song would mutate and hopefully grow and at some point it would be pronounced "done".
Now, I did work with synth and keyboard players then too, but it wasn't like I was writing their parts, or certainly not the sounds they would get. I might have suggestions, but that was it.
Flash forward to now, and of course I am doing it all myself. Naturally this is a harder bit of trick to accomplish, and that is one reason that, for me at least, it all takes so much longer to finish any piece of music.
Therefore when B says, I think that synth sounds too thin, if I agree with what she is saying, then I have to go on a fishing expedition. That is exactly what I did for the rest of the time I had that night, going thru the 1000's of presets that are on my synths, trying pretty much in vain to find something that a) sounded fuller b) didn't step on the other instruments and c) well, just worked
In my mind I had heard some rather string-ish sounds on the refrain, and I found a preset that was close and modified it a bit. I think that will make the cut and stay.
On the verse, B was saying "you know, something like an organ...". Funny, we had just been to a jazz club the other night, and the best guy on the stage was the Hammond player. Now I have to say, I don't really like organs much at all, they just don't work for me. This guy did have a great left hand on the black (bass) keys tho. He was a killer.
With that in mind, I try about 200 different organ sounds on the verse, and none of them cut it. So I begin searching out other sounds - and boy, the descriptions the sound developers use just bite - who can tell what many of them may sound like at all from something as cryptic as "Syn25".
What I finally came up with was something that I know won't make the final cut but I want to take the concept: its a fairly full sound, but does an intriguing bit of processing with the fx, so that it fades in and out and in a rhythmic fashion. Now, I will have to tear the preset apart and find out what makes it tick, and mess with it to make it work with me. This may take a looonnnnggg time, and I may fail at it, but that is the game, no?
That is the crux of electronic music to me, its blessing and its curse: when you start to just deal with raw sounds, as opposed to simply trying to learn to play several instruments with some degree of facility, write, and arranage and record a good song, then mix and master it - well, I think none of those will happen without that golden tone.
It reminds me of an intreview I read with Jimi Hendrix. He said that, during any given concert, if he could manage to play one good note, he would be happy. I think that if I can make that one good tone, I'm halfway there.