I have been writing a lot of music though.
At this point we have a good arrangement of our first song, which makes me unbelievably happy. In brief, it was written like this:
Jeff has a great love of drones in music, which I share also, which for tambura providing a background to the sitar and tabla. Jeff laid down some licks on his mizwiz, which is a double tubed wind instrument that sounds somewhat like a small bagpipe. He also played a straight drone on one note.
Then I looked around in Reaktor and brought up my favorite new synth, the OKI computer 2. This is supposed to emulate those eight bit sounds of video games of long ago, but it does much much more than that. We played around with the settings until we got this nice tone, sort of like a shruti box, which is a hand held and pumped type of organ.
After some tweaking, I came up with a nice drone that fit with the key the mizwiz is in, and then another different kind of drone. And then for good measure, another drone, a bit more complicated. We then found a good rhythm to go along with this, from a CD that contains popular belly dance rhythms. I dumped the whole track into Project 5.
Now we needed a bass. Once again, we turned to the OKI and mess with a preset until we got this nasty, cutting bass sound. Jeff, in dealing with belly dance music for so long, wasn't used to thinking in terms of bass lines, but after all he was an electric bassist for years and years, so its not like he is unfamiliar with the concept. I said, here you have a tone to work with, so write a bassline. Which he did, pretty quickly, a nice and simple bit that worked with everything else.
We run out of time and I get back to working on this piece by myself and end up with a little more inspiration, and a couple of other basslines. Jeff is back a few days later and as I am showing him some stuff in Battery, he asks about a deeper kick drum. I have a kit already set up, and take one of the bass drums, copy it, and mess with the pitch. Viola! Instant huge kick. Combine this with another track of drums to go with the original middle east drumbeat, and you get a HUGE kick ass sound. Also on the middle east kit, I add some Tibetan cymbals, and with the two together it gets amazing. This pretty much takes up all the time for that session.
When Jeff comes by next time, I have doped up an arrangement and he checks it out. One thing I did that was off the wall, was copying one of his horn parts, re-pitching it up 22 semi-tones, then down-pitching some of the notes in a pattern, then playing with the panning. Now it doesn’t sound so much like a mizwiz as some weird kind of synth – but to my relief, when I play it for Jeff, he really likes it. After all he told me to do something crazy with his horn part.
We mess with the arrangement and I burn a CD for Jeff to listen to. We are going thru a lot of CDs doing this! But the important thing is after listening to it for several days, and comparing it with other CDs in this genre, he still likes it. And Paulette, his wife and diva of the Gypsy Caravan, likes it too! Great news, since we are trying to hit the belly dance market, and hell, she certainly is a belly dancer.
Next time we get together, at Jeff’s suggestion, we decide to shorten the piece, since its almost five and a half minutes long, a bit long for the dancers. This is when the collaboration gets good: we just start listening to what is there, and between the two of us decide what we can cut and not lose the flow or the ideas of the music. Its really pretty easy, Jeff and I seem to be much on the same wavelength. Once you give up the idea that not every single thing you write down is precious, you can really cut to the chase.
After a couple of hours, we get down a much tighter arrangement, without losing anything critical. In fact, to both of us it sounds much better, tighter and more focused. And we cut an entire minute off the song, so someone dancing to it will have a better shot of fitting it into a time slot.
That’s a great thing working with Jeff, and actually trying to write for a market – you have some idea of what people want to hear. And since Jeff and Paulette and the Caravan have sold lots of records, I am way happy to listen to what he has to say.
Its really a change for me, having at least some idea of what I want a piece of music to do before I write it, instead of just tooling around until I find some sounds or a rhythm I like. What I am doing now is copping these belly dance rhythms and working from there. Its not constraining, I like the beats, and it gives me a lot of creative freedom since I have a bit of structure to work from.
The other thing is working with Jeff, not only do I get the benefit of having more than my own brain having to make decisions and coming up with ideas, I am forced to write a lot of material. At this point, I am writing more of this stuff than Jeff, which of course is part of me having the equipment to do it, but the end product is certainly always going to be a collaboration. Anything that makes me write better music is great! And I feel this CD with Jeff is going to turn out great, feels like endless creative possibilities.
What more could I ask for the new year?