Its late, after midnight, and I am listening to Radio Lebanon on Live 365.com. Not that I am plugging anything, but this internet radio station is a great resource. I like having the immense choice that the internet radio stations give. I would have killed for something like this 10 years ago!
Like everyone else I had some time off at the holidays, so I took advantage of it to write some more music to further develop with Jeff. This is leading me into several interesting areas.
What I have been doing of late is taking one of the many traditional belly dance rhythms from a CD that is just rhythms Jeff gave me. One of the advantages of this CD is that is has not only the names of the beats, but also the tempo they are played at. This makes it easy to be accurate! And of course, I don’t use the original track off the CD, so I am not infringing on anyone’s copyright. After all, no one owns a beat!
I have mapped out several middle eastern drum sets in Battery and use these trigged with the pads on my XL7 to steal the beats – its almost like having a miniature drum set at your fingertips, and velocity sensitive too.. I am happily surprised at how easy it is. One of the reasons is that there are usually only four drums plus maybe a rik (which is somewhat tambourine like) in the background.
Once I get the basic beat down, I fire up another Battery session with a more normal trap drum set. Either I simply try and write a new beat, or I cruise the hundreds of midi drum loops I have on the hard drive. Its amazing what you can do with this combination.
Of course, there are other samples, and I have been experimenting with using the Chinee Kong Chinese sample sets in the same way. Talk about huge drums!
What is interesting also about this process is that I have been writing a lot on my own, and then with Jeff as he makes it over once a week. It would be nice if it were more often, but we are both pretty busy, and it does let my mind roam in all sorts of directions, many of which are outgrowths of ideas that Jeff and talk about.
For instance, a couple of weeks ago we were discussing how we might use his shruti box, a small Indian sort of pump organ. It got me thinking back to some of the other world music samples that I have. I found this one call a Baja, but it sounds like a harmonium to me. I was trying to work out a way to use it on a song, and then had the idea to dump a huge long delay on it. Suddenly it all starts to make sense, so I have this combination of a non-western rhythm, a western rhythm complimenting it, and then this long Baja riff on top. It almost sounds like a dub song, in a strange way, with the Baja. Neat.
In fact, during one long session, a whole basic song comes together, at least in skeleton form. There are lots of drum parts, and lots of space for Jeff to work on it.
I also worked on a few other pieces, and was quite happy to discover that another rhythm off the CD worked perfectly with a little idea I had some time ago. Its just like seeds, these small ideas. Once you get it planted, it will grow if you just work at it and of course, know when to stop at any given time, when the inspiration dries up.
By the time Jeff makes it over I have a ton of stuff to show him, and most of our time is taken up with this, so we don’t get a whole lot of writing done, but that is OK – I can’t expect him to just whip up new parts on demand, any more that I can. But we do discuss things, and it makes me thing about what the next step is. I give him a lot of songs and snippets to take home, and he is one careful listener, which is of course really valuable.
A couple of nights later I am thinking about some of the other instruments we were talking about using in a song. I am looking for some samples of a kora, and African harp, but with no luck. I do however find a ton of other interesting string instruments, the best of which is a santour, a hammered dulcimer found in India and by other names all over the middle east.
Again I fall in love with the pads on the XL7, since I can make a nice approximation of playing with the little hammers as you would on the santour, only with my fingers on the XL. Funny enough, what I end up with is a very traditional sounding piece, since I have another typical drum beat and the santour, nothing else. Pretty cool, and not at all what I thought I would do. Certainly a base for something, and opens up many other possibilities.
Jeff and Paulette are leaving for New Zealand and Australia at the end of the month, but through some good luck Jeff and I will be getting together for a couple of long sessions of recording in the daytime. Then I will have three weeks to get something sorted from that – and I am really looking forward to it.
Stay tuned!