The Grooved Whale Project

I wonder if we’ll ever discover the overall code for human music – one massive algorithm that would allow us to press a button and presto! a new song pops up. While I’ve seen many attempts at creating this code, most fail miserably imho, either creating stuff too out there or too boring for consumption.

What I’ve been paying attention to lately are the transition zones in pieces I compose- areas where the beauty/groove no longer reigns and the song becomes seemingly less musical. Hold this transition for too long and you lose the listener.   Forget to put a transition zone in and the song fails to progress.

The trick for me is to create these transition zones in a live setting, where loops and layers have already been established. I love the freedom electronic gear ultimately gives me but sometimes the constraints are annoying. I miss the freedom of creating with just my violin, where my whim is at my fingertips.  Ahh well, it wouldn’t be an exciting world without challenges, would it?

Had another great practice with Kirk Watson today – really focusing on taking things outside of the box then bringing them back in. Got around to thinking about the different zones I’ve had to master to bring me to my current musical level.

First there’s the playing of my instrument – the violin – and all the years I put in to learning its abilities. Second, there’s the programming of gear – learning how to make the sound do what I want it to do when I want to do it – such as creating beats on a drum machine or a patch on a keyboard. Third, there’s the creating music in real time where I am the creator of all sounds and the one in control of them. And fourth is the creating music in real time with other musicians.

This fourth zone for me holds the most risk and the most reward. I have no control over what the other musicians are doing. I can only suggest ideas by sending out particular beats or phrase “codes” but what they add to the mix is up to them. Improvisation within the limits of a structure.

This type of music-making to me is very freeing. The mistakes you make are part of the game, taking you to unexplored areas or relieving you from boredom. Add to the mix a live audience and it feels a little like bungee jumping – scary until you feel the rope at the end of your feet and then you know you can enjoy the bounce.

Kirk and I will be trying out our new material at The Midnight Tea Garden this Saturday. Going to be fun!! Check it out: http://www.mikokuro.com/

For the past 10 or so years I have been looking for the codes that create music.

Most of my explorations ended up on digital equipment where I could reduce things to numbers and examine their mathematical patterns.  I learned quite a bit by doing this but programming electronics does not feed my soul.  The greatest pleasure for me as a musician is to interact with others, where I open myself up to the risks and rewards of creating in real time.

I have been working with three musicians – Kirk Watson, Alcvin Ramos and Haagen – and have found myself invigorated and challenged as a musician to bring my best to the table. We’ve been jamming and improvising together where nothing is scripted but everything unfolds beautifully. The thrill of interacting with others – of listening and responding, testing my boundaries, taking leaps of faith – is for me the creative adventure of music making.

Music is easy to create if you know and follow the codes. The kicker is it takes a lifetime to learn them. Every day I practice. Today I worked on a track that I thought would be interesting to post a sample of. It is only an exploration of a patch I created. It consists of a sparse bass line and some percussive elements, is 1 bar in pattern length and is tweaked in real time.

The difference between this improvised track and a finished song is in orders of magnitude. There are mistakes or musically undesirable parts to this track. There are boring parts – parts where you wish something might change.  There are also parts which groove where I should have stayed rather than move on. Such is the benefit of hindsight. Once I learn the patch I will be better able to control these elements.

This track may eventually become a component of a song, or it may end up being one of countless explorations that never make it to the light of day. Anyways, thot i would post it for your edification and/or enjoyment

Here are two more snippets from explorations from this week:
This one explores filter sweeps.

This one explores gating my violin in different patterns

I’ve been exploring one of my favorite rhythms for awhile now. Its a 6/8 pattern which has a bell part that seems to tap directly into the primal beat. When I listen to it, I trance immediately.

Why is it that this particular group of beats has this effect? This particular organization of sound? And how does one explain the trance state that it creates- where I’m still conscious of my surroundings but in a much different way than waking reality?

There remains so many mysteries to music . Music is much more than a sum of its parts – the individual notes or phrases or themes- somehow they all combine to loft the resulting mix into the realm of music and away we go.  Our bodies and minds get wrapped up in it and we dance and sing.

If we are open to the potential of another creature having music we need to understand the essence of music, not just the aesthetics. Each time I pick up my violin, program my drum machines or play with other musicians I am thinking bout what lessons I can learn from my behavior. Why do I choose certain notes over others? Why and when do I change the patterns I’m playing? What is human -specific about what I’m creating?

Had a wonderful time at Entheos this weekend. Gave my first ever workshop on my research with music and whales. It felt really good to do – to finally release some of my ideas out there and get feedback. A rite of passage.

Back in the studio tonight, preparing for Shambhala. I’ve been working closely with two amazing musicians, Kirk Watson and Alcvin Ramos, focusing our creative efforts on how best to combine our acoustic instruments (violin, bass, shakuhachi) with technology. We will now be joined by a third amazing musician, live PA artist Haagen who will bring his gear into the mix. Together, we will be exploring the creation of human music.

Working with these fellow musicians has definitely broadened my horizons in terms of understanding music. First and foremost they release me from playing every role in the creation of a song. I can better concentrate on specific aspects of sound. I can take time to listen to what’s evolving outside the realm of my own creation. I can rest, recharge and wait for musical inspiration to hit.

The communication that is created between musicians is one of the most intriguing features of music. How do we know what to play and when to play it? What are the cues we are listening for? Why do we have these cues and where do they come from? Is music an innate language or one that we learn as we grow as musicians?

When I look at the many different avenues I have explored over the past decade in my search for music in other species, one of the main differentiators I see between us and other creatures is that the human species has many songs and we have to create each and every one of them.

How is a song brought into being? Why is it brought into being? What is its lifespan? Why do some outlive others? Can everyone create music? What is the ratio of creators to listeners? Why do composers compose? Why do I compose?

What would the human species look like if we only had one song? Would we still consider ourselves be a musical animal?

Over the course of the Grooved Whale Project and my research into whale song I’ve radically altered how I process the world. I’ve become accustom to analyzing myself and my behaviors much as I would do another species. The challenge I had with analyzing my musical behavior was that when my brain was in the state of music, no logic was allowed to enter. Let me explain:

When I am fully involved in music (most often while playing my violin) I am in a place where the sound plays me. There is no conscious decision of what notes to play, of moving the bow up and down. There is no conscious recognition of individual notes, patterns or progressions. The music just is. It pulls me in and directs me where to go.

This state is recognizable – I see it in performers when they hit the zone. Have a look at this James Brown video but first turn the sound down. If you were a non-musical species studying this behavior, what would you conclude?

While my research has been mainly focused on understanding the humpback whale and its form of sonic logic, I’ve come to realize that my own species has variations of perception and communication that I can’t even begin to imagine.

Often while composing I play with the idea of inhabiting an alternate biology, re-visioning my music to fit a human with 6 fingers instead of 5, or playing with the idea of extending our hearing range or rhythmic acuity. I have to wonder tho, how I would write music for the creator of the video below? How would my music need to sound to fit into her world?

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.
Lionel Trilling

Studying humpback whale song has made me interested in where human songs come from and the idea of copyright. Are songs the creations of our own mind or do we use other songs for inspiration? Humpbacks seem to borrow and trade quite freely, as noted by researcher Mike Noad when the east coast humpbacks in Australia adopted the tune sung by the west coast whales.  (More on this here).  I have to wonder if before money was attached to copyright, our species did the same.

Where is the dividing line between inspiration and out-and-out stealing? The Black Eyed Peas are currently being sued by Phoenix Phenom for the song below. A valid lawsuit? Check out these videos.

Much has been written about how music can heal, but can music harm?

Since first traveling to Alaska to hear the Humpback feeding call in 1996 I have often wondered if these animals had a root sense of music. The patterned play of notes seemed too close to my ear to discount this possibility.

On my journey from being a musician to being a “music researcher” I had to drastically change the way I interacted with sound. Basically I had to remove all of music’s hold on my brain so that I could study it without being influenced by it.

My main technique was to compose with tracks out of alignment, making my music sound absolutely horrendous. Listening to my creations caused multiple physical reactions – from my back tensing up, to jaw aches and migraines.

Not many people get a chance to listen to “wrong” music (as opposed to bad music or music you might not understand) as by the time a song hits production, the alignment and symmetry of a piece are usually fixed but if music can heal, can it also harm?