Listening back to all of the song’s versions its surprising how little the current version resembles its original form. When I’ve listened to various evolutions of whale song, the changes seem much more constrained. So why did I make the changes I made? What was the impetus?

First of all, there was dissatisfaction with the original piece. It worked as a piece of music – but only just – and I wasn’t satisfied with its flow and progressions. The mutation from 4/4 to 6/8 happened by accident. I had been playing around with a 6/8 beat and opened up the wrong file to paste it in. By pure happenstance it worked beautifully with the original violin trax I had laid down. I deleted the original rhythmic parts and began adding new ones which fit with the new time signature.

Now that I had a basic structure I could invite others to play on it. Over the course of the summer Kirk added his sonic styling through his bass, Alcvin on his various flutes and Haagen with his electronics. What’s curious to note is that each time we jammed on the song, it was never the same twice.

My current job is to now pick the best trax that we laid down, massage them into a cohesive whole and release the resulting entity to the world to begin its life as a song.  Where it goes, how long it will live, what it might spawn, we’ll have to wait and see….

Sez Wikipedia: The handicap principle is a hypothesis originally proposed in 1975 by biologist Amotz Zahavi to explain how evolution may lead to “honest” or reliable signaling between animals who have an obvious motivation to bluff or deceive each other. The handicap principle suggests that reliable signals must be costly to the signaler, costing the signaler something that could not be afforded by an individual with less of a particular trait.

First off, not only have I found concepts in Zahavi’s book “The Handicap Principle A Missing Piece of Darwin’s Puzzle” fun to apply to all things music but I love the way Zahavi and his co-authors write – as if they tried all the experiments on themselves and then wrote about their observations. For instance, consider Zahavi’s musings on the finding that great tits, whose songs were more rhythmic and contained more syllables, were more successful breeders.

“There is an inherent conflict between collecting information and precise execution of vocalization. Both activities demand concentration, but to collect information one must concentrate on listening, looking, discerning, and correlating, while precise vocalization demands that one concentrate on execution….One who tries both to listen and to vocalize is likely to falter a bit in the rhythm- a stumble that will display divided concentration.”

Maybe he tried talking and listening to someone talk at the same time – or is he also a drummer?

Based on my own observations “in the field” of the drum circle his ideas re: faltering are valid. Playing the drum (vocal execution) while listening for the beat (collecting info) is very hard. As one trains as a musician, the skill of listening while playing/playing while listening becomes so enforced that it becomes second nature, allowing the player to easily enter what I call a “musical state of mind”.

While this is probably not the goal of the great tits, I find studies such as these great fodder for understanding my own musical nature – insights which I’m getting excited about sharing as I prepare for the upcoming 2010 Annual Conference of the Canadian Acoustical Association in Victoria this October. This will be my first foray into the world of science and am looking forwards to meeting others who are intrigued as I am about the chirps, squeaks, hums, thrums, moans, calls and songs us humans and other animals make.

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?

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/

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
[See post to listen to audio]

Here are two more snippets from explorations from this week:
This one explores filter sweeps.
[See post to listen to audio]

This one explores gating my violin in different patterns
[See post to listen to audio]

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?

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?

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?

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?

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.