Song for Creative Commons

After reading The Culture Club, I was encouraged to read further and got Audio Culture, edited by Cristoph Cox and Daniel Warner, a collection of readings. One of the most potent essays in it
is Bettered by the Borrower by John Oswald. As I read it I jotted down ideas and later thought they would make good lyrics.

I'm in the process of recording the song but thought I'd share the text:

We share in ears
vibrations in air
it's more primal than blues
this form we share

I am a sound
a song that is true
this music that flows through me
can flow through you too

Gentle borrower
transform me
gentle borrower
transform me

Brainstorm elation
marks transformation
save condemnation for
straight imitation

There are more than these notes
there are more than these keys
an infinite soundscape
needs your diversity

Gentle borrower
transform me
gentle borrower
transform me

For me the lyrics pick up on my enthusiasm for Creative Commons as much as my desire to see everyone make music. I often say that music is too much fun not to have a go. And then there's the strength that can be taken from music, not to mention its application for purposes of propaganda like advertising.

What I like about Creative Commons is the idea that every endeavour relies upon building on existing ideas. Jared Diamond has an awesome chapter in Guns, Germs and Steel (I think it's called Necessity's Mother) that discusses how much we seem to like the idea of a single creator when the truth is more often the case that progress relies on developing existing research. He gives a bunch of examples, like James Watt's improvements to the steam engine.

Anyway, I'm drifting off track. The thing with music is that, of all the possible combinations of notes, only a limited number sound good together. So, really, we have no choice but to recycle (at a fundamental level) and some of the ideas that get promoted to protect copyright are really petty. Like, can you imagine being taken to court for making a video of someone singing Happy Birthday?

Post script: I've put the song I recorded with these lyrics up for remix. Grab the parts and have a go.

My PR for RPM

Local artist rises to international challenge

The RPM Challenge, now in its third year, encourages musicians to record an album of music in the month of February. Last year 850 albums were produced, including one effort made entirely on a Nintendo Game Boy!

The idea is a simple kick in the arse for musicians to stop dreaming and procrastinating and to realise their songs.

Or, as the RPM Challenge entry in Wikipedia puts it:

There is no winner of the challenge, which functions solely to give musicians a needed push towards finishing original material and help them achieve a sense of satisfaction.

For Jason Richardson of Brucedale (recording under the name Showcase Jase) this has meant a number of sleepless nights. "It's almost funny but probably a bit dysfunctional. Last year I decided to take time off work to get hands-on with raising my children and have a sabbatical. I picked up the guitar again, rediscovered the joys of composing and now find myself sneaking off to to scribble lyrics or tweak my mixes."

His passion for music isn't entirely new. In the last three years Jason has released two albums of electronic music (under the moniker Bassling), as well as performing as part of Wagga Wagga's 2006 Unsound Festival, contributing to the Ninja Trax mixes curated by Gascomm.org and exhibiting in ABC Online's Poool project for regional artists and at Charles Sturt University's HR Gallop Gallery in 2007.

"The internet cops a lot of bad press for people pirating music but there are many, many, many musicians collaborating and distributing online. It's been acknowledged there are probably more people making electronic music now than people buying it. And I think that's great - music is way too much fun not to have a go."

One of the benefits of personal computing has been people are now able to have a home recording studio. "I was listening to demo tapes from a Canberra band I played in during the mid-90s and, in comparison, the quality you can achieve with a PC is brilliant," says Jason Richardson.

Of course, there have been a few technical issues. Jason's soundcard broke prior to beginning so he's had to improvise with other equipment. But that's all part of the challenge, according to the blog entry of another musician. "I went into the Challenge last year with no experience for recording an album with actual songs," writes 19-year-old participant Mian Laisa, of Littleton, Colorado in the United States.
"I came out of the challenge with a new understanding of how the process worked."

www.showcasejase.com
www.rpmchallenge.com
www.bassling.com

Post script: Here's a video I've made about my experience with the RPM Challenge

Still harping on

Recorded Dec '07


Recorded Feb '08

Portrait of the blogger as a young man onstage with The Avalanches

Pic by 'Pling for BMA Magazine, Canberra

Click here for pics of the show on 6 March 1998

Aeolian harp

"In Zen they say, 'If something is boring after two minutes, try it after four. If still boring, try it for eight, 16, 32 and so on. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all, but very interesting."

After reading this quote (attributed to John Cage) in Craig Schuftan's book The Culture Club, I had a whole new appreciation for the aeolian harp Alan Lamb and Scott Baker built in the backyard. So I set about recording it more often and have put the results online at soundclick.com/aeolianharp. Hear free mp3s here.

And after sleeping with it for a couple of nights, I'm feeling what the romantic poets talk about. Like Eduard Mörike in one of the most famous, 'To an Aeolian Harp'

Leaning against the ivy-covered wall
Of this old terrace,
You, an air-borne muse's
String-melody full of mystery,
Begin,
Begin again
Your melodious lament!


You come here, winds, from far away,
Alas! from the boy's,
I loved so much,
Freshly green turning hill.
And touching spring blossoms while passing,
Oversaturated with sweet fragrances,
How sweet you're tempting this heart!
And whispering here into the strings,
Attracted by harmonious melancholy,
Increasing with the draught of my desire,
And dying down again.


But suddenly,
As the wind swoops here harder,
A charming scream of the harp,
Echoes, me to sweet fright,
my soul's sudden excitement;


And here - the full rose strews, shaken,
All its petals in front of my feet!

Another thing in Schuftan's book that's given me a fresh perspective on the wires was introducing me to some of the philosophy behind the Theatre of Eternal Music. This group believed modern music was unsatisfying at a very fundamental level:

The problem lay in the Western system of tuning itself. The intervals between the notes on a piano keyboard are not mathematically correct, but represent a compromise, a fudge designed to help keyboard musicians jump from one key to another without having to re-tune their instruments. So technically, all Western classical music since Bach (who consolidated the new tuning system with his The Well Tempered Klavier) has been out of tune. Of course, we've got so used to it now that we don't even notice it, but for Young's group with its endless dronefests there was no getting around it. As Terry Riley, a later member of the group, explained it years afterwards in an interview: "If you threw up a bunch of slides on a wall that were out of focus, you'd tend to through them quickly."

The Culture Club ends with a really pointed question that is the logical conclusion of this idea that popular music is melodic novelty disguising repetition; but, the main thing I got from here was the Theatre of Eternal Music's idea of droning on one sustained note. The following chapter on John Cage, Stockhausen and the aleatoric technique, which puts an element of chance into a composition, reminded me of the idea of the wires as divine inspiration.

I really enjoy hearing the low pulse build into a furious drone before a new pulse builds again or occasionally another will collide into it. Or the wind will still.

The wires of the aeolian harp seem to be a bit sharper than G, which is usually a nice melancholy sort of key. At least, that's where I end up when I play along with them on my fretless bass. From a sharp G they go sublime, as explained elsewhere:

The aeolian harp's very special tones/ tone combinations, resembling to the flageolet-tones of other string-instruments, cannot be created by man by any "conventional" action on the strings whatever (like bowing, plucking rubbing etc.).

(And, to digress, it's something that reminds me of Percy Grainger's idea that the future of music lies in droning, shifting tones - although he had much more complicated - and, for the time, freakingly awesome - methods of generating tones through transistors and photo-voltaic cells.)

I'm still grappling with identifying the harmonics on the wires but this description covers it nicely:

The harmonics always appear in a pattern. The first harmonic is an octave above the fundamental; the second is an octave and a fifth above; the third harmonic is two octaves above. Then two octaves and a third, a fifth, a seventh. Then three octaves and a second, third and on and on. If the string is tuned to c, the harmonics are c,c,g,c,e,g,bflat,c,d,e, etc.


When wind blows across strings it is not the fundamental that is heard, but one of the harmonics.

Here's another description of how an aeolian harp works from an academic who has spent time researching the effect on power lines. I particularly like these lines he quotes from Coleridge, in his poem The Aeolian Harp:

Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a World like this,
Where e'en the Breezes of the simple Air
Possess the power and Spirit of Melody

Reminds me of another quote from John Cage, “Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look.”

The other night I slept in a tent next to the wires and as they pulsed pre-dawn I heard their harmonics oscillating with the Doppler effect on a passing car in the distance and then a plane. It'd be good to be able to record that, maybe an omni-directional mic could do it. It's a shame that the deep rumble of a passing train would be too deep to reproduce though I'm starting to recognise how they effect the wires and shape the sound.

Anyway, I'm beginning to see how Alan Lamb has spent years sitting under humming wires. And I'm grateful I live in an age where superstition doesn't see the sounds of the harp as ethereal voices or sorcery, like poor Dunstan in the following:

The principle of the natural vibration of strings by the pressure of the wind was recognized in ancient times; King David, we hear from the Rabbinic records, used to hang his kinnor (kithara) over his bed at night, when it sounded in the midnight breeze. The same is related of St Dunstan of Canterbury, who was in consequence charged with sorcery. The Chinese at the present day fly kites of various sizes, having strings stretched across apertures in the paper, which produces the effect of an aerial chorus.

That last bit reminds me of this French bloke, who demonstrates an amazing number of ideas for things that can be powered by the wind.

Post script: there's a video with a bit about the aeolian harp here

 

Battering Ram

Screened as part of the 2007 Reel Is Real film festival

First three songs - no flash

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h g h l g h t

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