Mix to remix

Recently I started experimenting with open-tunings and it has opened new musical ideas

In the past I found that replacing the low E string on the guitar with a D string from a bass held pitch better, and also that DADGAD was a lot of fun for riffing.

One time I settled on DDAE tuning, which was interesting as it switched around notes when picking arpeggios.

Anyway, this time I've gone for DGDGBD and really like the way it sits sorta between a guitar and a bass.

It was using that tuning that I started writing the song in the video at the top.

However, a recent Junto project asked for a remix and I thought it would be a good opportunity to revisit the song.

I knew there would be vocal performances that were close enough to layer together for the thick sound one gets through doubling.

The remix below worked from those pieces and added a 909 beat and a wubby bass part.

Wandering in wonder

 

Recently Naviar Records called for contributions to appear in an exhibition in Japan

Marco wrote that his inspiration came from the Ainu, Japan's indigenous people, in his email to the Naviar community:

I've been working on this installation for a week now, studying and collecting sounds from my local environment, learning and understanding more about where my culture comes from. To someone who's been in contact with indigenous cultures all their life, this might seem like a childish game; however, for me, it's been an enlightening experience.

It brought to mind a project that I started to write songs reflecting my own heritage, which began around the time of Anzac Day and was inspired by the idea of that event being Australia's version of an ancestor celebration.

My contribution is a draft of one of those songs, drawing on the history of the Wanderer butterfly in Australia.

The lyrics are:

From foreign skies it came,
A fire-bright drift in golden flame—
On cyclonic winds, torn and tossed,
Somehow carried life across,
After this flight over the seas.
A stranger turned sovereign by the breeze,
In the year 1871,
Met the blush of Antipodean sun.

On winds of fate, it crossed the sea,
A monarch's flight to lands so free.
From foreign shores to Sydney's light,
The Wanderer took its maiden flight.


Milkweed bloomed—a bitter crown,
Bred the brood in orange gown.
Wings like stained glass kissed by fire,
A tale of travel, cocooned desire.
Not born of bush or Dreamtime's lore,
Arrived at a eucalyptus shore.
An exile once, now a monarch of air,
This Wanderer dances on blooms with care. 

The rationale for this symbol is:

In my backyard is a mint plant that I hoped might grow to replace my lawn. Many butterflies land on the flowers when it blooms.

I started researching their varieties as I began photographing them and became interested in the Wanderer, which is the Australian version of the Monarch in the Americas. It has distinctive white spots on a black body and magnificent wings coloured like autumnal leaves.

This type of butterfly arrived in Australia around the time my father's great-grandparents migrated here. It is thought it may have been blown here by a cyclone, but found the imported milkweed plant that supports Monarch caterpillars and was able to survive.

My parents were both born in North America, so I've come to adopt the Wanderer as a symbol for my cultural identity.

I've performed the song using a ukulele, as it is an instrument from the Pacific – the ocean that unites Australia, Japan and the USA.

And the bio I've provided is something I'm going to add here (mostly for future reference, sorry for appearing kinda bigheaded but it's my blog hey!):

With a focus on the Riverina landscape, Jason’s interdisciplinary art spans text, digital media, and community-driven initiatives, including his work with Naviar Records' Crossing Streams exhibition and Red Earth Ecology. As a writer and musician under the pseudonym Bassling, he has contributed to online music magazine Cyclic Defrost, won the Murrumbidgee Short Story competition, and collaborated internationally on projects like the Shinobi Cuts Remix Chain.

And in Japanese: 

ジェイソン・リチャードソン（オーストラリア）
ジェイソン・リチャードソンは、オーストラリア・リヴェライナ地方の風景を軸に、言葉とデジタル表現、そして地域コミュニティとともに行う創作活動を横断的に展開しているアーティストである。
Naviar Records の「Crossing Streams」展や Red Earth Ecology などのプロジェクトを通じて、自然と文化、個人と土地との関係を探求してきた。

ジェイソンの自宅の庭には、芝生の代わりにと植えたミントが茂り、その花に蝶が集まるようになった。
それらの蝶を撮影するうちに、特に「ワンダラー」と呼ばれる蝶に惹かれるようになる。これは、アメリカ大陸に生息する「モナーク（オオカバマダラ）」に類似した、オーストラリアの在来種である。黒い身体に白い斑点、そして秋の葉を思わせる色の翼を持つ。

この蝶がオーストラリアに渡来したのは、ジェイソンの曽祖父母がこの地に移住してきた時期と重なる。サイクロンに乗って漂着した可能性があり、北米から持ち込まれたトウワタ（milkweed）の存在によってオーストラリアの地に定着できたとされる。

北米にルーツを持つ両親のもとに生まれたジェイソンにとって、この蝶「ワンダラー」は、自身の文化的アイデンティティの象徴となった。

本作では、オーストラリア、日本、アメリカをつなぐ太平洋を意識し、その象徴的な楽器であるウクレレによる演奏を取り入れている。 

Innuendo

Lately I've been playing with machine-learning services again and it turns out that they're great for quickly scaffolding lyrics

As a result I've been singing and playing ukulele a lot more, but that might also have to do with six weeks of teaching primary school kids to strum that instrument.

Yesterday the surf was too rough to do much on the beach, so I began playing with ideas.

It's my 23rd anniversary and I have been joking about romantic tropes, such as the role of cupids.

Since my partner likes joking about innuendo sounding like an innuendo, I made her a song and then recorded it.

However, as I only have the microphone on my camera for audio, I got carried away trying to make the recording work and it really doesn't have the quality -- in either performance or fidelity.

P.S. A few days later and I had a different idea for this chord progression.

Vice-versa

Sometimes the Disquiet Junto projects really surprise me

There have been many examples over the years, such as the "layered sameness" exercise that led to a revelation when I heard all the takes together.

Late last year there was a Junto activity that gave me a glimpse of a different depth in my recording.

It was the "switch back" direction to "Make the quiet part loud, and vice-versa." 

Listening back to it now and I'm surprised at how much I enjoy the spaciousness around the instruments.

I can hear a place that I'd like to visit again.

New year new

Made this poem from my senryu/microjournal habit

The creative prompt shared by Naviar Records led me to revisit a process from previous years.

I sampled my daily writing practise, then quickly recorded a reading to go with a piece of music.

The words are below, since you can't really hear them:

Clear a space for truth

put demons on the table 

we all have monsters
The familiar

our lived experiences 

we never escape
Preoccupation

knowing unmentionables 

hiding maligned forms
In these descriptions

old paraphernalia 

wrestling for new life
Anchored ideas

peppered onto bathroom walls 

I read the comments
My steps unbalanced

finding a new way forward 

these steep learning curves
Personal essays

images that resonate 

using metaphors
It leaves me beaten

along branches of wisdom 

stick with what I know
Dulled by the moment

anything is possible 

love profound boredom
Title on the door

master procrastinator 

holds me to account
I don’t play tennis  

when the ball is in my court 

I’m hitting it back
The role I’ve taken

allowed to fully occupy 

where I’m meant to be
Sometimes giving up

letting loose parts of myself 

and it’s positive
I’ve backed myself in

wet paint around the corners 

I’ll spend some time here
A love of the thing

not really a career 

expert of nothing
Enjoy the journey 

it’s different for everyone
like so much guidance



interpretations vary 

so I guess words will travel
Robust narratives

explaining our lives away 

it’s not magical
Without little words

sensibly made into thoughts 

would I know myself
Finding small spaces

unused outlooks on the day 

to make a window
My opacity

hiding in the everyday 

beliefs are porous
We can save those gifts

people don't want those insights

lies are easier
We hold opinions

underestimate vastly 

how truths destroy us
That crushing feeling

to hold a sensitive heart

wishing it weren’t mine
Something in my chest
resonates with emotion
reciting your words 
It’s the easy thing

seeing only what I know 

can you really blame me?
A slippery slope
I can go down a wormhole
lose myself a while 
These are summaries
so when revisiting them
I'll find my own words 
Thinking of my poems
as conversation partners
go let them mingle 
We sometimes struggle
as our own brand of magic
fails to charm ourselves 
Sometimes I’ll look back

some will say I’m different 

but it’s just I’ve grown
Through a world of sound

the only filter I have 

my discerning ear
Scanning the dial

your radio call signal 

I’m the antenna 

It seems obvious

that lozenge rhymes with orange 

but maybe that’s me

Collaborations

Music has always been the key requirement for membership of an online colony, along with English for me

The earliest was the Ninja Tune forum that introduced so many remixing techniques, which continues in the Shinobi Cuts Remix Chain albums.

In the last month I've had a couple of collaborations with my online communities, particularly the Disquiet Junto. The prompt to compose with a 29/16 time signature arose from a conversation with Oscar about the Mother 3 video game.

That led to two tracks and the second became a soundtrack for a walk-through the Marea Bright exhibition at the Museum of the Riverina.

 

 

Naviar Records shared my senryu this week and it led me to filter the noise from a South Coast video.

Come as you art

 

Today I had an "open" studio for the Art Trail around Leeton Shire

I'd installed my Organ Donor sound sculptures in the front yard and could overhear a few comments from people passing on the street.

It was a last minute decision to set up a studio, since I wasn't sure I'd have any visitors.

A couple of people came to have a look and I amused myself by recording this cover of Nirvana.

Avant gardening

Here I am performing poetry “with an avant garde twist”

It involved remixing one of the poems in the book being launched, by using the cut-up technique.

I recorded this version of the piece the following day:

Photo by Neil McAliece.

inFREQUENCY tour

The inFREQUENCY tour will bring together electronic musicians from the southeast and southwest for performances and workshops that showcase their different approaches

“We’re literally overcoming the Great Dividing Range to visit locations in regional New South Wales,” says organiser Jason Richardson.



“Our aim is to create opportunities to share cutting-edge audio-visual art through live shows and workshops that will provide a behind-the-scenes perspective on the techniques being used.”


There will be demonstrations of video projection-mapping and live-coding that provide an introduction to free software in workshops before the performances dazzle and inspire audiences.



Artists Scott Baker and Jason Richardson have two decades of experience in working together, including running projection-mapping workshops at Griffith Pioneer Park Museum in 2016.



Both were part of the Unsound Festivals that ran in Wagga Wagga, which put Australia’s experimental musicians on the world stage.



Baker has developed audio-visual art as Abre Ojos and his new techno persona Dron Skot, while Richardson’s work as Bassling has also gained national and international interest.



“This project began when I was enthusing to Scott how Bernard Gray was developing live-coding performance skills in Griffith with the DECODED workshops” says Jason.



“It brought to mind the skills in music-making and video-editing that I’d learned in Wagga, so we began planning a way to bring together this diverse group of musicians based in regional NSW.”



“Scott identified artists Myst Mach and The DJ Ruined My Wedding Day from the South Coast and we thought it’d be great to create performance opportunities to develop skills for the musicians and the audiences, because you never know where the ideas and experiences can take you.”

Myst Mach is a young producer and DJ from Tathra who pulls together genres far and wide to mould them into a kinetic object in their own dancefloor-focused journeys. 


The DJ Ruined My Wedding Day will make you as giddy as a bride on their wedding day and build you up to only take you higher with their DJ set colliding old favourites with the best underground tunes.



Baker and Richardson reflect how the skills they’ve developed came from experiments with technology, performance and exhibition.



“It’s great to get out and perform, but it’s even better to aim to inspire the next generation of regional artists through the workshops we are running,” says Jason.


Tickets are available via https://www.infrequency.au/


The inFREQUENCY tour is supported by the Backroads Initiative and South East Arts through funding from Create NSW and the NSW Government.
 

Screw Youtube

Youtube's automation of copyright claims should be questioned

Look at what's happened to my video this morning.

A recording of my drumming, in fact two recordings of my drumming layered together, has been monetised by a company claiming I'm infringing on their copyright.

Someone else is collecting ad revenue from my material based on an automated response!

Youtube is facilitating this spurious claim and I think their system needs to be scrutinised.

Advance Australia unfairly

A recent Disquiet Junto project gave me an idea to use the cut-up technique on the national anthem

My oldest, Oscar, sings in the choir at school, so I knew he'd provide the raw material for this edit.

My partner Jo joked that I might get arrested for butchering the national anthem and it's a contentious song for me anyway, since the second verse is at odds with Australia's offshore detention policies.

I think it was William S. Burroughs who thought the Cut-up technique revealed hidden meanings in text, and it seems to me the Australian national anthem has language which seems to 'dog-whistle' the white Australia policies of earlier eras.

Anyway, my result is unmusical and I tried singing the new arrangement to the existing melody, which improved it but seemed at odds with the Junto directions.

Play Music On The Porch Day

I recorded this version of my song 'Blue Moon' for Play Music On The Porch Day, which is an initiative that I've involved myself in during previous years.

Music for The Lost World

Silent movies were never silent and I wanted to raise awareness of a gem from 1925, so I’ve made music for it

This remarkable feature was the first to use stop-motion animation and also the first screened on a plane, at a time when nitrate prints presented a serious risk in wooden aircraft.

The story was written by Arthur Conan Doyle, who “frequently mentioned that Professor Challenger, not Sherlock Holmes, was his favorite character among his creations.”

Willis O’Brien’s visual effects are a large part of the film’s charm and he went on to animate King Kong in 1933, as well as earning credit for the story in the first on-screen encounter the giant ape had with Godzilla in 1962.

Another bit of trivia from Wikipedia:

In 1922, Conan Doyle showed O’Brien’s test reel to a meeting of the Society of American Magicians, which included Harry Houdini. The astounded audience watched footage of a Triceratops family, an attack by an Allosaurus and some Stegosaurus footage. Doyle refused to discuss the film’s origins. On the next day, The New York Times ran a front-page article about it, saying “(Conan Doyle’s) monsters of the ancient world, or of the new world which he has discovered in the ether, were extraordinarily lifelike. If fakes, they were masterpieces.”

The Lost World remains entertaining, from the opening slapstick comedy through to the intergenerational romantic rivalry and, of course, the handmade dinosaurs.

You can see the film and hear my soundtrack by downloading the album.

This project is supported by the Country Arts Support Program, a devolved funding program administered by Create NSW and Western Riverina Arts on behalf of the NSW Government. 

Aviatrix Remove Borders

The Disquiet Junto recently offered an opportunity to revisit a track from 2016



Remove Borders was a response to a Naviar Haiku prompt and I'd consciously develop a section of the song that sped-up and had in mind that it was a plane taking flight.



So when the Junto asked for "a short piece of music that is intended to blend in with the industrial drone of modern air flight," I'd remembered the earlier track and thought it could be reworked in an ambient style.

Channels

The Disquiet Junto number 424 shared a project by Jonathon Keats, who instructed participants to perform outside "employing nature as your conductor."

I recorded my guitar by the water channel, changing pace based on the wind on my face.



Before I'd begun I'd an idea to layer the takes, using a technique shared by Brian Crabtree in Disquiet Junto project 223.



Then, after reflecting on the missed opportunity to incorporate a palindrome, I revisited the recording and reversed one guitar part then added my attempt at a solo on top.



It was this last version that I thought might be likely to interest Leeton locals, so I posted in on a Facebook page.

There I was delighted to prompt the following response from Dale Richey:

[That's] "Across from my parents home lot's of history on that bridge. I seen you over there first time a guitar has been played there.

"That was where nearly every kid in leeton swam mudfights fist fights laughter tears and many good times were had there ask any local aged between 55 and 65 and you will get a smile out of them as they remember the good times at the canal."

200 Junto videos

Small milestone on the weekend as I uploaded my 200th video for the Disquiet Junto.

Passage of time

Revisiting old songs and found lyrics I hadn't recorded

Here's the original recording, which didn't include the singing as I wasn't confident my voice could carry the melody.



Yesterday I rewrote the verses after the chorus and created a new backing track, so that I can include the song on my next album: SING.

Someone once said that time is like a river
because even if you stand in the flow
you just can’t go
back to that sliver of river again

My father likes to say that time is the fourth dimension
as everything exists in at least four ways
height, width, depth and when
then again

I think everything exists in history
whether it’s the thoughts of you or me while we all breathe
it’s context bringing us together
and then

it’s times like these that we share more than the air
because no one really cares how much you know
until they know how much you care
so share


Light fades from day
Time runs away
These words are past their date to use
even if I could choose
to stay with you


Don’t think I recognised the window in your chest
now there’s a tightness in my throat
describing letters that you wrote
and the beating of my heart is on my breath

It’s not like we’re alike in not liking
the same kind of times
as though they were different lives
our stars will align to glow in their sign again

The moral of the story is it’s a moral story
that’s now cliched and boring
put to music I’m performing
filling the air that we share with my care

Knowing the movement of the stars feels like a kind of curse
but when the power comes along
I can right this minor wrong
let’s put the universe into reverse with song


Day forms from light
shadows hiding night
intentions on new moon
taking form in verse and tune
our time passed too soon

Grizzly Beat from Yellowstone

Earlier this year I remixed a recording of a grizzly bear for Cities and Memory



There's this discussion of my track 'Grizzly Beat' on the Cities and Memory website.

I was interested to learn:

These sounds were recorded with a cell phone by an experienced Bear Management Technician, Dan Bergum, during recent fieldwork involving capture. The bear was recorded during the few moments that it was contained inside a large, culvert-sized trap.

My track was made entirely from the recording, including repitching the growls but also shaping transients to create the percussion.

The dream I mentioned was discussed on this blog last year.

Burn it all away

If I were Elton John, then Alicia Boyd might be my Bernie Taupin

I adore her writing, particularly the imagery and vulnerability.

When I was considering lyrics for a chord progression I'd found on my ukulele, I turned to her blog.

The piece that grabbed my interest described smudging, which is an activity my beloved has been indulging a lot lately.

Then I recorded myself singing Alicia's words:



The next day, I listened back and thought how unlikely those words sounded coming from my mouth.

So I decided to write lyrics that incorporated Alicia's writing, as well as my own experiences -- particularly the role of Burns, which is where I met Alicia.

Light the fire and fan the flame
I sense the heat to feel the pain
draw the smoke that fills the air
smudge the image that I wear

To hit the bare self underneath
cough while trying not the breathe
the sacred fire blurs our world
allows my spirit to unfurl 

(Chorus)
Watch our world burn away
from ash we will grow again
in the embers in the coals
we know the spark that’s burning in our souls 

Our bodies mask how we appear
look beyond the flesh veneer
know that I am your own kind
in my heart I do not mind 

In the dark we’re free to dream
black charcoal makes us clean
naked branches without leaves
makes the space to grow new trees
(Chorus, first verse, chorus, end)

Then I recorded a quick demo to hear how they sound:



This week I used this video for the Disquiet Junto project, which involved glitching.

Praise for Different Use

The most recent Shinobi Cuts remix chain was well-received

It was the sixth album in the series that I've been coordinating with Ben Coffer.

Our musical heroes Coldcut, who pretty much invented remixing, mentioned it on social media.

And the website Bandcamp included it in their "The Best Electronic Music" for February:

This is what the internet was always supposed to be about: not filter bubbles and corporate domination, but ready collaboration, international linkage, and expecting the unexpected. Coordinated by Brit in Macedonia and leftfield electronica veteran Martin “MDK” Wood, this is a musical game of pass the parcel: each track is a remix of the previous one, starting with Wood’s own tune, which was handed around the planet until finally, it ended up back with him in Skopje, 15 generations on, completely unrecognizable and ready for him to remix once again. The names are unfamiliar, the sounds go from dub reggae to processed rock drumming loops to large quantities of Aphex Twin-influenced braindance. The quality is high throughout, but the joy of this is in hearing the whole album, watching an idea as it passes through many minds, and feeling the absolute joy in the process.