If you follow me on twitter, there is at least some probability that you would have ran into me talking about.. a voice synth. Now if you like, you can follow that voice synth link and play with the voice synth right there on the web page… You type something in, hit play, it speaks it back for you… and you can try out different voices.

Also on that page is a download link.. which allows you to down load the program to your computer.. and you can throw text files into it.. and save the results as MP3s… 

Latter:

So what I did today was.. I just sorta randomly attempted to write lyrics in the voice synth’s text field.. ”hmm, what does this sound like?” And the results where… the make the hairs stands on the back of your neck sort!

I think what it is is.. the feeling that.. well you know.. my music is conventionally instrumental.. of an experimental electronic sorta sort. It’s stuff that is kinda out there.. or its like.. lets say conceptualized from a point of view that is radically different from.. any thing you’ve heard before. What’s impressive about that is simply that..

I don’t think most sound artists are as comfortable going out on a limb like that..  What I mean is we all give lip service to innovation and.. originality.. but I think there are certain things that…  create certain norms.. and so.. I don’t know..

There’s a lot of norms in music.. There’s a lot of norms in everything.. and… hmm.. I don’t know how to totally describe this.. but it does have something to do with the core of who I am as a human.. as well as as an artist..

The more outside of the norms you go.. the harder it is for people to understand you.. things often take a little more explination.. its consumption is a little more challenging then the same old same old.

So one of the things lyrics could potentially do for my work is.. give you something to hold onto.

I’m feeling, as I write this, that I have sooo much in common with Frank Zappa.. he’d make this music that was outrageous.. I mean really interesting stuff.. and then he’d kinda put this cultural satire on top.. in part to try to give his work some commercial potential…

Latter:

It took me a while.. I was looking for a good example here.. where you get both.. his lyrical thing… and the interesting musical thing… I think this is pretty good…

What I’m digging about this is.. On the one hand the music is a very.. well a particular sorta Zappa Jazz thing… it’s crazy and fun..  and then you have the whole lyrical thing.. and the performance. What I’m digging about this performance is.. where is the narrator coming from? He’s very blasé about the whole thing..

Next day sometime:

I think what’s strong here is… look, listen to the music.. Is that Jazzy thing.. I don’t know, how broad is the appeal of that kinda thing? Lets face it, if you’re in a Jazz band.. you’re probably struggling.. I mean assuming you haven any ambitions that don’t involve day jobs.. Throw those lyrics on it.. now how broad is the appeal? Suddenly we are in a position where folks who would normally not listen to that kinda Jazz-y music.. well they’ll kinda dig into this a little.

I don’t want to get too side tracked by this Zappa tangent.. but take a look at this video… It really shows of some his musical sophistication:

I wish there was more music like this going on today.. in the sense of guitar solos that are worth listening to.. hell, there aren’t even that many guitar solos, are there? To say nothing of that kinda complex crazy stuff..

Ok.. here’s a video that’s essentially an advertisement for the Berklee College of Music… I’m not big on Berklee.. took a class there, and blah blah blah, but.. Well the thing to may be appreciate here is that Steve Vai is like.. a technically amazing musician.. Many folks who are serious about guitar will tell you he’s the best guitar player ever… I’m not sure I’d go that far but.. yeah, he belongs in the pantheon of guitar heros.. so lets take a look at what he has to say about his experience with Zappa

Ok.. so enough of this craziness… I’m starting to loose the impulse of what I wanted to get with this entry!

Back to the Music of Matt: 

So what kinda blew me away about “lets go play with the voice synth..” It’s a cheesy kinda voice synth, right? But that’s sorta not the point. The point is.. you throw in some lyrics, and out pops a rendering of it.. 

My lyrics.. there’s a kind of dark mystical bent to them… There’s a kind of depth to them that’s.. well they can potentially be mind bending.. This particular bit of lyrics.. it was as if it were being sung by a serial killer.. though we aren’t totally sure that he / she is a serial killer.. clearly the person speaking wants to be our lover.. and it sounds like this somehow involves killing us..

Ok.. but there’s the connection between love and death.. that the love potion is a poison.. symbolically.. the person speaks of how all life is suffering, and how this person wants to save us from our suffering.. There is the symbolic idea that through death comes life.. You have to die to your self, in a certain sense, to reach that next spiritual step.. a message of Christ’s, certainly, is that life is not something to be clung onto.. The love potion is a poison because we have to die to our former life in order to take on this kinda love..

So the lyrics are sorta playing around with all this stuff in a very edgy sorta way.. and this is really just the kinda thing that… comes off the top of my head.

So…  well the lyrics of Zappa’s Jazz Discharge Party Hats is speaking to.. a couple of things… It’s speaking to a kind of adolescent male’s take on sex… lets say.. but with a detached blasé quality of it.. is on the one hand sorta making fun of the whole thing.. and on the other hand its sorta.. sympathetic to it.

You can also get into the banality of it.. and the way Zappa’s stuff is sorta echoing, in some senses, certain qualities of pop art.. Zappa deals with issues of high and low brow art.. and the issues of art in the market place..

What I’m doing is… much much much more about this kind of transcendent mystical experience.. but dark and edgy to a kind of extreme… 

Next day some time:

I loaded up the vice synth renderings into Ableton Live. I figured Live was probably the place to go when it comes tempo matching and all that.. but I’m not totally sure I’m getting it all right… Or how to make it really work.. The solution, of course, is to wrestle with all this stuff…

A thought, I’m having, is one I had with my Deep Space Adventures track.. which was early ideas on the relationship between linguistics and music.. with DJ style productions:

You create content.. Now this content is in now way a “finished work” or even “something good.” This content is more like “research and development.” What I mean is that the content is made out of a kind of experimental adventure process… and it’s not work that actually has to stand on its own in anyway.

Generally, the result is… well lets say it’s an audio file.. that audio file will have its own continuity… Whatever trip you were on when you made it.. well who knows, but its somehow about that, right? And.. just as you can see things in the clouds when you stare up at them.. it is as if there’s some kind of a meaning and story associated with these audio files… some kind of a perspective on stuff.. some kind of a take on stuff.. a kind of voice, if you will.

You then, eventually, move onto a process where those audio files can be like the raw building blocks of a production. What happens is.. in a rather strange sorta way.. those elements.. behave in a kind of language like way..

So lets look at this in more concrete terms.. with the vocals…

Screwing around in Live.. I have the words “I don’t know what the future holds.” That is one fragment of the lyrics I wrote. It’s almost as if you  wrote a paragraph and thats about the first half of the first sentence. What I’m now starting to think about is.. take the whole set of lyrics.. and chop them up into little fragments… where we experiment with the little fragments..

So far.. the experimentation consists of.. lets take that clip.. from one of the voices renderings.. and lets copy and past it across 3 channels.. and put various filters and effects on the 3 channels.. have them panned around.. automate the mix a little…  make those lines repeat…

The voice synths have a kind of archetypal feel to them… Every time you’ve heard someone who couldn’t speak, using a voice synthesizer.. it sounded like this.. so these are sounds we’ve all heard a million times before.. so in some ways its a bit like “sampling stuff from our culture.” You might not even realize you’ve been listening to voice synths all this time.. but hey look, you have..

So what I’m thinking is.. have these little experiments that are like.. parts of a whole… where we do.. who knows what with them.. then, latter on.. we reassemble the lyrics… into the song, so to speak.. inside the context of a larger production.

What also interests me is.. we could have clips from these vocals.. coming in and out all over an album. 

Process wise.. this is very much like some kind of abstract painting..  

My goal is to really try and make a kind of huge giant jump into the darkness…  To jump way the hell out of the universe that’s known to me.. to try and create a work that is.. somehow way better then I could do… 

Latter that day:

I’m really processing the hell out of these vocal tracks.. and trying to make the automation of the processing parameters interesting. I imagine possibilities.. 

I’m looking to various effects that I might add to my rig.. I’ve blogged about these in the past… or most of them anyway. I have this kind of “old school” set of ideas.. of ways to mutate sounds. For instance.. I take what I’m working on now, render it to an audio file, put it on my iPod, and record the sound of it playing back in my car.. or in any number of other places.. or through a guitar amplifier.. or who knows what kind of craziness. Well, I’m not actually doing any of that.. It’s much easier to just twist a few virtual knobs in your software.. and half of what I’m thinking is the effects I’m adding to my rig would allow me to achieve whatever.. just via knob twisting…. basically.

The real challenge, in all this.. is to maximize the amount of energy I have going into these projects. 

Err… this is probably a long enough blog entry to kinda.. cut it off here..  so to be continued! 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 9:57 am and is filed under Ableton Live, Music Production, The New Project, musical composition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.