Month: August 2016

Words, Wonderful Words!

| Forgotten Fields
An illustration by Ernest H. Shepard from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
An illustration by Ernest H. Shepard from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Whether they are spoken or sung, words can reach into one’s very soul and do wonderful, terrible things. Words inspire me to write music.

Sometimes, it is a lyric:

“The fire of maples in autumn is how I remember you.”

— Michael Franks, “How I Remember You”, Dragonfly Summer (1993)

Sometimes, a verse:

And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time
As I stared at my shoes in the ICU that reeked of piss and 409
And I rationed my breaths as I said to myself that I’d already taken too much today
As each descending peak on the LCD took you a little farther away from me
Away from me…

— Death Cab For Cutie, “What Sarah Said”, Plans (2005)

Sometimes, a passage:

The Mole waggled his toes from sheer happiness, spread his chest with a sigh of full contentment, and leant back blissfully into the soft cushions. “What a day I’m having!” he said. “Let us start at once!”

— Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908)

Sometimes, extracts from a play:

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.

— Caliban, Act 3, Scene 2, The Tempest, William Shakespeare

Oh, it is monstrous, monstrous.
Methought the billows spoke and told me of it,
The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder,
That deep and dreadful organ pipe, pronounced
The name of Prosper.

— Alonso, Act 3, Scene 3, The Tempest, William Shakespeare

Sometimes, a poem or two (I regret they are not English):

Et je ne sais vraiment
Où peut s’être posé
Le moineau que j’entends
Si tristement crier.

(And I honestly don’t know
Where it can have alighted
The sparrow that I hear
So sadly calling.)

— From Le Brouillard (“The Fog”), Maurice Carême

En hoog in die rande,
versprei in die brande,
is die grassaad aan roere
soos winkende hande.

(And high in the ridges,
scattered in the fires,
are grasses astir
like beckoning hands.)

— From Winternag (“Winter’s Night”), Eugène Marais

FORGOTTEN FIELDS

Why I Compose in GarageBand

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GarageBand, compose, music, electronic, post-rock, Erik Satie, Grooverider, William Basinski, Antonin Dvorak, Edvard Grieg, minimalism, creativity, French horn
The preliminary mix for “Airship” in GarageBand
I compose using the GarageBand app for iPad. I use a limited selection of instruments and any field recordings I make. My arsenal consists of a small number of synths and, on occasion, any instruments that suit the aesthetic or theme of a track (the French horn* in “Airship”, for example). I think I work best when I have these self-imposed restraints. When you only have two bass synths to choose from, you spend less time cycling through endless options and more time wrestling with what you have to produce the sounds, effects and textures you want. To me, that is the “experimental” part in experimental post-rock music. This rigid framework forces me to be creative. It is a stimulating and interesting exercise and GarageBand provides the perfect environment in which to do this. It is uncomplicated, often very sophisticated and always a pleasure to use. This approach appeals to my minimalist aesthetic and love of precision. I like “clean” music, whatever the genre, from Erik Satie to William Basinski to Grooverider. I want to create such simplicity in my own work and composing music digitally helps me do that.

Forgotten Fields

* My adoration of the French horn comes as a direct result of my obsession with Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, B. 191 and Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16. If you have a quiet moment, please listen to the first movement of the Dvorak cello concerto for the most sublime use of a French horn I have ever heard. (Only Grieg’s subtlest use in the second movement of his piano concerto—my favourite piano concerto—comes close, in my opinion). When I first heard Dvorak’s use of that instrument, I am not ashamed to say that I wept, as I do today, every time I hear it—so graceful, so delicate and so stirring of one’s soul is the sound it produces.

No Guilty Pleasures

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I was going to share one of my favourite poems, but then I read that Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl doesn’t believe in guilty pleasures: “If you fucking like something, like it.” And so I thought, why not share something I like that’s rather embarrassing: Stock, Aitken & Waterman.