Tips, tricks & ideas

May I offer a few tips, tricks and thinks on music making and listening ?

Some of these may find a resonance ..

When writing, composing, thinking ..

Try becoming more aware of our own surrounding 'music' and sounds.
These may be environmental - city, rural, people; they may be musical awarenesses and memory - country, folk and nursery, 'hums' and schoolyard

Many ‘old’ musics provide inspiration and ideas; they are a real ‘common’ knowledge ..

'Source' (find) and listen to other ways of making music - quiet ways, thinking ways, responsive ways ..
If playing and singing, make each play and sing a new occasion; make it special, prepare for it, 'tune up'

And on 'tuning up' ..
Create our own tunings; listen to our surroundings and slowly become ‘tuned’ to those notes that seem to resonate with us and our place; base our new play and sing and piece on this ..

Listen to this -

The bird sings 'shapes'; unique series of motifs, absolutely identifiable in terms of 'species' and 'location' - and singing a song we'll never hear repeated .. music is not mechanistic ..

Many old folk musics were never 'tuned up' to an arbitrary reference (there wasn't one) - prior to playing; the interest was in hearing 'how' the instruments sounded - here, now
'Tuning' was effected as pieces were developing and listening and ideas were flowing

Tuning 'flat' is nice; I've found - as have many others - that our imposed A=440 is er imposed; it may suit manufacturers and marketers but not people's ears
Try A = 432Hz (about -36c) if you like numbers

Ditto for ‘time’ and rhythms; start out with a free ‘time’ - leave the dreaded clack tricks, metro-gnomes and the default 4/4 tempo stuff turned OFF - at least whilst trying out new ideas

Scales and modalities Create our own scales; (if you can) expand and contract the ‘industrial’ 12 notes per octave limitation.
24 notes per octave works well; select those pitches within such a scale and create our piece within it

Try the ‘old’ modal scaling systems - determine a base pitch/drone and develop our own scale over this

Rhythm?
Find and have a listen to the 'old' world of African and Islander musics - not the current 'world music' drum n bass stuff, but the wonderful vocal and percussion musics that goes way back !
And, if you want to really to spin your ears around, get into gamelan music - don't try to follow it 'logically'

Nature's 'spin' is on wonderful display when up close to a dam full of frogs and crickets - all clacking at slightly different rates

Composition ..
Try more ‘live’ performance; base our musics on mood, feelings, responses; make a new piece a special occasion ..

Sell/lose our cds, ipods, loops .. learn not to play - or listen to - the same thing over and over ..
Nature is never ever the same; everything changes all the time, we are never ever (quite) the same ..

Try early morning pieces, thoughts, non thoughts, listenings

Many sound enviros may stand as music pieces in their own right - without added conventional music; they have texture, mood, rhythm and dynamics - try them !

Consider musical ‘homogeneity’ as a compositional model (look at the landscape!) - a myriad of variations built upon a (relatively) simple set of formants

Maintain a recurring motif whilst moving or altering the reference or resonance.

Constrain lines/instruments to particular (time/pitch) areas

Create new versions of old instruments
Try altering the attacks and decays (if you can) of what ever ‘every-day’ sounds we use a lot (pianos, guitars); they transform into all kinds of other instruments just by slowing/quickening their attack times ..

Production tips

If stuck with using music and/or sound enviro 'loops' (repeating phrases), use as long a loop as possible, use asymetric loop times (eg 31:29) if using more than one sound source.
Avoid looping identifiable 'events' or sounds; much recurring sounds can drive a listener mad!

In installation work; try using lots of (smaller) sound sources - rather than large centralized units; they are much more fun to be in!

Recording enviro sounds is something of a meditative activity; even with extensive planning you have to ‘expect nothing’ - or ‘everything unexpected’!
Listen for this 'unexpected'

Find our own ways of composing and producing and playing; base them on real feelings and inspirations; leave the 'market' out of it

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