Alley Play (featuring The Windscale Blues Experiment)
Notes on "ALLEY PLAY (featuring The Windscale Blues Experiment)"
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore 3, Studio One 6.5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 6.5 Professional
Number of tracks: 49
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Sample One, Maitai (All built-in sound sources of Studio One)
Composition and recording period: Nov 04 2023 - Jun 12 2024
Mutation from Bebop
(TM writes:)
This piece is the second one that I was (and am) thinking about putting into a new series. About the track I wrote first is to be released later, I describe the process of making a series like this:
This work ["Percussion Sings"] is what I was thinking as the start of a new series, in which the concept is a sort of unusually grooved atonal music. Since the previous series called "Placid Wanderings" was designed as atonal beauty with some acid jazz vibes, I wanted more rhythm-centred music this time.
But that concept is what FMT has been doing all these 7.5 years. All such past tracks titled as "Life In Hanno" (2018), "C-Funk [with Gary Rees]" (2020) and "How I Like To Align My Things" (2021) are similar to that. No conclusion has been made, whether we make an album like that. It won't be bad at all, but will seem nothing outstanding to me. Let me think for a while.
Thus, the concept is basically the same here, but particularly in this track, the idea as well as tentative title are "Swung 2-on-the-Floor", an anti-concept from the four-on-the-floor, which is nearly subconsciously applied for dance music like House and Techno in general.
In spite of the time signature of 6-8, the tempo is set in a quarter note, eg, ♩=126 (beats per minute) at the beginning, which means the kick drum appears like in 84 BPM (equivalent to 2/3 of 126). But I designed to keep the back beat that should appear in 168 BPM (doubled) very unclear, which means it sounds just like the 6-8 time.
When the rhythm turns to something like 8-8 later, which is almost the same as 4-4, an ordinary rhythm of 8-8 (or 4-4) is treated as "odd" time, even though it's even. Interestingly enough, although the kick drum is unchanged, it sounds in dotted fourths, which means the tempo sounds like 126 BPM in the case. That's how it sounds like "mutation from Bebop", as TI indicates (below).
On top of that, while the bass plays D first, the other parts B and C#, meaning it excludes the thirds and fifths. The bass plays unnaturally -- in a way quite different from one performed by a human.
The Windscale Blues Experiment (WBE) plays excellent saxophones and that's what we can't programme. His improvising plays here emphasise very human aspects and make contrast with the complicatedly designed grooves and harmonies.
In the middle of this track, the key phrase from our past track called "Mad Disco" emerges. Mad Disco is written in the 4-4 time, but I just copy-and-pasted its notation onto this in 6-8. Similarly to the shifts to 8-8, it sounds like an error, doesn't it?
Also, the kids' voices TI very nicely sampled around his house are chopped along the rhythm. I wrote how to chop them. We call the method like this "gating", which is used for our works "Blanket Of Moss / Gate Of Moss", "Demo Shows", "Stratosphere" "Coach To The Airport" and "Spa Music", for example.
I like such experimental plays very much even if it sounds so weird.
(TI writes:)
For this track, TM wrote the Musescore score and I didn't make any changes to the Musescore part.
I mixed the Sax played by The Windscale Blues Experiment (WBE).
Sound creation and mixing
Regarding sound creation, basically the MuseScore sound sources specified by TM are played as they are, and then imported into Studio One and mixed.
However, we made significant modifications to the sound quality of these. In particular, the bass parts of the Bass Drum and Bass are emphasised to give a punchy sound image.
In addition to the MuseScore tones, a Sub-Bass is played in the low frequencies (around 40 Hz) for both Bass Drum and Bass, compressed with a limiter and compressor, and the sound pressure is adjusted and emphasised.
In the Rhythm section, the MuseScore tones all have a long reverberation, so I applied a Gate to all but Clap and Tom, which I wanted to emphasise, to reduce the reverberation and make them sound tighter.
For the Rhythm and Bass sections, I focused most on matching the sound pressure and the Gate setting.
The instrumental parts were mostly left as they were, with some delays applied in places to widen the sound image.
The music was almost finished, but at this stage it was mostly just the rhythm section and a short refrain, and there were parts that were a bit lacking in terms of music, so I wanted to add something to it.
I wanted to add something, and as the sound at this stage sounded like "a Be-bop rhythm section that mutated during the evolutionary process", I decided I wanted to add a sound that suggested this, so I immediately contacted WBE and said, "Pretend this sound we've created is the new Be-bop, and play Sax as you like! Blow it all over the place!" They agreed and sent me three solo takes a few days later.
I edited and collaged these three takes of Sax and sent them to TM, who edited them further with his requests.
The noises heard throughout the song were recorded on my balcony with the recording function of my smartphone switched on and left for about 10 minutes on a weekday evening, and then the rhythm was made by turning the mute switch on and off on the track (the timing of this on/off was specified by TM).
Initially, I was going to use another white noise, but the file size of that Noise was too large, and I thought that if it was white noise, the sound of a group of air conditioners on the balcony would be more interesting because of its ups and downs.
I did so, and it contains the voices of neighbourhood children (the conversation is about promises to go out and play when they get home and other such trivial matters), which creates an interesting atmosphere.
Once the mix was finished with these tasks, I wanted to try out the Dolby Atomos immersive sound production feature in Studio One, so I re-mixed the mix using the immersive sound feature. However, I found that the output had to be a normal stereo output, otherwise it would be inconvenient for mastering, uploading to various distribution sites and playback, so I ended up just sending the low frequencies to a subwoofer. The result is a slightly more spatial feel than the normal Stereo mix.
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