Bali Bach
Notes On "BALI BACH"
Composition tool: MuseScore, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks:103
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Composition and Recording period: Dec 25 2020 - Jan 12 2021
[Compositional inspiration and concept]
(TM writes:)
I have loved both the Balinese (an area in Indonesia, famous for the gamelan music) and Bach’s (or Baroque) music since I was young. Although the two types of music are musically quite far, the feelings that the two generate eventually are sometimes quite common as above. Such a finding was the trigger for this composition.
Although we aimed the combination of the two, only a few features of them are used. Yet, the combination is so comfortable, relaxing and a little bit moving.
Bach’s Joy Of Man’s Desiring, for instance, consists of a scale-like rhythmic melody and beautiful harmony. To me the feelings that the melody gives us are somewhat similar with what the 5-notes-scale Balinese music does. But, of course, Bach was unlikely to have even just a listen to it. I imagine he could have loved it. This track is not what picks up Bach or Bali, but a could-have-been encounter.
The Balinese scale is used here on Eb, ie, Eb, G, Ab, Bb, D. Onto this various harmonies are added, regardless of the scale, by treating it as Eb major (with slight emphasis on C and F on the major pentatonic scale).
At the beginning the 5-notes pattern is not actually a sole pattern in order for us to make it sound a little random but not perfectly so. There sound dyad chords along it, all of which also consist of the five notes in the scale.
From the 24th bar, a polyrhythm of chords and a bass tone begins and lasts for a while. The chords are something like Gm7 and Eb sus4 M7 (with both fifths omitted) and located in every bar (ie, four meters), while the bass tone repeats F for four meters and Eb for six, which allow them to accidentally sound like Gm7 on F, Eb sus4 M7, Fm6&7 or EbM7 add9. This is unlike Bach and Bali, just like FMT. That is how it was designed.
Furthermore, there are melody-like phrases and counter-melodies added on them, written by both TI and TM. They follow the 5-notes scale but does not sometimes. For example, from Bar 55, both the counter-melody and scale-based eighth notes follow a different form of the scale: Eb, G, (natural) A, (natural) B and D. 5-notes scales are often used in diverse styles especially in the Asian traditional music (of course, like Bali) but none uses the fifth and sixth notes flat. But it soon comes back to the Balinese scale.
I might have explored it a bit too much… Anyhow, what I found interesting is how to treat chords here. People in general assume that chords progress. It’s not the case in this track. They never do, but they are just located at particular positions with some musical regularity of the scales and rhythms. This is what Bach did not make.
Another point is that Bach’s music is widely applied for the musical regularity or structure, but this track does not take them except for the counter-point.
(TI writes:)
TM sent me a score titled "Bali Bach", which had some single-melody pentatonic phrases written on it.
When I saw the title and the score, I thought, "I see what you mean. Indeed, gamelan music and baroque music have something in common in the way that single melodies are intertwined to create a single piece of music.
That's how I interpreted the title of the TM and the score.
I wanted to create a melody with an unstable pitch instrument like the gamelan, and combine it with a baroque melody.
However, even though it is baroque, I hardly consider the law of averages in my compositions. We assume a combination of single melodies with ambiguous pitches and scales.
However, the mere combination of such things is just noise. I spent a lot of time and effort to read the meaning of each phrase from the score and reflect it in the tone and volume.
For example, this phrase has a gamelan-like oriental sound, while this phrase reminds me of Italian baroque.
The phrases and articulations I wrote are unusual for me in that they are figurative, or rather, they are inspired by nature sounds, insects and animal noises. For example, the tremolo-like phrases in the strings are insects buzzing, the Pizzicato is birds singing, and so on. I imagined that the sound of the harpsichord, which is completely different from the other instruments, would come in and harmonize with it.
＊As a side note, in my son's junior high school music textbook, under the topic of "Encounters between Eastern and Western music", there was a reference to the influence of gamelan music on Debussy's music.
Debussy had originally studied German music, including Wagner, but after hearing gamelan music at the Paris Exposition, "he realized that a new sound could be created by combining single melodies with an ambiguous sense of pitch, and it is possible that he reflected this in his own style from then on".
Debussy is certainly a favourite of ours and has influenced our style in no small way. I also started out learning German Classical music, so as TM says, I tend to prefer (and create) rather clear melodies and sounds.
[Mix]
In terms of tones, I envisioned specific instrumental sounds at the time of composition, and used sounds that were close to those sounds.
However, there are not many samples of oriental instruments in the Studio One library, so I had to process other sounds.
For example, the gamelan sound is a filtered sound with the pitch of the piano shaken.
For articulation, however, I try to create a distant feeling from the instrument by processing the waveform and using effects rather than the articulation of the instrument.
For example, I applied Gate to the violin's long tones to make them sound like buzzing insects, and then overlaid them on the left and right tracks with their rhythms and tempos shifted, and then overlaid them with white noise and applied volume control.
Each of the five tones (tracks) on the left and the right side was given a different rhythm with Gate and volume control, and once mixed down, it was faded in.
The five layers of sound are then spread out horizontally.
Also, the tempo of each track is slightly different from the other tracks, and although it follows the Musescore score, each track is time-stretched differently so that there is a subtle shift.
This is also an image of the "synchronized but slightly out of sync" feeling in the natural world.
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