Bass Sextet
Notes on "BASS SEXTET"
In The "Auditory Art For Visual Arts" Series
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore 3, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 23
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Composition and Recording period: May 31 2022 - Jun 25 2022
The Groovy Minuet
(TM writes:)
Very frequently I write short phrases on a notation sheet just like notes or a diary. I might be different from many other composers in making phrases on many parts at the same time. The work "Bass Sextet" is one typical example of those. I wrote this very quickly originally in December 2021, which was nearly complete, and developed it swiftly in late May 2022.
Obviously, consisting of six parts, it pursues a minuet style to some extent. What I found interesting while writing it is to make a "groovy minuet", which is funny to myself, though. The groovy minuet includes the same dyads sequentially sounding on different instruments and very digital phrases.
Originally when I first composed it in 2021, the notation (as above) had just a strong electric piano, weak one and a guitar; that's it. If the strong and weak pianos play the same notes consecutively in the 3-4 time, you can hear unique delays that generate certain groove. Finding it very interesting, I composed nearly the whole piece like this within a day or two in May 2022.
It was fun, but that was all. I didn't think it deserved being released at all. One day after a while, probably in June 2022, I came up with an idea of changing all the instruments to various basses in that I love the high tones of bass instruments a lot; in fact, for that reason, many FMT's tracks use a high bass. I love them too much to make sure if the phrases I write are within the register of the bass. I must apologise TI.
I tried that on the MuseScore software and that was so great. I changed the title-at-that-time "Minuet" or something to "Minuet For Bass Sextet." So, all the parts much like, eg, the pizzicato, viola and guitar are basically played with basses. (I said "basically" because it might be wrong, but TI may answer to that precisely.)
Whereas it sounds somewhat tonal, I omitted tonalities on purpose. Interestingly enough, if you feel it's tonal that should be restructured within your brain, because the piece implies tonality only slightly but actually it doesn't have. For example, the chord (if you name it so) that appears at the very beginning is something like F# sus4 add2, ie, with no thirds.
Is it really based upon "minimal on basso continuo"? I know it's not. But forgive me please, as it's all made of basses.
(TI writes:)
This track was originally written by TM with the intention of using only a bass sound source, but it was put on the shelf because the sound range was not enough with just a bass sound source, and the bandwidth overlapped too much, making it difficult to mix.
One day, I decided to port the data to Studio One and create it without sticking to the bass soundtrack, and it sounded better than I expected.
This track is an extension of the 'In The Mirror' series in terms of mood, and is intended to be played live, so I didn't go too far with the mix, just organising the overlapping bandwidths as mentioned above.
In terms of composition, I only modified a few long-tone phrases near the end and wrote a solo on the cello.
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