Equatorial Deliverance

Notes On Equatorial Deliverance




TRACK DATA

Composition tool: MuseScore, Studio One 5 Professional

Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional

Number of tracks: 95

Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT,(All built-in sound sources of Studio One)

Composition and Recording period: Feb 6 2022 - Apr 11 2022






Concept: "Neutralised, Digitalised East African"


(TM writes:)

When one day, perhaps in early February 2022, I heard East African traditional songs such as Tanzania and Kenya, I felt they were very attractive. I had not heard many of them by then. Although I think it’s unlikely that the music of the area can be categorised into just one, each of the songs was attractive anyway. The tentative title during the production was “East African.”

From the beginning “Equatorial Deliverance” was to be made for “The Anomalous Folk” Series. The album includes five tracks to symbolise five geographic areas: North, South, East, West and Middle. Equatorial Deliverance is the track for South, which was my intention.

The first time I heard East African folk music my impression was quite different from the image I’d had until then. In short, some of it uses many seven degrees to five beats. The concept I was interested in is to mix the electro and minimal features, bluesiness and vigorous five beats with abstracted, neutralised East African features.

In addition, through making this track, I strongly thought “digital” music was very different from “electronic” music. Electronic music can be typically characterised as one that uses many sounds of programmed synthesisers and drum machines, while what we call digital music is just data-based music, no matter how mechanical or electronic it sounds. That might be why FMT makes non-electronic sounds central. You can also name such music Meta-verse Music or whatever.




Production Process: Hard & Mild Directions


(TI writes:)

The production process for this track was:

1. swing away from the first MS version (TM) in the TI direction (hard direction).

2. swing again in the TM direction (mild direction).

3. reinforce the aspects that are lacking, such as bass (hard direction).

And finally settle in just the right place.

The process was like a 'pendulum', going there, coming back, going back again, and repeating this back and forth until we were close to completion.

This process is necessary in creating a better piece of work.

While it may be important from the perspective of productivity in the business process to decide on a goal at the beginning and work towards it efficiently, in the creation of a work of art, even if it is completed successfully and in accordance with that goal, it does not seem to create depth.

We believe that by repeating the pendulum movement, going back and forth, asking ourselves whether this is what we are really looking for, and discussing it amongst ourselves, we can increase the depth and completeness of our work.




Composition: A bit like blue note scale in 5-4 time


(TM writes:)

This is atonal and also the scale was made ambiguous, whereas we use a scale like G, A-sharp, C, D-flat, D, E, F (sometimes with A and B), which was designed to resemble the blue note scale.

I wrote the conga first and the muted guitar second, which formed the groove. The muted guitar plays something like Am on G. I added seven degrees dyads on the acoustic guitar and a scale-based pattern on the funk guitar. Furthermore, adding the organ and claps was my impulses, which I think has given energy to the track.

Since around this composition I have challenged the implicit notion that “the basic of music is the 4/4 time.” When I open the blank notation sheet (almost everyday like a diary) without clear ideas of what to write down, it is mostly a 5/4 or 6/8 time. In fact, 5/4 holds a unique fascination. I’d like to emphasise that and make much more 5/4 tracks later. 

(But, even if our music becomes embraced by many music researchers in the future, I wish our (or just my) recent works could NOT be called "5/4 Period" or "6/8 Period" like Pablo Picasso's Blue Period -- I'm just joking.)

In terms of the rhythm, as you may have recognised, the role of the drum kit is far different from the traditional one. Even though traditionally the drums are supposed to show the initial beats and strong beats, I hardly did so here. My tendency like that is going to be strengthened in the tracks to be released later (which we are working on recently at the time I am writing this text). I may be talking about that more in the later notes.


(TI writes:)

Initially, TM sent me MuseScore and its theme (East Africa), which depicted the rhythm part, the rhythm-centred refrain and the overall structure.

When I first saw this, I immediately thought of adding sounds that could be found in the presets of portable electronic keyboards like the Casiotone, which is used a lot in contemporary African music.

Also, being a mixture of African music, I wrote the phrases with a New Orleans funk, especially Dr John-esque vibe in mind.

Also, as a bassline, I added an acid bass because I feel African elements in the roots of acid house, and I added a phrase that is somewhere between dub and hip-hop-like Heavy Kick drums and bass.

In addition, African folk music-like phrases appear at the beginning and in the middle of the song, but this is not a sample. Only the calls were used, and the percussion and other instruments were phrases created by TM. As proof of this, even when the voices disappear, the percussion and guitars that had been playing until then continue to play and develop.




Mixing


The first image I had was a bit of dub, a bit of Dennis Bovell's Bristolian New Wave of yesteryear (The Pop Group, etc.), but the initial work was to handwrite the opening and closing data for the guitar wah pedal and acid bass filter, which he then mixed. I created the image of Ryuichi Sakamoto's "Riot In Lagos", not "Riot In Nairobi".

Once I sent this to TM, it was different from his image, so we reconciled the two. As a result, I removed the distorted, bass-boosted sounds and created a mix with a more subdued, unobtrusive feel.

However, this was lonely, especially in this song, as there was no explicit bass part, and from there, the acid bass and kick phrases I had written would sound hazy if left off, so I started adding the heavier elements back in.

The specific procedure was to unison the low frequencies with sine wave. Especially in the second half (where the live drum-like part comes in), where the bass comes in, it is masked by other sounds and drum sounds, so I strengthened the reinforcement.

At this stage, half of the electric organ and cheap synthetic brass presets were rewritten to live sounding brass, and the score was also rewritten to orchestrate accordingly.

The reason for switching the soundscape between the first and second half of the track is that I wanted to make the track sound light-hearted, and in the second half, when there are more sounds, the low and high cut soundscape makes it difficult to hear the individual sounds, and I also wanted to make it clear that the development of the song has changed.

The handclaps play a very important role in this song, and I went through a lot of trial and error regarding these handclaps.

To begin with, the sounds that exist in recent music as handclap sounds are not simply handclaps, but are often TR-808 handclap presets, so we started from the point of 'what kind of handclaps are needed'.

TM's image was "a sound that has the feel of a lot of people clapping their hands", but such samples rarely exist (of course, there are probably some if you look hard enough, but most clap tones are based on the TR-808 sound).

As a result, I turned down the volume on the Sound Font claps used in MuseScore (probably samples from TR-808) and applied a short delay to emphasise the bandwidth lower than 200 Hz, giving it a dubbing feel.

For the rhythm machine sound, I applied various effects and equalisers in order to create as much of a cheap atmosphere as possible.

For the 808 snare, I lowered the pitch by a semitone from the original sound (MS Sound Font) and added a low-pass filter (high-cut) to the snare and hi-hat to give them a cheesy feel.

For the snare, which was designed to sound like live drums, the pitch of the original sample tone was lowered a whole tone (-2) and lowered 5 degrees in unison, with gated reverb applied to the higher notes and no reverb on the lower ones.

I then adjusted the comp (slightly emphasising the attack and making the sound disappear faster) and added the amount of lost notes with a gated reverb.

The reason why I went to such trouble is that the reverberation of the snare in the Sound Font has a lot of noise (the reverberation of the gate reverb in the original sound). So I cut the reverb from the original sound once and added a separate reverb to clear the resonance.

A low-cut gated reverb of the same length as the snare is also applied to the toms, and a 50 Hz bandwidth is added to the bass drum with sine wave.

Finally, I added an EQ to the master with a high drop (cassette tape-like frequency response) curve, similar to our song "Here I am", to make it sound more muted (the arrangement has a lot of midrange, so I did not inflate the midrange).

I also shaved the high of each note except the pan-flute of the lead.

In creating this song, I feel that I can see the connection between African music and Rock n'roll (not Rock). The second half is already Rock n'roll (Chuck Berry style, not Presley).

Also, I don't think African music has bouncing rhythms to begin with. It's basically a series of flat rhythms, which seems to lead to rock n'roll.

Similarly, the beat is ambiguous in this song. Although the rhythm is even, the beat is not clear, especially in the rhythm instruments, and the concept of 'measure' is rare.

Come to think of it, Acid House didn't have a bouncing rhythm when it was first generated, and the concept of bar delimitation was also vague, with just a flat rhythm that went on and on. I don't know if you are aware of this, but there are elements common to African rhythms. To begin with, the TB-303 does not have a bouncing function. (Perhaps it was the Hard Floor that added the bouncing element to it.)

Haruomi Hosono even imagined that funk music was created by African rhythms being rocked by the waves of the sea, and I felt this when I was creating it.




Visual






The key visual we use on SoundCloud is from a photo of Abu Simbel, Egypt. (TM: It's Egyptian, not East African just to dilute particular geographic features.) 



 

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