How I Like To Align My Things
Notes On "How I Like To Align My Things"
- How I Like To Align My Things
- How I Like To Align My Things (Still Playing)
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 66 (80 for "Still Playing")
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Composition and Recording period: Sep 10 2020 - Jun 19 2021 ("Still Playing"), June 22 2021 – June 26 2021
"Poly-structures"
There are two versions released under the title; the longer version called "Still Playing" is a development from the original shorter version. Both are available only on SoundCloud and YouTube, rather than such music distribution services as Apple Music, Spotify and Amazon Music.
The tentative title was “Poly-Structures”, intending to assemble various lengths of the patterns. Whilst polyrhythm has multiple rhythms of two-, three-, four-beats or some lengths like these, poly-structures are much longer.
For instance, the drums parts is based on patterns of 1.5 bars (or six beats) and 2.5 bars (10 beats) and the bass part 7 bars (28 beats). Some other part has a four-bars (16 beats) pattern and another part has a five-bars (20 beats) one.
The human recognition is very interesting. You may feel like this: “It sounds like some pattern but it may be not.” That is what we aim for here.
The way such various patterns are aligned is just like how children align their own things such as toys. Quite often adults do not perceive that they are put away, but it’s just that children do not have the definition of putting away.
In the sense we have played like kids in this track. From the musical perspectives this music is very unlikely to be considered neatly aligned. But from ours it’s interestingly aligned in a sense. That is what we want the title to imply.
In addition this is scale music based on eight-notes modes, but the mode that the harmonic parts in this track follows is made different from that of the relatively rhythmic parts. The former is Eb – E – F# – A – A# - B – C – Db – Eb, whereas the latter Eb – E – F – F# – G# – A – B – D – Eb (and later full-note higher on F). The four lower intervals and the four higher are set the other way around. The objective of using these modes at the same time is to separate the sounds of each part and “distance” them from the other, or in other words, dilute the relationships between the parts.
As I wrote in the notes on other tracks, at times people tend to recognise songs they are used to hear as something attractive. They tend to feel heavily-rotated songs are attractive for the mere reason that they remember those. We prefer to avoid this tendency as much as we can. This track could well be hard to be memorised. I bet you never hum it involuntarily.
Finally, I would like to add my comment that we have made such composition for one year or two and I am feeling this will be around its end. I named it “2020-esque tracks.” Since around March 2021 I have made music in a different, hopefully more developed and more sophisticated way. I hope you will like both the 2020-esque and 2021-esque.
(TI writes:)
Composition
This was another song that we had been working on for a while, and when I checked the properties of MuseScore it was September last year (2020), more than half a year ago.
In June, I was discussing with TM about what to do for the next release, and he said "this track is interesting", so we reworked it. The working title was "Poly-Structures", and the idea was to construct motifs in multiple time signatures, tempos and tonalities simultaneously.
The process of creating this piece also began with the creation of a number of motifs that would form the building blocks of the piece, which were then laid out on the score. Each motif has a different beat, a different tempo, and a different tempo and beat within the motif, so there is no unity in the motifs themselves.
However, when arranging and constructing the motifs on the MuseScore, I did not arrange them in a random way, but took into account the tempo and beat of each motif, and arranged them in a way that they would fit into the frame.
However, my own way of arranging the pieces is more like a visual arrangement or design than a musical arrangement. In other words, it's like drawing a kind of pattern on a music sheet. And each part of the pattern (musical motif) has the same tone.
When I'm writing a song, or when I'm playing it back after it's finished, I think of visuals like Mondrian or Kandinski in my head.
Mixing
In addition to the above motifs, there is a bassline and a rhythm that TM created, so I mixed them so that each motif can be heard clearly. In the bass line and bass drum, the bass line is the main part and the BD is the accent. The bass line is layered with resonant notes in the highs, and filtered, low-pitched notes in the mids and lows. In contrast to reinforcing the bottom, I play the notes in unison to give some sense of pitch.
[Still Playing (Long Version）]
This is a version that I created simply because I wanted to listen to this track for a longer period of time, and to hear each of its motifs more closely. So I didn't put it away, but rather left it in a mess. It's like a child who plays with his/her toys and doesn't put them away even though his/her parents tell him/her to.
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