Pebbles In The Garden
Notes on "PEBBLES IN THE GARDEN"
(Featuring ANSOUND)
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore 3, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 40
Sound source: 8 tracks from ANSOUND, Presence XT, Impact XT, Sample One (All built-in sound sources of Studio One)
Composition and Recording period: Aug 12 2022 - 17 Sep 2022
Concept: "Gating" Experiment
(TI writes:)
It all started with an offer from ANSOUND: "We've recorded some material for a song, why don't you try to create something?" The tracks he created were completely different from ours (which continued to have a big influence on the production process).
We decided to ask him to send us some tracks, because the tracks he creates are completely different in conception from ours and therefore interesting.
He sent us eight tracks and shared a demo mix.
This demo mix was a completely different type of song from the one that ended up as "Pebbles In The Garden".
(TM writes:)
This work enabled us to see the next direction we should be heading in, despite struggling at first. The production process was completely different from the one that we usually follow. TI explains in detail below on how it was.
When we were getting close to the completion of the album to be released called “Auditory Art For Visual Arts”, ANSOUND suggested his seven or eight tracks of sounds, each of which contained an abstract play he had recorded. The easiest way to make music based upon those is to make some rhythm and simply put them onto it. I tried that, but that didn’t work at all, probably because they had their own unstable tempo. I looked for the tempo on which his tracks and my rhythm best suited but that wouldn’t have been unlikely to reach some sort of attractiveness. I was unable to smell it.
What I tried instead then is to make a rhythm that controls ANSOUND’s tracks by sampling those. I used them as a part of the percussion even though they didn’t sound percussive.
Well, that was better but still how samplers were supposed to be used in general, I suspected. Then, what if some tracks of ANSOUND’s keep playing and the rhythm controls where and how long they play. Imagine you are in an airplane. While you open the windshield, you can see the outside view. Whereas the view is originally successive, I mean, it’s like flowing without any break, you can control how to show it to yourself by opening and closing the windshield. Once you control irrelevant sounds this way, it tends to sound quite differently. At first when ANSOUND listened to a demo, he must have been surprised with how differently it sounded, I reckon.
What I came up with next is that it would be equally effective if you use a completely different piece as a sample. I put this experiment late in this work by opening/closing the windshield (which I call “gating”) from the outside, meaning two different pieces – having a completely different tempos and completely different musical context (ie, the tonality, key, scale or whatever it may be). One is a piano phrase I composed for an irrelevant intention, whereas the other is an existing track of ours, which is, “Bass Sextet.”
It's funny and a little bit exciting that our work called “Bass Sextet” and this track are to be released at the same time coincidentally. I haven’t heard exactly that one artist use Track A in Track B as a sample in the same album or something.
Additionally, this work and "Blanket Of Moss" are like a pair. Both of these two pursue the "Gating" concept and contain the same sound in the background: the rain sound. It's used in the way it was in "Pebbles..." while "gated" in Blanket Of Moss." Later, gating is applied in "Spa Music" as well.
Phase 1 of Production Process
(TI writes:)
At first, TM wrote the basic score in response to these eight tracks, which were then ported to Studio One and played at the same time.
This was not a bad song, but the tempo of the part using the slap bass played by ANSOUND as a bass line just didn't fit. This is due to the fundamental difference between our way of writing music and his way of writing music.
Our works can in principle be written in musical notation and processed completely digitally as MIDI data, whereas his are basically live (not necessarily with live instruments) and free tempo. So the tempo is constantly changing, and he is not playing with the concept of bass in the first place. This is self-explanatory because we interpret it as a bass line and try to match it to a fixed tempo, which is natural.
However, if we force the free tempo to be in-tempo, it becomes very boring, and there is no need for it to be ANSOUND's sound. Especially as the ANSOUND sound source this time is also a digital sound source, it becomes 'just a tone'.
At this stage, work came to a halt.
Phase 2 of Production Process
(TI writes:)
Here, several exchanges took place between us. Here are our exchanges. It is long, but it is written almost verbatim.
TI: Stave music does not originally exist in Japan, but we start from it, and we use it as a basic format and protocol for understanding and creating music. In a way, our musical mother tongue is the language of the West. And in music (language/understandings/creative basic format or protocol), we can't use our mother tongue.
But ANSOUND doesn't use their musical mother tongue, essentially, and that combination is already twisted, which is an interesting point.
That's one of the technical reasons why we're struggling with sound combinations at the moment.
The other thing is that something like industrial music (incorporating sound itself as music) is something that is not originally part of our culture.
Therefore, to create this kind of music, we have to have a very intellectual twist to get there. In short, we can't create music from an industrial point of view (we incorporate it as a sound, but it's just one of the components or essences of music, and we can't/never have built music with that alone).
FMT music has a high affinity with industrial music, such as being atonal or not sticking to four-quarter time or intempo, which makes it feel close, but it's fundamentally different.
What should I do with this track now? And those are probably the two reasons why we're worried that it doesn't fit (we see them as separate issues).
But you are saying to each other, "Let's do it". That discrepancy between the will to do it and the reality, which is interesting in itself, or it seems like it could be a concept.
TM: That's a good point. That's also why the concept hasn't come out. I always try to use protocols and make concepts that question them, but if there is something outside of the protocols, it causes a problem. I think it's difficult unless you create something completely different and put it on top of it.
I always think of industrial music, but I feel like it's too late for that... It's partly because it's been done, and even if you turn existing industrial music upside down, people don't really notice it, and even for me it's like, "So what? (What's so interesting about that?)".
TI: I felt that if we put them together haphazardly, it would blur the concept and the music. (Actually, acoustically it's rather close to our music, so if we wanted to put it all together, it would come together.)
TM: There might be something to that perspective. It's always been that way. You hear someone say 'industrial' and you ask them, and then you go, 'So what? (Is that all?)".
TI: That's exactly the interesting thing, and I don't know what ANSOUND thinks about it, but music created on staves is also very old. It's been around since the 1600s. It's a bit too old for that. But we, who are from a completely different cultural and historical background, are using it to create music. If you think it's too late for either of us, that's an interesting situation. But perhaps from the point of view of Westerners who play industrial music (whose native language is supposed to be musical notation), there is a sense that it's too late for music with five-line notation (I often hear stories like that).
It's very twisted and interesting (that, you know, the current situation) .
TM: I'm meaning, so what? It's more recent for Industrial, so it's too close for me to mess around with. It's very close to me at least.
But it's true that industrial music has been consumed and it's not even interesting anymore.
TI: That's right, so I don't think it matters at all that the rhythms are different. It's a different thing to begin with, and I think it's fine, because if you put them together it's like you're forcing them into each other's culture (also, from an individual physical and sensory point of view, I think my sense of rhythm in that area is completely different from TM's). I'm rather (or rather, not at all) fine with that kind of thing . So, well, until the concept is fixed, let's just lay out what we have (and in doing so, let's just put a colour (tentative) for convenience so that it's easy to understand aurally).
TM: Well, that's like my occupational hazard there, but even then, it's still too far off the mark at this stage. Well, that's fine. It's more like... before that.
TI: That's because it's simple from a musical (aural) point of view. There's no way to develop it (to develop it, it's difficult without the staff notation part. (As a tool, the staff is sophisticated, isn't it?)
TM: Yes, that's the feeling. As you say.
TI: That's where Studio One (DAW ← sampling technology) comes in. It can handle both (notes on a staff, noise or just sound) on the same playing field.
TM: Yes, I can understand that.
TI: Yeah, that's probably the theme or concept (as I said at the beginning, the fun or tragedy of people who don't have a common language, and who can't speak the native language they are supposed to have, trying to communicate somehow).
TM: In other words, DAW has become a protocol for the music being made now. I think it's narrowing the scope of the music, though. Yeah, it's certainly at a level where it's enough to make a series.
TI: That's what I mean. It's like, this is the reason why I can communicate with everyone. Whether it's remote areas or the Covid-19. Then there's the fundamental part of singing and making sounds in a realistic way (which is a bit difficult to do). To begin with, actually, up to this point, TM and I are the only ones who communicate in staff notation.
The last time we did 'Present' (with ANSOUND), it was possible because we treated our sounds as 'just sounds'. When it goes the other way, it becomes that much more difficult (which is also very interesting).
I just think this situation itself is really interesting .
TM: That's what's strange or rather strange about it, but when you record an audio file, you're creating a real sound.
I understand that there's nothing new in the mainframe-like cascade from notation to DAW, but has there ever been any music produced as a result of that? Of course, there are some, though.
TI: But you can't have any kind of sound source without a stave protocol to control it. That's how versatile and sophisticated the stave protocol is in music.
Almost all sounds can be played on a close level using staves. Even Japanese music is being sold these days with notation in stave notation.
Conversely, the only industrial music is that which can't be played on a staff, and that means that the parts that can be expressed purely as industrial music are reduced.
ANSOUND's use of DAW is definitely completely different from ours.
What's also interesting is that industrial music is a new genre of 'music', but as a sound it's primitive. It existed long before 'music' and 'staff notation' were established. It's abstracted and reproducible, and that's what makes it 'music'.
And this time, ANSOUND' sound is sampled, so there's a high possibility that he doesn't 'produce sound' in the same way as we do. That's another interesting twist.
If you do it normally, you can force it to be the same, and it usually is, and to be honest, when I heard the slaps in this example, I thought 'that's boring'. I thought it wasn't in-tempo, and I didn't think it was in tune (normally, hand-playing should automatically correct itself, but they didn't do that).
TM: You're right. I was a little bit like, "What!?" and I feel like I was pulled in by that. That made it even more chaotic.
TI: So for ANSOUND, I think that this 'fit or not fit' thing that they're struggling with is probably unimaginable.
I really think this situation itself is enough to be a conceptual art.
Usually, when you get into a situation like that culturally, one side tries to suppress the other side (if not suppressed by force, they try to persuade (educate) the other side by reason). That can sometimes lead to war. But it's also interesting that it doesn't happen. It's a really interesting (situation).
Also, we (TM) try to interpret sounds (in our own context). That ANSOUND bass, we just thought it was a bassline, so we don't know what ANSOUND's intention was. We just used the preset slap bass sound.
Well, last time (Neither~) was away from us, but this time it's home, so I think it's better to make it in our style or with our advantage.
So, what if we took all his sounds into the sampler and played them with completely different phrases that we had created? We tried that, but it wasn't very interesting. I think that's because musically, we cut out too many tones, and ANSOUND's unique sound was lost, and it became almost the same as our usual songs in terms of the listening experience.
However, if you apply phrases like in the first half of the current take, it's good (because the unique sound is alive and in a different (our) context).
In that sense, I think it's going well so far this time (especially the first half). It's just that we haven't fully verbalised the concept.
In that sense, when staves and samplers (DAWs) are combined (for better or worse), most of the sounds are absorbed and converged there.
So if that bass and the seventh track we're talking about don't converge, that's how unique it is.
TM: That has been very helpful. Can we go back and experiment a bit more?
This is a long quote, but as a result, TM sent me the MuseScore file with the following comments.
TM: I cut out only the first half. I deleted all the parts that were used only for the second half (the bottom three drum steps, I think).
We also deleted the bottom two or three, bass-related ones.
And the top row has been added. This shows where to turn on and where to turn off the volume in the second row. We call it Volume Gate.
(This volume gate is the same thing as the water sound volume control in Spa Music. I'm thinking this could be developed in quite a few ways.)
And for the Ansound Sample, there is one specified in the second step. Here it is changed so that only Track 3 and Track 4 are used.
And the bottom two rows of this file are Organ and Guitar, can you make them sound with pitches to Ansound's Track 2 and 1 respectively? That's what I mean.
And then the x note in the part called Dr 1, I'm wondering if I can make that sound like Track 6. I'd like to try something like that first, is that possible?
TI: This sounds interesting! Let's give it a try. I'm looking forward to it! So, this is a counter to so-called improvised music, isn't it? On the contrary, it's a counter to improvisation and industrial (equipment and non-instrumental), which we're going to control too.
That's all.
The rest is just about running this into Studio One and doing basic processing such as equalisation and compression, and balancing the volume.
I used all types of ANSOUND tracks and did very little processing on the sounds and phrases.
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