The Century After Dada
Notes On "THE CENTURY AFTER DADA"
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore 3, Studio One 6 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 6.5 Professional
Number of tracks: 41
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Sample One, Maitai (All built-in sound sources of Studio One)
Composition and recording period: July 10 2023 - Aug 18 2023, Aug 29 - Sep 12, Oct 10 - Oct 22, Dec 17
"Meaningless Acts of Creation"
(TI writes:)
This track went through some real twists and turns (although I still don't know if it was ever really finished).
As a result, it is very different from the first MuseScore score created by TM.
The production process was initially faithful to the score sent to me by TM. This version of the file has been left behind and I intend to complete it.
However, the version that was faithful to MuseScore was not enough for me, to be honest. TM also told me that I could tweak it as I liked, so I added noise and other rhythms based on it, and also changed it to a version that had some industrial music elements in the rhythm and a slow tempo, so that it sounded like 'New Beat', the Belgian dance music of yesteryear.
I added a flat 16th-note bassline (which appears in the second half of the song), like in 'New Beat', and added new parts to the introduction and ending to make it about twice as long (around 8 minutes).
From these 'meaningless acts of creation', I added sounds that evoked and evoked Dadaism (many of which have been largely cut in the version presented here).
The only sounds that remain are a phrase created from a sampling of the aria 'Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen' from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, and a rhythm sampled from the ceremonial guns of the launching ceremony of the former Japanese army battleship Yamato.
I think originally there was a radio interview with Salvador Dali, the voice of SuZanne Ledwith who collaborated with us, the pipe organ of my old school and other sounds.
But we didn't create any more because we felt that something was missing, so we left it as it was, but then one day we thought of speeding up the tempo, which we did and it was very good. I also shortened the length of the song by speeding up the tempo. I tried a lot of different tempos, but I was most comfortable with 1.19x, so that's what I did.
Incidentally, 'listening to a faster or slower tempo' has been done for a long time. This is due to the fact that when DJing for dance on analogue discs or analogue tapes, I used to do this in order to match the tempo when connecting tracks.
From a 'real music fan' or 'creator's intention' point of view, it's probably wicked, but it can make for interesting and more engaging music.
Speaking of which, there was a theory that playing YMO's U.T. (recorded on a 33rpm album) at 45rpm was the beginning of hardcore techno in the 1990s (this is something I used to do before hardcore techno).
There is also a story that the aforementioned 'New Beat' also started by playing Acid House and Electro 45rpm 12" singles at 33rpm.
Anyway, this 'changing the tempo afterwards' made the production and editing process very difficult and unstable.
The tempo of the track is actually not constant, the tempo information is written in detail by TM, and simply changing the BPM setting in Studio One does not work.
In particular, sampled sounds and phrases do not always follow the intended BPM change when the BPM is changed.
Therefore, there is more work involved in re-mixing a file that was once exported at the original song's tempo with a different file with a tempo of 1.19x again.
In addition, when monitoring and mixing, the 1.19x file is used as a reference, but at that time, the composition was changed in various ways, and the beats were changed in places, and then increased or decreased. The location of the original files in the 1.19x speed listening file and the location of the original files in the actual mix do not match, and it is taking a lot of time and effort to identify the location.
Also, when the application of effects such as reverb and delay are closely related to the tempo, the result is often different from what was expected, which is very difficult.
The story is digressing, but I was trying to somehow make it into a piece by adding elements without stopping, while repeating confusion and digressions in this way.
However, I thought that TM would not be good at this kind of music, but he first of all found it interesting, and from there some suggestions were made, such as 'cutting the introduction and instead adding an industrial noise rhythm from the second half' and 'organising the sample sounds'.
These suggestions made the music a lot more organised and cleaner.
Also, Studio One was updated in the middle of the project to enable immersive mixing, which made the sound even cleaner.
The idea of the mix was to add a bass-heavy element (which they didn't have) to The Art Of Noise of yesteryear. So for the instrumental part, I was conscious of the 'hi-fi sound of the time, created with an 8-bit sampler at the time', but it ended up sounding completely different.
As for the mix, all I wanted to do was to use the limiter and make it more powerful.
Usually, if I use the limiter too much in a mix, it just sounds too loud and frivolous, so I intentionally use it sparingly, just a little on the drums, but on this song I used it to the point where I was like, "This much?"
(TM writes:)
My original composition is, as TI describes, not like this at all, but the change itself is very interesting. Having said that, I feel the concept I originally made is still left more or less, which is going to lead us to a new series.
Although the new series is untitled yet, its concept is "complex, extra-ordinary grooves in atonality." Through it, in particular, I just wanted to create unheard dance music, but don't want to say that because the dance music in general is so narrowly perceived (even though I'm doing so here now). Thus, the concept is my criticism against the recent commercial dance music.
After TI attached the images of Dada to this work, I thought it would be nice to start the new, untitled series with it, so that the audience would be surprised and confused some way. The relationships between movement and percussion-centred groove, or between confusion and atonality are the key in the concept in my view.
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