This is the final product. I spent a week working on this 5-minute long piece and from a certain point, I knew I couldn’t go back on what I did. I might have overthought this project too much, due to the fact of my persistent perfectionist work philosophy that doesn’t allow any incoherent feature to step in. This could be either the rise or the dawn of my piece. I recognize that the final piece is not as bad as I expected, although I confess that I shoot in the wrong direction. I may have focused too much on the musical aspect of the piece instead of the sound part. This makes me ask where does this problem could be centered: is it my incapability of not being sufficiently prepared to work with sound only? is it sound that isn’t as versatile and easy to understand as music is? or are these the wrong questions that should be asked after the culmination of a project? I believe all these questions are correct, but I’m not yet prepared to answer them.
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#5 Creative Projects – Sampling
This post is dedicated to showcasing all the references my sound piece has in terms of references and samples used.
(1) Steve Reich – Triple Quartet: Second Movement
I previously used this sample on the intro track of an album that I had planned to release this year. Unfortunately, I lost everything to an encrypted virus. I decided to reuse the sample in a different way, thinking this time on the sound piece I had to deliver to this signature. I came up with the idea of giving the sound a specific element of one of my favorite films Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by the thailandese director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The film talks about the feeling of finitude and preparation for death. Boonmee, who suffers from terminal kidney disease, is visited by its past lives and family who are represented through demon-like creatures with a monkey appearance. The following scene is the introductory sequence of the film and was the scene I focused on to address my sound piece.
This spectacular scene gave life to my initial piece that I later called The First Time I Saw Frozen Red Eyes Starring At Me.
It tracked didn’t work out as I wanted to, because it became at some point a little bit dull. Nevertheless, I used it as the main structure of my final piece
(2) John Lurie – Improv rehearsel in Stuggart with a Soprano Saxophone
This rehearsal turned out to be one of his most famous performances that took place in a soundcheck Stuggart (East Germany, 1989). The video belongs to a documentary about his tour. I used this sample for its unique way of playing the Saxo and to follow along with the whole aesthetic of my piece. At the same time, I wanted a sample of Saxo that sounded like Angelo Badalamenti’s song Dance of the Dream Man – full of reverb, provocative, erotic, dirty.
John Lurie is also something that I often like to connect with, especially if it directs to Jim Jarmusch’s dirty decadent reality films like Stranger than Paradise (one of my personal favorites).
(3) João Villaret – recital of the poem “Cântico Negro” written by José Régio.
Born in the same period as José Régio, João Villaret was a portuguese actor from the ’50s. During this decade, every Sunday at 8pm, João Villaret would open the people’s ears with his really emotional recitals of infamous Portuguese poets. One of them was “Cântico Negro”, which was seen as a rebel act against Salazar. I sampled the whole audio and separated it into two parts inside my piece. You can find a translated version of the poem in one of my previous posts related to this project.
(4) Camaron de la Isla – Quiero Quitarme Esta Pena
I have two obsessions. One of them is Flamenco Nostalgia and the other is Flamenco Nostalgia. Recently Spanish pop artists have been using flamenco and Spanish traditions to be their leitmotifs on their music. The most evident musicians are Rosalia, who in the last 4 years released 2 flamenco-based albums Los Ángeles (2017) and El Mar Querer (2018), and C. Tangana, who released this year an album that reached instant national popularity and world recognition with El Madrileño (2021). I must confess that in 2020 I was infected by this Spanish nostalgia bug, and ever since I couldn’t stop listen to flamenco and read more about Spanish culture (my culture). Camaron de la Isla became my new favorite pop star and Paco de Lucia became my new religion. My head bangs with flamenco the same way it bangs with Techno Music. However, in this project, the sample served as a chiaroscuro for the piece, to contrast with the more devilish sounds. I used flamenco the resemble something god-like and sublime.
(5) Scene and Song of the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) directed by David Lynch
This is scene is one of my all-time favorites, not in terms of cinematography, but rather in terms of symbolism and visual art. The bar scene from the film “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” represents Laura Palmer’s darkest side. A version of herself that no other character knew of – only deviants and Bob would know this side of her, without knowing her other fragile persona. This scene served as an inspiration to compose the music representing the grotesque face of the piece, because of this dream-like dirty slow blues that throws the listener to dance in the most unconventional way possible. The song was inserted in Angelo Badalamenti’s OST album, but it was originally composed by David Lynch himself.
(6) David Lynch Sound Experimentalism
Extract from an interview with Jay Leno in 2000:
Jay Leno: I didn't know you were a musician. David Lynch: I'm not a musician. (...) D: I play (the guitar) upside down and backwards. I'm working the wang bar with my left hand. Guitar players might laugh at me but I'm still still getting the thing to do what I want it to do J: And what is that? D: To talk to me.
David Lynch’s way to fulfill his goals in these matters doesn’t always cross the line of knowledge. He created his own ways to treat the instrument and successfully found a way to make the guitar do its job. By exploring his techniques, I decided to play the electric guitar the same way he explained in that conversation and, like him, I succeeded in making the guitar talk to me.
#4 Creative Projects – Sexto Sentido
Sétima Legião’s album Sexto Sentido, might be the first album in Portuguese music history that attempted to fuse ethnomusicology with electronic music. It is a fascinating record that pioneered experimentalism in the country and prayed tribute to an everlasting musical and sound culture. Rodrigo Leão is the personality behind the concept of this album, a musician recognized to be a post-rock artist with records like A um Deus Desconhecido (1984) where can be found tracks like Glória who gained a lot of success in the ’80s or even De um Tempo Ausente (1989) with a more popular approach and reached national popularity with the depressive pop-rock song Por Quem Não Esqueci.
The band Sétima Legião used several themes extracts of Portuguese traditional music, but never with the same caliber that Sexto Sentido has. In the album, several samples from recordings taken in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s by the sound artist and ethnomusicologist Michel Giacometti can be found arranged in different manners. The idea was to leave them as pristine as possible, so the voices and sounds reproduced maintained their fidelity to its original recording. The voices of labor singing obtained a new life and destiny in this approach, eternalizing their legacy. Although several songs sounded too ambitious, the album outcome is extraordinary and makes any Portuguese artist proud. For them might have been complicated to change their register tremendously.
Many fans of the band criticized their work for being “too different” because they were not expecting this side experimental side of the band. They switched from pop-rock to Electronic-Ambient -Trip Hop-Folk Music. For me, this could be also a reinterpretation of the future by using the past as a reference and served as inspiration for my sound piece.