This weeks track was made entirely in transit – on a plane between Melbourne, Doha and Paris, and in the tour van between Paris, Rennes and Paris, and a little at Ory Airport. Anytime, Anyplace If there’s one thing this project has shown me it is that ideas come from everywhere, at anytime, usually when you are least equipped to deal with them. I’m reminded of a Tom Waits story related by Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert in a TED talk she gave. Tom is driving down an LA freeway when a melody popped into his head. He looked around his car for something to record it with – a pencil, paper, anything – but could find nothing. He began to panic that he would forget the melody and be haunted by it forever, that his talent would dry up and he would become nothing (I’m sure anyone reading can relate to this, even if you aren’t engaged in creative practice it is always the new things that you can’t quite fully grasp that seem the most important). At some point during his panic attack he stopped and said to the melody, “Excuse me. Can you not see I’m driving? Do I look like I can write down a song right now? If you really want to exist, come back at a more opportune moment … otherwise go bother somebody else today. Go bother Leonard Cohen.” Systems of Capture While I haven’t quite gotten to the point of telling my ideas to come back later (that’s some ninja level sh*t, or maybe Waits/Cohen/Dylan level) I have developed a very quick system for cataloguing ideas for later reference. It’s barely even a system really, it’s just that if anything at all peaks my interest (article, show, podcast, song, book) I make a note of it and put it all in the same place to sift through when I’m ready. The key is ‘when I’m ready’. Sometimes it’s great to follow an idea immediately. But I also find it effective to let the initial excitement or interest nestle gently in the back of my mind for a while, let whatever happens back there happen and then approach it when fully energised. Briefly back to the system of collection, I use Evernote but the tool doesn’t matter. I think the only pre-requisite is that you are able to file the idea very quickly and unobtrusively, no interruption to workflow. Because I often get new ideas while finishing old ones and that can just lead to a whole lot of unfinished stuff. Evernote works for me because I have it across all my devices, I have web clippers on my web browsers, it captures audio etc. So if I am reading, watching or whatever it is very quick to file the item in the correct place, often only two clicks. In Flight Jamming The work formed in two parts quite organically. The first on the flight between Melbourne and Doha, lazy groove I created thinking of floating in a slightly boozed and medicated daze through clouds. I made it in Ableton, just jamming around with different instruments until I landed on things I liked. It began with the synth pad, then the bass came, then the 808 drums which have a max4live delay patch to create the bouncy feel. Once I had the groove locked down I became stuck and let it rest for a while (and attempted to sleep). On the next leg of the flight I was chatting with the my bandmate Nic about the idea and we joked of recording lots of quiet and weird plane sounds to use in the track. He fell asleep and I set about doing that, recording myself whispering into the computer. I tried to capture some take off sounds also. I built these sounds into an unsettling soundscape at the beginning of the track and also wove some whispering, “everybody is trying to sleep” into the rhythmic part of the track. Lastly I wrote some lyrics and sung them into the laptop. We’ve been flying For one day and night Babies in a tin can In the sky This was particularly challenging as everyone was asleep around me and there is a lot of background noise on planes, particularly aircon sounds! So they don’t sound the best but I really like that all of it was done this way and funnelled through the laptop. As per usual, I would love to spend more time on this idea. I would also like to explore non traditional methods of audio capture more – phones, laptops – as I think this has relevance to the themes of this project. I am spending the next few days on holiday in Rome and I’m thinking that it would be great to do a Transit 2 but use sounds I have collected from around the city. Let me know any thoughts in the comments, and thanks for reading and listening.
#experimental music#experimental electronic#Melbourne Music#citizencayn#chimera_52#Whisper#Plane#Spoken Word#maxmsp#ableton
