For my second task I was hoping to emulate the production techniques of Frank Zappa he referred to as reassembly. In this method Frank Zappa is notable as one of the many musicians to pioneer the studio as an instrument. In this method he would use his sound recordings or ‘sound sources’ and rearrange them in the studio, using a myriad of sounds from recorded conversations with his band members from the Mothers of Invention, to live recorded sounds. Here I’ll show you a small section from an article about the man.
Though sophisticated and innovative in terms of content and presentation, the first three M.O.I. albums are somewhat dated in terms of their “sound,” a shortcoming that Zappa later addressed by overdubbing new bass and drum parts on the We’re Only In It For the Money tapes in the mid-’80s. However, along with Lumpy Gravy, the first three albums (now available in a threefer package from Rykodisc) introduced several production techniques – and musical and lyrical themes – that would feature prominently in later releases. Both Absolutely Free and We’re Only In It For the Money featured non-stop, segued album sides arranged as suites of songs, interspersed with field recordings of bandmembers’ dialog and sections of musique concrete (“natural” sounds modified by tape manipulation). These audio jump cuts and sudden changes in ambience were also reflected in the music, as doo-wop, pop songs, political commentary, fuzz guitar rock and cocktail jazz all piled up on each other. As the years went by, Zappa’s edits became smoother, to the point of undetectability, but he consistently used editing as a compositional tool and created many coherent (if idiosyncratic) compositions from apparently random audio scraps.
This idea of working with pre-existing sounds and composing with them with the means to create something entirely new isn’t a totally alien idea to me as sampling took off massively with the emergence of hip hop before I was born. A genre of music which in its origins hoped to carry strong political messages and biting social commentary. These two things of course are what Frank Zappa was never afraid to talk about with cogency and a liberal bent. Frank Zappa liked to face these taboos head on with his music and assembling diverse but contextually relevant sounds in the studio is something he had mastered.
My intentions for this task however are to reassemble sounds in a way which isn’t politically motivated but to use samples of recorded instruments to create a collage of pitch and texture. For my task I have recorded a variety of instruments with no forethought of rhythm or timing to be formed into something which does.
Instruments I have recorded are
Pump Organ
Andy Riffing on the Pump Organ
Side view of Pump Organ
Grand Piano
Mic Placement for Piano
Vox
Andy, Centre of Recital hall singing
Experimenting with mic placement to capture room ambience
Acoustic Guitar
No image available, sorry
Snare drum
recording isolated snare hits to sequence later
Hi Hats
Hi Tom
and finally Floor toms
Would have taken pictures had not the camera ran out of battery.
What I realised after I’d recorded all of my sounds was that my production technique bears more in common with Canadian producer Secret Mommy(Andy Dixon). Previously a member of punk rock band d.b.s he started his own record company called Ache to release his own solo material. He started his cut and paste production style similar to John Oswald‘s method called plunderphonics, borrowing sounds from pop song recordings and editing them beyond recognition and composing with the resulting sounds. He then started composing using sounds from field recordings. For his third album released in 2004 entitled Hawaii 5.0, referencing where he recorded his sounds, he made music entirely from sounds he’d captured from a holiday in Hawaii. The 5.0 part of the album title is a reference to the electronic manipulation of sounds he used in composing. For his next album named Very Rec released a year later including standard instruments too this time, he used a hidden condensor microphone to record sounds at places of recreation, including a basketball court, yoga studio, swimming pool, football field, ice rink, dance studio etc.
The sounds in this song are composed entirely from recordings from a late night session in a basketball court apart from the cello.
In 2007 he released Plays which following a similar method of recording ‘organic’ sounds is made only from acoustic instruments. The method he outlines in this interview from earshot.com.
“I just booked some studio time where I just had all my friends come in. It was a free for all; it was like an open house where we just recorded a bunch of music, and it was just completely improvised. I took all those recordings and then I made that Secret Mommy record out of it. So Plays is processed recordings of all my friends.”
This is what I wanted to do for my second task and I did, but with the unfortunate handicap of almost all my musician friends being busy on the day I’d booked for the studio, me and Andy Buclaw are the sole performers on the track.
here’s a song from the album Plays, a peculiar marriage of free improvisation and anally precise post production glitchery. He also made the video. crafty *ucker.
My approach is hoping to emulate the technique of Andy Dixon without emulating hyper-edited results as I’m not conversant with ProTools to do so yet.
