When I took my PortaStudio 24 up from the basement, it had 30 tracks on it I previously recorded about two years ago. This one was one of the most beautiful it seemed to me. Not sure how I recorded it and with what instruments. Perhaps the Kaosillator? Hard to know for sure. Now, two years later I lay the 156 program s from the Minilogue over the track recorded two years ago. I twist the sound a little in Portamento and perhaps use the sustain pedal a little too much. The 156 program on the ML is based around a 5th chord which always sounds discordant yet powerful to me.
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The melody is from memory of old songs of America. The kind written during the founding of the nation. It is meant to express the ghost of a melody written during the pioneer period. Much influenced in this piece by my friend and incredible composer and musician, Rick Sowash. He has introduced me to some of the great music from the past. By the great American composers like Gershwin. Influenced also by the legendary Oscar Peterson and his suite to Canada, his home country. Also influenced by American spirituals and music of the American frontier, or frontier years when the nation was expanding into the unknown and everyone needed a “new hope” moving into the unknown. (There is certainly parallels today to the America of the pioneers and that of us today … both moving into an unknown land).
My Friend Rick Sowash / One of America’s Great Composers
Anyway, searching for the right sound and learning how to make them in the MiniLogue. Taking a deeper dive into this little monster than I did two years ago. There is so much inside. Forty years ago, it would have taken a roomful of instruments and a pile of cash to buy a machine like the Korg Minilogue XD and the Korg Electribe Sampler. They are the two key instruments I’m trying to learn more about away from searching for the built-in programs on the machines and creating music from mixing these sounds (200 on the MiniLogue and 150 on the Electribe).
Today, I started learning how to create sounds with the ML. It is much easier than I thought and I imagine I’ll be making a number of new sounds and storing them into the upper numbers of the ML. Anyway, perhaps we’ll leave Track C on and add others. Perhaps we’ll take Track C off and try something else. There is little I want to touch on Track D, the original sound you hear that was recorded a few years ago.
So many interesting aspects to Track D that cannot be changed. I imagine the question is really whether Track D needs another track played over it in the first place. If one says yes to this proposition then we consider Track C recorded via mono input from the MiniLogue in real time. On listening to these two tracks creating a song titled New Hope at this point in time, I think it is a good sketch of a particular music or song that we are searching for. Expressed in this one and a half minutes of music.
The Drone Sound of Bagpipes in Modern Electronic Instrument Sounds
One aspect is the constant drone to the track caused by holding down the damper pedal on the MiniLogue. To me, this drone has that powerful marching forward force of the music of Scottish bagpipes. The sound of the drone – created in the middle east – comes to Europe through bagpipes in a large respect. Here, that sound of bagpipes constantly in the background until about 1 1/4 minutes into the song.
Hope everyone can hear the music of McCoy Tyner and John Coltrane in the above.
Where does this sound or song go from here? Perhaps as an inspiration to the music of another artist. This is the greatest praise for me and Midnight Oil, In even a small way of Inspiring new musical composers in America. Music as the potential for a true common bond between segments of the populace that could never agree on anything through words on paper or speech over media,
Above, the questioning of where the story / theme proceeds from the music above.
If in fact it should proceed.