Existential slow house.

Every few months or so there comes the compulsion to decide on my favourite pieces of music ever.

(Ever ever? Ever ever??)

This list is impossible to create and all previous attempts have immediately felt wrong and borderline embarrassing. An easier and more important list however consists of pieces that have truly influenced me as a music maker. While these might not be my very favourites, they are tracks that either significantly changed my musical perspective, or had a lasting effect on my composition style or myself as a musician.

1. Branle de Bourgogne 

After a fair bit of research and a few trips down memory lane, I believe a simplified version of this, played by 7 year olds in a school assembly when I was 6, was the catalyst for me to begin learning the recorder.

I had been asked before if I wanted to learn and I had declined as the early apeman in my genetic code thought it “girly”. However, when faced with a group of my peers playing this piece of baroque dance music, I experienced a strange mixture of jealousy and joy. It was decided then and there that I wanted to make music and I took up recorder lessons in the following term.

Today I still love the gracefulness and simplicity of these musical lines.

2. Beethoven - Pathetique Sonata

When I first heard any part of the Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata I was probably 12 or 13 and the performer was a pretty brunette girl of 15 who was both an immediate crush and fine pianist. She played the third movement as part of a music recital where I played recorder (probably Telemann but it escapes me) and I left the event, after sheepishly congratulating the girl, again in a state of jealousy and joy with a touch of heartache wedged between them.

It wasn’t just that it was impressive, but that it inspired me to immediately buy the sheet music and spend many lost hours with my delightful music teacher skirting around the edges of Beethoven’s genius, and classical music in general. She would double my lessons’ length at no extra cost as we both tried to learn Pathetique’s slow second movement; she made me cassettes of incredible interpretations of Beethoven; she made it fun when it was plain that neither of us had the talent to play the music in any recognizable way.

It was a kind of musical seduction that was essential to my development. The sonata also holds some phrases that never fail to delight me.

3. Squarepusher - Journey To Reedham

I knew and loved Aphex Twin before Squarepusher. I would stay up late night after night watching MTV in the hope Windowlicker would come on, but it was a chance listening to Journey To Reedham that made me ask ‘who is this Squarepusher and where can I buy everything he’s done?’. Nowadays I find most IDM hard work and unsatisfying, but for a while in my late teens I listened to it almost exclusively. The idea of a single person creating complete musical worlds was very attractive.

Before Squarepusher was an idol I was destined to be only interested in recording guitars or maybe notes on a stave. Now I had been tempted into the abstract world of programming where the arrangements were humanly impossible and the sounds were not of any instrument. It is a world I both love and hate but that constitutes most of my day-to-day paid work.

4. Herbie Hancock - Chameleon

I always thought busy drums were the best drums and wondered at the boredom of creating slow, simple beats. The truth is that a perfect slow break or rhythm, played or programmed, is a thing of real beauty and consequence. Consequence? A drum track of great feel is essential for almost any modern pop song or dance track: listen to the incredible rhythm work of The Funk Brothers on the Motown hits for a masterclass in this.

It was an ex-employer and friend who confirmed the importance and power of feel when it comes to drums, by simple playing me Chameleon by Herbie Hancock. The entry of the drums that cut into the synth bass is so simple, and the beat is so simple, but the funk is undeniable and captivating all because of the drummer’s feel. 

Recreating a little of this magic is a daily trial, and I’ve not really managed it yet.

5. Arvo Part -  Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten

Arvo Part is responsible for some of my very favourite music, and it was through him that I accepted that simplicity was as impressive as complexity, in music and perhaps elsewhere.

Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten is made up of only descending minor scales and a tolling bell, yet it is a glorious construction and very moving, producing emotional results far in excess of its parts.

With Arvo Part, every note counts.

I attended a selection of talks last night in East London, focused around music tech and music future. We were invited to tweet along with a projector showing the events feed (a nice touch, though open to hijack should anyone have felt like causing a 140 character ruck). I tweeted about an excellent and relevant old article from The Wire, transcribed from a Radio 3 documentary, where avant-garde frontliner Stockhausen comments on AFX and other modern electronica artists. Sweetly, I got a mention for this on the write-up of the event: Future Human | Sonic Boom: Thoughts, Photos and Crowdfunding Drives

My own analysis of the evening? The opening fast-track history of electronic music/modern music tech was nicely done if understandably hole-ridden. I did wonder whether at an event like this it was necessary - weren’t we all meant to know most of that anyway? It was interesting nonetheless.

Then came a calamitous presentation of Alphasphere; which looks incredible but is an idea with so many flaws and unanswered questions that it is best to hold final judgement until the product is further developed. That said, the concept of it - other than it being tactile (and surely a piano or a cello is tactile also?) - was very difficult to follow. I gathered it was meant to be very simple to use, yet it was hooked up to Max/MSP. It also made me think of a myriad of UI problems. I think the boys behind it need to seriously rethink the concept.

Then an interview with Matthew Herbert, author Adam Harper and producer Subeena. Subeena seemed a little out of her depth - she certainly doesn’t make music as cerebrally as Matthew does, but that doesn’t mean her work should be thought immediately as light. On the panel she represented how a lot of musicians/producers feel - not sure how to quantify their work, but completely driven in making it.

Adam Harper’s Infinite Music conversations were quite wordy and dense, mathematically interesting but not especially relevant to anything in terms of expression. His point almost boiled down to, ‘because the universe is possibly infinite, music is possibly infinite’. True, but there are also then infinite Biros and Tampons and Lemons. 

Matthew Herbert comes across as a modern artist rather than a musician, and I think in his mind the two have to be the same thing, which leaves little room for the amateur. He was an excellent speaker and happily conversed over some Q&A’s, including with myself, and was a real coup for the night. It was just a shame I couldn’t have a done a quick chat about my upcoming iPad app. I think it would have been an interesting juxtaposition to what was talked about, but it’s not quite ready yet…

In this Christmas themed post, I’d like to present you with three very different versions of one of my very favourite Christmas songs: In Dulci Jubilo. 

This song’s name roughly translates to ‘In Sweet Jubilation’, which is a rare emotion. Jubilation suggests a joy that is sustained and ecstatically free, and I’m not sure how many times in my life I have been been in the thralls of real jubilation, if ever. Mike Oldfield’s version of the song is high on the spirit of jubilation and curiously timeless with its mixture of instruments old and new (as the video handily represents). While you enjoy this belovéd march of joy, you can also amuse yourself with the subtle stumbles in Oldfield’s guitar playing in an age before Pro Tools:

This next version is a Bach arrangement, cunningly represented by the visuals of an 8-bit sequencer and played on similar sounds. I would be interested to sync a real recording to this one day, as I love the way this video works: 

This final version, and possibly my favourite, I had to upload myself as I could not find it anywhere else. Though there are many choral versions, this one slows down and becomes more thoughtful and harmonically complex in every verse. These arrangement ideas makes the song less jubilant and more introspectively beautiful:

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, whether you are a believer or simply raising a glass to the best of the myth and enjoying the merriment. Where possible, spend some time with the people you care about.

Nile Rodgers finishing his book off. What a complete legend - I can’t wait to read it.

Remember, this is the guy behind Le Freak and Good Times (and therefore Rapper’s Delight), David Bowie’s Modern Love AND the Coming To America soundtrack.

*awe*

Facebook (1) | Nile Rodgers’s Photos - Wall Photos

“Composer sought for low budget short film “(removed)”, written and directed by (removed), produced by (removed). The film is a 25 minute drama, shot on 35mm film via the Panavision new filmmakers grant program. Logline for the film is “A young woman searches for (removed).”

A score with light instrumentation is sought, piano/classical guitar/accordian; which can lend itself to quality recording sound despite our zero budget.

Copy and credit only.”

How exciting!