Sunday, August 9, 2009

Weftovers: Notes by DJSE


Yesterday morning I woke up with a churning stomach. I felt like Christmas poo. But we were getting together to jam, and the show must go on. Somehow Snake and I got to the new place in music that we had been talking about approaching. finally a song-like structure with key-changes throughout the piece. And this is probably the first danceable piece that we've put together. All of this marked the beginning of a new "album" on our site.

Early in the session, we were joined by mutual friend Tomo, who brought over a bag of farm fresh fruits, a number of Hawaiian instruments, a loaner flute, and the camera that took the stills from this session. We already had a couple of loaned ukuleles from my friend Vinny, and that along with Tomo's uli uli, ili ili and pu ili, helped us bring a Hawaiian flavor to our construction.

The session started with me asking for a speed and Snake calling out 99.30bpm, then I started messing with a drum build at that speed. Snake jammed on the uke and layered in a tropical rhythm section. We started dancing with the percussive Hawaiian instruments and added them to the intro build. The ili ili was a really fun one to play given it's vibrant plumage. Then I added in a high synth melody contrapuntal to Snake's uke rhythm.

Meanwhile, Tomo was jotting notes and recording stuff for a future magazine article that she may include us in. She seemed pretty surprised by our process. We just pick some starting parameters, then get to playing. It's always a bit different, but having some stuff looping all the time with the mic in the middle of the room gives an opportunity for all kinds of fun stuff to work it's way in. Who knows what yours truly will decide to record and add into the mix while Snake is running around making sounds?

Then we reached the key point, we added in B and C sections to the track. Different chords, different rhythm sections, different instrumentalism and driving percussion. As we continued to work and fill these sections in, we brought in harmonica, threw a wah-wah effect over Nick's acoustic Dobro guitar, ...

Surprise for me: Snake can play the flute. Fun stuff.

The reading by Snake is the early draft of a poem that I wrote in Port Townsend. I condensed the poem into my personal blog's first haiku Weft and Warp. The name of the piece came from this reference, with a little joke about how Homestar Runner might pronounce it.

At the end of a seven hour session, we ended up with a tune in a pretty listenable place. Give Weftovers a try. Happy listening!

Here's a little peek of what the track looks like under the hood in Ableton Live 8: