More on phonographic glue, elements and the whole (part I)

I felt a real craving for beat-making today. After practicing some bluegrass rolls on banjo and fingerpicking on acoustic guitar (because some of the existing/new song ideas will need it), and after playing the latest Westside Gunn (Supreme Clientele, 2018) and Evidence (Weather Or Not, 2018) albums—both receiving best hip-hop albums of the year nods by various rap tastemakers—I guess I felt somewhat (too?) drawn into the experiences of the...

On drum layering: programmed and live

Listening to the two tunes produced two days ago (6/8 Brass Hit and 6/8 Psychedelic—all working titles) following the Americana excursion, I’m noticing again something I have been meaning to note down (I’ll use the latter track as the case in point here...) There is a discernible ‘edge’ or impact I am perceiving (to the sample-based aesthetic), when programmed and live drums are audible as parallel, synchronised streams. A bit like...

On signal-flow colouration layering (as phonographic glue)

Christmas Day today which meant I had a whole day for recording. I thought it was a good time to express some of my Americana ideas which have been festering throughout my last semester of musical osmosis (during this PhD, I have been spending an average of about six months obsessing over a particular style, listening to it almost exclusively and learning or focusing on relevant instruments to perform it—the last few months have been...