recorded 20130902

active


elements used:


bass1_b2_078a_cinematic (3 iterations)
bass2_b2_078a_cinematic
beat4_d2_078a_cinematic (2 iterations)
beat3_d_078a_cinematic
beat1_d2_078a_cinematic
gtr1_c2_078a_cinematic (2 iterations)
gtr2_c2_078a_cinematic (2 iterations)
key1_c2_078a_cinematic (2 iterations)
pian2_c2_078a_cinematic (2 iterations)
pian3_c2_078a_cinematic
pian4_c2_078a_cinematic
orgn1_c2_078a_cinematic (2 iterations)
horn4_I4_120d_funk
horn3_I4_120d_funk
horn2_I4_120d_funk
horn1_I4_120d_funk
syn2_I4_125a_Dance (2 iterations)
syn1_I4_125a_Dance (2 iterations)


this piece, whose title is of course, taken from a joni mitchell song, “shades of scarlett conquering” from her classic 1975 album “the hissing of summer lawns”, really and truly surprised me. it started out life as a new track exploring the “cinematic” sound pak; but then a chance event changed everything.

early on, when there were only a few elements in place, I decided to see what the song would sound like if I added horn parts – I very quickly snagged four unique horn parts from the “funk” pak, and randomly, added them into the piece in reverse order – horn 4, horn 3, horn 2, horn 1.

and that was it – I realised what had happened – even though they were never meant to even be there – the horns had to stay – because they utterly and very suddenly, transformed this unfinished, uncertain “cinematic” piece into a piece of real jazz – which recalled to my mind, the jazziness of joni mitchell’s “the hissing of summer lawns” album – and before the track was even finished, it hit me that it must, must be called “cinematic lovers sway” – a title which I hope, so elegantly captures the jazzy feel of the piece – taken from one of my very, very favourite tracks from the album, the beautifully understated “shades of scarlett conquering” – wherein, “cinematic lovers sway”…

so the piece went in an unexpected direction, I added a few more carefully chosen elements to flesh it out, but basically, I knew it was done – and this is one of those pieces that I could really just listen to forever…partially because once again, mixtikl had surprised the holy heck out of me – by effortlessly creating a piece of real jazz – which is totally down to the musical quality of those four discrete “funk” horn parts, which just changed everything so irrevocably, but also, brought me my first piece of “mixtikl jazz” – I love it. I felt really blessed that day, because OK, I’ve done a lot of ambient pieces; a few “proggy” pieces or “rock” pieces, but I am not sure it would have occurred to me to try jazz with mixtikl.

as always, it did a stupendous job of it, and if you had asked me at any time in the last 20 or 30 years, “do you think that some day soon, there will be a generative musical tool that will be able to create intelligent, human-sounding music, that will allow you to set up elements and parameters, push play, and beautiful, perfectly formed jazz music will emerge?” I would have said no, absolutely not, OK, maybe they can make generative music, but, it will be limited, and it will always sound machine-made, not human-made…

how very, very wrong I would have been! of course, I have a distinct advantage in that I’ve been a musician now for many, many years, and I have an almost instinctive ability to select and arrange the mixtikl elements so that they sound pleasing to the ear, or rather, I think, it’s probably more about knowing what NOT to do – what won’t or never will work, what will sound awkward – so I do believe that the musical skill level of the operator has a direct effect on the quality of the pieces – the more musical knowledge and experience you have, the easier it will be to make mixtikl sound “good”. or so it seems to me.

there is also the fact that the makers of mixtikl have gone out of their way to create samples that do work well together, even “cross-pak” – some of my pieces have sounds taken from perhaps five or six completely different paks, yet, it still all hangs together – and that helps a lot. If the samples were poor, and not well thought out, then no amount of musical skill would be able to save the resultant pieces…so a lot of the credit must also go to the designers of mixtikl itself, and the staff who selected / created the samples, and worked out how they all “went together” so effortlessly and so very musically.

all this brings me to what is probably one of most sophisticated mixtikl arrangements – “cinematic lovers sway” – from the oddly syncopated drum break that appears every four bars, to the reverse-order horn parts, to the tinkling pianos to the almost guitar-craft-like guitar parts, while there are not that many different elements in the piece, the selection of them and the way they all work together – the drums, the bass, underpinning a complex overlay of piano, horns, and guitars – the droning guitars remind me ever so slightly of king crimson’s “one time“ from the “thrak” album – and that mad, jazz drum riff is very bill bruford-like as well.

working with elements with this super high quality musical DNA, has given me a piece of music of awe-inspiring beauty – thanks to the miracle that is mixtikl – I never dreamed I could create a piece this intense, this complex, but that hangs together so, so well – and especially, never dreamed it could be made with a generative music application on a tablet !!

unbelievable, but utterly real and utterly true.