A song built in the mixing studio from individually recorded notes A, C and E performed in various octaves and tempi. Voice, keyboards, guitar, violin, tabla. Minimalism taken beyond its limit. A first part from this 4-part piece.
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Story behind the song
Normally, a composition would contain several tracks performed by individual instruments, with every instrument playing its pattern, or melody. I became interested in melodies played by several instruments, wherein each consecutive note is produced by a different instrument. The Carrier of Time is the first in what will probably become a series of pieces exploring this premise.
Following a six-note intro that states, in a way, what the piece is about, the mix is pattern-based. In line with the above considerations, most patterns were built using notes from several instruments, making for a sound of a lunatic chamber orchestra. Occasionally, an effect was added to this note or that, giving it a unique character.
In the first section, 30 measures of a repeated 2-note pattern create a 2-beat rhythm. Additional patterns, also built from separate notes, are right-aligned, respectively, with every 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 10th, 15th and 30th occurrence of the main pattern, creating an ambiguous polyrhythmic structure, in which every fragment is a result of a planned coincidence. (Right-aligned here refers to an alignment based on the endings of patterns.) The additional patterns are not really in time with the main pattern either.
The second sections root is double-time, relying on a 4-note base pattern. Added is spoken voice, which begins to tell the story (see the lyrics).
The third section moves on to a 3-beat rhythm, and the fourth a 6-beat one, following the same principle. (Only the first three sections are included in the excerpt presented.) Next, the fifth section is in 5 beat, and the sixth in 10 beat, which is concluded with a brief reprise of the original 2-beat section.
This composition took about 15 hours to build in ProTools (at Trakworx in San Francisco). This time, from scratch can be applied in a rather literal sense. It would probably take twice as long to score, should anyone ever be tempted to perform it live.
Lyrics
Onto one side, that goes onto one side. Onto another, this goes onto another. Onto the middle, middly meddling into the custard-like structure. Travel along narrow corridor. Look to left, see no future. Look to right, see no past. See travel, and again and more so. See more, and travel at the speed of light. You travel, you a brain cell!
Again think of what had not think before. Again structure in bubbling mass of pre-proclaimed nonsense. You travel, you a brain cell! Again remember don't know what. Who cares. Blink: house on the pond. Blink: large people's people. Blink: ball jump away. Seen this before, know this already. Where?
Comes the Carrier of Time, stops clocks, hangs dirty software hardware underware on tired index fingers of hands. Time will be dirty now, covered with mud. You travel through time as through dirty water. To one side, that and this. To other side, this and that. Onto the middly meddle, who cares . . .
Carrier of Time sent by rhinos. Who rhinos? They the ones who eaten you. How can forget? No, Carrier of Time no sent by rhinos. He Himself His own Carrier, and of Time. Set by rules from aforementioned categories, and a posteriori handicapped like dogs with no legs. He like dogs with no tails, like tails with no dogs, or elsehow, the other way around! He set and condemned by you who is a brain cell. So fly through time and space, carrying the Carrier and other aforementioned categories. Who cares . . .
You bump into a bump, like who knows so . . . Once remember, but now no more, how can recall. Know one thing: forget the next. Know the next: forget the one. You fly, shift, puzzled question mark handicapped like brain cell with no brain. Maybe should talk to someone, like the Carrier of Time. You the Carrier of Time, how else can be so? Carry it on your shoulders, and carry it in your stomach. Stop by the edge of a time-road and reflect. Scrutinize yourself, upon completion scrutinize again. Dirty vomitware on the palms of imaginary clocks, little tiny finger on the faces of imaginary watches snapped from out of non-reality and dropped into non-reality again. Check time by the Fahrenheit scale, measure in grams and miles. Who cares . . .
You carry time upon your face, like a scoundrel. Like an old beauty lost in time. One reads traces of former past and pre-predicted pre-future, distinguished by a dot of present and non-present. You reflect, stop again. You brain cell.
Comes the Carrier of Time, tells you the story of adhesive people.
"Once upon a time, there was a planet inside a chestnut. Open like a music box, but only from outside. So didn't know, perceived themself as big big grown up world. So once drilled a hole in chestnut, saw what's outside. Since then affected by peculiar allergy of adhesion, or could be a virus so. Them rhinos come and mutate you into present form to be food. You bigger now than your ancestors before you. Bigger, to more food!
"But where did the rhinos come from?" You inquire, you brain cell.
"They came from everywhere."
Travel along, move straight. Look forward, turn upward. See clearly, breath deeply. Think slowly, twang readily. Who?
You a brain cell.
Think concentrate, no no think concentrate. Here come rhinos riding on the shoulders of the Carrier of Time. In his hands paths of centuries. In one of his eyes the past, in other future. How can distinguish? You travel along, move straight, who cares . . . You brain cell, no stopping no more!
Comes now the Carrier of Time, tells you the story of the Sky.
"Sky upon once become the supreme. Upon it, everything else is dependent. Without it, no much more to proceed or to establish. This to be the essential rule, like one of those forgotten upon your awakening. No awakening no more, sleep forever. This design of the Sky. Who dreams longer, receives more favorable dreamings, more pleasant dreamlings, more suitable dreamdillings. Who wants escape, or hunts for the Texture of t
