Blackbird Stirb Endlich!
a classic Beatles song re-interpreted
I don't have a specific method for making music. Not yet. I call my music experimental because that's exactly how it is created. I start typically with nothing more than a single idea, image, or random sound. This song began, believe it or not, with a recording of the Beatle's song, Blackbird.
I don't use generative AI for any of my art, but I do use multiple software apps that manipulate sound. Because I like to incorporate some randomness into most of my visual and sound art, I especially like to use a few apps that are not very good at what they claim to be able to do.
One such (ipad) app is called Scaler 3, which includes an audio transcription feature. It can listen to and record any song, like Blackbird, and provide a score of the song as a long chord sequence. The result is consistently, horrifically, bad.
Scaler then allows me to play back the sampled music in a variety of simulated instruments, all of which, also sound bad. Here's the first several bars of Blackbird, as interpreted by Scaler 3, played back as an acoustic guitar:
This becomes layer 1 on my new song. For track 2, I'll layer on the same sequence played back as a twangy electric guitar:
I use many layers of sound in my songs, usually at least a couple dozen. Here are staccato symphonic strings of the sequence:
And a cheesy synth:
After laying down all these layers on top of each other, I'll then add several different effects to each layer, from reverb, to delays, and lots of heavy distortion. The song is now transforming from really bad simulated music into the realm of noise.
I also use an app that creates static sounds:
But the real champion in this process is what comes next. My favorite device is La Bruja, a custom made squawk box that is hard to describe. Here's how the guy who built it introduces it, "This machine is wild. Chaotic witchcraft. Screams and wails, bleeps and bloops, even some living creaturesque type business..."
For now, La Bruja is the common denominator used in most of my music. I can get lost for 30-40 minutes turning its dials and knobs generating long sequences of hysterical noise. Here's a sample with the volume turned down:
And I'm still just getting started. I'll spare you more clips, but I continue to add layers of many different sounds, such as percussion tracks, choral passages, my own recorded voice, pots and pans from my kitchen, water fountains, clips from movies, urban field recordings, radio commercials from my childhood, early americana music from historic public domain collections, and even childish things... which reminds me...
When I was an early teen, I placed a tape recorder on the floor outside the closed bathroom door and recorded the sound of my sister peeing. She was angry, I laughed, but then felt bad about it. It should not surprise you to learn that my audio collection contains sounds of myself sneezing, coughing, and yes, pissing.
I've got the shortcut button on my iphone configured to instantly start recording audio any time I hear anything at all that strikes me.
I believe in subliminal messaging. Many of the layers on my songs are not consciously legible, but the sound waves that they consist of still enter your brain.
Here's what all of the above clips stacked together sounds like with just a little bit of distortion:
Here's the full finished track, which may sound nothing like any of the above clips, but all of those, and a bunch of others, are embedded within it. If you listen with headphones, which I recommend, you'll also detect some stereo effects with sounds bouncing back and forth between left and right.
I consider this music for meditation. I like to lay on my back on the floor and listen to a few tracks before going to bed. Noise music, especially Harsh Wall Noise, which this track is a variant of, doesn't have to be played loudly. I want it just loud enough that I can hear most of the subtleties, but not so loud that my ears ring afterward. The English title of this track is, "Blackbird, Just Die Already."
I have tinnitus. Bad tinnitus. I hear noise in my ears 24/7, and when I'm anxious or stressed, it can be excruciating. Listening to this style of music cancels it out in the most beautiful way. For me, this is music for meditation.
I started making this kind of music on October 8, 2024, and my first few albums are explicitly ant-fascist. Some of my recent stuff is less explicitly so, but all of it is a form of protest music. This is me reacting to current global circumstances. You can find all my published music on Bandcamp.
