Adventures of a Shoegaze Cellist
Moments of quiet technicolor – TOTW 3-1-10 by ooray
Saw “A Single Man” this weekend, and was greatly affected by its haunting and elegaic tone…I suppose some will see it mostly as a perfume ad, but for me it had its moments of beauty mixed with painful clarity. Anyhow, it put me in an elegaic mood as well, so I suppose this track is a continuation of that feeling.
Back again with track #51 after a two week break. I feel a bit more refreshed and ready to start making more music! This one is an experiment with more percussive sounds out of the cello using col legno (beating the strings with the wooden part of the bow) with some spectral delay. A little 8-bit synth accompaniment as well.
Blackheart – TOTW 1-11-10 by ooray
Experiment with two parallel loopers – one looper is guitar through harmonizer, and the other is uneffected cello. I like the result – this piece comes in waves and feels more dynamic than my usual looper pieces.
Well, it’s been 48 weeks (which means 46 tracks, since I took two weeks off) since I started this track of the week project and it’s time to reflect on everything that’s passed. Here are my favorite 15 tracks from the year, including some that I thought were a little overlooked. I’m hoping to have this collection mastered and released as an album sometime in the future if people are interested.
But before I comment on individual tracks, I’d like to talk about the project as a whole. Inspired by my friend Marc Fisher’s dust breeding blog, I started this project with a few goals in mind:
1) Keep up my improv skills so they wouldn’t be rusty for when shows rolled around
2) Push myself to learn new techniques and skills on the cello
3) As a means for promotion and recognition.
In terms of goals 1 and 2, I think the project has succeeded. In terms of 3, I am thankful for everyone who has listened and commented on this project. I wish I was able to comment more on the individual tracks and improvisations and what they mean to me, but it takes a long time for me to reflect on what I’ve done. I realize that this is not exactly conducive to the transparency the best blogs and projects have, but my project is what it is. In the future, I’ll try and comment more about details if people are interested.
What else have I learned from this project?
1) Improvisational discipline. Being forced to improvise a new track every week has done wonders for my writer’s block. I start something, and don’t worry about it. It’s made me less obsessive about each detail and think more about what kinds of musical structures my music fits into. Another one of the wonderful things about this project is that it’s made art a daily part of my life during stressful times and helped as a release for that.
2) Do it for yourself. Like I said, I am thankful for everyone who’s listened and commented. But honestly, there are so many other worthy people on the internet to listen to with similar projects, that I feel a little lost in the shuffle if I think about my music in that context. So, I am learning not to sweat it too much. If people like what I do, that’s wonderful, but it’s not a necessity for me to continue. Not all of us have audiences like Robert Haenke or Taylor Dupree’s projects.
3) Always be ready to collaborate. I’ve pared my live setup down to a few minimal pieces of gear, which has enabled me to swoop in and collaborate with anyone who’s willing. One of my favorite tracks this year was a collaboration between unrecognizable now and myself, and it wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t all ready to collaborate.
In re-listening to some of these improvisations, some seem a bit shrill and unfinished; some seem like much of the same, but I think these are my favorite 15 moments from this year, organized into a coherent collection.
Here are some notes on individual tracks that I thought were overlooked.
Andalucia: pure, unadulterated cello looping over a simple guitar part. I still like how coherent this one sounds. It sounds almost mideval to me, which is probably the result of listening to the Tous les matin du monde soundtrack too much.
Sun spots: this is the fruit of a collaboration between myself and unrecognizable now. I’ve played with them for a number of shows, which has been really great, but this was a pure improvisation between the three of us, with Marc looping everyone and making it all cohere. I’ve always felt we were pretty good at being restrained and listening to each other, with no one calling all the shots, and this feels like the culmination of two years of playing together.
Sleep: this was a very simple two chord guitar track, run through a multitude of pitch shifters. I really like it because it feels simple and pure.
Frog-chorus: this started with a simple idea: run guitar through Marc’s granular plugin and emerged as something that I was quite pleased with. Especially like the tonal shift in the middle.
Chimes at midnight, Scenes from a Vitrine, Oo-year: Some of my favorite tracks were a combination of guitar and cello. These were three of my favorites in that the guitar provides a nice improvisational structure for the cello.
Track 04: this is an improv from my favorite show this year, my show at the Dunes. It starts out with the cello run through my TC voiceworks for some choral style harmonization and ramps up to a shoegazerish conclusion from there. This was a really wonderful night for me; lots of friends and family came to see me play and it was one of the best audiences I’ve ever had.
Again, I hope everyone has a great new year and here’s to the past and future tracks of the week!
Itzscho – TOTW 11-09-09 by ooray
Track of the week this week is some shoegazer lapsteel.
Huygens-principle – TOTW 10-19-09 by ooray
Track this week is all about the refraction of light…I am practicing for a show on October 28 (details to follow) and this track is what resulted…mostly uneffected cello, with some spectral delay.
Long Distance Sitar – TOTW 10-12-09 by ooray
A drone track with a sitar-like sound this week.
Fallen equinox – TOTW 9-21-09 (Unrecnow + gasp + oo-ray) by ooray
Here’s a track that consists of some live playing by Unrecnow + gasp + oo-ray mixed with some further sounds by Marc.
Sun Spots (ooray + unrecnow collab) – TOTW 8-24-09 by ooray
This track is the fruit of a collaboration with Matt and Marc of Unrecognizable Now (Marc’s original post about this track). I’ve been going over to their practice space on sundays and improvising with them, which is fun and forces me to keep up my improv and collaborative chops.
One thing I most like playing with Matt and Marc is how well they listen to each other…so I do my best to listen and contribute accordingly.
Also, very cool, James Fahey, aka The Ambienteer made a 56 minute stretch remix of this track which can be found here: http://ambienteer.com/index.php/2009/08/21/sun-spots. Definitely a relaxing, gorgeous listen.
Across the Volga – TOTW 8-17-09 by ooray
Guitar improv this week…lots of pixellated sounds, and dirgey as well.