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Tuesday, 7 December 2004
Rework ::
In October and November I reworked 4 of my tracks in progress. One needs the drums redone (again) and I’m aiming to let someone else bring a fresh approach to it. There’s another track I spent a lot of time on between starting it in January and finishing composing it in March. I had been procrastinating on working it; it took so long to compose and is still far from finished. The basic track, which is near-constant 16th-notes in ever-shifting meters, is simultaneously a flawed foundation and much of the soul of the piece. What to do?
The problem parts have layers of orchestration built by feel on top of the odd meters. What’s a dropped 16th note here and there? Well, that’s the heart of the problem. Imagine trying to bring in real string players to overdub! There’s no click and the rhythm can only be felt after long practice; it’s too convoluted to notate.
The solution seems to be to line up the arranged parts into straight meters, and shift the original track, adding and dropping occasional 16ths so the accents still land on downbeats. I tried re-playing the original track or replacing it in places, but then the piece loses the main element of spontaneity and vitality; it becomes too block-y. The carefully-built structure was shaped to an imperfect foundation, but turns out to be relatively easy to move. So far.
I just realized that this is pretty much the opposite of an approach David Torn described in an interview: he builds a composed structure (though using improvised elements), all for the purpose of creating an environment for creative improvising. I’ve started with a naked improvisation, inferred a structure from it (complete with developing themes), and amplified that structure with composed parts and further improvised bits.
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