#82

I hear you. We’re in the art world, so we must take on the concepts from that world in addition to whatever else we discuss. I guess.

Or not. We can put on our straw hat and head outside to play the songs our grandparents played, on our washtub bass, in peace, free of all these uptown concepts to distract us.

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#83

I’m real sorry you fellas are burdened with that art stuff, it must be rough. (spits)

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#84

@deltasleep I’m fascinated by your avatar. Feels so on-topic.

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#85

I was wondering, does any one know the process behind creating the high pitched synthesised sounds in the track ‘John Taylor’s Month Away’?

Timestamps: 3.20, 3.50, 4.00ish etc

I’ve been thinking of sounds similar to these for quite a while and have had the name ‘streamers’ associated with them for a while now in my head, but not sure from where I got this. Perhaps someone else here knows a more common name for them, or one I haven’t just made up!

Always thought they were beautiful ways of making subtle transitions but haven’t quite been able to get there with making them. I did make some other cool things along the way though, so all is not lost.

#86

Hopkins is fond of eventide processors which have a lot of pitch shifting algorithms, custom plug-in chains, and Roland SH-09. I’m guessing those are involved in creating the sound.

Interesting interview with him here: https://www.xlr8r.com/gear/in-the-studio-jon-hopkins

#87

The sound at 3:20 sounds like a concertina/accordion to me rather than something synthesized.

#88

Ah yeah, it’s not that sound I’m on about. I gave each timestamp with a few seconds ‘count-in’ so that the sound didn’t just play the moment people skip to there.

#89

I’ve probably read just about every interview by this point aha! Researching him for part of my dissertation :slight_smile:

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#90

Look into Leafcutter Johns discography, first and second albums on planet mu should be of interest, haven’t necessarily kept up in recent years.

Also, if you can find it, ‘Spiritual Sci-fi’ by Kurt Weisman on Important recs is a gleaming example that is fairly unknown.

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#91

Hi,
I believe there are more people than me making both electronic compositions and traditional songwriting, maybe even blending the two. So I figured it would be worth starting a thread and giving those thoughts/discussion a home.

I’m using ”folk” as a tag to imply conventional song structures – verse, chorus, bridge/middle eight within the limits and constraints of a “3-minute song”. Yet, I’d be interested to hear about songwriting + experimentation in any genre – soul, pop, rnb, rock, country etc.

The term Deep Folk I nicked from Ben Watt (Everything but the girl) who has created a few mixtapes called Deep Folk where he mixed folk songs with field recordings and tape echo.

A few threads before have touched on the subject:

To start it off:
Sometimes I find it challenging trying to blend the folky with electronics. If I start recording/producing the track and go too far with traditional instruments like guitars/bass etc I sometimes find it difficult to make the electronic sounds fit. It’s as if they are intruding. It might be easier perhaps, if I create some kind of electronic/experimental foundation and then create the “conventional acoustic order” on top. What’s your experience?

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#92

Thanks for drawing attention to this discussion. The following may or may not be worth the reader’s time. :no_mouth:

Expressivity has become an issue for me in recent years. I’ve done instrumental electronics in the style often tagged online with e.g. the trio of ‘ambient’, ‘experimental’ and ‘electroacoustic’. Those words are terrifically broad, but we have an idea of the foremost sound that they happen to have come to characterise. I’ve used lots of choral samples and field recordings and other textures. I still come at doing music with such material in mind, but I don’t know how to use it to express some themes - parenthood, emotional insecurities, other personal-life stuff that I feel increasingly compelled to vent somewhere - to my satisfaction.

When I’ve made instrumental music it’s partly been a kind of yearning for some impersonal organic texture, for a total absorption in some idealised (and totally unrealistic) macro-level natural landscape. A bit like sitting somewhere and just listening and sensing (even though the music doesn’t ‘sound’ like that at all). Whether as method and metaphor that’s cool or foolish or problematically flawed, it doesn’t so much get at that personal-life stuff. In other words, sticking in a few lyrics obviously tends to establish a closer narrative relationship to this or that memory or message than does simply telling (oneself or others) that this drone track is ‘about’ something. So I’m turning to lyrics and singing (which I’m not very good at but who cares) and am trying to bring about some kind of middle ground between musical material as I know how to make it and something with lyrical significance. I think that area leans more towards the former, as so far I’ve structured songs fairly freely. There’s also an undeniably vain thrill in considering myself a singer-songwriter. I’m an impatient amateur, but in truth I’m the same with the instrumental stuff, merely a bit more experienced.

In short, I find it enjoyable to be applying my preferred processes to songwriting, something less familiar.

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#93

There is a whole Global Bass genre which I would recommend you looking into.
One of my friends is a fairly recognised artist within that community in Hungary. Send me a PM if you want me to put you in touch with him.
Edit: I just saw that the post is from 2018 hahah

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#94

It’s interesting. I come from the the opposite direction. Pretty comfortable with writing a campfire song, but really puzzled right now about my drone-project in VCV-rack.

For me electronic music has presented opportunities to try out lots of different sounds and genres. Techno, house, lofi-beats etc and now perhaps ambient - but my longterm goal is to come up with fusions that I find interesting. Creating new connections.

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#95

I find it helpful to frame this as an orchestration problem when blurring genre boundaries, rather than as a traditional v electronic instrument problem. Pairing sounds and/or instruments together in a way that works for the song/piece is always a complex puzzle. But when we learn to write/produce within an idiom or genre, habits and conventions can do the work of solving that puzzle for us. To me when sounds/instruments are overcrowding each other or don’t gel, it helps to work from what role they each play, and to find ways to make space for each through bringing more contrast and purpose to their respective role.

I find listening to composers talk about those problems especially illuminating for myself. Not just ‘academic’ composers, also film music composers: disciplines where people are required to be reflective about orchestration, and to communicate their choices verbally.

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#96

Thanks, those are some great tips. Thinking of each arrangement as voices (like actors in a play) with different roles I’m sure could clarify a lot of things. To identify the role for each instrument beforehand is probably the way to go. Too often I tend to compose as I record.

I realize another thing that could possibly help is to allow my electronic instruments to “move some air” as they are recorded. Send the sources through amps or speakers and mic them up. Or of course reamping when the mix isn’t working out.

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#97

In Gowan Ring spent some time in the cross-genre you are interested in, with some interesting results.

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#98

hey, pretty sure that Colleen album is 100% samples as it was before she started using her own instruments. I think its just lots of effects, particulary pitch shifting, time stretching, reversing. You can hear it quite well in the track ‘Your Heart On Your Sleeve’ which samples the intro of ‘here she comes now’ by Velvet Underground. Early Caribou (under the name Manitoba) is another good example of a fusion imo. Also early Four Tet!

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#99

At the risk of being self-promoting, I had a project back around 2005 called Rivers and Skies that was done while I was pretty heavily in this folktronica headspace. There are two releases on the streaming services. First one is eponymous and second called Dose. We never got the bandcamp thing together although I would still like to. Edit: the first one is the first CD I ever released (of only two total…)

The other thing I’d recommend is a blog called Microphones in the Trees. microphones in the trees: July 2007

Their range is broader than just folktronica but lots of great stuff to get turned onto there.

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#100

My friend Phil Legard who is a lecturer in music at Leeds Beckett university and a member of Hawthonn has written some interesting stuff on electronic, folk and their crossover.

Phil Legard - Leeds Beckett University

Hawthonn – 21st Century Moon Musick (wordpress.com)

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#101

Gosh, that takes me back to my undergraduate days. To that blog I owe my discovery of Éric Cordier’s album Breizhiselad. The electroacoustic treatment of choirs has never since stopped being amazing to me.

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