Have now created my bandcamp page for Eigengrau where all my own personal and collaborative music work will be uploaded, you can also choose to buy my music from this site where you will then be able to download high quality sound files of my work. This helps keep me motivated and able to fund future sound projects. Will be uploading music throughout the day and whenever any new music is made.
Eigengrau
Eigengrau - “Soundscape” (Live mix from concert)
Here is the track I performed at LSO St Luke’s tenth anniversary birthday concert, alongside an orchestral ensemble from LSO soundhub and Ayanna Witter-Johnson. The track was simply titled “Soundscape” on the set list.
Concert Tracks
I got the multitracks back from my concert from Monday, so I will be mixing them a little and uploading within the next few days. They sound amazing and can’t wait to share them.
Eigengrau - Forest
This is a soundscape/collage which I created using samples and clips of old projects I have recorded, and consists mostly of field recordings, and prepared guitar (miccing of vibrations of body), as well as miccing up of KORG monotron synth, these clips have been sequenced together to create this sound collage, which was then poorly and quickly mixed, and submitted at the last second for my college music project unit assignment. (Now re-uploaded with better mix)
LSO: Present. Curate. Collaborate. Innovate. St Lukes, London.
The concert went very well, I believe me and griezelig pulled off our piece without any hassles or problems, and I liked the sound we were achieving. The other performers were great and I very much liked my soundscape improvisation with the other ensemble performers. Here is pics of my set up. Will post audio and video once I get the multi tracks.
Eigengrau - Echech
I like to let myself believe that every now and then sound should be free, un-orchestrated. Too much energy and effort is spent trying to contain sound and give it structure and create an end
product.This is very much nothing but free noise, un-composed sound, you will hear frequencies from my monotron delay synthesizer fed into a rode NT1A microphone, put through a particle emitter, and a bass guitar in endless delay feedback. Listen as the frequencies freely dance together, no time was lost or spent making this, I did not create it, I merely took a break from being the one in control, the composer, and simply recorded what was there.
Eigengrau & YYV Updates
# Eigengrau Updates #
Eigengrau - Neutron : adding finishing touches, fairly complete in terms of structure and sound, although may not upload.
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Eigengrau - Ashtray : not yet started this, but it is going to be the title of the next track I make for sure and will involve some kind of free electro-acoustic performance.
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Eigengrau - Awakening I & II : if you didn’t noticed I pulled the recording I uploaded the other day, it was foolish of me to upload it, it’s nowhere near done or close to a decent composition, it was just a take of sound exploration, and I found some good sounds, so I wish to develop on this and build something more mature.
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Eigengrau - In the static grey rain there is noise : the title is very much undecided, it is a simple track, just a field recording I made the other day in the rain of a slightly busy road, with just an electric piano composition played over it. I’ve done a few takes, just going to keep improvising and exploring notes I like and patching it into the track.
# YYV Updates #
Griezelig : I know that he always have some amazing tracks somewhere in the works..
YYV : When we have passed onto a brief quiet period in our existential nightmare i’m sure we will get together soon to record or improvise some ghastly horror straight from the nightmare itself.
# Other Updates #
All other projects that have been listed on this site prior to 14/02/13 have been suspended, I have moved on musically and want to focus on a specific sound right now, that will no doubt evolve over the years, but I want to mature more as an artist and musician, and not dedicate a whole project to experimentation and sketches of all kind (koma7) so i’m laying the projects to rest indefinitely, although no past work will be deleted. (interestingly enough, over a hundred project files will soon be uploaded to a collaboration community for their use in whatever, from this maybe I will be able to finish some track and share them here)
# E N D : T R A N S M I S S I O N #
Awakening
It is simply amazing the kinds of the sounds you can get off any stringed instruments when put through some creative processing, got a twelve minute or so ambient sound scape done that sounds enchanting and quite creepy, but some how elating. All just from a couple of strings from my bass guitar. You can just squeeze so much dynamics and texture from strings, you can use the same note over and over again and it can express so many different things. Will upload the piece later.
Method
I have a track I seem to have committed myself to these past few days, which is quite unusual of me, as I rarely work on a track for more than a day, which I feel is very good in that i’m learning some patience when it comes to composing, I think mainly because my approach to composing has changed quite a bit since I first started making music, in where I was relying on moods and ideas to get going, and focusing a little too much on structure and how things would get organised, ultimately what prevented me from being able to come up with anything in the end.
So I decided to withdraw to practising and exploring various influences and such. When it comes to playing keyboard, I generally practice by picking notes that all sound good together, generally enough to make up a nice open scale, and then I will just generally practice and improvise around that scale, whether they’re ones i’ve made myself (eg. not found out which scale it is..) or others ones. In this freedom and my practice in improvising, I decided to give composing a go again and abandon most reason and thought, and just get a nice sound going, simple textual loop or drone, pick a scale that works with it, and then just keep practising over it like I have been doing with this current track, until you get all these nice little ideas blended together to give off all kinds of moods and feelings.
At the moment it’s still quite unorganised, but it’s a start, and i’m finding it easier when practising within a scale to pick out melodies and chords that sound good, and making them the hook to the track, with this I can then structure the track a lot easier.
With method of composing I am benefiting a lot from the keyboard practice and also in being able to compose new ideas through actual performance opposed to thought, which generally tends complicates most things in life.
Hopefully i’ll have it up soon enough.
Walking the Eigen Path \ notes
3:28AM - College in a couple of hours, i’m not particularly tired, but opposed to sit around the rest of the night or lay in bed regretfully till I pass out and wake up late, i’d rather spend the night exploring musical ideas and getting some stuff recorded down.
Headed on down to the shops to get myself some milk so I can keep myself supplied with some coffee, also listening to the ambient surrounding, remembering one of the key things I identified when I first started going deep into exploring music, that is, music is a journey, a ride, like a train ride, that is, you have your beginning, point A, this is where your journey begins, can be any frequency, any set of notes, melody or noise, then there is the base of which you stand or move on, this would be a train, a car, or if you’re walking, your footsteps, now in music you travel from A to B to C to D, maybe even make a trip back, it’s a journey, and whereas what’s around you will change there will be that ever present base on which you stand on, in music this is one thing that is constant, a beat, a sound, it connects you to the journey, the music, it holds you in, most music will keep this constant, some music can throw you off your base flying, this can create an unnerving, displaced feeling within music, this is often a great creative technique.
No trip, however well planned, can go exactly how it’s planned, nobody can account for every detail in this world, so walking down the road to go to the shops to buy some milk is your goal, and then to return, but what you don’t realise or never truly anticipate is how it’s gonna play out, you’re on your way and a car passes by, fade in noise, fade out, these are the elements of your journey, your music, the birds chirping 3 notes, fade out to settle on the textual dynamic layer of noise ever present in our atmosphere, our air.
Music is a journey, no matter how well composed, calculated, it is a journey the moment you begin to the point where you end, the performance, and no performance is ever the same. I want to improvise and build a journey, a soundscape of which all the elements play out and create the music of the world, where all the layers fade in and out of each other, 3 notes on the keyboard are played here, to fade out to uncertainty, only the surrounding elements of this unpredictable journey can predict what comes next, what the artist, the musician, the person on this journey hears, sees, feels, bring in a movement, a rising note played on a synthesizer tense, it hangs in the air uncertainly, before dropping and withering away, 5 notes on the keyboard react.
Walking The Eigen Path, walking your own path as a musician, an artist, on the artists neverending journey of self exploration, of ones inner most feelings and thoughts and all the external elements of the world, everything is a single uncoordinated performance, every sound, noise, texture sings the song of now now now, the past is but the echo echo echo but still part of now you watch the tail slide by to nothing, good bye, no such thing as the future, it is but the energy and the motivation that keeps the journey going, keeps the elements brewing, the future is never what you hear but what you might hear, point B, point C, point D, but never point stop. No stopping full stop sound is constant, the journey is constant, no one can say the journey ends, only you can say, and hear and feel your own path, your own journey, walking the Eigen path, walking your own path as a musician, an artist, on the artists neverending journey of self exploration, of ones inner most feelings and thoughts and all the external elements of the world, everything is a single uncoordinated performance, every sound, noise, texture sings the song of now now now.
~zoahk
