Music • Sound • Video • Art

Just wanted to mention very quickly that Adam Fielding has released his CD Distant Activity on Magnatune.

Adam Fielding Distant Activity

I don’t know Adam personally, but I am familiar with his work for Jeremy Janzen over at Nucleus SoundLab. Adam contributed a number combinator patches to both Viral Outbreak and ReCombination. His combinators are a marvel of design — beautiful sounding and very functional. (You can see some of them in Jeremy’s video demos of both refills.)

Distant Activity is not my “usual cup of tea” as my personal tastes tend toward instrumental tracks (whatever genre), and this is mostly a quasi – ambient (inadequate term please suggest one), somewhat beat-oriented collection of songs with well-crafted vocals. It’s less ambient than I would have expected based on my limited knowledge of Adam, but this excerpt from his bio on Magnatune highlights how limited that knowledge was:

“Although Adam’s earlier tracks were geared more towards industrial and VGM styles while taking an interest in metal and post-hardcore music, his style would later evolve to encompass a wide variety of sub-genres including dance, ambient, synthpop, downtempo, breaks and neo-classical styles while retaining his unique production style and melodic focus.”

Obviously, a multi-talented guy. You’ll find the player on the next page. I like track 6 in particular. (Then again, it’s the only pure instrumental track so it figures.)

“Practice.”

It’s an old joke, but one that has some truth to it.

After 20+ years with various and sundry keyboards, I finally took the plunge a couple of years ago and started taking formal piano instruction. (If you are interested in music instruction and you live in the DC-MD-VA area, you really owe it to yourself to check out the Levine Music School.) I had always been a proponent of avoiding the “straightjacket of orthodoxy” and discovering music creation on my own or in collaboration with like-minded individuals. I’ve come to the conclusion that it is easier to break the rules if you first know them. And besides, for my personal interests, some of the rules are helpful!

My focus is really on developing my finger dexterity so as to make it easier to write pieces at the piano with more spontaneity. I also am trying to develop a much more formal understanding of theory and harmony as I have aspirations to one day work with film.

But you got to start somewhere, and if you want to also, then Hanon, Hanon Revisited, and Beyer should be your new friends.

The issue of course is finding the time. Between family, the day job, stuff for the blog, and (let’s not forget) my latest project tracks*, I’ve got to find the time to practice. Requires a purposefulness that is … well … more intense.

There are a few mac-based “pro-level” generative music programs out there: ‘M‘ by Cycling74, Nodal by Peter McIlwain [EDIT: as part of a team at CEMA], and Intermorphics Noatikl by the team who brought us Koan Pro some years back. I would add to this group Ableton Live and its ‘Follow Actions’ as this can create some very nice generative compositions if employed skillfully.

I am planning to take a look at each of these over the next few weeks and will post observations, walkthroughs and such as I get them done. If you have any experiences you would also like to share or contribute, please do so.