Mantiskane makes instrumental music

I invented Mantiskane, a musical entity, a more electronic facet of my musiquettes. It’s maybe Mantis Kane, a guy from another planet, half-human half-mantis.

I made a clip with images I made with the GauGAN NVIDIA model, which is at gaugan.org. This tool is designed to create landscapes, but I tickle it with non-landscape-words, as it fits.

I made more than a thousand flying machines, chose a few dozens and made the music from a simple loop, a pile of sounds refusing to evolve. Piling.

QES Prototypes:

Then I added a “chorus”, a second part based on a military snare drum, it’s here:

QES Prototypes II:

oOOOo

Before that I did it with African mood, inventing a planet, composed a tribal music based on percussions and passing by sounds…

Quick-Eyed Memories:

oOOOo

Before that I worked with the VQGAN+CLIP model of hypnogram.xyz to create SF images. It’s a more “digital art” tool, right? I made an abstract music with a bunch of different slow loops on my Mac.

Space Gates & Titans:

oOOOo

Have fun! Thanks for reading!

Jean-Pascal

Music Chronicles 6: Tricky Creatures & The Old London Voice

I went on using poems for music (do you have some for me I could use?). Today: Verlaine!

Léandre le sot,
Pierrot qui d’un saut
De puce
Franchit le buisson,
Cassandre sous son
Capuce,

Arlequin aussi,
Cet aigrefin si
Fantasque
Aux costumes fous,
Ses yeux luisants sous
Son masque,

— Do, mi, sol, mi, fa, —
Tout ce monde va,
Rit, chante
Et danse devant
Une belle enfant
Méchante

Dont les yeux pervers
Comme les yeux verts
Des chattes
Gardent ses appas
Et disent : « A bas
Les pattes ! »

— Eux ils vont toujours ! —
Fatidique cours
Des astres,
Oh ! dis-moi vers quels
Mornes ou cruels
Désastres

L’implacable enfant,
Preste et relevant
Ses jupes,
La rose au chapeau,
Conduit son troupeau
De dupes ?

Colombine

English Translation here: https://www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/song/5112

Again, a walking bass. I love them! Dong dong dong dong dong. I tried to add less mechanical music. I added string chords, but interrupted them sometimes. I tried another style for the end, a long stroll of bass string going nowhere…

The pictures I took along a long walk strangely fit the song: creatures. Birds. Drawings. Things.

=====

For this one I found an old voice from the London docks, with a bell, announcing something.

The game is the Moby one: add drums, JP, bass, strings, saxes and whistles. Then it’s a puzzle around this loop: adding things/cutting things. I should chorus but nope. I should double the bass with somme upper pianos… maybe.

I stole some pictures to clip it.

Have a great day!

The Lost Esthetics of Richard Pinhas

Richard Pinhas is a French musician, “electronic music pioneer and leader member of the legendary Heldon“. He is a sort of musician-philosopher, considerably influenced by Gilles Deleuze. I won’t really present his work here – there are web pages for that – but I’d like to talk about his style.

http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=1993

• A specific lava sound of guitar (close to Robert Fripp’s)
• Minimalism and icy synthesizers
• Cyclical electronics à la Philip Glass
• Strong machinic KingCrimsonian monsters (Heldon)

 

A perpetuum modulating electronic crescendo

 

Synthfloating over ice with machines, then landing within panting beasts

 

A growing standstill monster

 

Infernal and methodical crimsonian rush – listen to it loud

 

I hope I showed you something you’ve never heard. It’s not that easy to explorer, I admit it. I regret this seems to be a lost branch in music. Imagine what rappers could have done with the last one! Imagine what you could imagine with these weirdeities listened in the dark?

Thanks for reading!

 

Craftily Blurred Elements in Music Part I : Röyksopp’s science in use

Music and Songs are interesting to analyse, you can focus on many things : arrangements, melodies, lyrics, production, clip, comparing, etc…

For this article, you need headphones.

First you have to listen to : Paul Kalkbrenner – Boxig Leise. I really love that piece. The toxic pleasure comes from the extra-note, a sharp annoying one which constantly bend your brain. Listen to the sound now : despite its “perpetually changing” production values, it’s very SIMPLE. Based on like 3 chords and “moving cursors” (percs, etc).

It’s simple, effective, it’s a spoon of music. Lemonade.

Now push up the sound, dear, and listen to Röyksopp – Tricky Two. And bim : the differences jump to your face. The melodies weaving is MUCH more complex, it’s a very scientific construction of dozens, really dozens of sounds. It’s a festival, a quiet mastered rollercoaster of ideas.

(One good test you can do with Röyksopp is this : move the cursor randomly on the YouTube movie – each time you’ll get something else).

What I would like you to “watch” here, though, it’s the way they weave micro-melodies. You have to listen carefully, with headphones, and literally WATCH how the music is built. You’ll discover like STAIRS of arrangements. And what do they do ?

They weave. Most of the melodies are not “apparent and clear” like in these musics. They are like MELT in the fabric, in the flow. I don’t have an example to show you her : it’s CONSTANT.

Play this game with the extraordinaire Keyboard Milk. As many ideas in seven minutes than in seven electro albums of the average DJ Machin-Chose. And hidden, blurry, floating, fragmented, cut, unfinished melodies. Bass, strings, chords, sparklings, angelings, strangled, dusty sounds.

It’s not simple, it’s complexity craftily used. It’s rich. It’s not a spoon, it’s a caldron. It’s not Coca Cola, it’s a Saint-Emilion wine !

You can do that with every track of this group. I mean (almost) : really.

This is why I barely NEVER heard a good remix of Röyksopp. You know why ? The other guys have no idea of what to do with this complexity. So they pick a few elements, they put this bag in loop and lazily boost some elements or play with cursors. They never “play” with the harmonic joy, for example : too complicated !

Tool, Dial, Lever : Simple or Complex ? Lemonade or Bordeaux wine ? Where’s your mental camp ?

Tool : What’s the difference, in music, about “I have a melody here it is, clear and loud” (like everything I hear around), and the idea of weaving/hiding it in the flow ? The difference is : in the second case, the listener has to pay attention. What will you do with that ? How does it work with other concepts ? In drawing, architecture, painting, filming… baking ?

Thanks for reading !

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