Iain Cameron's Diary
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2005-01-09 - 10:27 a.m.

I am trying to get back to a sound world that I want to develop. To this end I have loaded Wavelab2 and a demo of Wavelab4 and plugged the Airsynth into the portable line in to record a few home made waveforms as WAVs. This is just raw material but is possible to get some harmonically rich stuff to work with in this way.

The Wavs can be loaded into the demo, version of Wavelab where the realtime manipulation interfaces are better. The new step today was the discovery that I can beat the save disable on the demo by realtime recording within the PC . I start Wavelab4 playing and then if I adjust the setup on Wavelab2 it will record from the demo version. Infact Wavelab 2 will record sounds coming through on line-in and also Wavs which it is running itself. This means that there are a lot of development possibilities within the machine and with a lmited number of bits of external kit. For example one can generate a Wav and load it into Wavelab 4 to process and loop against (say) its original version in Wavelab 2 and capture the two loops against each other with commentary from the Airsynth.

I went out for a bit - bright but cold and windy. I ended up with a 1972 performance at a gallery in Soho of Glass�s Music for Voices. It reminds me a bit of that time in Tokyo at Honda HQ when I heard the hostesses practising their vowels and consonants. This is a positive attribute. The piece lasts about 13 minutes and worked off an informal score forfour pairs of singers with Glass clapping to move the singers from one section to the next. Needless to say I am wondering about sampling it and trying the two Wavelab loops trick on it. It is seen as an example of Glass moving in the direction of the theatre.

The other longer piece on the disc is Another Look at Harmony Part 4 which is much closer to the more finished style which brought the composer fame and fortune. Not really so much fun. Good nighttime music I expect. Very pentatonic to start with but gets to be chromatic as it graduallyunfolds

I also got a DVD of a Joni M concert - 1979 in Santa Barbara. She has some sort of band with her. Jaco P on bass, Pat Meths and Lyle on gtr and kybs. M Brecker blows a bit too.

They are playing her 70s repertoire - Hejira, Court n Spark, Summer Lawns, Mingus. Just now they are doing Coyote with that bass part. Miss M looks very glamorous, perm, haute couture and serious make-up and she puts the songs across very strongly. The band looks like a bunch of jazzers. She is on the money on Pork Pie Hat and gives the lads as good as she gets taking the lyric way beyond the recorded version.

I have never before seen how Jaco did it - there�s a long solo with a digital delay where he drops into 3rd Stone from the Sun. He is able to pull up the 5th harmonic from the bass strings as he needs it to fit the phrase he is on. But you can see that he has a off-hand attitude. Miss M responds with the Des Moines Dry Cleaner as a contrapuntal exercise with drms sax and bs. Then plays Amelia on her electric without them effortlessly with Meths filling his own way.

It�s a weird combination - she looks like she is ready for the 80s but the band plays like jazz was always meant to be played on rock instruments with all the edge and aggression that that implies - no posing or inverted commas cf Style Council - ie not the 80s way of doing it. .

Welcome to the Cactus Tree Motel. Even if its for only an hour and a quarter.

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