Feb
Artist Series, Music, Uganda
Episode 6 – PolyPhonic Clix
About you/group?
We met as architects working together in a Design Office in Preston in the early 1990’s and soon realised that we shared a passion for making some hybrid form of electronic based music and have been making music together ever since. During lockdown we finally completed a series of tracks that make up our first two albums “Details of Production” and “Tales of a Future Film”. During this period we have launched our music on all popular music streaming services including Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer. In addition we have started to create films to accompany the music and have launched these on our YouTube and Instagram channels.
Could you describe your aims and intentions at the beginning of this project?
We’ve always gravitated towards music which has some sort of unspoken narrative, sometimes with a filmic quality, other times evoking a sense of place. So, along with Merv’s love of all things percussive and twangable, our interest was piqued by the ethnic samples and loops in the GSM library gravitating towards something that could culturally interlace Western and African instrumental patterns and dance rhythms.
How would you describe your working processes?
We are musical ‘evolutionists’ – or musical jackdaws depending on your point of view! We’ll find some unusual quality in a sound or a loop or a rhythm, and then look for something that can sonically dovetail into it or supplement it – loop-based samples are perfect starting blocks for us. Eight bars will lead to another 8 bars, and then another; somewhere an idea will evolve for a theme or counter melody, and then perhaps some shifts in and out of the rhythmic pattern. Then it’s a matter of creating light and shade as the narrative unfolds through the track – we experiment with a variety of beginnings, endings middles, and juxtapositions. After a couple of years of crafting and tinkering we get to absently humming some version that is recognisably a song – that means it has crystallised and its time to commit the arrangement to final mix and mastering!!
What daw(s) do you use?
Logic Pro X
How did you find using the GSM samplers?
We were a little naive when we started out using the sounds (having only just started using Logic in 2015) so we did it long-hand; dropped a lot of samples into an audio track, auditioned them and decided which loops appealed to us. As the various loops were already sorted by tempo, we determined key centres (and occasionally tweaked them slightly sharp or flat as necessary) before exporting the selected sections as Apple Loops into our Sound Libraries. The loops can then be manipulated in the main window for pitch/tempo/speed/direction etc..
How did you integrate the GSM instruments into your music?
We tend to use them as starters/generators for a track, so it’s more a question of how to intertwine other aspects of the track around the GSM loops. Occasionally, the development of the song might necessitate editing the timing or harmonic content of a loop, but we try to minimise our intervention.
Is there any particular instrument or sampler that you favoured over the others?
The loops are the most instantly rewarding for us – it’s much easier to capture a player’s natural dynamics and physical ‘attack’ on percussive and strung instruments, rather than to try to recreate those subtle differences in a sampler, or laboriously tweaking controllers in a piano roll.
What are your plans for the future?
More noise, more tracks, more experimentation. Specifically using GSM material, we’ve been incorporating some of the longer ‘location’ loops as ‘atmospheres’ into a couple of tracks that are developing. We also like to incorporate real life sounds recorded on International trips, such as voices, train sounds and alarms as sounds that are alien to our own knowledge and cultures piques our interest.
We’ve also acquired some Alesis Trigger units and intend creating some ‘hang drum’ type MIDI triggers – hopefully these will allow us to create better dynamics and phrasing when we’re triggering patterns from some of the GSM Instrument Sample Packs.
Links:
About you/group?
We met as architects working together in a Design Office in Preston in the early 1990’s and soon realised that we shared a passion for making some hybrid form of electronic based music and have been making music together ever since. During lockdown we finally completed a series of tracks that make up our first two albums “Details of Production” and “Tales of a Future Film”. During this period we have launched our music on all popular music streaming services including Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer. In addition we have started to create films to accompany the music and have launched these on our YouTube and Instagram channels.
Could you describe your aims and intentions at the beginning of this project?
We’ve always gravitated towards music which has some sort of unspoken narrative, sometimes with a filmic quality, other times evoking a sense of place. So, along with Merv’s love of all things percussive and twangable, our interest was piqued by the ethnic samples and loops in the GSM library gravitating towards something that could culturally interlace Western and African instrumental patterns and dance rhythms.
How would you describe your working processes?
We are musical ‘evolutionists’ – or musical jackdaws depending on your point of view! We’ll find some unusual quality in a sound or a loop or a rhythm, and then look for something that can sonically dovetail into it or supplement it – loop-based samples are perfect starting blocks for us. Eight bars will lead to another 8 bars, and then another; somewhere an idea will evolve for a theme or counter melody, and then perhaps some shifts in and out of the rhythmic pattern. Then it’s a matter of creating light and shade as the narrative unfolds through the track – we experiment with a variety of beginnings, endings middles, and juxtapositions. After a couple of years of crafting and tinkering we get to absently humming some version that is recognisably a song – that means it has crystallised and its time to commit the arrangement to final mix and mastering!!
What daw(s) do you use?
Logic Pro X
How did you find using the GSM samplers?
We were a little naive when we started out using the sounds (having only just started using Logic in 2015) so we did it long-hand; dropped a lot of samples into an audio track, auditioned them and decided which loops appealed to us. As the various loops were already sorted by tempo, we determined key centres (and occasionally tweaked them slightly sharp or flat as necessary) before exporting the selected sections as Apple Loops into our Sound Libraries. The loops can then be manipulated in the main window for pitch/tempo/speed/direction etc..
How did you integrate the GSM instruments into your music?
We tend to use them as starters/generators for a track, so it’s more a question of how to intertwine other aspects of the track around the GSM loops. Occasionally, the development of the song might necessitate editing the timing or harmonic content of a loop, but we try to minimise our intervention.
Is there any particular instrument or sampler that you favoured over the others?
The loops are the most instantly rewarding for us – it’s much easier to capture a player’s natural dynamics and physical ‘attack’ on percussive and strung instruments, rather than to try to recreate those subtle differences in a sampler, or laboriously tweaking controllers in a piano roll.
What are your plans for the future?
More noise, more tracks, more experimentation. Specifically using GSM material, we’ve been incorporating some of the longer ‘location’ loops as ‘atmospheres’ into a couple of tracks that are developing. We also like to incorporate real life sounds recorded on International trips, such as voices, train sounds and alarms as sounds that are alien to our own knowledge and cultures piques our interest.
We’ve also acquired some Alesis Trigger units and intend creating some ‘hang drum’ type MIDI triggers – hopefully these will allow us to create better dynamics and phrasing when we’re triggering patterns from some of the GSM Instrument Sample Packs.
Links:
