‘I de­ci­ded to bring as little as pos­si­ble.  I hadn’t re­ally ever im­pro­vi­sed be­fore and was loo­king for­ward to the op­por­tu­nity to do so. Ra­ther than take my ent­ire gear I thought I’d just bring a syn­the­si­zer and a drum ma­chine. Next time (and I hope there is a next time) I’ll take even less equipment.I also de­ci­ded to leave song-writing/pre-conceived ideas at home too.  My am­bi­tion for the So­nic Wee­kend was to ‘be in the back­ground ma­king funny noi­ses’, and to have a good time do­ing so. If that can be clas­sed as an achie­ve­ment, then I did it.

I ho­nestly can’t re­mem­ber anything ugly or bad, and this isn’t be­cause I spent most of the time drunk.  On the train back with Jo, Shifty (Au­dio Spy­der) and Mark (Worried Chee­tah) we all sat there in a se­rene state of joy — as if we’d all just step­ped out of a world of our own ma­king –laug­hing loudly as we tried to re­collect ta­les of the weekend.’

‘My pre­do­mi­nant me­mory of the So­nic Wee­ken­der is that of a mad wo­man bran­dis­hing her pick­led onion grab­ber. What did I get out of it? A se­rious de­sire to do it again. What did we achieve? What we set out to do. That’s im­port­ant. A good bit goes as follows:

(I for­get the ex­act words, but the con­ver­sa­tion about one of the tracks went like this…) Ano­ther mem­ber of the group co­mes into the room and wants brin­ging up to speed on what I am con­tri­bu­ting to the piece. At least three mi­nu­tes la­ter I fi­nish ram­bling about space ali­ens, ge­stu­ral lan­gua­ges and emo­tio­nal re­spon­ses. He re­plies, ‘Uh, I was thin­king of play­ing in C major.”

A bad bit:

Nee­ding to sleep and mis­sing stuff.

An ugly bit.

Nope, can’t think of one. Ever­y­thing was hugs and pup­pies. Oh, I just re­mem­be­red — clea­ning a per­ma­nent mar­ker grid off the no­tice board by rub­bing it very fast with a kit­chen sponge for about five minutes. Still, I ma­na­ged to amuse the ca­mera guy when I fi­nis­hed by an­noun­cing “Ha! Years of mas­tur­ba­tion fi­nally paid off.” Come to think of it, that was a good bit too.

‘It’s 8:30 am on the first full day of the So­nic Wee­ken­der. As far as I know I am the first to wake, ha­ving been the first to sleep last night. Yes­ter­day the house throb­bed with mu­si­ci­ans, ca­mera wiel­ding ob­ser­vers, con­ver­sa­tion and mu­sic. Here is a quick and bia­sed report.

Three pie­ces were re­cor­ded, two of which I was in­vol­ved in. The first was a wholly im­pro­vi­sed piece to a per­cus­sive backing crea­ted by twan­ging a me­tal spa­tula against a door frame, the sound then being loo­ped and put through se­veral ef­fects. There was a moog­foo­ge­red bass, gui­tar, se­veral key­boards — one emu­la­ting a mel­lo­tron. I ad­ded some sim­ple swo­ops. Ever­yone played pretty much con­ti­nuously and af­ter­wards our pro­du­cer, Pierre Du­plan and our mu­si­cal di­rec­tor, Ann Shen­ton ha­cked away all the dead wood gi­ving brea­t­hing space to the in­stru­ments and im­po­sing a struc­ture on the piece. It worked very well.

The se­cond piece was Matt’s idea. (Matt = Wire Mo­ther) Matt laid down a se­quenced backing on his No­va­tion, and swit­ched bet­ween that and a CD of trans­mis­si­ons down­loa­ded from the NASA web­site. I im­pro­vi­sed a plain­tive me­lody over the top. Mostly I kept in tune, but there were a heck of a lot of dis­trac­tions, not least from Ann and  Pierre or­ches­tra­ting us fran­ti­cally from about three feet away and ge­sti­cu­la­ting to go wild, calm it down, use the milk-frother with a wire at­ta­ched (I call it the frot­ha­trill — it makes the the­re­min warble like Gad­get the mog­wai from the film Grem­lins) so there were ple­nty of op­por­tu­nities for me to lose the plot com­ple­tely, which I of course did. La­ter, our word­stress, Leigh, ad­ded a “HAL 9000″ style voice-over — just an ama­zing, sexy voice!) and I made my way to bed while Pierre and Ann mi­xed it down.

My plan to find a room away from the sounds ema­na­ting from down­s­tairs was lar­gely suc­cess­ful — only one in­stru­ment ma­na­ging to find its way into my be­droom — will so­meone please shoot that ruddy the­re­mi­nist! — so I fell as­leep to the sound of my own worst play­ing, over and over.

The third piece was lar­gely mem­bers of Pony Har­vest — I think — but I was out to the world by then.

Mostly I slept well, apart from a pe­riod where my room­mate was eit­her tu­ning his motor-bike or con­struc­ting a by-pass, and I pas­sed the time con­tem­pla­ting the be­ne­fits of smo­the­ring him. Sun­day morning. Hope­fully when the rest of the gang get home and read this they will add their ta­kes on the wee­kend. Me­an­time, here’s the Gor­don per­spec­tive — i.e. from the kit­chen, next to this morning’s ex­ten­sive collec­tion of em­pty bott­les and cans.

Yes­ter­day I pit­ched Pho­enix As­te­ro­ids and it went well. Garry took the bass line on my ether­wave, I had the Kees En­kelaar the­re­min and Ann sat on the floor in the hall­way with her Z Z Top red (a fri­end had been pain­ting his gui­tars and had some left over — she also told a story about using so­meone fa­mous’ gui­tar strings — Eric Clap­ton or Jimmy Page or so­meone — as a flail with which to play her the­re­min and sla­shing the back of her hand as it whip­ped round, twice) ether­wave per­ched on a chair — she had an in­te­res­ting take on stay­ing very still which I am told in­vol­ved the use of a pickled-egg-picker-upper (the de­vice used by Ar­nie in To­tal Re­call to ex­tract a ho­m­ing de­vice from his si­nu­ses.) Ran­dom per­cus­sion was pro­vi­ded by Jash.

La­ter there was a fran­tic se­arch for pa­per to write some ly­rics down. When Ann as­ked me I had no pa­per, but of­fe­red some more ly­rics in­stead. So­me­thing I wrote for my children.

Twinkle, twinkle little star

How I won­der what you are

You’re a fu­sing plasma ball

Your great dis­tance makes you small

Tra­vel­ling through our atmosphere

Makes your star­light twinkle here

Twinkle, twinkle little star

Now I know just what you are

(It’s great han­ging out with ar­tists — people found emo­tio­nal con­tent in my words I had no idea was there!)

Which was leapt upon by ano­ther group working on a piece in­spi­red by sno­ring (ever­y­thing is a po­ten­tial source of in­spi­ra­tion) about the uni­verse go­ing to sleep. There was talk of my pro­vi­ding the voice, or of Leigh. It might have been re­cor­ded yes­ter­day af­ter­noon while I slept. It might not. We shall see.

My whir­lees (lasso d’amore) pro­vi­ded a drone in­ter­lude for ano­ther piece — I was on ta­kes one and two but not the fi­nal take — arms too kna­cke­red by then.

In the af­ter­noon I slept and mis­sed the choir of ever­yone sin­ging for an a cap­pella piece which soun­ded as­to­nis­hin­gly good — what bits I heard of it.

Also de­ci­ded by dra­wing na­mes from a hat while I slept was the groups for six one mi­nute pie­ces. My group have yet to re­cord, but I ki­bit­zed a couple of the ses­si­ons. One mi­nute ta­kes as long to re­cord and mix as six — pos­si­bly lon­ger, people fee­ling they have more free­dom to do re­ta­kes and add ex­tra tracks. Pierre Du­plan is a pro­du­cing ma­chine — people bring him cof­fee and ome­lettes while he sits at the mi­xing desk and the mu­sic keeps rol­ling out. Ann’s ge­nius lies in tel­ling people their ideas are great and dis­rupt­ing pro­cee­dings at just the right moment.

Plans get dit­ched and re­for­mu­la­ted at the speed of light round here. One piece in­vol­ved re­cor­ding vox pop in­ter­views with ran­dom people on the sub­ject of home. My con­tri­bu­tion was to be vocal-esque re­spon­ses to the voices on the the­re­min. Then we went into the re­cor­ding room and the voices were played back be­low au­di­ble le­vels du­ring the ses­sion. So I just made twiddly noi­ses in­stead. Then in the fi­nal mix the voices were brought back up to the top. Aaaargh! But on the plus side, Ann did her fa­vou­rite — OK all go crazy for this bit — bit, so I pun­ched on the pitch shif­ter. Fun, fun, fun!

I can’t wait to see what to­day brings. Al­re­ady I have been fil­med iro­n­ing my chi­nos and po­sing with the iron as a hero of the do­mestic re­vo­lu­tion. For the one-minute piece if it fits I have in mind to do some the­re­min plus de­lay ar­peg­gios. But who knows. What I want is to bring so­me­thing dif­fe­rent to each piece I play on, and I’ve still got a few tricks up my sleeve

Sun­day eve­ning. The whole day has had a winding-down feel to it. People have drif­ted away. About half re­main. This morning we laid down a be­au­ti­ful piece about blo­wing pla­nets up. Pretty, with an un­sett­ling nervy edge to it. Lis­ten­ing to the rough mix I felt my con­tri­bu­tion could be fur­ther into the background.

This af­ter­noon has been slow. Pierre and Ann have been in the stu­dio for hours fi­na­li­sing tracks. And we have enough to be able to pick and choose!

To pass the time I rust­led up so­me­thing on Ga­ra­ge­Band, using the sys­tem text to speech to read the nursery rhyme in the pre­vious post, with a touch of low pass, a bit of ring mod, a hint of re­verb and the last word echo­ing away. Then a pad of some pre­sets voices, kind of am­bi­ent Eno-y and gentle. A very sim­ple, naive piece, which I think is im­port­ant to it. I’m cal­ling it Nursery Droid.

Whe­ther there will be time or room to add it to the al­bum I don’t know. It’s not im­port­ant. I thought it would be nice to of­fer Pierre so­me­thing that didn’t need a lot of work from him. Af­ter half term I’ll pro­bably dig so­me­thing out of archive.org and stick it on youTube.

Been lis­ten­ing to the fi­nal mi­xes. Damn good! Pro­ject suc­cess­ful. Wait till you hear it. 

Also got to give props to Marc. He has done all the dirty work — pi­cked up ci­ga­rette butts, wa­s­hed and clea­ned, made tea and pro­vi­ded in­spi­ra­tio­nal spee­ches. Main man!

Well, I had gone to bed, but yeah, the party went on till late.

Af­ter my pos­ting yes­ter­day af­ter­noon the mood pi­cked up. People stop­ped lea­ving and the re­mai­ning people found stuff to do. There was an op­ti­mistic mood in the air. While I was mes­sing around with nursery rhy­mes Eti­enne played with the vo­coder on the No­va­tion, and came up with a M style (“ever­y­body talk about Mmm, pop mu­sic”) pop song — “everybody’s tal­king ’bout sox in space, sox in space, sox in space [see foot­note]” and people star­ted ofe­ring sug­ges­ti­ons — add a fe­male voice — needs some moa­ning — I of­fe­red a lewd mime with sound ef­fects that had amu­sed Ann ear­lier — she dub­bed it “The­re­min W–k” — I pre­fer to call it “Solo Per­for­mance” — but Eti­enne was able to pant ex­ci­tedly into the vo­coder like so­meone who had a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence in that field. I also sug­gested a voice-over of Newton’s Laws of Motion.

Isaac New­ton wrote:

An ob­ject at rest will re­main at rest un­less ac­ted upon by an ex­ter­nal and un­ba­lan­ced force. An ob­ject in mo­tion will re­main in mo­tion un­less ac­ted upon by an ex­ter­nal and un­ba­lan­ced force.

The rate of change of mo­men­tum of a body is pro­por­tio­nal to the re­sul­tant force ac­ting on the body and is in the same direction.

All forces oc­cur in pairs, and these two forces are equal in ma­gni­tude and op­po­site in direction.

All good stuff — people came with ideas and went away with ideas. Fair play.

I fell as­leep as the vir­tually fi­nal mix was played back for ever­yone. As be­fore the only sounds I heard were the the­re­min. Soun­ded a lot bet­ter than last night. This morning there is a calm­ness in the house that is be­lied by the gale force winds outside