Sunday, March 29, 2009

Untitled Instrumental #1

Greetings!

Click on the above title to download

Some people have said that the aduio file for this song stops at around 00:49. So now I have a new link that will hopefully work. Sorry for the inconvenience!

I created this song thinking in terms of playing the guitar with a rhythmic sense. The style of this song was influenced by Haushka's "Chicago Morning", where it is a continuous pattern of loops. That's what I wanted with this peice, to have a basic underlying pattern that slowly morphs and changes into completely new beats.

Other than putting emphasis on the drumming quality of the guitar, I also aimed to create melodies that worked within each other. Like a sychopated melody. With every new loop, the old one would take new form and so on and so on.

This peice is more of a technical experiment, unlike Thistles and Milk.


Wednesday, March 18, 2009

The Golden Palace of Thistles and Milk

Shanti! Shanti! Shanti!

Click on the title above to download.

I have created a new soundscape tale of unprecedented wit and beauty! This song is called The Golden Palace of Thistles and Milk. It is a rags to riches story of a farmer building a castle made of thistles and milk for his lady love. Here are the lyrics:

i was going to build
an empire to fill
all our wishes and our wills
made of thistles and milk

i was going to live
as deep as the sea
as tall as the sky
as big as the sun

i was going to find
my way across the line
dreaming of other times

(undecipherable jibberish.........)

Here I wasinfludenced by Indian Sitar sounds of Ravi Shankar and traditional Chinese pentatonic scale. I needed that deep reverberated crystal chimming golden kind of sound. Like some sort of vast golden prairie.

In the process of recodring this song, I came across ghosts in the machine. Voices and murmurs and electronic sounds that were not present at the time of initial recording. They were like little sound fairies that dazzled my song with rainbow glitters and delicious imperial sweets. Anyways, again, if you have any ffedback or if you'd like to share some of your work, please leave a comment.


Enjoy! Express! Power!




Monday, March 9, 2009

Hello

First video on the blog!

The above video is one I made during the winter of 2009. I used a small 2.0 pixel camera and Window Video Maker, so it was made using really simple and primitive editing tools. The song used in the video is called Morning Bells, which was originally written for my brother as a departing gift when he left for Australia. The music was made using a Sansa Mp3 player and a guitar with DD3 Boss pedal. I think it's best if you watch this video using some headphones, an crack up the bass...

It was filmed in my house using various lamps and lights.

With this video I wanted to experiment with light and shadow effects. I wanted it to have a warm orange glow throughout the video. I wanted to evoke the feeling of sombre nostalgia, something that is familiar yet seemingly far away. Here, I was heavily influenced by Indonesian shadow puppetry(Wayang), with it's contrasting lights and autumn glow. The middle part of the video was made by putting a crystal ball up to the lenses, that's how I made the kind of kaleidoscope effect. It was meant to be used as a projection for a larger art installation.

Anyways, take a look at the video and tell me what you think.

Lavurn

Sunday, March 8, 2009

An Alright Start

Hello world!

This is blog number one. Just testing it out. A start to a much bigger happening. Hoefully this will grown into something more concrete in the following months.

I'll keep you posted.

Lavurn