Well it took me a while but I just finished the podcast version of my last post. I decided to make it after I looked over that entry and felt like it would be more engaging if you could actually hear some of the music I’m talking about. Anyway I think it turned out pretty well and I hope you enjoy:
Up next I’ll be getting into the details of Lillian’s creative process – stay tuned.
[Listen to the podcast version here]
As I get ready to explore the creative process behind Lillian, I thought I’d write a little about how I got into Alias, the rapper-turned-producer behind that song.
I first heard Alias in 2005 when my friend Nate put together a little 2-disc “intro to hip hop” package for me, after I admitted I didn’t listen to any rap and probably should. The first disc was a sampling from the 90′s with names like Nas, Public Enemy, Dr. Dre, and Canibus. The second was Alias’ album The Other Side of the Looking Glass.
Rap was a real paradigm shift for me. The fact that I’d spent my early teenage years growing up in rural Illinois did nothing for my acculturation into the world of hip hop in general. I struggled to listen to a lot of what my friend had burned for me, especially because a lot of the songs he chose were lyrics-focused with no-frills beats. Ironically some of these songs would later be among my favorite music, but it would take me years to acquire the new tastes that let me fully appreciate them.
Part of me wishes I could go back and rewire my brain, make myself listen to these lyrics and hear them like I do now. But it would be naive to think that slow process wasn’t necessary, that it wasn’t part of my growth as a listener. So I’ll just be open about that fact that at the time, the stories these rappers wove and the taunts they unleashed on my ears went largely ignored.
Alias’ The Other Side of the Looking Glass was a different experience. I was immediately attracted to its vivid and melancholy beats, which fixated me enough that I enjoyed listening to somebody rap against them. As someone who’d so far grown up with favorite artists like Radiohead and Massive Attack, Alias’ affinity for an electronic, often sentimental soundscape helped to bridge the gap to my slow appreciation of rap as an artform.
The Other Side of the Looking Glass was obviously not a typical rap album, even to an outsider like me. Looking back on how I first listened to it, I see myself wandering through it like a foreign city, slowly familiarizing myself with its symbols and conventions. The lyrics were brooding and introspective, but for a young me it was the sound that stuck in my mind. It always seemed like it was raining in that album.
It wasn’t until late 2007 that I looked up Alias’ other work. I downloaded his two albums Muted and Lillian and started listening to them together. It was the first time I realized instrumental hiphop could be a genre in its own right, and not limited to the lyric-less versions of rap songs I sometimes found on EPs.
I played those albums consistently throughout my college years. The formulas behind the songs were simple to understand, but their composition resonated. I became familiar enough with each album to appreciate its differences. Muted was pure Alias, with samples of speeches, rants, and his own live introductions rubbed into gritty breakbeats and ambient tones. Lillian added a whole new layer of instrumentation, with Alias’ brother Ehren playing beautifully on the flute, clarinet, and saxophone. With this added element Lillian was a rich experience, as the voices of Ehren’s instruments crooning from the patchwork of Alias’ jagged synth gifted that album with a color and mood that Muted had only hinted at with tracks like “Beginagain” and “Sixes Last”.
Altogether, Alias’ sound was a new flavor and texture that provoked my imagination. Like a lot of my favorite artists’ work, his albums founded a new space in my mind – a distinct world in which each song was its own place and concept. Over time, a few of these ideas would sharpen into detail, becoming paiges. Among them was Lillian.
Well it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. My job ramped up in the past couple weeks and I didn’t have time to blog. I guess I could’ve dropped a note just to say hey, but that’s not really my style. I need something meaningful to be able to sit down and write about it, and then I tend to be a perfectionist so it usually ends up taking hours and hours. That’s actually something I’ve struggled with both as a writer and a programmer. I’m always getting ideas for posts, though, so now I’ve got a backlog of stuff I’d like to share – stay tuned is all I can say!
Anyway, I’ve been wanting to post about this podcast by Radiolab called Musical Language. In three fascinating chapters it examines how our brains process and respond to music, provoking questions of what it is and why it exists for us. To quote Robert Krulwich midway through:
We’re going to explore this a little more deeply, take a closer look at the connection between language and music. We’re going to add touch. And that will take us to the ear, and then into the brain, and into the big question – the really big question: why does music, or how does music, become a feeling?
The podcast is definitely relevant to what I’ve been discussing here – shout out to David for sharing it in the comments of my last post. You can follow the link above to the podcast’s page or listen to it here (the three parts are about an hour total):
I hope you find it interesting too – feel free to comment/discuss. And keep an eye out for my next post, coming soon!
I had a conversation with my sister a few years back, where we ended up sharing how we represented the time of the year in our heads. I have no idea why we were talking about this, but it’s one of the reasons I like having a sister. Anyway, it turned out we both pictured ourselves somewhere on a gigantic circular calendar, with the months colored for what the weather is like at that point in the year. We even agreed on what some of the colors should be.
I think our minds are fascinating in their differences, strengths and weaknesses. Mine happens to be very visual. I correlate letters and numbers with colors. I rarely get lost in new places. But I’m terrible at remembering people’s names. In fact I have a tough time memorizing pretty much anything I can’t see, unless I can cook up some kind of visual analogy for it.
When I hear a song, colorful patterns and shapes appear in my mind. It might sound like it’s distracting, but the effect is usually pretty subtle – just a faint visual sensation that blends with the sound of the music. No matter what I listen to, this imagery is always there in the background (even it it’s the worst song I’ve ever heard).
These visuals are closely linked with the origin of paiges. They form a kind of physical foundation on which more complex and emotional ideas can start to appear. They might seem mysterious, but I think these images can be reduced to simple associations.
Some sounds match up with an image of their instrument in real life. Harps, banjos, and sitars all show me strings being plucked or strum. Drums and cymbals are impacts on a surface. When I hear a piano play, I see the disembodied keys pressing themselves down.
Sounds that my mind can’t pin to a physical contact are more interesting to me, because they’re freed from that association with a real object. Woodwinds and brass show up as colored voices that are hard to focus on. Purely electronic (synth) sounds tend to appear as glowing lights or flares of energy. Bass is a tremor disrupting everything around it. The electric guitar is one of the most fascinating sounds to me – a beautiful, shapeshifting creature, with the potential for powerful transformations and pyrotechnics.
I wish I could show all this to you, just like I wish I could show you what my story Lillian looks like in my head. But for now the best I can do is write about it.
Luckily I’m not the first to explore the relationship between music and visuals. There’s a movie, now over 70 years old, called Fantasia. It’s a film by Walt Disney featuring a number of animated shorts set to classical music. The shorts range from abstract visual narratives to familiar stories like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. More on this beautiful movie later, but its opening chapter brings to mind the experience I’m describing:
Watching this first part of the film, it seems like it’s meant to introduce the viewer to the idea of giving music a visual representation. Notice the steady transition from reality to the abstract, all guided by the music. At first we’re shown a simple language of lights and colors matching the instruments. Then around 3:30 we’re moved into a place of pure imagination as the animation takes over.
Anyway, I realize this post was a mouthful but I hope you found it interesting. Please comment with any thoughts you might have. Have you had similar experiences? How does your mind process and respond to music? Don’t be afraid to share your ideas.
I just read this BBC article about Neil Harbisson, a color-blind artist who uses a special device to hear color. Check it out if you’re interested.
I like how he started to dream in color after adopting the device, though the distinction between our own ideas of color and sound seems to blur throughout the article. I also think it’s interesting how his unique perception of color keeps advancing with technology, already extending past our visible spectrum.
I randomly came across this article, but it’s actually relevant to my upcoming posts because of how it explores the connection between sight and sound. As I start to delve into the process of how a paige gets created, I’ll first look at the basic building blocks, where music causes shapes and colors to appear in my head.
In Neil Harbisson’s case the correlation between color and sound is an intentionally constructed language. In my case the relationship seems more accidental, innate, and harder to tease apart. But in either case I think they are means to a creative end.
Here’s one of Neil’s videos:
And let’s not forget the relationship between color and taste:
Hey just a quick post to let you know the Lillian recording is finally finished – go to that story’s page to check it out! As always I’m interested in hearing your thoughts and feedback so don’t hesitate to comment.
I’m pretty satisfied with how the recording turned out, though there are still some parts I want to improve/fix at some point. The project was starting to drag itself out though and I’m glad to call it done. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I tend to set completely unrealistic deadlines – for future reference it’s best to take whatever I say and double it. Then add five days. Then divide by zero.
Coming soon: analysis of Lillian’s creative process, as I start to dig into what inspires ideas from music, and a post about the themes of my writing and what to expect as a reader.
Well the Lillian recording is taking longer than I thought, but I’m making progress. The other day I finished a perfect run of one of the longer sections only to realize there was a siren blaring in the background (not even for like half a minute either – it just kept going, like this cop must’ve gotten lost in my neighborhood). I’ll have to see if Audacity can work its magic to salvage that clip. But anyway I’m hoping to have the audio ready by this weekend, and I’m excited to see how it turns out.
In the meantime, I’ve posted the text of the story to its dedicated page. Feel free to check it out and post any reactions or feedback. I’ll be discussing the story and its creation in a coming post, so stay tuned for that and the recording if you’re interested.
Also, let me know if there are any issues viewing that page. I’m still feeling my way around WordPress.com so it might look different for you than me.
