hang drum

Rough ideas and sketches of stuff I'm working on

Sketches

ambient

Instruments

Music created and played solely on the Eigenharp

Eigenharp Music

I've prepared a reinterpretation of Koyaanisqatsi for our San Francisco Eigenharp tour from May 5-10: http://www.eigenzone.org/events 

Koyaanisqatsi holds a special place in my heart, it's one of those musical pieces that never leaves you, it stays deep inside you with all its beauty and nakedness, forever. My father introduced me to it when I was a little kid, it's a real shame he passed away before I was able to play it for him myself. He would have loved it. Nonetheless, this is dedicated to him.

I think I managed to capture the essence of Koyaanisqatsi, let me know what you think of it.

For those interested in the technical parts:

Everything is played on the Eigenharp Alpha and recorded straight from the audio interface output without any mixing and just a little bit of mastering. I'm using the SonicCouture's Glass / Works instrument in a four-part multi-timbral setup in Native Instruments Kontakt. Each key individually controls pitch, velocity and the resonance of the convolution filter cut-off frequency (which creates a faint scraping-like sound).

The vocals are done through the DPA microphone that's clipped onto the breath pipe and plugged into the Eigenharp Alpha. It uses the built-in Eigenharp Alpha pre-amp and is routed through a series of Audio Unit effects in EigenD for pitch shifting, stereo spreading, EQ and compression. I'm monitoring directly from the headphone output of the Eigenharp Alpha with my Etymotic ER-4P earphones.

The single instrument cables carries all the information, data and audio, in both directions.

Koyaanisqatsi

This is one of the original instrumental piano pieces that I've been composing on the Eigenharp Alpha. I'm still contemplating on adding vocals over it and turning it into a song, but I'm not totally convinced yet.

However, after many months of keeping this under the wraps, I though it was time to record a video with the factory piano sound since I think it's stunningly beautiful and responds wonderfully well to dynamics.

Hope you enjoy it.

What If (piano instrumental)

Hangdrum

I've been studying the Eigenharp Alpha for a few months and have been looking for a nice song to cover until my own compositions are finished. I accidentally stumbled into the melody of the Battlestar Galactica Cylon theme while jamming and thought it could be a perfect fit.

The theme is heard in the series by the final five Cylons and it's a melody that Bear McCreary composed on top of the chords of Bob Dylan's 'All Along the Watchtower'. I continued improvising off of the piano song that the series' character Kara Thrace is trying to remember and made my own version of it.

This arrangement on the Eigenharp Alpha features Tonehammer's Emotional Piano, the Eigenharp's natively modeled Cello, Orange Tree Samples Evolution Electric Guitar Strawberry, Studio Devil Amp Modeler Pro and FabFilter Twin 2. The drum loops are part of the extensive collection that ships with the Eigenharp.

At the end of the song it seems that I'm taxing my two year old MacBook Pro a bit too much and there's some crackling since the CPU has trouble keeping up. It was fine while rehearsing, but recording at the same time seems to have pushed it over the edge, sorry about that. I should have expected this as these Kontakt sampler instruments are so detailed that some computers have trouble even playing them by themselves.

I hope you enjoy this performance nonetheless, do tell me what you think of it.

Battlestar Galactica - Kiara Remembers on Eigenharp Alpha

Track realized by Marco Selvaggio (hang and percussions) www.marcoselvaggio.com & Eduardo Gonzales (dj and producer).

Marco Selvaggio & Eduardo Gonzales - Painting my world

While experimenting with upcoming features of EigenD 2.0, I was testing out the new audio input support and came up with this experiment.

I'm playing my Moog Slim Phatty with the Eigenharp Alpha by routing its audio back into EigenD through my Metric Halo ULN-2 audio interface. This allows me to use Audio Units for real-time performance effects while playing the analogue synth through MIDI at the same time.

The Slim Phatty is full driven with 14-bit MIDI for modulation and volume, modulation being tied to a key's sideways motion, while slight volume changes are tied to pressure. Pitch is, as usual, tied to a key's up and down motion.

The audio units used are Rob Papen's Delay, Distort and the iZotope Ozone limiter. The Eigenharp's breath pipe is tied to the amount of distortion that's applied and the first strip controller is tied to the amount of feedback that is used in the delay. At the same time, the key modulation also changes the filter frequency for the distortion effect.

The sample rate of EigenD an my audio interface is set to 96kHz with only 96 samples as a buffer size. This really captures the nuances of the analogue audio as well as reduces the latency so much that every interaction with the effects feels instant.

Eigenharp Alpha with Slim Phatty experiment

I was feeling quite a bit emotional and stressed tonight and needed something that really relaxed me, so I started playing with my custom Eigenharp Alpha Hang Drum setup. Since I got some requests to record a video with it, I just recorded the session and I came up with these themes. I'm not a great percussionist by any means, so this is just what it is, hope you like it.

This is solely using the sampled Mk1 and Mk2 Hang Drums from SonicCouture's Pan Drums product.

Instead of playing them as regular instruments on the Eigenharp, I arranged the two different sampled Hang Drums on the playing surface of the Eigenharp Alpha so that one is on top and the other at the bottom. The notes of the Hang Drums are structured in colored 'zones' of five keys which correspond to the different articulations for the same note. This means that I can just hit the area without thinking about musical notes and get into a percussion mindset. The arrangement is very similar to what would happen if you cut a real Hang Drum in two and bend each half until it's straight, with the Ding and Gu stuck at the top end.

It works very well and feels extremely nice with the super sensitive keys of the Eigenharp. The colored lights are also naturally soothing and it's truly a relaxing experience to play.

Eigenharp Alpha Hangdrum improvisation

This is an original composition on the Eigenharp Alpha using just the U-he Diva virtual analog synth.

Many thoughts of what remains after people have left this earth.

That . What . Remains

A quick sketch of a song I found last night. The text is not finished at all and actually improvised on the spot as I usually do during brainstorming sessions. It also needs to be arranged with the band of course.


Solo Sketch - Undecided

From the upcoming album, 'Anastasis,' out 8/13 (int'l) and 8/14 (US). Pre-order available now at iTunes: http://bit.ly/dcdpreorder. 

Amnesia (Radio Edit)

This is my version of the theme from the TV series 'Game of Thrones'. It's entirely played live on the Eigenharp Alpha, a new electronic instrument. Original song and soundtrack by Ramin Djawadi.

Game of Thrones theme on Eigenharp Alpha

Opium is available for free download from: http://t.opsp.in/k0BqK

Dead Can Dance have announced details of the release of a new single, Opium, through [PIAS] Recordings on 29th October 2012.

The single is taken from their recently released album, Anastasis, which came out in August. The album was their first since 1996’s Spiritchaser. 

The band also recently announced an extensive European tour, including a show at London’s Royal Albert Hall, tickets for which sold-out within 48 hours of going onsale. 

The full list of European dates are as follows:

SEPTEMBER
16th		Beirut				Zouk
19th		Istanbul			        HCTAT
21st		Thessaloniki			Earth Theatre
23rd		Athens				Lycabetus
25th		Utrecht		         	MCV
27th		Paris				Grand Rex
29th		Brussels			Cirque Royal

OCTOBER
1st			Frankfurt			Alte Oper
3rd			Berlin				Tempodrom
5th			Hamburg			CCH
7th			Munich			         Philharmonie
8th			Cologne			         Philharmonie
10th		Prague				KCP
12th		St. Petersburg		 Ice Palace
13th		Moscow			        Crocus City Hall
15th		Warsaw			         Sala Kongresowa
17th		Budapest			Papp Laszlo Arena
19th		Milan				Teatro Degli Arcimboldi
20th		Geneva			        Batiment Des Forces Motrices
22nd		Barcelona			Auditori
24th		Porto				Casa Da Musica
26th		London			         Royal Albert Hall
28th		Dublin				Grand Canal Theatre

Signed by 4AD and releasing their first album in 1984, the duo drew rapturous reviews for albums that spanned neo-classical and folk across time and geography, each album selling to a progressively larger audience, the emotional drama of their coming to the attention of the San Francisco ballet, Hermes Perfume and a documentary on Hitler and Stalin; likewise motion pictures such as Heat, The Crossing Guard and Baraka. Gerrard developed her own solo film soundtracks - The Gladiator and The Insider, for example – while Perry worked on solo albums such as 1999’s ‘Eye Of the Hunter’ and 2008’s ‘Ark’.

Dead Can Dance - Opium

This is an original composition, played live on the Eigenharp Alpha and looped for some parts.

It uses a single sound on my Moog Slim Phatty for all the sections of the song. This one of the challenges that I've been setting for myself. I want to create only a few very expressive and versatile sounds that I perfectly learn to play on the Eigenharp in all their nuances, as opposed an arsenal of thousands of sounds that are totally unconnected from myself.

Here I'm driving the Slim Phatty over Control Voltage, giving me an incredibly detailed connection to the expression of the sound. This is possible thanks to the Expert Sleepers ES-3 module which converts the data from the Eigenharp over digital ADAT audio to Direct Current.

Pressure on the keys is tied to volume, left-right movement to filter cutoff and up-down movement to pitch. I'm additionally controlling distortion through the breath pipe of the Alpha and delay feedback through its strip controller, both are AudioUnit effects from Rob Papen. The looping is done through Mobius and is controlled through a Rig Kontrol USB MIDI footpedal.

Sometimes Is Not Enough

Hangdrum Experience

hang drum ,Daniel Waples

This is a quick sketch of one of our upcoming songs.

Same place again

When Tabla an Hang drum come as One, cosmic big bang arise!!!

Benjamin Tabla & Sacha Hangdrum

I'm a singer-songwriter and combine my vocal melodies with the electric and acoustic guitar and new instruments like the LinnStrument. I have lots of musical ideas that go into many directions. I've channelized most of it into my band Flytecase, but there are now quite some compositions that are either too personal or that don't fit with the style of my band.

I'll be posting my experiments and sketches online. If you like them or have some suggestions, don't hesitate to leave comments.

Buy my CD:
http://gbevin.bandcamp.com

Buy my band's CD:
http://music.flytecase.be

Eigenharp Alpha Hangdrum improvisation

G.Bevin