de camino a roca roja

bossa nova Berdmonseyana

The conversation (and guitar) that is heard at the beginning of the song was recorded with my phone at El Pumarejo (Barcelona, July 17, 2017).

Roman Daniel (mans o) and Max Feriche (Cuarto, Aventura Campanela) are exchanging opinions on effect pedals.

trémolo tartamudo

foxes

Interlude

endless stairs

armonía armónica

This is my short version of the original song composed by Yoko Kanno for the original soundtrack of the Japanese anime 'Sakamichi No Apollon' (Kids on the Slope). A beautiful anime about jazz music and friendship.

Listen to the original piece here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuQz_nqM7_U

a piece of blue (Yoko Kanno)

'Night trip' video here: https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&ar=1&video_id=WM1B-zwOVVk

I believe there is an interesting duality in this ‘repetitive’ piece where the bass line – being the base of the piece during the more than nine minutes length – dictates the beat and rhythm, tempo, repeating the same four notes from beginning to end. Above it, a keyboard is improvising wet in reverberation and delay effects, creating thus a sense of directionless; it is floating in time without being anchored to any specific musical structure. Moreover, a grand piano can be heard during the first four minutes of the piece. It is also improvising above the bass synth line yet since ‘music is a form of ‘serial action’, the time value of a note depends upon its integration in the melodic and harmonic progression’ (Seashore, 1967). That is, both the synth and piano are improvising in the  same key (E♭ minor) giving thus a sense of both continuity/movement and directionless.

The length of this piece is also helping to create an effect of timelessness, in which is altering one’s conception of the beginning and ending of the piece: everything seems part of an eternal present.

Read more: https://javu272.wixsite.com/javicarlesound/music-1

Night (repetitive piece)

I aimed to compose a musical piece similar to Piano Phase (1967) and Six Pianos (1973) by Steve Reich due to its alluring effect in one’s perception of the passage of time. 

The gradual process of these pieces is slow and uninterrupted, causing thus a sense of non-directionality and time retardation. In Phase Piece, the same piano chord can be heard from beginning to end, but it is their temporary position (and the number of chords) that changes throughout the piece. 
 
When listening to this piece, something interesting occurs: the listener is somehow forced to spend time waiting for it to unfold, the prediction of what next feels like it has a constant degree of uncertainty. ‘The listener’s temporal horizon is altered in a way which is both similar and yet different to the way in which it can be altered by ‘drone music’ (such 'static piece'), in which it extends the temporal horizon infinitely into the past and infinitely into the future. On the other hand, the phasing process appears to extend the temporal horizon only finitely in both directions’ (Smith, 2004). In that sense, the listener does not perceive a sense of timelessness, but rather a finite extension of the temporal horizon – the present is finitely extended. 

This enormous agglomeration of notes/sounds within a short period of time has an effect of acceleration, in which one’s perception of actual time (or ‘clock-time’) seems to speed up. The listener – and in this case, the performer as well – is purely subject to the development of the process.

Read more: https://javu272.wixsite.com/javicarlesound/music-1

Phase Piece

'Day trip' video here: https://www.youtube.com/edit?ar=1&o=U&video_id=KbDl0K820so

Three layers of looped drones compose the base of the song. This constant buzz is present from beginning to end, accompanying the other sounds without leaving any gap, with a solid continuum base of sound in which leads the piece. On the top, a fading soft keyboard ‘washes’ the drones together with the sporadic sounds textures that appear randomly throughout the track, giving thus a sense of directionless regarding the passage of time.

The musical narrative dominates the temporal, in which after a few minutes the listener is not able to neither remember nor reproduce the chords previously heard because they do not follow a particular key or pattern. The length of the song also helps to produce this sensation in the listener. It gives us, as I said, a sense of directionless as well as ‘a state of timelessness. The state of timelessness is not one in which time ceases to exist, but one in which the listener appears to perceive no passage of time' (Smith, 2004). Fascinatingly, time seems to bend and past, present and future becomes the same temporal state.

Read more: https://javu272.wixsite.com/javicarlesound/music-1

jaybai

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