Monster music
A year back, I got a phone call from an unknown number. In the other end was Øystein Ulsvik Brager, a theatre director and generally happy man. He wanted to know if I ever do any instrumental music. ‘Not really’, I replied, ‘but I would love to try’.
Øystein was in the early planning of putting to stage Mary Shelley’s epic book about Frankenstein’s monster, and he wanted me to make the music. I would have a year to write it, his full confidence, and total creative freedom. I couldn’t say no! But I didn’t really know what to do, either.
In July I moved into my new apartment in Oslo. Basement, concrete walls, no phone coverage, no internet, plenty of space, and best of all: with my Grandmother’s piano at the heart of things. I travel (too) much, so the basement is a very welcome free haven. There, I can (and must) calm down, restructure my brain and work undisturbed for hours. No one hears me even though I crank the amplifiers up to 9 (mine only goes to nine) at 4AM in the morning. But how was I to make all the silence into music? I couldn’t have told you on beforehand, but now I think I can.
Step 1: Record. ‘Waitwaitwait!’, you might say now, ‘Shouldn’t you actually write some music before starting to record it? Well, I thought so too in the beginning, but then I realised that a) I don’t read or write notes b) I don’t remember anything longer than 4 seconds c) everything I try to ‘compose’ becomes flat and boring and streamlined. Luckily, I only wasted a few months pursuing that strategy. Finally however, after spending a whole evening trying to pen down some meaningful visualisation of a melody, I turned my recorder on, placed in well inside the belly of the piano, and played.
If my recorder hadn’t been on, I might as well have forgotten the whole melody. Waking up the morning after, I rediscovered the short clip (among hundreds) on my recorder. That’s how my method was born.
Over the next few weeks I spent long hours in front of the piano, with the recorder always on in case something magic popped up. Often though, the magic was not apparent in the moment it occured, and I would spend more time searching for gold in old recordings than actually playing. I brought the recorder on the bus, in school, everywhere, and hoped for a few golden seconds to shine through the chaos.
Step 2: Build it.
Once I had a handful of melodies at hand I started adding additional instruments and sounds to the recordings. My handheld recorder can do up to 8 mono tracks, which is just enough for a small composition. What’s more, it has a plethora of effects in it, like delays, compressors, fuzzes, echoes, overdrives, modulators and so on — things that are obviously supposed to be used along with electric guitars, but I found it even more interesting to combine it with more untraditional instruments. For example the effect chain [piano → distortion → guitar amplifier → microphone] turned out to be a delicious combination. Or how about the [water kettle → multiband compressor → bass amp → mobile phone microphone] loop? I’ve had some fun indeed.
Obviously, the sounds that come out of a method like this won’t be very…orthodox. However, I’m not much of a sound geek, and don’t care (and cannot really tell the difference) if the amplifier is a US-built 1958 Marshall tube miracle that costs an arm and a half, or if it is digitally emulated crap and comes from within a handheld recorder at $199.
In Ulming, you (might, if you sharpen your ears) hear my voice(s), an acoustic guitar, three pianos upon another (of which the ‘sonar’ sound is one), a distorted bass ukulele blended with a synthesiser recorded with a leslie speaker through a loosened snare drum, and my hands screeching against the back of a crate. That’s eight, approximately speaking.
Step 3: Prevent a disaster (a.k.a. mixing).
As you might have realised already, I’m not much of a studio person. Just looking at the sound bars and matrixes of ProTools makes me dizzy. I think I might have an allergy towards being serious. Luckily there are people who don’t panic. Hasse is one of them. I delivered the whole set of songs as shown on the photo above: no edits, no plug-ins, no comments, no directions.
When I got it all back a week later, I couldn’t really tell the difference. ‘Have you really done anything to this?’, I asked him. Then he let me hear the original recordings. I was stunned. The versions were worlds apart! Hasse had somehow preserved the feeling of the songs, but at the same time made it sound almost like…almost like real music. I felt a little (undeservedly) proud, and at the same time I realised how aweful things had sounded in the beginning.
Now I have sent off the music to Øystein. He and his cast have two months to screw things up. Perhaps they will shove the whole thing. Perhaps they’ll run the songs in reverse through a radio speaker outside the theatre hall, and not use it for anything else. Or they might put more layers onto it, adding a saxophone solo or a vacuum cleaner harmony. For all I know I may have created a monster, but it’s up to the theatre to pull the lever that gives it life.
Premiere at Nordland Teater in Mo i Rana, 12th of March.
www.nordlandteater.no
