As promised, when the

The timed comments option with Soundcloud is a great way to add ‘subtitles’ to your music, to explain it, talk about what’s happening, even add credits if you have lot of guests that you want to highlight…

Feel free to use the timed comments yourself – you can respond to my commentary, ask a question, or just point out the bits you like the most (and please use the comments below this post to explore other things that might be possible with timed comments, as well as whether or not you found it helpful to have the commentary while listening…) :

2nd un-mixed track from the forthcoming steve lawson/mike outram album by solobasssteve

and here’s the first tune again, if you missed it last time round:

Rough Mix of 1st Track from forthcoming Steve Lawson/Mike Outram album by solobasssteve

Mike and I have another day booked next week for mixing, so we’ll see how close we are to putting the album out after that!

If the 2nd track reaches 500 plays before the album’s out, of course we’re put up another un-mix for y’all to hear.

…That’s what my brain is asking when I’m improvising.

We were able to snag a day recording in the rather lovely studios at Leicester College, giving the students there something to record, and a very different type of project to work on.

We went in having NEVER played together at all. In fact, we didn’t even soundcheck together on the day – the first thing we recorded was the first time we’d played together. We just hit record, started playing and carried on playing for the rest of the day, with a short break for lunch.

The extend of the conversations prior to each recording included ‘OK, this time I’ll just loop you’ on one tune, ‘let’s play some weird shit’ on another, ‘shall we try for something a little shorter?’ on more than one occasion… For the most part, one of us started playing, the other joined in and it unfolded from there. And that’s where the question above came in – what was happening? was it good? yes (the answer every time, thank God) – what could I do to make it even better? do that.

For those kind of questions to work and not be hi-jacked by other questions like ‘is what I’m playing OK?’ ‘I hope he’s OK with where this is going’, ‘is this jazz enough? I think I’m supposed to be more jazz’ requires a level of mutual trust that allows you both to just get on with it. I needed to not be worrying about what Mike might play, or what he thought of what I was playing. Naturally, I wanted him to like it, but being unable to ask him in the moment, I just assumed that my own taste would work as a reasonable benchmark for that which is good, and worked from there.

I also did my best (by smiling a lot) to let him know that I loved what he was playing (he’s amazing), in order to foster more of that trust.

At that point, when you’re both playing and digital tape is rolling, there’s no time to think about what you can’t do, what you should do, what you wish you could do if only you’d brought your other bass with you… it’s all about that initial question? Is this good? what can I do to make it better? And being prepared for the answer to part b) to be either ‘stop playing’ or ‘just keep doing what you’re doing, and let him be awesome’.

In the event, we ended up with a lot of music that I’m more proud of that anything I’ve been involved in for a long time. It’s fun, it’s refreshing, it’s very tuneful, it’s spacey, extravagant exciting music. We’ve got a couple of hours of it from which to choose and mix the bestest bits for an album release. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

For now, here’s one of the VERY rough mixes – the first bit of the project to be made public – pretty much as it came out of the computer in the studio…

Rough Mix of 1st Track from forthcoming Steve Lawson/Mike Outram album by solobasssteve

The recordings are remarkably good considering they’re just on a little Tascam digital recorder thingie (recorded by Andrew Buckton – fab singer/songwriter who came with me, and sang beautifully on the gig too).

here they are – enjoy!

New Tunes from Islwyn Guitar Club by solobasssteve

Here’s The trailer:

And here’s the first of the duo improvs that Michael and I played, with my introduction to it (about 2 minutes of talking – I’ll probably put the music-only version of this on youtube!) More audio and video coming soon:

Steve Lawson and Michael Manring, live improv in London. from Steve Lawson on Vimeo.

Since Saturday’s upload, I’ve put 2 more videos on Vimeo

I’m fascinated by the relationship between technology and end result, and by the methods that we as musicians can use to keep our own technical thoughts and experiments subservient to the greater artistic and communicative aims…

Anyway, the first video is this:

Steve Lawson public beta. A Gentle Descent Into Madness. from Steve Lawson on Vimeo.

It’s the first of the new experiments to have earned itself a title - ‘A Gentle Descent Into Madness‘ (don’t expect that to make to to the finished project, but it did seem fitting) – the initial loop has the flutter of harmonics over a simple semibreve bassline, with a melody that drifts in and out of consonance, giving it a vaguely unsettled feel that becomes more and more nuts as the looped parts of the tune get more promient, more scattered and more harsh… Lots of fun!

Then there’s this:

jazz experiment (public beta music, happy edition ) from Steve Lawson on Vimeo.

As I said on twitter, it’s stumbling clumsily into Todd Johnson‘s territory - there are moments of guileless happiness and frivolity on every project I do. It’s very much a part of who I am, and how I hear music, so this is me exploring that space, seeing what comes out. Towards the end, the looping stuff deconstructs the more traditional feel of the jazz progression + solo format, taking into a more StevieSpace. Enjoy!

I guess both of these pieces tie in well with the ‘is darker music inherently deeper?‘ question – feel free to continue that discussion in the light of these, and Saturday’s offering.

Having had the aforementioned week away from playing, I sat down yesterday to do some bass-things.

Then I switch to slide, with another shorter loop with the feedback turned down so it’s basically a long delay, and play around with the wah-wah/filter on the sound to give depth to the layers… The sound on the video is OK, but not really good enough to hear just how effective this can be. Still, you get a good impression of what’s going on.

here it is, enjoy!

Steve Lawson – New Ambient Work, Beta version… from Steve Lawson on Vimeo.

If you want to see more of what I’ve been up to, there are lots of videos from the last month or so of experimentation at vimeo.com/solobasssteve.

And of course, Youtube has loads of live video of me solo and with Lobelia, Theo Travis, Michael Manring etc.

Anyway, here it is – I edited out a chunk of it, cos after I created the loop, it went nowhere for quite a while. Remember, all these tracks are just one take improvs – they aren’t ‘compositions‘ that I’m working on, they are open ended, freewheeling experiments, where I try out technical possibilities, mess with arrangements and see what kind of things are thrown up serendipitously as I meander through music:

It’s got a beat… you can dance to it… (more public beta music experiments from Steve Lawson) from Steve Lawson on Vimeo.

The second video is a a good contrast to this – it’s the only video I’ve ever found of Theo Travis and I playing together. It was filmed at the National Theatre in February, our first gig for about 18 months, and the tune is one from our duo CD, called Flutter – playing with Theo is about as easy and freeing as any musical situation can possibly be. He makes anything I play sound 5 times better than I imagined it could, and is an effortlessly inventive improvisor. I hope we get to play again soon:

If you want to keep track of all the videos I’ve been putting up on Vimeo, you can do so on my page there, or via the RSS feed of my uploads.

Does Darker equal Deeper?

An interesting comment thread has started up on this video of mine on Vimeo. The question seems to be ‘is darker music inherently deeper than lighter, more poppy music?’ – is it, as Steve Morton puts it in the comments, “more substantive?”

I tend not to try and play to other people’s expectations of what my music should or shouldn’t end up being – I’m terrible as second guessing how others will perceive what I do – but I am fascinated by people’s take on the nature of ‘dark’ music. I find that sometimes I gravitate towards darker, more dissonant music by a particular artist, but other times, it’ll be the more obvious melodic/diatonic pieces that maybe because they are easier to play seem imbued with a deeper level of communication.

What say you, commenters of the internet?

They contrast a couple of different possible uses of the functions I’ve been exploring on the Looperlative of late – the first being using the replace functions as an ancillary bleepy effect in an otherwise mellow ballad, and the second being a full-on rhythmic bleep-fest, that veers much closer to glitch-core (though the fact that my rhythmic reference point is just a fairly slow ‘four on the floor’ kick-drum style pattern is a little less interesting than you’d expect from something more obviously IDM…)

Anyway, here they are, hope you enjoy them. Please feel free to share the links to them with your friends, to embed the videos on your own blog, and generally let people know what I’m up to here. It’s kinda fun putting the stuff that would normally happen behind closed doors, as part of the development process, out there in front of people to see how ideas develop and how newly emerging musical processes become part of compositions and improvisations…

More Public Beta musical experiments from Steve Lawson from Steve Lawson on Vimeo.

Steve Lawson, public beta music experiments. Bleepy electronica time! from Steve Lawson on Vimeo.

Each day that I experiment with these glitchy replace functions, it feels like I’m getting closer them being ‘musically transparent’ – where the music is bigger than the technique… I’m trying to get so comfortable with the tech that I can employ it while focussing on the music.

So here are the two AudioBoo idea-grabs that I did today:

And then (as if that wasn’t productive enough for one day!) I headed down to the British Library (as I commented on Twitter earlier, Steve Lawsons are generally at home in Libraries) to record a podcast with Thom AKA Minifig. We chatted about music and social media, the news and a few more philosophical things. You can listen to it on their podcast page, or via the embed below:

The new tricks are around the idea of ‘replacing‘ bits of a loop, with other audio, giving it a chopped up, glitchy feel. The main effect I’m using is a ‘quantise replace‘ function, that replaces bits, but switches on on and off on the beat, so when I hit the button it waits for the next exact subdivision of the loop (in this case, 1/96th of the whole loop time) before doing anything, and again to switch off again.

In the middle, I’ve got some of them reversing and going to half speed while the replace bits are being recorded, which means that they play back at double speed and backwards, for even more baffling effect…

I’ve got a few other applications of the same trick, that are less gnarly and nasty than this one (this was designed as a kind of screwed up urban deconstructed blues kinda thing… not sure if it ends up anywhere near that, but still… Enjoy!

Steve Lawson’s public beta musical experimentations. from Steve Lawson on Vimeo.