Foot Of Snow Overnight, original improv, G modal

  1. Jess L.
    Jess L.
    The weather prompted this tune. I'm just goofing around playing mandolin along with a drone-and-drums backing track that has only one chord. The tune uses both G mixolydian scale (flatted 7th) and G major scale.

    The first 3 pics *before* the 1:11 kaleidoscope, are the yard here the first day before more snow arrived that night. No, I did not use any black-and-white or sepia filters on those first 3 pics although it looks that way, in fact I actually had to *lighten* them ("curves" adjustment to make them less dark) because they came out of the camera with everything way too dark - apparently it's difficult to get the exposure right with bright snow. Anyway, then *after* that are a bunch of nice short snow videos from Pixabay (theirs look better than mine do).


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  2. Bertram Henze
    Bertram Henze
    Very dramatic, Jess, and interesting to consider why: the constant drone resembles highland pipes, kind-of, and upon closing my eyes I see not snow but a host of wild-looking clansmen* poised for battle. Here lies Bonny Prince Cherlie's recipe for Prestonpans

    *) imagine Frank Sinatra saunter up and down in front of them, singing "let it snow, let it snow, let it snow" - now there's a true hero.
  3. John Kelly
    John Kelly
    Very seasonal, Jess. Your use of the single drone and only one chord does create a highland bagpipe effect as Bertram suggests - the three drones on the Great Highland Bagpipe are an A bass and two A tenor (though not at concert pitch but nearer to Bb in actual sound). I liked the slow fade you used too.
  4. Simon DS
    Simon DS
    Lovely! Very seasonal and relaxed. Nice flow in your playing Jess, and I like the different views of the snow.
    (Very warm here BTW, 59F or 15C I went for a hike in shorts and tee shirt)
  5. Jess L.
    Jess L.
    Thanks Bertram, John, and Simon, for the kind words!

    Bertram and John, I've always loved highland pipes drones, I find them strangely soothing.

    Bertram wrote: "Very dramatic," ...
    "wild-looking clansmen* poised for battle"

    That's actually very perceptive, as it's been battle-stations (Trek reference lol) and all hands on deck around here the last few days to do everything we can to prevent weather-related structural damage to the buildings. (More on that in a minute.)

    I think the tension got subconsciously expressed in the music. I wasn't aware of it while playing, you know how it is with music, the hands take over while the rational side of the mind just sort of backs off for a bit. All I knew is I wanted to make a snow tune but I didn't have a logical reason for 'why'.

    But when I listened to the recording after I'd conjured up my little tune, I noticed there were some tense parts in the music. Rather than tossing it out as being too emotional or something, I thought maybe I'd just go with it and try to make the video into a little story with a happy ending.

    That's the main reason I switched over to stock video clips after my first 3 pictures, because there was a wider choice of clips for different moods. My own snow picture-taking attempts didn't express much of anything aside from a foreboding sense of alarm and claustrophobic gloom. I wanted it to have a lighter, more optimistic, feel.

    As to the likely source of the tune's tension: My recent snow concern has been about the structural integrity of some of the dubiously-constructed nearly-flat-roof buildings here. Old enough to be rickety, but not old enough to have been built with sturdy construction methods. It's doubtful they're in any shape to withstand heavy wet snow loading, particularly if there's a sudden warmup and switch to torrential rain (that does happen here) which can soak into existing snow like a sponge before it can melt or run off - that can add too much weight to an already-weakened or poorly built roof.

    No one does anything by code in this remote region, it's all just wild-west mentality with everyone doing their own thing while the authorities look the other way. A year or so ago we discovered huge structural problems (since fixed at considerable expense) that resulted from that mindset, but that may just be the tip of the iceberg so there is reason to be cautious. In this area it's usually many years between heavy snows and/or unusually-low temperatures, so builders and DYI remodelers have cavalier attitudes. By the time a building has failed due to hidden shoddy construction, the builder(s) have typically moved on or retired or died, so there's no accountability.

    As to rain-saturated snow loads collapsing roofs, I saw an instance of that in the 1960s - heavy wet snow overnight (several feet before dawn) on an old large 2-story barn roof, then the next day before anyone could get up on a ladder to attempt snow removal, there was a nearly-instant switchover to non-stop pouring-down rain. The snow absorbed the rain before it could run off the roof. Even though that old barn (traditional pole building) had the advantage of a steep-sloped roof, the structure was nevertheless old and could not support the extra weight of all that waterlogged snow. Down it went, a catastrophic structural failure that also took out its exterior walls. All that was left intact were the floorboards and the center milking-station. The rest of it was a pile of siding boards and poles on the ground.

    Since then, I've seen two other instances of water-related (although not snow- or storm-related) roof failures in other structures in the region.

    We may be past the highest-risk conditions at this point, but not a good idea to let up one's guard prematurely, as far as preventative actions.

    Anyway...

    Music, generally speaking, is a strange thing. We humans use music in ways we don't even necessarily realize or fully understand.

    John wrote: "slow fade"

    Thanks, I like those too. It seemed appropriate there.

    Simon wrote: "relaxed"

    Oddly enough, I actually did feel very relaxed while playing, it was almost like a meditative thing. That's why I was so surprised to later notice that parts of the tune had a bit of the tension/release thing going on. Maybe the tension/release *causes* the relaxation?

    Simon wrote: "Very warm here BTW, 59F or 15C"

    That sounds nice! Would be not unusual for here except that this winter has been colder than normal. It was 11F (or -12C) here earlier this week, then 16F (or -9C). One day's high was 23F (or -5C). At least we have good indoor heat here now, so that helps.
  6. Simon DS
    Simon DS
    Jess, where abouts do you live? Not Glenwood Springs, Colorado?
  7. Jess L.
    Jess L.
    Simon wrote: "Jess, where abouts do you live? Not Glenwood Springs, Colorado?"

    Not Colorado, no. I will only say that it's an undisclosed location in a sparsely populated region in the western half of the North American continent.
  8. Michael Pastucha
    Michael Pastucha
    As a guitar player, I find playing backup for this kind of 'modal' tune very tricky. It's very easy to make the chords either major or minor and then put in the iv and the v chord... but this often ruins the song I think or turns it into something else altogether. So what you have done here, is what I often try to do on my guitar with a melody like this... lots of drones, chords without thirds (in rock they are called power chords) and open tunings to provide cool drones and some bass runs to help but not over power the melody. It's all about tension and release and letting the melody define itself.

    Great tune by the way!
  9. OldSausage
    OldSausage
    I like it
  10. Bertram Henze
    Bertram Henze
    I see the "foreboding sense of alarm and claustrophobic gloom" thing about heavy snowfall - still remember the pictures of a Bavarian indoor skating hall that had collapsed under snow in 2006, leaving 15 dead.
    The drone trick also reminded me of a video Julie Fowlis did with a shruti box. And I agree with Michael: doing this with a plucked instrument is a challenge indeed.
  11. Jess L.
    Jess L.
    Thanks Michael, David, and Bertram!

    Michael, excellent points about accompanying modal tunes.


    Bertram wrote: "Bavarian indoor skating hall that had collapsed under snow in 2006"

    Yikes. What a tragedy. Too many errors in the design and construction. Wonder how the investigation turned out, did the remaining complicit parties weasel out of responsibility for their bad decisions or were any of them ever punished? Hard to prosecute something that far back though.


    Bertram wrote: "The drone trick also reminded me of a video Julie Fowlis did with a shruti box."

    Oooh I like that sound, nice!
  12. John W.
    John W.
    I enjoyed it.
  13. Gelsenbury
    Gelsenbury
    I'm quite impressed that you found the time to play mandolin under those circumstances, let alone record a lovely improvisation! It obviously worked in releasing some tension and calming the mind, which is great to hear. Hang in there, and best wishes!
  14. Jess L.
    Jess L.
    Thanks John W and Gelsenbury!

    Gelsenbury wrote: "It obviously worked in releasing some tension and calming the mind, which is great to hear. Hang in there, and best wishes!"

    Thank you, and I'm happy to report that we managed to get the snow removed from important roofs prior to the heavy rain starting, so those are no longer at risk of collapse due to rain-saturated snow. Huge relief.

    And yes, taking a mini break to plunk around on mandolin helped me to de-stress so that I could think more clearly about what we needed to do to deal with the dilemma we had.

    Gelsenbury wrote: "found the time to play mandolin"

    Lol well it took exactly 7 minutes 47 seconds total playing time to come up with this tune. I have my Zoom H2n recorder's WAV file which documents the tune-discovery process. The first couple minutes I was just fumbling around playing random runs and riffs trying to come up with something I liked the sound of. I wasn't sure I was going to get anywhere with it but around the 4 minute mark it started to sound more like a tune instead of just a bunch of random notes. I kept at it for several more minutes and I figured that was probably about as good as I was going to be able to do, so I stopped playing and turned off the recorder.

    Went and got a glass of milk from the kitchen and went back to my computer. Transferred the recording to Audacity, skipped past the useless first and middle part to see if there was anything decent towards the end of the recording. Found that the last 2 min 9 sec wasn't too bad, so I merged that with the backing track (after doing a simple treble-cut EQ and "Small Room Dark" reverb), cropped the start, put a fade-out on the end, and exported that as a WAV file for my video app.

    I put the video together towards the end of my 'day' because I knew it would help me further unwind so I could stop worrying and get some quality sleep. Worrying is useful if it leads to productive ideas/action, but at that point we'd already done everything we could at that time. There would be more to do the following day, but high-quality sleep and clear thinking would be beneficial.

    Took about two hours to assemble the video, time well spent though because I did sleep really good afterwards! The video editor I use is Adobe After Effects, which is mostly beyond my understanding but I've figured out how to do some basic stuff with it. I added keyframes for opacity (I use that for visual fade in/out of video clips when I want the fade to start/stop at locations other than the endpoints), and I adjusted size/position of each video clip as necessary. A few little visual effects here and there (curves to lighten, the kaleidoscope thing, etc), added text (using text templates I already had) etc. Then 17 minutes for AE to 'render' the video while I grabbed a snack from the kitchen, then about 1 minute to input that to Media Encoder to make the MP4, then logged into YouTube and uploaded it there.

    I think it's probably easier to gin up these types of mood/emotional improv tunes, because they don't have to fit into any particular structure or style. So it's easier to relax and just play.

    Whereas if a person was trying to create a more structured tune in a specific genre or style or for some particular specified purpose, there would be more interference from the rational mind (while playing) saying things like "that note doesn't match that chord" or "that phrase is too repetitive" or "that's just a scale, it's too boring" or "that's too complicated, good luck getting anyone to play that" or whatever other types of distractions that the logical side of the mind can offer. Such concerns can be useful in many settings, of course.
  15. Christian DP
    Christian DP
    What impresses me most, is the fact, that your mandolin improvisation is rhythmically as precise as the electronic drums, Jess.
  16. Jess L.
    Jess L.
    Thanks Christian! Keeping a steady beat is an ingrained habit and I usually do ok with it. (Unlike my sense of pitch and intonation which is abysmal despite years of sincere effort to correct it, that's one of the main reasons I quit fiddle years ago.)

    The consistent rhythm thing is one of the aspects of music that I really enjoy. It's also why I have such a stubborn streak about not wanting to play anything that's supposed to use rubato (composer-mandated slowdowns and speedups in the middle of a tune) because rubato messes with my sense of rhythm. I like consistency.

    Although a closer look at the waveforms, reveals that my playing is not as accurate as I might like to think. I took a quick screen capture video, below, which shows the Audacity app with this tune's mandolin track and backing track waveforms. The tall areas are the louder areas which correspond to beats and the start of new notes. Some of the mandolin notes are a little earlier or later than the backing track beat at that location. (I added the text annotations for clarity.) The timing differences are not enough to really make any difference one way or another, but still not totally precise.


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    I was listening to that exact backing track when I recorded the mandolin, so I wouldn't have had much of an excuse if I hadn't been able to stay in time with it, overall at least. No different than playing with a group, gotta keep the beat.

    Although everything has to be within reason. It wouldn't do any good to be so hyper-accurate as to sound like a robot or something. I noticed a few years ago that TablEdit actually has a playback option that intentionally introduces some timing and 'velocity' (loudness) discrepancies into its MIDI playback to make it sound more "human" - not sure I could ever really tell the difference in the timing, although I am more inclined to notice and appreciate loudness differences between notes because I make extensive use of loud-vs-soft notes all the time in my own playing, to help keep things from sounding too monotonous. I do recall that, back when I was still using TablEdit more, I definitely always set it to use 'swing' rather than regular - that difference was super noticeable to me (I tend to add swing to all sorts of things that probably don't even really need it). But personally, if I had to choose between robotic tight rhythms vs sloppy loose rhythms that detract from the other players/instruments, I suppose I'd have to go with robot mode, but ideally a person's sound would be somewhere in-between such extremes.

    On most of my stuff the last several years, I do usually record the lead/melody while listening to some sort of backing track or at least a funky drum track of some kind. I get better inspiration that way. And having a common point of reference makes it easier to line up the tracks. Sometimes I delete the initial backing track and add my own backing, other times I just keep it if I still like the way it sounds.
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