sarajazz

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Introduction
  • Abstract
  • What is it about?
  • Inspirations
    • Oblique Strategies by Brian Eno
    • Melissa McCracken – Painting Music
    • Song Exploder
    • Noa Kageyama’s Blog
    • Impro Lesson with Susanne Schneider
    • Lesson with Nadine Nix
    • The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

• Methodology
  • Development
    • Analysis Through Visualization
    • Composing based on Visual Arts
    • Creating Lyrics based on Colors and Patterns
    • About Motifs and Setting Tasks
  • Reflections
    • Using Blender
    • About Improvisation
    • About Identity
    • Drawers
    • About Songwriting

• Process Documentation
  • Transforming „Heaven in Pennies“ by Esperanza Spalding
    • Tension and Release
    • Master Recordings „Hidden Path“
  • Transforming „I Heard You Singing“ by Jacob Collier & Becca Stevens
    • Painting „l Heard You Singing“
    • Composing „Another Soul“
  • Transforming „Gotta Be Another Way“ by KNOWER feat. WDR Big Band
  • Transforming „Meadowlarks“ covered by MARO & Jacob Collier
  • Transforming „Halleluja Junction“ by John Adams
  • Transforming „Atchafalaya“ by Snarky Puppy
  • Transforming „Sing To The Moon“ by Laura Mvula
  • Transforming “ In My Bones“ by Jacob Collier feat. Kimbra & Tank and the Bangas
  • Transforming „Lest We Forget (blood)“ by Esperanza Spalding
    • Getting back into Animating
    • Drawing a Stop Motion Video
    • Documentation of my Improvisation-Experiment „SOIL“

• Conclusion
  • Music In A Prism – a philosophical approach

• Discussion
  • Sketches

17/33 Meadowlarks

Take a listen to the song:

The Portuguese artist MARO, has started a pretty cool project with the beginning of the corona pandemic: „ITSA ME, MARO“. For this, she „called“ artist friends to make music with them. The result is a lot of nice collaborations and all videos can be watched on her YouTube channel:

I was especially touched by her „conversation“ with Jacob Collier – the two covered the song Meadowlarks by Fleet Foxes. Their version creates an extremely peaceful atmosphere and inspired me to set myself the task of writing a song that has an absolutely non-melancholic mood. At this point, it occurred to me that I haven’t written many peaceful songs that don’t have a tendency towards melancholy, and I wondered which songs I know have this characteristic. Daydreamer by ADELE? Time to Rest You Weary Head by Jacob Collier? Both are very positive, calm songs that nevertheless carry a melancholic quality to my sensibilities. Possibly, however, this may be due to the fact that I associate certain situations of the past with them and the melancholic feeling arises only in me and then I do not want to infer other listeners. 

A genre whose greatest quality is to evoke as little goosebumps and emotions as possible, but to gently put its listener into a calm, neutral relaxation, is that of lullabies. So below is an acoustic impression of my improvisation and the idea of the resulting lullaby. 

Likewise under this aspect, I also approached the visualization of the song. To me it seemed too clumsy to make the melody voice clear by a disconnected line. So I illustrated it as the course of a mountain range. The positive, gentle atmosphere is mixed with polyphony marked by tensions, which give the whole thing a slightly surreal character. This is how the futuristic-looking lark in the form of a spaceship with a breathing organ came into being. 

The following associations have arisen to this image:

• Bird
• Lark 
• Birds flock
• Breath
• Voice
• Singing
• Lungs
• Movement
• What it means to have a voice. What can it do? Sing, speak, communicate, heal, help, hurt, move things and inspire action, shout, whisper, breathe…
• Breeze
• Echo 
• Vastness 
• Calm 
• Blood
• Circulation 
• Distance 
• Taking off from earth
• Spaceship
• Heaven and earth touching 
• Progress
• Soar
• Float
• City moves into the background
• Nature 
• Diversity 
• Surreal 
• Dream
• Sleepy

Abstract

This study uses a self-experiment to investigate the extent to which creative processes and compositional development can be fostered by focussing on a visual stimulus. 

In the course of my existence as an artist, I have noticed that in my case the development of new song ideas often emerge from a system of „try and error“ or by contrast is based on a very theoretically, heady approach.

This study aims to give a methodical approach to generating new ideas in order to take away a certain arbitrariness from it, but at the same time intends to provide a foundation to an intuitive way of working.

At its core, this work documents the transformation process of an acoustic stimulus into its visual illustration, on which the creation of new music is based.

In summary, this Master Research Project produced 7 paintings and two videos, a series of improvisations, 6 completed composition, as well as an additional lyrical sketch and a pedagogical improvisation concept. The majority of this outcome occurred within a period of a few months.