Gearsander
Electronic AI (Aleatoric Improvisation) Jazz
Introduction 1.
This is an album, not a collection of unrelated tracks. They are intended to be experienced as a whole. Together, the tracks should make more sense than individually.
This album works best when you listen to it, giving it your undivided attention. It is less suitable as background music, although in my opinion it works great at parties.
I feel a bit ambivalent about explaining my music to you, listener. I would prefer to let the music speak for itself, and give you the opportunity to create your own story about what the music means for you, tells you, for your own images to form inside your mind in response to my music.
But then again not everyone has the same background as I do, so this music will not automatically resonate with everyone’s experiences, taste and associations. And I know this music can appear a bit hard to get into at first, so I decided to give you some insights, some guidance into what I think this music is about, as far as any instrumental music can be about anything anyway, so maybe I should say where this music comes from and why this music is the way it is.
So you can choose to read the text below, or to skip it and listen to the music with a fresh mind, without any knowledge about what to expect, what to listen to, what to think. In fact, I would encourage you to give this album a first listen without having read the text. Be prepared to be surprised, be open to experience what this music does for you, what it makes you feel, what images or ideas it brings you.
Introduction 2.
I once saw a concert by the famous Dutch improvisers’ collective ICP, the Instant Composers Orchestra. They started the concert by just making noise. Slowly, out of this noise musical form appeared, which evolved into segments of beauty, of swing, of new and fresh music.
It reminded me of the birth of our universe, of our everything. First there was nothing, then there was chaos, and slowly, out of this chaos, forms started to appear, suns, planets, galaxies came into existence, the earth was formed, fish, birds, trees appeared, mankind came into existence, creating a lot of interesting stuff, among which the most ungraspable of all things, music.
To me, the evolution of this album feels the same. From initial chaos, musical structure and form emerge, like stars forming in the universe.
Introduction 3.
At one point in time, halfway through the sixties, while four guys in Liverpool changed the world with their albums, and another guy from the States teamed up with two Englishmen to change the sound of the world with his guitar, I was born. When I was about twelve years old, my world changed its colour when I heard Hey Joe for the first time, watching a pretty mediocre movie in our neighbours’ house. This was the moment I knew I wanted to create music.
I learned to play the trombone, played drums and guitar, got two degrees in music, and got more and more interested in synthesizers. I learned to understand and play jazz, lots of styles of what they call world music, and listened extensively to modern classical music (which is also a stupid name). I started dreaming about combining techniques from different styles, putting together the freedom and unpredictability of jazz, the rhythms of dance, compositional techniques from the classical world and the sounds of synthesizers. I wondered how I could make computers improvise.
As a jazz musician, when composing for a group of musicians, I leave a lot of space for my musicians to add their individuality to the music and to shape the music to their taste as well.
So I will compose part of a melody and ask them to continue improvising on that melody, or I will outline a rhythm and will ask the drummer to create parts based on that rhythm.
When starting to work with a modular synthesizer system, I wanted the computer to behave similarly. So I created basic melodies that it could improvise on. Sometimes I just provided a group of notes that it could pick from when creating its own melody. I defined rhythms, defined the amount of freedom to play around with these rhythms, or I designed several ones and let the machine decide when to play one of those.
This album is the result of this process. It takes its place between modern jazz, contemporary classical (composed) music, and electronic music. Oh, and there’s some disco in it as well, because I am a child of the eighties after all. I hope you find it as inspiring, intriguing, sometimes funny, sometimes overwhelming as I do. Please take the time to listen to it with your full attention, I promise you it’s worth it.
Every performance of the songs is different, but unfortunately it’s not yet possible to share that experience with you. So what you hear on this album is one performance out of many possible ones. I hope one day it will be technically possible to create an album that is different every time.
The Songs
1. Confusion Say
This is a ritual, an initialisation, a calibration of your ears. Reset your mind. Open your soul. Free yourself from expectations. Just listen. Let the music blow away all thoughts and judgements, and get ready to experience the rest of the album.
Inspired by the rhythms of human speech and birdsong.
2. That’s Not How It Works.
You may have an expectation about how events will turn out, but more often than not reality will interfere.
The working title of this song was “minmaj” because I created a scale that is both major and minor. The song takes through quite a series of harmonies, and for every harmony the melody is improvised in the corresponding scale, much like jazz (well, it is jazz, actually). All this is accompanied by a solid disco drum and bass part, so we might not be able to sing along to the melody (actually, it’s possible), but we can always dance to the song.
3. Please Don’t Turn Left Again.
When it would have been better not to turn left in the first place, it’s absolutely advisable not to turn left again.
Bells playing rhythms accompanying a long melody. The rhythm of the bells consists of two sections, a strict one and a free one. The rhythms of the first are basic drum rhythms, but when played by bells they sound very different.
The melody is a long, lament like outcry.
4. One Of Those People.
You find out, much to your surprise, that you are not so different from those other people after all, when looking at your own behaviour.
I was inspired by 17th century composition techniques like fugue, basso continuo, ostinato bass, when I wrote this tune. There is just one melody, that’s being played in the bass and in the upper voice. The bass takes an accompanying role, although it sometimes forgets that assignment, and in the melody the machine improvises its digital heart out.
The drums follow their own logic, never losing the beat but enjoying themselves, and there’s even space for a little drum solo.
5. Invitation (Amaze Yourself)
Do it! Don’t hesitate! You can do it!
The basis of this song is a two tone bass drum part that is inspired by the Brazilian Surdo drums. The snare drum thinks it’s the soloist in this song, so who are we to deny it that role? The voice wants to tell us something, but it takes a while before we can hear what it says. There’s a melody that cannot decide whether it wants to jump around or stay static, so it does both.
I added some guitar and bass guitar to help out the machine grooving. I hope this song will inspire you to dance and be happy.
6. Adrift.
All solid ground is gone. Like a rudderless ship at sea, we are adrift. Where will we land?
I wanted to create a so-called drone, that’s slowly evolving music. I think it worked out quite well.
7. I Wish I Could.
Sometimes you aren’t able to do things the way you want to, even if that would improve a situation. There’s always you between plans and reality.
Bells and (tuned) percussion are having a conversation, or is it a fight? In the middle of the song, they seem to have reached an agreement, but then the discussion intensifies. The bells and drums both play basically the same melody, which vaguely reminds us of Gamelan music. A steady pulse on a drum keeps everything structured. The dissonant jazzy chords in the background follow the melody.
8. Easter Egg.
Hate them or love them.
This could be the music to a road movie. Our hero oversees the battle field one more time, turns his back and strides away. The drums (or is it gunfire?) of the battlefield are still audible, and there’s confusion everywhere. But our melody is one of hope and achievement. The melody consists of just a few notes, played over three or four octaves.
9. I Choose You Pikachu.
I imagine Pikachu is happy that he’s the one getting chosen.
I was intrigued by the approach to rhythm in Indian music, and the way Steve Coleman uses a similar technique in his music. So this is my M-base song. The original title was “Takadimi”, which is one of the words Indian musicians use to sing their rhythms. You hear rhythmic modulations, as well in the melody as in the accompanying parts.
Especially the bass reminds me of electric jazz bass playing.
10. My Name Is.
What’s my name? Who am I?
This is my thank you to Nysthi, a software developer who helped me create the tools I needed to create this album. Usually, when I had an idea, he would create something overnight that was not just what I asked for, but it would contain a lot of extra, very useful functionalities. So I took one of his tools and used the first preset, because I liked it a lot.
I played some punk bass and guitar on this tune, so I guess this is an electronic punk-jazz disco song. The song has an 11 bar form, which could feel a bit unusual to the untrained ear.
Just as, I realise, might do this entire album.
All music composed by Joop van der Linden
Mastering by Michiel Cornelisse
Artwork by Martin Draax