Now that a lot of the sampling and cleanup is finished from the original parts, I can start working on new stuff. I liked that arpeggio that came from the Time for π experiment, so I thought I’d expand on it.
Trying to keep with the Disney/Children’s music theme, I remembered this:
Welcome back.
In a 40+ minute-long piece of music, there needs to be some kind of narrative flow. This can be done in a bunch of ways, like lyrics, tempo changes, volume variations, changes in orchestration, etc. With a constant-tempo EDM parade, though, many of the things that add narrative are closed off to us.
One thing that I did use was vocal samples, 1960s spoken word tracks, backwards lists of frozen food ingredients read by a robot, satanic chants, audio porn, or other lyric-like things. The idea is that they give you something obvious to focus on — you don’t need to really concentrate like you would if you were teasing out subtle changes in orchestration.
Time for π, then, is going to be a little challenging in that regard. It’s pretty high-concept, in that no listeners are really going to be able to hear that the melody, harmony and rhythm are generated by the digits of an irrational number. The four of you that read this blog, sure, but nobody else.
One option is to have the numbers narrate themselves, perhaps by sampling the Pointer Sisters vocal out of the Pinball Numbers Count song.