Below are sound pieces from 2020 /24 and 2015-2016 while early tape work About Love was recorded in 1983. Different techniques are used - five of them feature solo bass guitar which is multi-tracked with audio processing controlled by iPhone motion-sensing. Two more could be referred to as Automatic Music, basically instrumental clips that are played and processed by random numbers. About Love is a piece based on a simple two-word tape fragment fed into dual tape recorder feedback technique. The last piece - This Little Lady, is a remix of a Gregory Isaacs song by the same name from the 1990 album Warning.
Bass Guitar & Electronics
Five recent pieces (2020-24) of solo bass guitar with audio clips and extensive live real-time digital processing. These are improvisations with no post studio effects processing or overdubs added. Having developed this unique setup (through Ableton / M4L) and improvised with it over the last thirteen or more years I believe the primary influence probably comes from French Musique Concrete which tries to strip traditional melody and harmony from the performance, introducing external recorded audio and electronic instruments and effects as primary audio sources. On a good day I like to imagine that no human was involved in producing the “music” and that the pieces evoke environments or dreamscapes. Noise, industrial, experimental and improvised musics of many kinds have always been influences.
Source audio is always a Fender Jazz bass with audio clips also triggered and layered into the live audio. The combined sound is heavily processed using various audio plug-ins as well as outboard digital processors such as Eventide H3000 and Eclipse, Chandler Tube Driver etc. The audio plug-ins are mostly controlled using iPhone XYZ axis motion detection so that the bass / clips / FX processing are all played “live” with arm movements captured by two mobile phones which modify the extensive audio processing on the separate digital tracks. Volume and expression foot pedals also control outboard digital processing.
The bass feed is multi-tracked in Ableton with individual tracks separately processed in real-time and then all tracks fed to five different amplified speakers. Two of the amplifiers are mic’d with that sent back to mix with direct digital and analog feeds into Protools for recording. An original Ampeg B2B bass tube amplifier, purchased when FAT formed in 1982 serves as one live amp along with a Mesa-Boogie tube Walkabout. An 18” JBL woofer, powered by FAT’s original 800 watt Bryston 4B provides a healthy bottom to the sound and this is also mic’d and sent back to the recorded mix. As such, the final result is a complex, swirling digital / analog sonic punch.
Automatic Music
These two pieces (Automatic Music 1 & 2) were conceived in 2014 and updated and recorded in 2016. They use instrumental clips and audio processing which are entirely played by random numbers. Pitch, rhythm, volume, audio processing, mixing etc is all "controlled" randomly but the result is not unlike some sophisticated free improv units I have seen over the years.
Other
About Love (1983) was made from a two-word tape fragment fed through a dual tape recording looping system similar to the one used by Steve Reich or Brian Eno and Robert Fripp in Frippertronics. The photo at the top of this page shows Jeff Noble with the tape recorder setup at the time.
This Little Lady (2016) is my own remix of Gregory Isaacs' song from the album Warning, already masterfully produced by King Tubby. The remix loops various segments of the song and adds only minimal processing. The remix has an offbeat loopy quality while respecting the heart of the original song.