The wet season in the Philippines is usually associated with major disasters, flooding around the Metro, the inconvenience it brings to city dwellers, disease, even death. Where I live, I encounter problems where it looks like it is raining inside my house. However, there are occasions when cloudy, rainy weather will remind you of a wonderful experience:
music improvisation
Life as a “Single” Guy – Stories Through Musical Improvisation: IV. “Waking Up From a Dream of Grit and Gravel”
There is a time when all of those feelings and emotions coupled with complicated situations and the lack of sleep will leave you feeling frustrated:
Life as a “Single” Guy – Stories Through Musical Improvisation: III. “Quid Inenarrabile Musica Voluntaris”
Part of living life as a single guy would be numerous attempts to meet women in many ways, shapes, and forms. In such a pursuit, there is a time when all of the sudden, you find this person. It’s as if the stars aligned themselves i.e. the person you have found thinks in the same manner as you, completes and compliments your thoughts, having similar struggles as yourself. I felt happy having found someone like that within the last few weeks. We knew each other back in the ’90s, and even back then we had this connection. I met her again recently, went out with her a single night that I probably will not forget. Two days later, we realized that this mutual attraction was real, was so intoxicating that there wasn’t a single day where we weren’t talking to each other. It was on the verge of a whirlwind romance yet for some reason, it was a romance that would never see the light of day. Such emotions are rather difficult to describe in words. When words fail to express, the music will:
Life as a “Single” Guy – Stories Through Musical Improvisation: II. “Is That You, Eve?”
It is natural for man to look for that other half, “katuwang” in the Tagalog language. Living as a single guy can be rather difficult emotionally. Erik Erikson identified eight stages of human development, and apparently I still fall under stage 6, intimacy vs. isolation. I struggle with the fact that I have lost 14 years of my life in a relationship that didn’t work out in the end, and I felt the need to search for that someone, my “Eve” so to speak. Here is a reflection of that state as told via improvisation on the piano:
Life as a “Single” Guy – Stories Through Musical Improvisation: I. In My Solitude
Ever since I got separated from my ex-wife and started living the life of a single guy/parent, I have gone deeper and deeper into my musical activities. An almost everyday routine I have established is to record various musical ideas and improvise on them, mostly using the piano. While I have been doing this for the past few weeks, something about them was revealed to me. I then realized that as it turns out, they are actually reflections of how I felt at the moment or whatever it is that I experienced within that period of time. As I have previously written before, my current life in solitude can be lonely yet it is an open road where many opportunities have sprung up. Here is one of my musical stories from my current status, as told on the piano, called “In My Solitude”:
A Few Words Regarding How I Composed the Music of Eskalets
For some reason I will never find out, I was chosen by Chrissi Villa to write the music for her video/audio book “The Eskalets”. I was in a pinch back then, being busy with other projects, but then I recalled a number of themes from previous compositions that would fit well with the story. Like beads in a necklace, I strung together a number of themes from my old compositions coupled with newly written material and improvised passages, signifying how some elements of life are known while some are unpredictable. It was a gamble of sorts, very much like the little birds of the story who tried to take their first foray into flight. I felt happy that my old themes and new arrangements for solo piano was a nice fit for “The Eskalets.”
A Jazz-Prog-Rock Fusion Band’s Early Beginnings
Since going for anything musical full time in a professional capacity, I decided to form my very own jazz-prog-rock band with two guys from graduate school, namely Diamond Manuel on trombone and Jeffrey Abanto on guitar, bassist RJ Sy (Karl Roy Band, Kastigo, etc.), and drumming virtuoso and chef KC Puerto. Together, we’re Hi-5! Nah, just kidding. We’re an unnamed jazz-prog-rock fusion band that is currently in its infancy. The video above is an excerpt from our two-hour first rehearsal session together where we had the audacity to take a crack at Alan Pasqua’s “Proto Cosmos” (popularized by the Tony Williams’ Lifetime band and Allan Holdsworth). I am quite pleased with our first session together as we were able to go through a somewhat tricky piece and survive it, hahaha! Other than this piece, we also had loads of fun with a free improvisation session. Hopefully, we’ll start working on original music as well as a couple of covers to spice things up.
The spark of it, all, however, was this free improv session with Diamond:
Philipperc: New FREE Philippine Percussion Library from Detunized!
Hey folks! Before anything else, I want to greet everybody a happy New Year!
Now that we’ve got the 2015 greeting out of the way, I just would like to post about something I’m really excited about: It’s the new Philipperc Ableton Live and Kontakt percussion library from Detunized!
The story behind Philipperc is this: I’ve always wondered about how I can get Philppine indigenous instrument sounds into my compositions without actually owning those instruments. For one thing, instruments such as a Kulintang set are expensive. Just so you would have an idea, in cultures such as Maranao and Maguindanaon, Kulintang sets are properties of the wealthy, treasured heirlooms that can be used as dowry for weddings! To be frank, I don’t have the money to purchase a set of babendil, agung, gandingan, and kulintang for myself. But then I had the good fortune of being enrolled in the Philippine Women’s University School of Music where I’m finishing my master’s degree of music education. It just so happened that it had the perk (pun!) of getting access to the musical instrument museum where they have this awesome collection of Philippine indigenous instruments. I spent one Saturday afternoon sampling a set of agung, gandingan, dabakan, and a kulintang. I also recorded a number of tongatong samples for good measure.
I sent these samples over to my good friend, Stephan Marche, CEO of Detunized, and asked him the favor of developing the samples as a virtual instrument. He went on to do this and developed versions for Ableton Live and Native Instruments Kontakt. He then asked me to go write some demos. To cut the long story short, it was awesome!
What is Philipperc really? It’s a sample-based virtual instrument for Ableton Live and Kontakt that features samples of Dabakan, Agung, Gandingan, Kulintang, and Tongatong. This instrument is intended to be used by composers, music producers, and music students, especially those who are studying indigenous Philippine music. At this point, Philipperc is available at no cost whatsoever! Therefore, I would advise you to get a copy now as this is, I believe, the first Philippine percussion sample library ever developed in history. I’d love to say it’s sort of groundbreaking in a sense. Should Philipperc take off well, we could probably go on and make a more comprehensive library with more Philippine instrument samples like kudyapi, bungkaka, kubing, etc.
To download Philipperc, just go to https://detunized.com/downloads/philipperc/. The prototype version I’m currently using is laid out as a drum rack, so if you have something like an Akai MPC or a Roland Octapad MIDI Controller, it will be great.
Now, what does it sound like? Here’s the demo I wrote for the release of Philipperc. It’s called “Where Coast and Mountaintops Meet.” Enjoy!
Lunch Break at the PWU School of Music Recital Hall
This is probably the first time I spent my lunch break on music rather than on food.
What’s happening here is actually a test of recording equipment. This is a video recording of myself and Jeepney Joyride trombonist Diamond Manuel performing a free improvisation jam. Everything here is completely improvised. The first piece is a 20th-century classical sounding ditty influenced by the likes of Bartok, Varese, Messiaen, Zappa, and maybe a bit of Debussy. The second piece is a pretty straightforward swing jazz in C minor.
Now, as to why I was testing recording equipment, I was checking recording levels on my Zoom H4n because I’m supposed to record Diamond’s trombone recital this coming Saturday morning. He will be performing his recital program on December 6, 2014 at the Philippine Women’s University School of Music Recital Hall. It’s free admission, and safe to say that I don’t think anybody’s going to hear this sort of jam session at the event.
The test did come out great on my Zoom H4n. I have to say, however, that the video posted here is from my crappy smartphone and so the audio quality is not so great. Since I usually have to take videos for my research, I suppose investing money on a real camcorder isn’t such a bad idea.
So, if any of you are in Manila on Saturday and happen to have some free time, please drop by and watch Diamond Manuel’s trombone recital. Cheers!
A Sneak Preview of Christine L. Villa’s “The Eskalets”
Music by Mark A. Galang
