The Ancient Camel Guide- a new chapter!

In a recent session of deep meditation, I repeated as my mantra:

"I have prepared myself to receive and understand your knowledge."

__________________________

For this particular peice, our hero SRI GAJA has wandered into misfortune in the cosmic desert... he is deeply confused and tries to find patterns from which to make sense of his experience...as he reaches the end of hope, a mystical ancient camel fulfills his own role in fate, and shows Sri Gaja the Way.


SOOTHSAYER- Ancient Camel Guide by SRI GAJA

First Steps

Today I took the first steps in creating the first steps of Sri Gaja, and by that I mean the first physical steps of a young elephant, not the metaphorical first steps of the album itself (although both are true).

The first thing I wanted to accomplish rhythmically was to create a contrast of balance and imbalance- sturdiness and steadfastness. I also wanted to melodically create the tension that tells of this same relationship.

Since I've been using drum kit libraries instead of a drum vst like battery, it makes for a more painstaking rhythm creation but also allows a lot of freedom for intricate touch up. I usually load up several kicks, snares, hats and the such to get started, and once I have all the technical things taken care of- levels, compression, frequencies...then I go ahead with dragging random drum hit samples into a playing loop of a bar or two (or a measure). With the ability to do so much to every little instance of sound, I find this technique (of dragging random samples in) to be a lot of fun as well as a learning experience. It's possible to take a random open hat that doesn't sound good at first and transform it into a digitalized wash at the end of a bar by reversing it and transposing it down or up a full or half octave (this can be heard in a lot of my tracks, this one below included).

Once I have drums worked out, I listen to what kind of sounds they are forming together, and make selections for melodic ideas. Massive is a beast of a VST, and I use it for literally everything. Creating fatboy bass lines from scratch is simple, and you're able to get sufficiently deep with carving out the exact sounds desired. For this attempt, I wanted to focus on creating the special wobble movement that would capture the sway of an elephants walk. I experimented with more complex movements, using triplet ramp LFO settings among others, but I found the simpler wobble to be the more effective one for this compositions purpose.

For this first sketch of my elephant Sri Gaja taking his first steps, I wanted to go with some mundane as well as epic sounds to show both the organic/innocent nature conceived as well as foreshadowing the future of the warrior elephant and his growing power. This was accomplished with the use of the trusty E flat/D dissonance.

Here's a soundfile of this first experiment, the first sketch of Sri Gaja (which is exactly that: a sketch, not meant to be an actual track):


First steps by SRI GAJA

Welcome!

Greetings!

I created this blog to describe and analyze the experience of producing my first official album- "Sri Gaja"- for Waveform Modulations. In this blog, I will explore the world of "Sri Gaja" and detail the musical creation that will be taking place over the coming weeks and months leading up to a 2010 release of this album. I'll be leaking preview/full tracks as well as loops that can be used by other producers to explore different paths of the "Sri Gaja" concept.

I am extremely honored to be releasing "Sri Gaja" on Waveform Modulations. As a label, WM has promoted the more experimental and cutting edge styles of 21st century electronica, championing the mystical/esoteric side of futuristic sound creations and featuring producers from across the United States as well as the UK.

Needless to say, I am thrilled to be able to go into the creation process with a truly open and unbounded energy. 

For every producer, the creation process is totally different. Some start with one particular musical/rhythmic element, some sequence the progression mathematically and color in the shapes, and some start with a basic mental concept and experimentally 'solve the puzzle' of the track through testing sound after sound. There are endless ways, and the beautiful thing is that all are the correct way.

My method (and probably the method of many other artists) is to channel from the abstract into concepts from words, images, or mind sounds and go blindly into the actual creation of the music. I feel that if one 'tunes in', the music will manifest itself via previously existing thoughtforms or instantaneous jumps of energy that can be translated from the abstract into musical notes, sounds, or rhythms. 

Like most musicians, producers, and composers, my mind very seldom stops creating sounds, hence my spaceman nature...much of the time I am totally immersed in another dimension, hearing or creating music, and very likely appearing catatonic. 

This is the model I have chosen to create "Sri Gaja". I have been pondering what to do with the album since spring, and have been awaiting the right time to start. I kept my mind and thoughts open to ideas for many months, knowing I would recognize the right idea when it came. Shortly after Transformus 2009 (the southeasts annual burn), the elephant came to me. 

It was not too long ago that I recieved the concept- tribal rhythms were floating in my mind along with thoughts of the ancient fire ritual when I noticed the elephant. The tribal rhythms became a pounding, spaced out broken beat- very much in the dubstep style but even slower- the snare drum hit was being represented by a massive elephant's heavy leg slamming the earth- shaking the ground with every step . Each gracious movement of this giant creature was part of the deeply layered rhythm- from the muscle contractions in its shoulders to the sway of its huge belly as it moved around- the elephants movements and the music were one and the same.

Naturally, I became fascinated with the elephant and realized how incredibly majestic the creature is, yet how incredibly gentle and peaceful it is at the sametime- a wonderful manifestation of yin/yang energy...a beautiful and perfectly controlled wobble- symbolically representing the mystique of  well crafted subsonic movement.

I began researching more and more about elephants, about how they live- their incredibly complex social order, their rituals of mourning the dead, their astounding memory and emotional depth, and the lessons humankind have learned from the nature of this pachyderm.

In both the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, elephants are deeply revered as sacred creatures for their nature as 'gentle giants', for the fact that they inherently have so much power to use for good or bad in their sheer size and might, much like an actualized human mind, so they became a model of the disciplined mind- like lightning in a bottle.

Taking in as much information as I could about elephants and their role in this world, I found the name 'Sri Gaja' to be appropriate for the intention of this album. 'Sri' is the prefix Indians give to honor or venerate sacred entities and 'Gaja' is the Hindu word for elephant. My goal with the creation of this set of music is to primarily honor the creature's sacred nature, which extended to the concept of telling a musical story of an ancient warrior elephant- an actual individual ancient warrior elephant named 'Sri Gaja' and the experience of his earthly manifestation.

Since this will be a very long and drawn out process, I will be sharing my journey in learning more about 'Sri Gaja',  his journey, and the creation of music that will express the experience. As I mentioned before, this is my very first official release, so it will be interesting to experience this process for the first time and see how it all turns out!

I'd be glad to answer or address any questions or comments on this forum, so feel free to start a dialogue or send some feedback.

Best,

Pericles

(for music and more info, visit www.myspace.com/djpericles)