The track above, which you may have just listened to, is the result of a virtual but very human collaboration between me and the Chicago-based philosopher and musician Steve Asma. Here’s how it came into being.
A few months ago I shared a sound experiment here in a post titled: What Do You Make of This Sound? You can go back and listen to it by way of that link. It was really just a tone I produced digitally and manipulated a few different ways. But there was something about it that captured my imagination, so I posted it and wrote a bit about it and how I tend to respond musically rather than “compose” music. I suppose that would make me a musician rather than a composer. Whatever.
Soon after I got an email from Steve, who is a multi-talented fellow, to say the least — a visual artist, philosopher, author and musician who is a professor of Philosophy at Columbia College Chicago, where he is a Senior Fellow of the Research Group in Mind, Science and Culture. He is good at all of them. So good as a guitarist, in fact, that he was a sideman for Bo Diddley. He’s got it going on.
We first met more than a decade ago when he started writing some very cool early pieces for The Stone. And then a bunch more: Does the Pandemic Have a Purpose? and Was Bo Diddley a Buddha? among them. As often happens in my business, we have never met in person. But because we share passions for many of the same arts and endeavors, we seem to find ways to work together.
Steve heard the sound, which I called “Pulse Project,” and suggested he use it as a foundational track to make some music over. So he recorded a guitar track along with what sounds like a shekere keeping quarter note time. The guitar has a distinct Indian raga feel and slides effortlessly into American country and bluegrass territory. It is lyrical and lovely.
I really loved it. But something bothered me. Steve’s part had transformed the sound from what I thought was an audio experiment of sorts into something very much like a song. And I never — I do not know why — write songs. Or do I? Over time, it grew on me and I began to hear it not as the sound it once was with a guitar track over it but as a thing in itself, with the two or more elements in conversation. I then dove into the spirit of it, went to a local studio that had a drum kit and played along until I got something like a drum track to lay into it (I seemed to want to channel Steve Gadd, such as I was able). I added little elements on electronic harp and one or two Garage Band rhythm loops drifting in and out. There are one or two slight timing glitches in the drumming but otherwise, Steve and I both liked the feel of it. (Listen for a transformation of the feel at about 3:20 into something more undulating and orchestral.) We now have two separate pieces of music with a shared origin sound.
In every song, a story. That’s the story of this tune.
Here is a link to the Question Everything home page.
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