Category Archives: music
Excerpt –
RAVEN CHACON: We were talking about the warble as a technique—can you say more about that?
TIMOTHY ARCHAMBAULT: On the technical side, the warble is a multiphonic oscillation. It’s basically a note that is sounded, and reverberates between the low tonic note and the high tonic note, meaning the octave. A typical vibrato vibrates between one note and the second note closest to it. In the Western methodology, the warble is going up to its octave, eight different chromatic tones higher, and back down, in rapid succession, which is quite fascinating. Some instruments, like clarinets, can do it. I think bassoons or other different woodwinds can do it in the classical genre. For me, it’s a spatial thing and I’ve always been attracted to it. A lot of tribes, like some of the Ojibwe and the Algonquins, used to soak their flutes in water. They thought it made the sound better, because they were mimicking the vocalization of throat rattling, and they called it the horizon, which the melody would float off of. I’m drawn to it—I love the mechanized sound of it. I love the machine aspects of an acoustic instrument. It’s a usually a piece of cedar or alderwood, depending upon what’s regionally specific to each tribe. Each had its own culture, musical history, and geographical resources that contribute to the making of the instrument. I’m still shocked to this day at some of the tones that can come out of it, especially when you think about how it’s just a piece of wood. I think if someone heard it and didn’t know that, they might think it was a machine. It’s about the rapid succession of breath, and pressure, and a threshold in the instrument that together starts off this rapid fluctuation of sound. You can’t change the speed so much once it starts—it stays pretty constant. And then, it’ll shut off. This is not something I invented at all; it was always there. You can hear it going back to old wax cylinder recordings from the early twentieth century or even the late nineteenth century. Not all tribes used this, but a lot did, from the Plains all the way up to the Ojibwe. The sound can mimic different types of bird calls. It could be used at a lake and the sound would ricochet off the water and carry over tonally as a signal for different types of war parties. It’s a crucial component of the flute that I know. I want to see how far I can go with structuring music around that, as the ancestors did, while also bringing in new techniques.
RC: Can you explain more about this horizon of melody—are you talking about actually reading the landscape to inspire a melody?
TA: Sometimes. For me, the warble’s the ground, or the horizon—that’s the edge. The warble has to be on the instrument’s lowest note; it can’t be created on any other note. I can make multiphonics on other holes of the instrument, but it’s always the lowest note that is the warble. That sound is the ground, in some sense. Symbolically, it’s the foundation that everything else floats above. If I were looking at the earth, or a silhouette of a mountain range, for instance, the warble will be the stone or the rock, and the light would be the melodies.
RC: That’s really beautiful. I’ve been using a similar idea in a lot of my pieces, where there’s a fundamental note and then the partial ones are like stars. I actually draw them like that, as little harmonic diamonds above a line.
TA: With a mountain, you can think of it in terms of time versus pitch: A mountain peaks at different intervals, which could be compared to the rate of the warble, or like how a higher frequency or a higher pitch eventually goes down. Your base melodies could be based upon the ground, and the other ones float off of it, not unlike these natural forms.
It was always those with little else to carry
who carried the songs
to Babylon,
to the Mississippi —
some of these last possessed less than nothing
did not own their own bodies
yet, three centuries later,
deep rhythms from Africa,
stowed in their hearts, their bones,
carry the world’s songs.
For those who left my county,
girls from Downings and the Rosses
who followed herring boats north to Shetland
gutting the sea’s silver as they went
or boys from Ranafast who took the Derry boat,
who slept over a rope in a bothy,
songs were their souls’ currency
the pure metal of their hearts,
to be exchanged for other gold,
other songs which rang out true and bright
when flung down
upon the deal boards of their days.
– Moya Cannon
We must not say no to ourselves
When there is a greater deed to do,
If it is not imperative that we should.
We must not say can’t
But we never should really believe that we can’t
Whenever it is for our necessity good.
We must not synchronize with anything less than art-wise
dignity,
It is either that we are natural-constructive-achievers
Or something less than the natural self.
The rendezvous time is here
I see a prophesy:
Across the thunder bridge of time
We rush with lightnin’ feet
To join hands with those,
THE FRIENDS OF SKILL,
Who truly say and truly do.
-Sun Ra
Away Games
by David Berman
So often it’s the unhappy little sounds
city-dwellers make when they’re waiting in line
that sends half of a mind into these
green and black mountain towns
where it’s always January inside the furniture
and even the life of a mushroom
can be classified as a performance
to the steady minds that train in frozen parlors
until they’re finally able to recall
each momentary phase of a candleflame
as a distinct historical object.
Unlike the larger urban areas,
where saxophone solos appear
as often and unexpectedly
as the devil in Polish fiction,
and where one’s upstairs neighbor
may in fact publish a private newsletter
headlined “Fighting to Get Started Tonight About 8 PM”,
these little towns have no bothersome folklore,
no special customs, and no traditional songs,
unless you count
the creak of adjoining matter.
These are places where people treat each other with respect.
No one pressures anyone else to dance,
offers unwanted magazine tips
on caring for the swamp-flower of materialism
or tries to say hello to you
through a mouthful of blood.