[mp3 .zip archive / 136MB]-- A little more time A sample is an electrical pulse that can often sound much like a familiar sound. By that definition, all recorded music is indeed a sample. Stretching the definition further, all electric instruments produce samples—it's not too much to suggest seeing even a fret board as a circuit board. To wit, '"sampling'" is a redundant term, but here we are. What '"samples'" do as opposed to notes generated by conventional instrumentation is that samples obey and betray their origins. Unless radically reworked, a sample of the break from Funky Drummer will always sound like Funky Drummer. Modulating notes in extremis is a bold and rich tactic of the avant-garde—and what others do with string playing Thiesen, here does with the sample. Bootsy Collins titled his first album Stretchin' Out. it's old school musician slang for the type of performance that involves stretching songs out live, repeating phrases, holding notes. As those notes are held and repeated the performance could go beyond a song reading and into an entirely new composition of accidental timbres and harmonies. it's best heard later on Collins's "Munchies for Your Love" a song both languid and urgent, the melody stretched out to disappear into silence then roar back—but the methodology is best explained by Tony Conrad's project of "just intonation." Stretch something out long enough and tone becomes a rhythm. Belying Thiesen's roots as a drummer, by taking pieces from the notational ('"classical'") canon—works concerned mostly with melodic interplay and progression—Thiesen stretches the samples beyond logic, and turns melody into drone and progression in repetition. Sample and hold. Brian Joseph Davis, 2007 |
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