Blog
Working with the music of our African friends… in Spain – part 1
Written by Andy Patterson
Last week was the Spanish Jam at the Abubilla Villa in Spain. We all had a list of jobs to do and tasks to achieve and my priorities were to work with some of the material we had recorded with members of the Batwa community in the studio at Ketebul Studios in Nairobi. So, armed with AM1 – our mobile recording studio in the image of the Singing Wells recording kits, and various members of the SMCC (including Sophie and Milly on strings), I set about trying to see what I could do with what I had….
The first song I turned my attentions to was one of Jovah’s songs. This wasn’t one of the ones that was on my list initially, but having listened through, I found what I was looking for.
a) – where the One lands.
b) – a key signature.
to elaborate a bit:
a) where the one lands – this is important whether you choose to follow it or not. By this I mean where the first beat in the bar is. Most music works on some form of regular beat pattern. In western music this is often patterns of 4 beats (and sometimes 6s – 6/8 – but this is really 2 lots of 3 when counting). This is not always a clear cut thing when listening to the music of the Batwa. When we recorded in Nairobi, Jesse – the in house engineer at Ketebul, gave the musicians a click track, which was new to some, if not all of the musicians. This gave them a reference for timing, which aided me greatly. Sometimes this was an un-accented 1 beat click – ie there was no start of the bar highlighted by the click track (usually the first beat of each bar in a click track will be louder or at a different pitch to the others to help you remember and recognise where you are in the bar).
b) – the key of the piece is important so that the music I add is in tune with that already recorded. As it happens, anything that Tiny Moses recorded was in F#major, as that is the key that his homemade guitar is tuned to…(which pleased the musicians at Ketebul!)
So, working with the I began to form a guitar part. I followed the vocal in the main, but basically came up with two sections:
One is a standard of Western Popular Music – I – VI – IV – V A favourite the world over (think Unchained Melody for a start).
There is
What was particularly interesting was that, to my ears, any chord structure I went for that was based in the root key (D Major from Memory) fit around the vocal line
So I also went for a minor based section – VI – III – IV – V which appears a few times, and a middle 8/bridge section which comes along with VI – IImaj – IV – V. This really helps the voice to soar, as does dropping different parts of the backing vocals out at different points.
I double tracked the guitars with the capo on at different points, and then added a bass part courtesy of the new Acoustic Bass at the villa. A shaker added an off beat at times (the one and threes) mostly in the intro and the minor sections.
At this point, I asked Milly to come in and record some violin lines over the track – which she did. In two passes. They are very much felt – there was no prior listen or notation, and save for a few moments where I have ducked them out completely, there has been no editing of her passes. Milly commented that she felt the music and the direction it was taking, so it was easy to play along to, which can only be a good thing I think.
And here is the piece in current form – note this is very much a working copy, and not a final version. I daresay I will take bits out and add bits here and there to make it all work and flow a bit better than it does.
Why do all of this?
The Singing Wells project has two main aims – the first is seed collecting i.e. to capture the music and archive it before it is lost.The second is seed cultivation – i.e. planting the musical ideas and letting them grow. I hope this goes some way to doing this.
There will be another article on the other track I spent quite a bit of time on, which is a departure from my usual comfort zones..