aeblog

"I have something that would be more interesting for you..."

I laid out a challenge for myself a few months ago, and now I have the results to share with you.

Download: Menya Besatzung Bateau

When my parents were visiting me around Thanksgiving time, I asked my dad to step into the studio and record a short story of something that happened in his life. That's not all that exciting in and of itself, but what makes it more interesting is that I asked him to record the same general story in four different languages. My dad has an incredible skill with languages and speaks German, Russian and French fluently in addition to English. I do not speak any of these languages (unfortunately!), so I set myself up for a situation in which I would be forced to treat my dad's words as nothing more than sounds; rhythmic and melodic. I listened to his voice purely as a musical instrument, with all semantics thrown out the window. It was nothing more than sounds that happened to be coming out of a human being rather than a mechanical or electronic device. I can't even imagine how schizophrenic the results must sound to someone who can understand these languages. I'll apologize in advance.

How did the words lead you to the music?
I will admit that primarily I was influenced by the rhythms of the phrases as opposed to the melodic aspects, but I used both throughout. The main loop was what inspired the primary piano riff and it all sort of took off from there. I wrote several other sections to the song that were more closely based on melodies that I took from the speech, but they got cut because they just weren't musically interesting enough to me. I guess that means that I was a little lenient with my 'assignment', but it's not like I'm in school or anything!

Did you notice any particular differences between the languages?
This is something I thought about a lot while working on this song. The German was not surprisingly filled with more percussive sounds and required a bit more compression due to the volume changes. The French was pretty smooth, I will say, and the Russian was surprisingly more melodic than I had expected.

What's your dad talking about anyway?
Though it was difficult, I didn't let myself listen to the English summarization until after I had completed the song. I won't make you guys wait though:

How does your dad feel about all this adulteration of his voice?
I guess he should know by now that he is in for it every time I record him, but I still feel like I have committed some sort of crime with what I have done to his voice in this song. Hopefully he'll like it regardless!

What on earth does that title mean?
absolutely nothing sensible (apologies to the Russians out there for my phoneticization...Cyrillic characters can cause problems on English language websites)

Can you pitch bend an oboe in real time?
I don't think it would be very easy, but I don't play the oboe, so really I have no idea.

Do people who speak more than one language impress you?
Yes!

Are you a typical American who speaks nothing more than partially broken English?
umm, yeah, I guess that's true...