reflection

 

 

 

 

An invitation into my chain of thought for this project reveals a journey marked by shifts and changes. I’d like to share my earliest descriptions to highlight the pure motivation behind my musical endeavors, and to acknowledge the moments where arrogance and naivety are evident.

All past tenses are written in italics


application for soloist program 


 

(in Danish) (advanced postgraduate diploma)

Siden jeg ikke er interesseret i at gentage mine tidligere processer og tricks fra mine tidligere dage som DJ og klub musik producer, har jeg bevæget mig videre i en mere eksperiementel kontekst. Dette har jeg udviklet under min via min tid på konservatoriet, hvilket har givet mig muligheden for at studere de historiske elementer, som har inspireret mig videre i min musikalske rejse som komponist. Derfor vil jeg gerne fortsætte mit studie på RMC og fordybe mig i mine kompositoriske praksis.

En plads på solistuddannelsen kan give mig mere tid til fordybelse og eksperimenter indenfor de rammer min vision og research tillader mig. Som komponist vil jeg gerne være med til at skubbe grænser og udvide lytternes opfattelse af musik. Jeg vil konstant udfordre/udvikle mig selv og derfor kommer jeg til at arbejde med forskellige emner for hvert album. Dette kan give mig tilladelsen til at fordybe mig i emner der interesserer mig, så jeg undgår at stå stille i min kompositoriske arbejde. Kernen i mit arbejde på solisten består af emnet: oldtidstraditioner med nutidens elektroniske muligheder.

Jeg vil arbejde med persisk folkemusik i samarbejde med iranske musikere, som består som basen for mit kompositoriske arbejde. Jeg arbejder med lyde der er 3000 år gamle og processerer dem med innovative software af ny avanceret teknologi.

Indenfor dette arbejde kommer emner som den persiske skala (Radif) indenfor elektronisk kontekst til at fylde en del, da europæiske software ikke indeholder andre skalaer end de vestlige. Derfor skal jeg række ud til andre researchers, som f.eks Khyam Allami, som arbejde indenfor dette felt og søge samarbejde. Udover skala, er form, ikke et emne som fylder særlig meget i litteraturen som persiske folkemusik. Derfor skal jeg, i samarbejde med de iranske musikere, få en dybere forståelse om hvordan man arbejder med form i persisk folkemusik.

first project description – 2 years ago

My work these four semesters consists of working with electro acoustic music that takes inspiration from ancient traditions.


The personal interest for ancient traditions comes from an artistic curiosityabout the roots of music. Another artistic quest is to ‘free’ music from capitalistic needs and it's normative forms and structure. I have a background in techno that branded itself to be ‘underground’, but has had an economic growth
very fast, that has made it into a million-dollar business. This made the producers of this scene to work very fast and be super productive. After being very involved in this side of the music industry, I feel a need and urgency to go in another direction, challenge myself as a creator, work with my artistic values and finally take a step back and find out how my music can have a place in the scene today.

Since there are many ancient music cultures to study, I’ve taken the decision of starting my research about Persian ancient traditions. The obvious reason for this is to study my roots. And a personal responsibility, presenting this culture to more people who work in electronic music. How does it sound when I as a composer, within the context of experimental electronic music, am inspired by the history and music of this culture. How does it sound when 3000-year-old instruments are combined with technology developed today?

Because of my Iranian roots, I’ve previously felt more pleasure of compose pieces with inspiration from the Persian culture. Some pieces I’ve created with other Iranian musicians has touched more than other pieces I’ve created beforehand. A very pleasurable deep feeling in my DNA and a feeling of pride. I like to see this project as an extension of my own identity. The idea of exploring

Persian music traditions to make a new type of electronic music, excites me as an artist. But at the same time, it’s very difficult for my family who lives in Denmark to understand, why I want to explore the Iranian culture. They understand people who move to a different country, you must integrate and conform in your new surroundings and not try to stick out. It could be the pressure of
the Danish society whose rhetoric about integration has been influencing my family’s views about this, but I’m trying to make them understand that I’m doing this to get to know my self better, and there’s a need for a bridge between these two worlds.

Methodology
I’ve decided to collaborate with Iranian musicians for this project. Since it’s very hard to find professional Iranian musicians in Denmark, I’ve searched elsewhere and found two musicians in
Iran, in the region of Kerman close to the Kurdish area. My path to these musicians has been through Behrouz. He’s leading an amateur Persian daf (the instrument) percussion group in
Copenhagen, and he has become a colleague of mine in this project. I found the group on one of the bigger social media platforms and contacted the group directly about my project. Since then, he’s been introducing me to Iranian musicians in Iran I already collaborated with, and just recently some local musicians in near Copenhagen I’m going to meet in February. He has been the source that has enabled my collaborations with Iranian musicians. My first collaboration with the Iranian musicians in Kerman, Iran, might be a bit tricky since we are
from different generations and musical backgrounds.


I started sending them some Iranian music I find inspiring and some other compositions I’ve already made with the santour in
collaboration with Mirsaeed Panahi who studied at RMC for a semester as part of the NoCoM programme. They understood that I was interested in improvised music recordings. I sent them 40 minutes of electronic material they are going to improvise over. The 40 minutes consisted of five pieces with different soundscapes, atmospheres and rhythms, so I was sure that I would get them to play in different ways during these five pieces. One of my goals was also to challenge them and make them come out of their comfort zone.


A lot of this relies on trial/error, and so does the processing. For one of my main ways of processing, I use a spectral effect processor from Unfiltered Audio named Specops. Here, you change the overall pitch and total (or part of) spectral sound. I spend a quite big amount of time in this software trying to digitalize the acoustic instruments.

 

Even just having this plugin on the channel without any
processing still changes the sound. I also try to take the sounds out of the computer and into a
modular system. One of the main modules I’ve spent time with has been the module Clouds from
Mutable Instruments. A realtime granular audio processor that can turn the incoming signal into
other worldly atmospheres. I will talk more about future projects and processes at the oral exam.

decay – an attempt to produce own dastgah 

I’m working on producing a series works of the same riff I’ve asked the musicians to follow. I’ve named this riff Decay. I’ve asked Koroush (one of the Iranian musicians in Kerman) to follow a riff I’ve looped from the session with Mirsaeed. It’s a 6 hits melody that continues with an occasional shift here and there.


I see this series of works to develop my own simple and concentrated dastgah piece (dastgah is the series of melodies and intervals musicians follow). I stay in my new library of sounds and atmospheric sound design for a while and tune my ears to them. All sounds must have same soundsource. The riff. Out of that I will build a whole piece where some sounds are unrecognizable from the source and others are much easier to recognize.


 

Working on this, I’ve been reminded working with this project that tonal importance has never been anything to me. I’m basing movements from the way the musicians played the instruments into my work.

The tonal 

information will be changed in through proces-sing or slowing down the recording. In some the 

Persian scales and intervals don’t matter in my works, but the decay (or rather trace) of the culture is very present.

a year later –

leaving the ancient term

After some time, I decided to abandon the term "ancient." Even though Persian music has roots from the ancient times and I’m trying to find some kind of musical truth before a time of capitalistic needs, the way of thinking about Persian music to be this kind of well-preserved ancient tradition was not a healthy state of mind.

 

Additionally, I had to acknowledge the distinctly masculine undertone in fetishizing ancient times – there’s even a TikTok trend that shows that.

 

I shifted my project to be about working with Iranian contemporary music as this music is still alive and thriving in the country. I changed my project to focus on contemporary Iranian music, which is very much alive and flourishing. Labeling something as "ancient" when it is actively present today is not only inaccurate but also displays a certain arrogance. This shift allowed me to engage with the living, evolving musical landscape of Iran, rather than imposing an anachronistic lens on it.

appropriation

Since my fascination with the potential of ancient rituals began, one of my primary goals was to translate ritual works from ancient Persia into contemporary electronic compositions. However, I frequently encountered obstacles, particularly in capturing the heart that Iranian musicians pour into their playing.

This essence was difficult to translate into the digital confines of my laptop and my Danish lifestyle. A sense of fakeness emerged in my consciousness as I pursued the goal of creating contemporary compositions for rituals.

 

Fellow postgraduate student, instrument builder, guitarist, and musician, Taus Bregnhøj-Olsen, highlighted this issue. After discussing the politics of my project extensively, he pointed out that suddenly seizing elements from a ritual culture, with my limited understanding, verged on appropriation. I admitted he was right and abandoned the idea of working with rituals in that manner. While there could be arguments for approaching ritual music from a different angle, this part of the project was ultimately eliminated.

the european arrogant innovater

In these texts, there’s also a hint of an attitude in the texts that suggests I can change something in Persian music. While an innovative approach can be positive, but trying to change something you don’t know very well can also have an arrogant nuance to it. Naturally, there's a mental pressure when studying the soloist, and you might impose an enormous burden on yourself to create something new. However, immersing oneself in the knowledge and flow of the culture, rather than bending it to fit your own needs, is a more respectful attitude towards the music. 


The lens has shifted to become more about confronting the usual habits and default elements in electronic music production and composition. This involves questioning the standardized methods and challenging the norms that often go unquestioned in the creative process.