Malady to Melody

Creating music was the first medium that gave me an acceptable social platform to express myself.

Suddenly, a lost teen with a burning desire to say something to the world, found his meaning and purpose in life...and an 'identity'. I was a muso; an 'elite' member of group of individuals expressing their hearts and souls to their communities all around the world.

I also discovered like-minded individuals who had a similar passion and again suddenly, I was no longer an isolated angst-ridden teenager. I was in a group of angst-ridden teenagers who were all searching for their identity in a world where connection with others was becoming much harder...I was not alone.

I didn't know about all this at the time...I was just in a rock group and from the first time an audience cheered us and danced to our music - they were pretty drunk - I was hooked and felt loved. I've been creating music ever since, on and off, for over 30 years.

Like any artist, your art grows and changes as you grow...and what you create will reflect in various ways - depending upon you, your philosophy, tastes, education, background, environment etc - the many stages of your life’s growth journey.

It was during my art college days - after around 10 years of rock - that my interest in music as an art form, deepened. This was around the time of the new age music growth and interest and I began to see music beyond being just for pop/rock expression. I mean I had listened to classic music a bit and couldn't get into that...I couldn't stand country either, but I discovered that the post modernist idea of borrowing from a range of past genres and combining them into something new, was contemporary and exciting.

So the influences of John Cage, Jean Michel Jarre, various new age artists and even Kate Bush and Pink Floyd, began to shape my interest and fascination with electronic sounds combined with traditional instruments, concrete sounds, mixed genres, performance art, visuals, computer sounds/art etc.

I remember thinking at the time that I didn't want my music/art to be just a pretty piece of art that hung in someone's office, or was played as background sounds. I wanted it to mean something and provide a vehicle to shift social consciousness towards greater awareness. I wanted it to challenge people in some way by not providing stereotypical tried-and-true structures or forms. I actually wanted people to listen. I discovered that people's listening attention span was influenced by many things and anything new that didn't conform to a previously known structure, had people turning off quite quickly.

Okay, so my foray into Schonberg 'structured' electronic compositions was met with mixed reviews, my performance art combined with recorded concreted sounds had people scratching their heads, and my drawing instructor at the time, could not see how computer drawn images fit the ‘fine art’ criteria.

Moving on, my latest album, entitled ‘Malady to Melody’, is a reflection and revisiting of one of my earlier intentions for music...to be creatively stimulating, gentle to the soul, have an aesthetic quality, have some shadow for contrast, tension and interest, assist meditation and/or visualisation, and provide a focus for spiritual journeys.

That’s my intention in creating this music, which is essentially electronically generated. I’m using Sonar and lots of plug-ins – Rapture, Dimension, Alchemy, Beatscape etc – for most of these compositions. I love using ‘arpeggiated’ sequenced sounds, which I layer and intermingle with other similar layers.

So that’s the album’s genesis I suppose. I wanted to provide some background to its creation. Let me know what you think. Do you think it lives up to my intention? It’s out there in the market and this is the social test for any art. So let me know whether it does for you what I want it to do.

If you don’t want to write a comment, that’s okay, but if you have a moment, have a look at the survey.

Thanks

Oh yeah, my album can be found here: http://amadavitmusic.com, and you can download a couple of complete tracks for free, IF you subscribe and send me your testimonials and/or feedback.

PS. The video below is one of my smaller compositions, but not included in Malady to Melody.