Repetition

“But this repetition has a meaning…
It alone confers a reality upon events”

Mircea Eliade, The myth of the Eternal Return

The second time I presented Piano.Letra.Aparato. I invited the audience to play a note on the piano while I recorded them in a loop. One by one the audience stood up and played a note. – Recorded Loop.mp3

The exercise would become the base and texture of La Calma in the concert.

A few hours later I decided to write a song inspired on the collective loop. I putted the loop in a new session and started to make modifications to it with the same tools I used live (EHX-2880), then I wrote and recorded two pianos inspired on it (Modified_loop.mp3).

This song was made for and by you: players, attendants, musicians and assistants.

Thank you.

Enjoy,

- PLA 120609 Fundacion Chacao.mp3 -

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Experimental Composition Method

…and suddenly everything becomes meaningless.

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1. – Define type of chord (e.g. Major, Minor, Dominant, sus 4) and root note (e.g. G) – Gm7 / G#13 /Gdim / etc.

Starting from Gmaj7

2.- Each circle derives from the first one, Gmaj7 in this case, and each note becomes the root note of a new maj7 circle.

3.- Define the start and finish notes of the exercise (you can mark them on the diagram if you decide too, each musician can choose his way from the start note to the final one)

e.g. Starting in G and ending in G#

4.- Choose rhythm and tempo (Percussion can use rhythm circles setting initial and final rhythm instead of notes)

a

b

c

5.- Start your trip.

a.- You can stay in a note as long as you want to b.- You can go and return in any route you want to. c.- Try forming new chords or arpeggios with the notes that surround your actual position. See yellow boxes in the diagram. d.- Use it with your band

A song using the method:
Gmaj7_from_G_to_G#.mp3

Let me hear your experiments and write me if you need any help: info@xavierlosada.com

The Maker

Being time,
seeing my hands become time
(constructing, destroying and composing while I listen, think and walk),
is my new obsession.

The Maker.mp3

For years I sought the inexistence of time. Despite searching and forcing myself to get rid of the notion of time, it was impossible to do so. At times I managed –just for a few seconds– to feel the absence, but soon it returned stronger than ever. Apparently still. Invincible.

The fight against time is exhausting. Caving in to time is even more so.

One day I decided to try and become time. If I could make myself time, real time, I would be able to battle it.

Since time destroys it all, I rid myself of everything I deemed useless around me, timely and without a doubt, according to my new criterion.

Time creates. I began to create. Our notion of time does not allow us to ignore its apparent linearity. Our creations help us cloud it. Being time, the wait ceased to exist. I created and destroyed only aware of space and my own working hands.

It’s just that sometimes I cannot recognize my own hands.

Composing is pursuing an idea.

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El Hacedor is part of Escritorio

The dance of oblivion

Part of a concert for three pianos,
woodwinds and percussion.

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First Part: A new cycle

- The dance of oblivion: The new cycle.mp3 -

The new cycle is about to begin.

A crowd is waiting for the end of an era. They’ll soon disappear. Soon the inhabitants of older villages will choose a “witness” and make him the new people’s god. The rest of them will pilgrim forever.

The caravan is coming.

The elder god had his moment. He is old and doesn’t fear. He is just sad. He had forgotten this destiny & now attempts to explain everything again to him & his children. The people barely listen, they are eager of oblivion.

The caravan is coming.

Memories begin. The houses are getting cleaned and closed. Some have the false belief that they’ll return. The people, now united, hear their fate approaching.

Flying over the people – infinite – it ventures.

In the meantime many stopped believing in the coming and going. The ideals and beliefs mutated, diversified. In the meantime the targets got lost. We became many. The coming is cyclical.

Between drums, dances and life it devastates the town, it grows and immediately leaves.

Among empty buildings is the one, the new god. The witness must create new laws, seasons, wealth and people. He must create a new town where everyone will be waiting to be chosen or be doomed to disable people and choose witnesses for the rest of the eternity.

The new cycle is about to begin.

- The dance of oblivion: The new cycle.mp3 -

Texture

“If the trees had been standing
so much star’s solitude,
then we stand the death
in the glowworm shadow.
If silent is the eternity 
then we can feel the course of the universe.”

Vicente Gerbasi, Los Colores Ocultos

I tend to believe that any non-final take in a recording is a canvas waiting to be painted. I see these potential paintings as textures -wood, cups, whistles, breaths, roarings – that sometimes I consider the final composition, while other times I rather use them as a base of a work. It’s quite interesting to explore both perspectives.

Facing a possible silent eternity, sometimes I sit down and paint:

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Sometimes I just want some silence.

Rest

“Living characters! Life must be represented not as it is,
but as it ought to be;
as it appears in dreams”
Anton Chekhov, The Sea-Gull

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Systole…

8000, Dream.mp3, concept, live, water, forget, MDE, beer, Chernobyl Dreams, work, Wahala, Speed Racer, Kortála.mp3, Geoffrey Chaucer – The Canterbury Tales, H, supermarket, think, Orchestra seats, Triad, 6870, Adolfo Herrera, Goyan Bego, the work, Messiaen, coffee, acantilado, The nail, the hammer & the impossible thoughts, Ricardo Martínez, Otrova Gomas – El virus del humor, record, deficiencies, Spain Embassy, J, producers, Interlude.mp3, dream, guitar, 7:30 a.m., Sony, chocolate, Bruno, joy, Skama Sweet Selection, P, accident, 5205,  By the Open Sea.mp3, whistles, C, Javier Melero, hear, People talk.mp3, Marlene, Andrea, surreal,  you,  languages, Edgar Allan Poe – Poetry Essays, I’m not some one else dream, piano, read, write, A, freedom hours,  3427, Elias, The rite of the crashed ambulance.mp3, stop, Composing Stories, giants, no music, cry, F, cart, Ernest Hemingway – From whom the bell tolls, 2024, reflection, NVV, analyze, La Salle, Carlitos, Windmills, supercapitalism, Vasos Comunicantes – Bruno Galindo, SAP, divorce, supermarket, feel, Gerry Weil, Spoken Word, D, Remoto, Reading of the small print of a life insurance to a safer death.mp3,  999, F.S.C. Santiago, grow, Cuentos de los aborígenes australianos – Anneliese Löffler, through the middle of the street, bed, “Smile, this is a recording”, Dim bandera as boolean, Labyrinth, Alessia y Diego, dizziness, Juanito, sleep, M, zero, 3 rooms.

…diastole

Readings
Compositions & recordings*
People & stuff that matters.

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*
Xavier Losada & Bruno Galindo - Demo
Recorded: 24 April, 2008 in Remoto Estudio
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27 de Abril in Los Tulipitos Nº 6
by Ricardo Martínez

Kortála.mp3
is part of the play Kortala
Music: Xavier Losada
Drums, percussion & arrangement: Adolfo Herrera
Bass guitar & arrangement: Ricardo Martínez
Guitar, keys & programming: Xavier Losada
Recorded, mixed and masterized by Ricardo Martínez in Remoto Estudio.

Amusia – La Uña, El Martillo & The Impossible Thoughts

“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear.”
John Cage

I. The song started as a research of noise, rhythm and melody interpreting certain amusia‘ degrees.

II. Later, I saw The Rest is Noise. The title inmediately made me think it would be part of the theme.

III. With a half-read book I started to write. 4:33 by John Cage would give shape and sense to the composition.

Amusia walks, minute after minute, between noise, rest & melody until it reachs our surroundings, the no-silence.

…maybe rest.

 

Amusia.mp3

What is rest? What is noise? What is this all about? Sounds & crowd making their way. Just listen, listen their way. Silence.

Thanks Alex Ross for “The Rest is Noise“.

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A musical listening test

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http://www.delosis.com/listening/login.html?u=139675_9d95164367

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Fateless – acantilado

“Still, even the imagination is not completely unbounded, or at least is unbounded only within limits, I have found.”
Imre Kertész, Fateless

The book

Imre Kertész – Fateless
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2002

The Song

 

After a minute, between fate and illusion, emerges the obstinatto, a melody that reminds of me sitting on stage at the piano, just about longing.

Immediately after, the piano and percussion begin to tell the truth, a reality that seems to hit but you don’t understand, you live.

Later on anguish’ textures shows up. I’ll never forget the image of soles pasted to the skin. Feet and wood made one. The uncertainty is there, always accompanying.

When in the theme I start to wander, to look back and think in destiny I call immersed the day-to-day life, the freedom and the fateless. With them goes otherness, a path that we feel but don’t predict.

The beginning… heroic and enigmatic as the end.

Sin Destino.mp3

 

Draft of dry land – Escritorio

I didn’t believe in the devil until I heard those drums, drums beaten by three dead and a lifeless. Scary King Vulture was no more. It was mandinga and my deceased dance. My feet trembled to the rhythm of the hands of those three lifeless and a dead. Stalking King Vulture was no more. I sweated over fire and danced ‘til dawn; I thought maybe this devil is me made drum, made rhythm, made free.

One drum stopped, I find no rest. Another one stopped, “What’s happening?” and I keep dancing. No screams. No drums. I think of mandinga, and turn around. No life. No drum. King Vulture has killed us.*

When I first heard Venezuela – Chants et tambours des confréries noires I decided to write a theme with Venezuelan drums. I started collecting sounds of drums and percussion sticks.

In the meantime the scope of the theme took shape: A tribute to Arturo Uslar Pietri’s short stories, specially to “El Rey Zamuro” (The King Vulture) and “El baile del tambor” (The dance of the drum), embodying the idea of a rich and incomplete country, a draft of a country. I ought to give an uncertain destiny to those sketches.

That’s the reason of mandinga, King Vulture, the deceased dance – a structure that begins and goes back again, a slightly out-of-tune guitar and a rhythm full of tones, textures and colors.

“Bosquejo de Tierra Firme” (Draft of dry land) is part of Escritorio.

Bosquejo de Tierra Firme

* Text: Xavier Losada. English translation by Ceci Egan.

434 a Short Film

“Composing is giving meaning to that stream of sounds that penetrates the world we live in”
Toru Takemitsu

 

Map + Previews

1.- Begins: Hotel entrance + Character Introduction + Room arrival => Unawareness

2.- Encounter: Pool + Her + Conquer => Decision + Motion

3.- Solitude: Awakening + Room + Window => Weirdness

4.- Action: Loneliness + Elevator + Stairs => Tension

5.- Commotion: Loneliness + Leaving stairs + Hallway + Room => Despair + Distress

6.- Introspection: Loneliness + Room => Resignation + Anguish

7(2).- Encounter: Final impression.

 

8(7).- Credits

 

434

Written, Produced & Directed by Javier Pérez-Karam & Leonard Zelig

Music & Sound Design: Xavier Losada

Director of Photography: Javier Pérez-Karam

 

Cast

Him: Leonard Zelig

Her: Tarina Rodríguez

Man: Javier Pérez-Karam

 

Foleys: Gabriel Álvarez & Ricardo Martínez

Graphic Design: Miguel Heberle

Edited by PérezKaram Post

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434 – Showing in 2008 – NYC, USA.