semi random meditations v2

sevenism.bandcamp.com/album/se...-meditations-v2

This follows directly on from semi random meditations v1. (sevenism.bandcamp.com/album/semi-random-meditations-v1) I realized that it doesnt need to be as random as possible - it's still fundamentally generative even if it contains more of my artistic personality.

It was part of a larger realization: meditation is not about pushing myself to be mindful, that even coming back to the breath when i don't want to is incongruent. It's not about finding peace, it's not about relaxing, it's about being whatever. Any time i'm pushing myself to be mindful i'm just reinforcing a push towards an ideal self and the whole point is about losing that sense of self.

I'd still recommend doing the mindfulness of sound meditation before listening: cdn.roughguides.com/wp-content/uploads/mindfulness/3.MindfulnessofSounds.mp3 .. if you want to, that is.. coz it might help that sense of being with the music, with whatever is evoked, letting your opinions and 'negative' feelings be part of the experience.

The same basic technique was used: generating random key presses in excel and playing random settings in acidrack then paulstretching the pieces.
There's a few minor changes that make it completely different though. If i didnt want to use the random tone that acidrack gave me i pressed random again until i was happy with it, and also i didnt want to limit the stretched tracks to always being 30 minutes long, so i just stretched them to an amount where i thought i'd be able to get a sense of my playing and more of the emotion of the improvisations. Also i used more fx in podfarm. As the project went on I used more fx and some smoothed out beats too as those began to fit the more bassy tone of it

So each track follows the last in a gradual evolution. There's several movements that connect the tracks into larger pieces:

• tribal movement (more beat and bass oriented) {tracks 1 -15}
• nonplussed suite (downtempo electronic) {tracks 16-22}
• imaginary beat suite (rhythmic echoes) {tracks 23-27}
• chilledambient section (ambient soundscapes) {tracks 28-41}

the track titles were composed by the music and me - i'd swipe conductor-like movements on my phone keyboard and use the words as titles. again, if i didnt feel the word fit at all i'd change it.

Ironically, this project has made me think of perfectionism in a different way. Volume 1 was all about forcing myself to let go of perfectionism, to let go of control.. but that's reactionary and i was still in thrall to it. In trusting my own process, of owning that perfectionism, i can understand it more and thus move on.

promo mix here: mixcloud.com/sevenism/randomiz...8-november-2015