It is believed that you think about something before composing a musical piece, that the composition is the result of a thought, and a project that precedes it. This is part of the rational component of making music, and represents the classic concept, and with a lot of score to write and then follow.
As I live it, often the opposite happens, perhaps because in my free time I explore and create electronic music.
All of my design and preliminary attention is concentrated on the search for sounds capable of capturing the soul. This involves the preliminary preparation and processing of a large number of parameters for the synthesis of sound, oscillators, filters, waveforms, ADSR, mixer, etc.
It must be an inspiring sound that literally has to “resonate inside” you, which is capable of triggering, and invoking emotions: this concerns background textures, special effects, polyphonic chords and the solo motif, often monophonic. However, that’s not enough, because to this set of parameters it is very often necessary to add a rhythm that can be obtained both with one or more programmable step sequencers, synchronized with each other, and with a simple arpeggiator (often combined with the first ones). In this case, in addition to programming note rhythmics, it is necessary to manipulate a large number of parameters of the sound synthesis in order to find the desired effect, in my case usually based on particularly powerful basses and sometimes even on the drums.
Therefore, the rational part for an electronic musician is in large part the one described above. At least it is for me when I go hunting for atmospheres. If an electronic musician is not a classical virtuoso a-la-Bach (like Wendy Carlos or Isao Tomita), but wants to experience atmospheres, once he has the technical / rational recipe prepared before, he simply lets himself go on the keys and on the buttons / sliders / knobs to see what happens. It is pure and simple exploration: of the machine and of oneself.
Basically you start by improvising, and then structure the piece in a coherent way, proceeding to record the music on more channels. If you’re lucky and you catch that perfect wave then you can take off because the synthesizer has literally become your spaceship, your escape.
It is at this point that suddenly your mind is filled with thoughts and images: all inspired by the sounds you felt you were able to choose and modulate. Maybe it was a need of your consciousness, but you weren’t aware of it before. Your subconscious mind inspired the rational part to manipulate the parameters of sound, and without realizing it you find yourself communicating with the universe of consciousness. Then suddenly the most disparate thoughts and mental images arrive. In this case, it is the music that inspires your thoughts and not vice versa. This is why in the 1970s German electronic music (the Berlin School on which Totemtag was born) is called “cosmic music”.
A need of the soul, able to compensate for the excess of rationality that characterizes my standard activity in science drives my creativity. But also and above all, it is a real project of study and exploration of the mechanisms of consciousness.
With this newly assembled musical video I wanted to briefly describe the thoughts and inspiration that arose from my musical pieces as I composed them, summarizing them among the 27 albums I published so far on Bandcamp, and with a sample of about twenty of my pieces played therein.
I want to share my processes with you and I wanted to remind myself of them too..
Please enjoy and thank you for your support.
Dr. Massimo Teodorani 