Ogham Ensemble

Ogham Ensemble is another of the bands I play in, we play music from Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, Britanny, Asturias and Galicia, and Scandinavia. Although not all are represented in this short selection.

These are some recordings of the first gig we had, back in August. That was when the band was about two months old, we're playing much better by now, but I have no newer recordings yet, so I hope to share more stuff soon.

The fourth piece, 'The Dancing Trees', is a four-part reel I composed. The name comes from an image at the window of my parents' house, of trees being shaken mercilessly by really strong winds. The first two parts came to my mind a few weeks after returning home from an amazing trip to Ireland in which I attended many sessions with my brother, and drank copious amounts of Guinness beer and peated whiskey (Yay!). The seed that would grow to become Ogham Ensemble was a duet I had with Ernesto, who plays the pipes and the whistles. And it was when I started playing with him and was reunited with this beautiful music, that I wrote the third and fourth parts of 'The Dancing Trees'. We were then joined by Irene (bodhrán and pipes) and Nabani (fiddle), and the band was complete.

Ogham Ensemble has profiles at Facebook, SoundCloud and YouTube. And a webpage that is still under construction at oghamensemble.com.

I hope you like the music!

Tres Tristes Tangos Live at Zinco Jazz Club on January 18 2011

This is a song of mine called 'La Danza del Dodo', played by Tres Tristes Tangos at a gig we had at the Zinco Jazz Club in downtown Mexico City.



This is a great song by Jorge (the bass player). For more vids check out our YouTube Channel.

Happy Zenkov

(This is a bit of a rehash from the original Kromata post.)
Happy Zenkov was probably my first good composition. I think what makes it work is that for the first time I wasn't thinking of mixing this and that, it was a natural and intuitive invention that certainly has some Balkan and Irish things but not in an artificial way.
I came across the Zenkov rhythm in Kesslari's Doumbek Madness. The meter is 21/8 divided in three phrases 9/8 (2+2+2+3), 7/8 (2+2+3) and 5/8 (2+3). So there's some vague fractalness to the rhythm that becomes really comfortable once you get used to it.

Kromata*:
Alex Daniels - Accordion
Polen Iñaki Pérez - Flute
Charly Daniels - Darbuka
Axel Tamayo - Bass Guitar

* The Attribution for Happy Zenkov should contain this list.

Two fantastic duets!

I've been very busy lately, studying for my final composition exam (hence the posts on serialism). Since I might not have time to record until November I decided to share these two recent musical discoveries.



I previously knew Norwegian accordionist Øivind Farmen as a classical accordionist. I had an amazing record called Baroque which I lent and lost :( His accordion is a Zero Sette, I don't know how they make the reeds, but there's something about their sound that makes them perfect for baroque music. Like a little positive organ with the clarity of a harpsichord.
When I discovered he also plays Norwegian folk music it made my day! (I have a soft spot for Scandinavian folk.)
Lars Karlsson, from Sweden, plays the diatonic accordion and Øivind plays chromatic. Both play with great feeling!
The tune was composed by Mr. Farmen himself.



This other duet is totally different. Ballaké Sissoko, a Kora player from Mali and Vincent Segal, a cellist from France. The two instruments complement each other beautifully. I love how the cello makes the melodies clearer simply by playing in unison. Toward the end there's this really great high-energy, powerful and athletic playing.

Both these discoveries made me very happy. I hope you enjoy them as much.

You can support these musicians by buying their records.

Trip Journal: 14 August 2010 "Sint-Nicolaaskerk"

There's a really quiet spot some 150 yards from Amsterdam Centraal Train Station where my brother and I sat down to enjoy the sunny morning and to look at Sint-Nicolaaskerk, at the glittering water of the Oosterdok and at the train station. We both opened our sketchbooks, Cha to draw, and I to scribble down the melody that I had been humming without noticing.

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Trip Journal: 2 August 2010 "Crickets"

I started singing this melody to myself while lying on a hammock and listening to hundreds of crickets singing.

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Kromata

Kromata was my first serious band. It was also the place in which I started to experiment with the idea of world-fusion. It has been inactive for a while now, we have all moved on to different projects and stages of our lives, but I think we all loved the experience. In my case, this band was my kickstart into composition and music in general.

The members were*:

Alex Daniels - Accordion
Polen Iñaki Pérez - Flute
Charly Daniels - Darbuka, Congas and Bodhrán
Axel Tamayo - Bass Guitar and Double Bass

We recorded two demos, one in 2005 which was sort of home made, and one in 2006, in a studio. I really like the 2006 demo, we recorded it after a two month season of weekly playing in a nice bar called Zaza, so we had the momentum in our favour. These two demos had been gathering dust in my hard drive for some time, I thought they'd do better out in the open.

I was thinking of uploading each demo in a separate post, but while doing some research on the copyright status of the songs, the list sadly became thinner and thinner :( As I want to remain out of any copyright trouble I'll only upload original pieces and pieces in the public domain. So a single post will be enough.
I particularly regret leaving out our rendering of Autumn Leaves. It had beautiful solos by Axel and Polen. I might have time later to edit the theme out and publish only the solos.

From Demo 2005:

· Basasón.
Basasón is a composition of mine which mimics cuban son. Polen's solo was amazing!

· Rights of Man.
A beautiful irish Hornpipe.

From Demo 2006:

· El Tigre (The Tiger).
We got this from an Ibro Lolov record called Gypsy Music from Bulgaria. The tune is marvelous. I'll post in the future about ARC, which is my favorite world-music label.

· A Camello.
This is another of my compositions. It's the sort of calculated fusion I try not to do anymore, basically a strange mixture of Balkan and Cuban music. My solo was nice (I think), but Cha's incredible conga solo takes the spotlight :)

· Happy Zenkov.
I consider this song one of my best things I've done. It was the first fusion I made not thinking of mixing this with that, it was a natural and intuitive invention that certainly has some Balkan and Irish things but not in an artificial way.
When we were rehearsing this, I remember the moment we overcame the technichal dificulties and could focus for the first time on the music and the feeling, as one of the happiest moments of my life. :'-)

Listen to and download the demo at Archive.org

* The Attribution in any of these works should contain this list.

Ephemeral Music: 15 July 2010 "I wish I was Shosta"

I had been listening to a lot of Shostakovich before this improvisation :) I'm usually a bit scared of putting too much energy into an impro, I fear the mistakes will become too apparent. They did! But I think it was worth it.

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Ephemeral Music: 13 July 2010

I intended this as another attempt to improvise a Prelude & Fugue. The music led me in a different path, the Prelude got longer and longer and became a stand-alone, free movement.
The whole thing is bound by a small idea, the motif with which the music begins. As I lost myself in the flow of the improvisation, this little motif journeyed across different colours and places. I even surprised myself with some impressionistic maj7 and add6 chords at the end, which I don't use very often but simply felt right.
This improvisation was really natural and effortless, I was in an almost trance-like state during the second half and I felt as if the music was making the choices, not me. It's an amazing feeling!

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Ephemeral Music: 8 July 2010

This little piece is an exploration of a nice sounding symmetric scale I discovered by accident: G Ab B C# D F. It sounds to me as somewhere between Messiaen, some of the strange scales in Hungarian folk and an Indian Raga.
It has two parts, a slow intro and a rhythmic section.

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Ephemeral Music: 6 July 2010 "Swarm-melody I"

In this post I started exploring what I call "swarm-melody". Basically many melodies move more or less in the same direction but in a disorganized manner. In each melody I tried to follow the previous one as close to unison as I could. The imperfections in my imitation and the reaction time create a strange mixture of dense heterophony and canon. Powered by Ligeti & Vuvuzela co.

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Ephemeral Music: 25 June 2010

This is an attempted improvisation in a Prelude & Fugue form. At its most successful bits, this attempt is either very free or *cough cough* interesting.
I'll keep trying for sure.

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Ephemeral Music: 16 June 2010

This was recorded with a bottle filled with water to different levels and about 7 tracks of accordion competing with each other for prominence. Most are playing the same thing with different levels of ornamentation, some are free wavy improvisations going in and out of key. The music accumulates to a dense and noisy disorder. Messy music FTW!

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Ephemeral Music: 19 May 2010

This is an improvisation, so there are lots of mistakes!
It's not my favorite performance, but there are some good moments, where I manage to get a groove going.

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Ephemeral Music: 12 May 2010

This is loosely based in Ethiopian music, basically I just copied a scale I heard ;)
I recommend anyone who likes the colour of the scale to listen to Mahmoud Ahmed, he's indescribably amazing.
The percussion is made by hitting and scratching two coins together, and by thumping the bellows of the accordion.

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Ephemeral Music: 7 May 2010

This was recorded in layers. It's cyclical music, something I'm totally hooked on since my discovery of African and specifically Zimbabwean music. There's also some irishness around and other things.

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Ephemeral Music: 6 May 2010

This is a folksy oom-pah tune that suddenly came to me while I was in a very good mood.

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Ephemeral Music: 5 May 2010

This tune is a bit reggaeish. I recorded myself in a couple of layers, improvising over myself. All sounds, including the percussion are my accordion.

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