AMEN BROTHER INITIAL AUDIO TRIALS

I had been toying and developing ideas in my head and also collecting some of the assets I felt I would need but now decided to do some experiments with the sound files I had collected. The first thing I wanted to do was to roughly mix all of the tracks together to see how they complemented each other and combined to make one long mixed piece of music. I had done some mini tests into playing with time so get the tracks to go from the actual Amen break tempo then move it into their actual tempo into the next Amen break but found this tricky and it was not too easy on the ear. I did try and use just one bar of the break and try to create a flowing series of sound clips but this was too fast and again really uneasy on the ear too. Underneath is the best compromise and three versions of varying lengths that I felt were working the best.

AMEN MUSIC TESTS X3 from Jon Saward on Vimeo.


The first thing I noticed from the tracks tests above was that some of them were a little similar and not just due to the drums being variations on a theme. There needs to be a greater variety of genres, themes and acts to build up and create more contrasts of the usages of the Amen Break.

Secondly it was really interesting listening to the different versions.

• In my opinion the longer version is the smoother and more polished mix as it allows more song to be used as the editing options are increased and also better contextualisation of the songs as there are more of them. However it was a little long and and due to not focussing solely on the Amen Drum Break of the songs did drift into some elements where the drum break was not in evidence and not force a link between all of the tracks continually.
• The shorter version I liked for it's immediacy and punch. The transitions were the aural equivalent of jump cuts in video and a little crashy and I liked the punch of these. However I felt that they lost a lot of the contextualisation of the artists and the original songs as there was too little of them played. In my opinion this would also bombard the audience with too  much information and not give enough prominence to the artists and band who have used the sample.
• The middle version (feels a little Goldilocks this) felt just right and had the best elements of the other two. The drum break was more featured, the tracks were contextualised enough and the transitions and flow has a sense of urgency and dove the audio forward but was not too cutty and jumpy giving a nice flow. Moving forward I feel that this was the best fit for the piece.

Something else that arose from the tests was my current technical skills and limitations with sound. Possibly some time spent with a sound specialist would rectify this but obviously mixing tempos, genres etc in small clips is tricky but worth looking into with some friend who teach Music Technology at the college I work at. However I do not want to edit the tracks and abridge them too much  or recreate them the whole point is that they are what they are and my re-interpreting would dilute this.

Another consideration I was toying with whilst collecting and deciding on the tracks to use was that not all of them had music videos for them to use as visuals in the final piece. A lot of them did have but even more did not. Some where album tracks others were obscure D&D or EDM tracks that were for dancefloors and clubs not the charts. I do like the idea of using the music videos as they show the diversity of artists that have used the Amen Break and their multitude of genres, representations and styles. Alongside that they are also visually rich and I have no issues about appropriating them for my use as well as music as they themselves did not by sampling the Amen Break. This would restrict me to using music tracks that had music videos but I did not see this as a problem or necessary anyway, and would using all 2400 tracks be possible? I felt that this was not actually needed or only a pipe dream anyway? See below.

Another thing I realised from compiling these tests and also from doing my research into sourcing the songs was that 2400 examples is likely to be far too many for the January completion of the work and also 240 would be a huge push. This is for many reasons sourcing the clips, editing the clips, visuals for the clips and the length of the piece. At the shortest version this would be 1:32 for 9 tracks so about 10 seconds per track. Times 10 seconds by 240 and the piece would be about 40 minutes long as it stands. For the middle version it would be about double this and 75-80 minutes obviously even worse. For the test I am aiming to do as mentioned perviously for the test in january 1% of the 2400 samples making it 24 which would bring the piece in at about 5 minutes.