One Media® presents "Sand"
by
Nowhere Near
(Downtempo Ambient/Electronica Acid Jazz streaming mp3)

"Sand"

Downtempo Ambient/Electronica World Acid Jazz with field sampled crashing waves, cool jazz styled soloing, and 'exotics'

One Media® humbly submits its Steemit Music League #beatbattle season two, round six (S2:R6) entry by whisking you away to a Tropical Paradise...

This Downtempo Ambient/Electronica Acid Jazz tune was recorded March 31, 2018. The tune features ambient crashing waves both field sampled and doctored up with filtered white noise and pink sound also adding a gentle breeze with the waves; vibraphone, tenor sax, and modulated flute solos; and a percussion patch that lends a Balinese and Gamelan exotic feel to the warm sand under your feet in this auditory simulated tropical paradise.

An attempt to field sample crashing waves on a Southern California beach, although in the first week of spring, leaves far too many human voices clearly noticeable even without headphones, to truly impress the listener with a sense of desolate Tropical Paradise. Hence the addition of sculpted pink sound and filtered white noise, to fill-in where the ambient humans were silenced (hmm, sounds kind of oppressive to put it in those terms ;-) leaving just the crashing waves themselves from the original field recording. The added white noise enhances the crashing effect when swept with a high-Q band pass filter from low to high center frequency, then back to low again. The pink sound adds a sense of gentle breeze when the band pass filter center frequency is slowly swept.

So while the crashing waves heard were sampled some 33.5° North of the Equator thus disqualifying the recording from authentically being 'tropical', missing by approximately 12° latitude, The composer decided to exercise further artistic license by incorporating a patch that has a strong sense of Balinese and Gamelan, to further an exotic sensation to the sound.

The sensuality of the piece is highlighted by cool Jazz vibraphone and tenor sax playing 'hot' blue notes to suggest hot sand under the feet and the cool wet sand where the waves broke.

First of all, the composer could NOT possibly conceive of a paradise if said paradise lacked at least some swing of the Jazz variety. Swing, after all, historically represented letting one's hair down, a loosening of cultural values (if you don't believe me, ask any flapper ;-) thus a relaxed sense of timing one conceives of experiencing in a tropical paradise.

In terms of music theory, here the tonal center is the key of 'G' and the bass line largely based on a major blues scale (major third not minor, here omitting the second and sixth). Another exotic feature, in music theory terms, is the use of The Tritone Substitution, a Twentieth Century invention in the canon of Modernism, well established in popular works such as those by Duke Ellington.

In the present example the composer employs modal improvisation in the mode of C-sharp Sexatonic, that is, C-sharp major pentatonic with the addition of its tritone, G, thus in this piece the bass line and the solos complement each other in each having the mutual tritone to each other, G-to- C-sharp. The overall effect of the C-sharp Sexatonic in the modal improvisation gives an exotic feel in which the composer himself noted a reminiscence of Maurice Ravel's 'Boléro' ...

Anyone remember the 1979 romantic comedy, 10 starring Bo Derek and Dudley Moore, with tropical beach scenes and featuring The Boléro? Probably the most memorable part of that movie.

Happy listening!
Zig

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