woodpecker by mummer

"a track made from sounds in the wood I might use for an exhibition" - 18/2//2018

recollections from 12/6/2024:

this is the first track I made as "mummer". I was 19 and on my art foundation. the ideas of reorganising familiar countryside sounds into music had been building for a few years, but it wasn't until an installation module at college where I mucked about with contact mics through fx pedals that I started messing with sound as an arts practice rather than just performance (i.e. playing drums in covers bands)

after months experimenting with a Microkorg, Zoom RhythmTrack 234, Teenage Engineering Pocket Operaters (PO-32 Tonic and PO-20 Arcade), a Roland SPD-SX and Garageband to work out how I could do electronic music my way (and imitate my idol at the time Panda Bear, specifically on "A Day With The Homies"), one day i asked my dad if I ought to buy a boutique analog drum machine, if that youtuber-endorsed real analog grit would make my sounds "better". my dad suggested I ought to learn about synthesising drums first so i could appreciate an analogue drum machine, and that with the sound quality of Garageband I could make a snare from any chopped white noise sample. at that moment a harsh downpour started, and i grabbed my crap samsung to record the rain drumming on a plastic roof to try this out.

following on from that I went to the woods with my mum and asked her "are the birds way louder than usual?", not realising I was actively listening for the first time on a dog walk I'd done hundreds of times before. we recorded a bunch of different sized sticks and logs, crunching leaves and rusty gates with a goal of capturing a whole drum kit of sounds. at home i sampled them to my SPD-SX and layered them with the 808 and 909 samples for more punch, then sequenced it with an Arturia Beatstep Pro over midi alongside a tweaked Microkorg preset, playing with filter cutoff, resonance and envelope routing (though at the time i had no idea what these controls did, i just went with what sounded good).

the moment i was done i was like damn, this was something good and different, i have to upload this while i'm still stoked about it before i think its rubbish. i made this bandcamp especially to put this out, but I knew the site from drumming on these tracks for my friends Hen and Barn: https://cgdeathfest.bandcamp.com/track/power-is-inherited.

i guess i knew the first track released was a hurdle i needed to get out of the way, and the enthusiasm of this successful experiment was what i needed to get me going. this was all happening at like 9:00 on a Sunday. i was pretty wired. at college the next day my mate Jamie was like "yeah i listened to it, all of it... it was really long"

i was listening to Factory Floor's debut a load at my weekend job in a speciality tea shop, as it presented a music that engaged me without needing vocals, chords or complicated structures, just sick driving rhythm but it wasn't until years later when i was writing my MA thesis on the TB-303 and condemning the banality of commercialised acid house that I realised the first ever mummer track was essentially an acid jam. cute.

Tracklist

1.	woodpecker	7:04

Credits

released February 18, 2018

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