1st of all i THINK i need to explain that the 'new' music i am doing now is not something new to me- to my audiences yes- but,to me not. i've been creating experimental music for as long as i can recall.
solo piano:
when i was in my pre/early teens and finally had my piano [after having tried french horn, trombone & sousaphone in school band] and began taking classical music lessons, i also started 'just playing'; rambling from here to there on musical journies and discoveries on the piano; going with the flow; going with the spirit. nothing planned- just playing! its unfortunate that i have no recordings of those days. [there may been a few on reel to reel]- i also did this, during the 60s a lot, mmm hmm, starting from one point and ending up at another hours later. as if i'd been dreaming. astral projection or totally one with the spirit.
i also began [early teens] experimenting with piano over other sounds, using an old 2 track reel to reel tape recorder that my aunt vera gave me. i remember one such piece- done around 1969 or 1970 of my playing over some of the LP [vinyl] sound track of Fellini's SATYRICON -recording bits of it in sections- playing stuff backwards. really crazy stuff. sapling in the 1960s? well, that was going on way before.... as in musique concrete. etc.
social influences on music art literature film photography
for some reason i always instinctively & intuitively KNEW things. but i also hung out with college students when i was in high school. they were more interesting. of course the 60s was such a period of exchange of ideas, a wealth of information passed around- like mental internet- cosmic consciousness. AND tv news and life/look magazines as mentioned in an earlier blog. whatever horrified america, like allen ginsberg & the beat scene- picasso/pollock& abstract expressionism, musique concrete, john waters & underground film, yukio mishima & jean genet, coltrane/davis's crazier psychedelic years- of course the whole hippie thing & psychedelic music- it all seemed very intriguing to me; and i wanted to be 'all the way' up in it. my music like my art, poetry & photography have changed over the years- but it depends on the year. the roots are always the same. even through all my days of songwriting, writing songs with lyrics, i also experimented on the side with abstract music.
as said, i had begun years ago experimenting with tape machines of all sorts- using two or three reel to reels, bouncing tracks, doing this and that. with the advent of cassette recorders i used them with the others, and even other cassettes decks with cassette decks to sample/ and 'multitrack' via bouncing.
with classical influences mixed with parental musical influences [john lee hooker, jimmy reed, slim harpo etc] and the music of my time,
the older i get and the more serious life gets, the more i want my ART [in all its forms] to go deeper- as deep as it can go- and be as serious as .
[C]2011 DOUG DUFFEY
