Episode 25 — Reawake: a Wake, a Sample, a Rebirth
This episode unpacks a uniquely grim and oddly funny situation: national press reports Steve as dead, friends organise a wake, and he turns up very much alive. Out of that comes a meditation on narrative, legacy and time-wasting, and a new piece of music built not from the wake itself but from a recording of his daughter's in-utero heartbeat.
Steve digs into how that tiny, intimate sound becomes the rhythmic and emotional anchor of the track; how his work with Hackney Colliery Band feeds into his sense of scale, groove and texture; and how influences from Arve Henriksen, Nils Petter Molvaer and Jon Hassell collide with trumpets, pedals and ambience to create a slow-building sound world that’s personal without being sentimental.
Running underneath all of it is the blunt question: if people can accidentally kill you off in print, what exactly are you doing with the time you’ve still got, and what do you choose to document in sound?
What we cover
The living wake story: How a bogus obituary leads to a real-life wake and a sharper sense of stakes.
Heartbeat as core material: Using an in-utero recording as pulse, texture and thematic backbone.
Trumpet & processing: Breath tones, close miking, pedals, delays and reverbs treating trumpet as a human/choral voice.
Lineage & references: Clear lines from Henriksen, Molvaer, Hassell and ambient / fourth world trumpet work.
Hackney Colliery Band DNA: How years of building dynamic, narrative arrangements inform the pacing and weight of this piece.
Ethics & intimacy: Where using family recordings deepens the work and where it becomes exploitative nonsense.
Further listening & links
Full Transcript
Verbatim transcript, reflowed for readability. No wording changes have been made.
Hello, my name is Steve Pretty. I'm a musician, composer and performer from London. And welcome to my podcast, Steve Pretty On The Origin of the Pieces.This is the show that helps you to hear, understand and enjoy music in new ways.Hello, musically curious people. I hope you're well, it's great to be back. Here we are for episode 25 of the show.Episode 25, it's here. Lots going on, it's been a great few weeks. I hope you've had a great few weeks as well.Fantastic show, Wilton's back in January. I think the last episode I did, episode 24, dropped just before that. It was really fun with some brilliant guests.We had Sarah Louise Young talking about Kate Bush and performing our version of Kate Bush and talking about tribute acts and how they're much relined, which was fascinating and brilliant. And we had Frances Raffael, fantastic musical theatre singer and Eurovision entry from, I think it was 1994. So we talked about Eurovision and we talked about a whole process of how that happens, how a song gets into Eurovision, what the experience of performing in Eurovision is like and a lot more.And I also had Alua Nascimento on, who is a brilliant Brazilian body percussionist and percussionist of all sorts, really. And he demonstrated some fantastic Brazilian percussion and an instrument called the berimbau. And all of that stuff is going to be coming up on the podcast feed in the next few weeks.So stay tuned for all that. But the live shows are really special. I think I really love doing those shows.It's kind of like an episode of the podcast, but it's presented obviously as a live gig. So there's a lot of stuff that happens in the room that doesn't necessarily make it to the podcast because it's about that live audience there. So if you like the show and want to experience a bit more of it, come to one of those shows if you can.I'm doing another one at Wilton's on the 30th of April. That's coming up quite soon. And I'm playing a few festivals over the summer, including the brilliant Also Festival.Now Also Festival is a festival that happens in Warwickshire. It's a really lovely festival. I've talked about it a bit on the show so far, and I'm doing it again this year.I'm doing a live horror score. I'm doing a load of stuff with Shells, and I'm doing a live podcast recording as well, to make sure you come along to that. The reason I mentioned Also Festival now is because at episode 24, we had the brilliant Juliette Russell, who is one of the co-founders of Also Festival, talk to her.She's a vocal coach to the stars, and she was talking about how to use your voice, how to make sure that you're looking after it, but also how to use it in creative ways and expressive ways. So do go back and have a listen to episode 24 if you've not listened to the fantastic Juliette Russell yet. So episode 25.Now, this is going to be a bit of a different show today because today I'm going to be doing something that I've not really done before. This is episode 25, The Quarter Century. I wanted to mark that by saying that I'm going to take a few weeks off the show and appreciate that the schedule of releases recently means that you may not notice that I'm taking a few weeks off because it's been a bit more erratic than I'd like recently.But I'm going to be taking a few weeks off to do a lot of stuff behind the scenes. I'm working on a new website. I'm working on all sorts of exciting stuff.There's going to be a lot more stuff coming out on my social media and all of that business. Kind of setting up a new system going forwards because I've got so many brilliant interviews already recorded with some amazing musicians from all over the world and all sorts of different backgrounds. And I just want to make sure that I'm presenting them in the best possible way.Speaking of which, these interviews, when I do them, I record them on video as well as sounds. I'm not going to call it a relaunch. I'm going to call it an evolution of the podcast.Seems appropriate. And for this evolution from episode 26 onwards, I'm going to be relaunching as video. So there's going to be video as well as sound.So you can listen to the podcast in the normal way, just through your normal podcast app. Or if you want to see what I'm doing, you want to see me, you want to see me in my studio here, you can tune in to video on Spotify or on YouTube and a few other places that I'll talk about after episode 26. Yeah, it's quite an exciting time.Loads and loads of cool stuff going on behind the scenes to make this evolution as exciting as I hope it will be for you as it is for me. So yeah, watch this space for that. I'm going to be coming back a little bit later in the spring.I'm recording this at the end of February and probably launching I think end of March, early April ahead of that Wilton show on the 30th. So that's what's coming up. And also the other thing that's going to be added to the show is I know what you're thinking.I think you're probably thinking this show is way too straightforward. You're talking to two or three different guests an episode. You're talking to musicians about their instruments.You're recording this. You're sometimes doing it with a couple of different cameras, several different mics. It sounds too easy.I know also you do the genre of tombola, Steve. That's too straightforward a thing. Taking all 1300 music genres from Wikipedia and randomly picking one and then often trying to make a piece of music in that genre.It's too easy. Stop being lazy. And so I've taken that feedback on board and I've added something else to it.So as well as those two aspects of the show and the various other things that I do, I'm going to be adding a new feature called Clip and Mix. And that is what I'm going to be focused on today. So no genre of tombola today, no entertaining noises, talking about instruments and things.Instead, what I'm going to be doing is talking about what this Clip and Mix thing is, right? And so what this is, is a way of kind of collaborating with you and with my live audiences to make a bit of collaborative music in maybe not every episode, but every couple of episodes. And what this is going to involve is you guys sending me audio or video.You can send it to me various different ways and on social media at Steve Pretty, on Instagram and Steve Pretty Music on TikTok and various other channels as well. Or email, you can email podcast at stevepretty.com with your submissions. And I've been doing this a little bit at gigs recently.I've been recording audiences. I recorded an audience shouting soup at Robin Ince's Nine Lessons and Cards for Curious People just before Christmas. And I've been sampling audiences and doing bits and bobs at my live shows, which has been really fun.And I'm going to be using some of those samples to create little bits of music and talking through the process as I do it. So the idea is to give you a little bit of an insight about how a musician and composer and someone who does music production approaches sound and a sound of kind of any sort in a musical way, hopefully. And some of them will be very silly.Some of them might be quite serious. Some of them will be me playing trumpet along to something that you send in, or maybe harmonizing it, playing piano to it. But then some of them might be much more electronic based.So I might be treating it much more as electronic sample and manipulating it as a lot of people who make electronic music do. So that's the idea. So if you email your stuff, podcast at stevepretty.com or at Steve Pretty On Social Media of Steve Pretty Music.Yeah, basically if you go to stevepretty.com or originofthepieces.com and watch out for that shiny new website there coming soon. But meanwhile, it just takes you to my own website. Do send in your submissions.I think it's going to be a really fun little thing to do. So, to launch this new feature, Clip & Mix, what I'm going to do is talk about one of the times in my own career that I embraced this technique of recording something on my phone and turning that into something musical. And I'm going to be having a deep dive into a track that I wrote for Hackney Colliery Band back in 2016, is from our 2016 album, Sharpener.And the track is called Reawake. So, here's a little clip of that now.It's very different from a lot of the stuff that Hackney Colliery Band, I guess, is known best for. We're known best for, I guess, bringing a bit of party atmosphere, playing some quite upbeat stuff for dancing and all the rest of it. We also have always had another side to us, which is something a little bit more introspective and unusual and interesting, I hope.This tune very much falls into that category. It's kind of a ballad, it's very influenced by music from Norway. I talked a little bit about my love of Norway and Norwegian musicians in this show in previous episodes.I love particularly a couple of Norwegian musicians who cross over with electronic music and jazz, and they both happen to be trumpet players as well, which I suppose isn't a coincidence being a trumpet player myself. They're called... Arve Henriksen is one of the players who plays his trumpet a little bit like a Japanese shakuhachi flute.It's a beautiful sound, do check out Arve Henriksen. And Nils Petter Mölvier is another. Both of these players combine the sonic quality of the trumpet with different sounds. They go processing their trumpet through a lot of electronics and that kind of thing. And the other person that's very much inspired by is a trumpet player called John Hassel, American trumpet player, fantastic player. And one of the early purveyors of what's now kind of, I guess, slightly controversially called world music.So trying to bring together lots of different influences from around the world in his music. So do check out those musicians, if you like what you're hearing with the track, Reawake, now that you can hear under us. With this track, I wanted to do something slightly different.And for me, this track is a very personal track because it's called Reawake for a reason. And I need to give you a bit of background as to why it's called that. Just bear with me while I tell you a bit of a story.And that is that in 2004, I was caught up in the Boxing Day Tsunami in India. I was in the Andaman Islands, which are part of India. But if you look them up, you'll see that they're closer really to Thailand.So they're geographically part of Thailand, but politically part of India. And I was over there. I'd been on a six-month sabbatical working with Tibetans in exile, writing about Tibetan music in exile up in Northern India, up in the Himalayas, which was an amazing trip.And maybe I'll talk about another time. After that trip, I decided I wanted to go and do some diving. I've always loved scuba diving.And so I went to do some diving in the Andaman Islands. Beautiful, beautiful islands off the East Coast of India. And while I was there, the Boxing Day tsunami happened.And I don't want to go into details too much. Suffice to say, I was very, very lucky. The sea went out exposing with a coral, which was very strange and came in again.But unlike the horrifying TV images that you would have seen, particularly recently because of the 20th anniversary, this last Boxing Day, I was very lucky in that the sea didn't come in crashing in one big wave. It came in at a kind of walking pace. So although a lot of stuff did get damaged, where I was luckily in a particular town, I was in No One Died as far as I'm aware.So we were very, very lucky, even though we were really quite close to the epicenter and there was a lot of really awful devastation around us. So I would have prefaced it by saying many, many people have far worse experiences of this than I did and do. Nevertheless, it's something that is quite a defining moment in my life in all sorts of ways.And has led me to make some of the choices that I have in terms of pursuing things that interest me, sometimes at the cost of my own career or my own sleep patterns, certainly, and just trying to maximise life, I suppose, and squeeze every drop of juice out of life, because I think it's quite common for a lot of people with, I suppose you call it survivor guilt, really, that you feel like you're still here, or those hundreds of thousands of people who were killed, something like 250,000 people were killed, I think, in that terrible incident. And I was extremely lucky to not be among them. So I want to pay tribute to people who have far worse stories than I do before I go any further. Anyway, I was in this fairly remote spot, and back in those days, I did have a mobile phone with me, but there wasn't any connection there really. And of course, all the infrastructure was knocked out in the incident. So I managed to get a message through to my parents after a day or two to let them know I was okay, but only via an intermediary, via an Indian friend in Delhi who they didn't know.So it was a bit of a strange time. They hadn't heard from me. And it was about 10 days between it happening and me speaking to them.And in that time, quite understandably, they were extremely worried. And because of where I was, and it was very, as I say, I couldn't get a message to them, they, I guess, assumed that I certainly thought that I was missing and possibly been taken by the tsunami. So they were posting in Internet forums 2004.There wasn't that much of that sort of thing around, but there were bits and bobs. And so my parents were posting in those with the last picture they'd had from me when I sent them an email a couple of weeks previously. And seeing if anyone had seen me and all this sort of thing.And the newspapers picked this up, picked up the image of me and the Daily Mail in particular of all papers. For those of you who don't know, here in the UK, the Daily Mail is, let's just say a terrible newspaper that pandes to right wing tropes and is pretty devastatingly anti-immigration. And I don't think it will be any surprise to most of my listeners to find out that I'm not a huge fan of the Daily Mail because it spews a lot of hate and I did not want to feature in it.But that was the paper that for some reason picked up my picture and the story. I can only assume it's because I'm a middle class white man who went to a grammar school and they love all of those things. Middle class, white men, grammar schools.So I'm assuming it was maybe for that reason, but they picked up the picture and I'm going to say, if you're watching on video, you'll be able to see this. I'm going to describe it if you're not. This is a copy of the newspaper that I've had.I had blown up for a show I did about this some years ago. So that is, here we are. It says, the missing is the headline.The subhead is, British Parents Frantic for News of Children Lost in Disaster Zone. And then there's a picture of my smiling face and naked torso, which was on page two there. So that headline and that picture, a lot of people saw, of course, I think a couple of other papers ran it as well.And so a lot of people back home thought that I had been killed. A lot of people thought that I was missing and given where I was geographically, that I probably wouldn't have survived. So during that weird 10 days when I couldn't speak to anyone at home really, as well as people frantically trying to find out news, friends led by my friend John, who you can listen to back on the Frank Turner episode of the show, which I think is episode nine or something like that, I think it is.My friend John and others organized what was started out as a memorial gig basically, a Steve Pretty Memorial gig it was called, and was in effect was a kind of version of my wake. So you may be seeing where the tune name ties in now. And then I managed to get off the islands after that time. Again, I was very lucky in that time. We slept in the hills for a couple of nights because I was a bit worried about, you know, more aftershocks and another tsunami coming back in, but actually was able to even go back in the sea after a few days. We were sort of stuck in this island because we couldn't get off.But yeah, I was able to almost not quite carry on as normal because we had to try and help them rebuild a little bit. But it was really, I didn't want to add to the burden of people desperately trying to get off in much worse situations than me. And it was just a bit of a scary unknown time, lots of crushes happening, trying to get on boats and that kind of thing, so I stayed put for that time.And when I did manage to finally get off, I then got back to Calcutta and then across the country to Bombay and managed to fly home. So I was home within two, I guess, two or three weeks it would have been. And then I realised that I was going to be home in time for what was originally supposed to be my memorial gig, my wake.So I went along to my memorial gig, my wake. Now, of course, my friend John and of course, my family and my close friends pretty much all knew that I was okay by then, but John had organised this amazing gig with all the bands that I played with at university and versus others, coming together in a great venue in Brixton and having this kind of all day festival fundraising gig. So we turned it into a fundraiser for having the tsunami and for rebuilding efforts and things.So massive thank you again to my good friend John Lumley for organising that. It was really quite an extraordinary thing. But the point is, I went there, lots of people knew I was okay, but not everyone did.So quite a lot of people were quite surprised to see me, because they thought I'd died, because the headline of the Daily Mail was doing the rounds. And yeah, it was a strange event. I've been away for six months travelling by myself, talking to Tibetan musicians and all this.So it's always strange coming back from a long trip anyway. And it was just that weird period after university and before I started my career. So it was already strange.And then add into the mix, survivor's guilt and going to your own kind of wake. And yeah, suffice to say, it was a very, very formative time of my life. And when I think back to still, if not daily anymore, it certainly was daily for many, many years.It's at least every few days, it's something that pops into my head. The fact that I'm still here and hundreds of thousands of other people aren't, and it feels like that comes with some sort of responsibility. Anyway, with that in mind, I really wanted to write a tune that was based on that experience, that reflected how I felt about it, but just in purely melodic form.And so I wrote the melody of the tune, just going on a walk between tours with the band actually. And I had a few days to myself to write. And so I went for a long walk in, I think, Cornwall or Devon, and didn't have any headphones on, tried to turn my phone off other than to just use it for voice notes with this melody, and came up with the melody that you can hear now, which formed the basis of this tune.And then I got back to my car, got out some manuscript paper, scribbled down the melody, and sang some other bits that I had in my head, rough beat in my head that I put down there and then. And so that was the kind of basis of the tune. It's not always that tunes come to you like that, but this one definitely did.I think there's a lot of mystique sometimes about how you write music, that just comes to you in a flash. And often it's not like that. Often it's just about sitting down and making a start, and just iterating and trying new things.But this was, I mean, I specifically set out with the intent of trying to write a tune like this, and the melody just formed in my head as I was walking and became what you're hearing now. Anyway, so that's how the basis of the tune was written. But then what happened was that over that period, my partner Joe, who you can go back and listen to on episode one of the show, was pregnant with our first child.And so shortly after I wrote that tune, when I was workshopping it, I'd taken it to the band and we'd rehearsed it a bit and done some work on it. And after that, I knew I wanted to add some more electronics to it. So up to that point in the band, we hadn't really used electronics alongside the brass and woodwind and percussion.So I really wanted to add some electronics to the sound of the band for some tunes. And so as well as processing my trumpet through some pedals and things like that, I also wanted to add acoustic percussion and organic acoustic instruments. But for me, you can do really incredible things when you bring the electronic sound world and the acoustic sound world together.And so I was really keen to do that. You get a kind of almost, it can be alienating, but sometimes in a good way, right? Kraftwerk, Pioneers of Electronic Music, talked about that alienation effect, the Fremdoms effect of the electronic sounds can have.But they can also be very warm and they can be very human. And so that's something that I wanted to do. I started working trying to find drum machine sounds.I went through different versions and eventually, I had something, a kind of placeholder. And then we went in for a scan for what turned out to be my daughter's, because we didn't know that at the time of course, but her first scan. And it's the first time that I heard the heartbeat of my unborn child.And I recorded it on my voice notes on my phone. So incredibly lucky these days to have all these ways of documenting these important moments in our life and particularly as a musician, I like doing that with the audio. You know, audio is something that really speaks to me almost more than the visual side of things sometimes.So I recorded this on my phone. And then it occurred to me that I got back home and was working on this track. And of course the track is about, it's in some ways terrible, in some ways very fortunate thing that happened to me surviving this terrible incident.And I realized that there was a kind of circularity to the fact that I had recorded this heartbeat and the fact that I was working on this track. Because this is about a new life. I mean, and in some ways this track was about all of the lives that had been lost.I realized that maybe I could use the heartbeat of my unborn child as the basis of this song, of the beat to this song. To this day, joke on stage about the fact that I have essentially monetized my unborn child's heartbeat in utero. But as a jazz musician, you've got to do what you can to make a living.I mean, that's the, you know, being slightly facetious when I'm saying that, because it did feel like there was a really nice link between those things, a really nice link between that thing that happened to me and happened far worse to all of those other people. And this rebirth, if you like, reawake then suddenly had a new meaning. So it was reawake as in regarding awake, but then also reawakening of my child.So yeah, that's why this tune has always meant quite a lot to me. That's the story, bit of a long story and hope you'll indulge me. I thought it will be worth explaining.Right, so I'm here in my studio and I'm going to start things off by listening to that original voice note that I recorded on my phone on the 25th of February 2016. So let's go and have a listen to that. It goes like this.So not the most beautiful sound in the world on one level, but also the most beautiful sound in the world for me at that point, because that was the first time I'd ever heard my child's heartbeat inside my partner's womb. So that was a really momentous moment for me, and it was such a, I feel quite emotional listening to it again now, just in its raw form, because I've heard the manipulated form, which we'll get to shortly, a lot, because of course I used it in this track. But just hearing that raw sound, somehow that connection that we have with the heartbeat, I think really ties in to our understanding of rhythm and our understanding of pulse, I mean literal pulse, but in this case musical pulse.Yeah, there's so much in that, I think, how connected we are as human beings to the timing that is based around our pulse. So a lot of the most common speeds that music is played are multiples or divisions of our standard pulse, which is something we can get into in another episode. If the track opens with this kind of washy, well it opens with trumpet actually.Here's what the track sounds like from the very beginning.So you can hear some cymbal. It's my processed trumpet.So this noise you can hear underneath it, kind of washy sounds you can hear underneath it.There we go, you can hear it more there.So that introduction, that little trumpet introduction and the washy sound that you can hear there, that is all taken from that same recording. So I'm going to start by showing you how I did that, right? So here, we heard the recording again.This is how it sounds in its original form, like this. So what I've done is I've taken that recording and I'm going to lower the pitch of it, because it's quite high pitched up there, and I wanted something that felt a lot more like being in the womb, almost like being enclosed in the womb, that idea of rebirth and reawakening. So here's that recording again, and as I'm playing it, what I'm going to do is lower the pitch and you'll hear the fundamental nature of that sound change and mutate, but still kind of have some semblance of the original in it.So it goes like this.So that is now down an octave, so down 12 semitones, so C to C on the piano if you like. And then I took it down even more. So that's now down two octaves, and it starts really changing down there.You can really hear the different timbre of that there. But actually, I took it down even more. So I took it down minus 31 semitones, which is quite a long way.And then it starts sounding like this.So you've got all these little glitchy things that are happening in there, which because of this recording, you get all these kind of what are called artifacts, these little interesting bits that can become musical in their own right.So a lot more haunting and kind of visceral somehow. So what I've then done with that lowered sample, and I should say that that's a third of a piano keyboard I've lowered it by, so quite a lot. Piano keyboards, 88 notes, I've lowered it by 31.So that's really down quite low. And I've then run that through some different effects. The first thing I put it through is something called a resonator.Now this, if you like, I've talked a bit in the show about how when you play particular notes in particular rooms or in particular spaces, certain notes will resonate if you're in a big, lively concert hall, for example. There might be particular notes that resonate more than others, or I'm sure we would have all had that effect of shouting in a very sort of reverberant room, or a tunnel is at the other place that can happen. It's a kind of reverb, the sound bounces around, but some notes are picked out more than others.And a resonator is essentially doing that across lots of different notes. So I've set the notes that it was going to bounce around, and it goes like this at that point.So, you can hear moving around. So, this is going to be slightly different every time because I've set it up to what's called randomize. So, in other words, to mix it up and vary the parameters as it goes on.So, that's that. That's the washi sound. And then I've added some other little effects like this.So, as you're hearing it, you can hear these things come in. Hopefully, this is now feeling more and more like you're kind of enclosed in that world. You know, you're in a womb, almost.So, even though this was recorded from a real womb, if you like, through the ultrasound, I've tried to recreate that because when we hear it, we're hearing a fast heartbeat of a fetus. But I wanted to kind of unpick that and rework that for us listening now, and try and place the listener to this track in kind of in that head space, if you like. So, that's that swirly stuff you can hear under my opening trumpet line.So, what I've then done, having created that kind of textural warbly sound to open the track, I've used that exact same sample, that same recording of the heartbeat from the scan, and I've done something called slicing or chopping it, a sample chopping. This is a technique that hip-hop producers have used a lot over the years, and really what it is, is taking, so a hip-hop producer might take a drum groove that they really like from a record from the 60s or 70s, and they might then chop that up into little slices or little samples, which they then remix and turn into a new beat. So that's something that's at the core of hip-hop production and by extension a lot of other music production over the years, whether it's drum, bass or a techno, all sorts of different styles partly use this technique.And so I've done that here, but rather than a drum loop, it's with of course my unborn daughter's heartbeat. I've chopped it up into little pieces and tried to represent different parts of the drum kit. I've got the kick drum, arguably the most important aspect of the drum kit.And that sounds like this before any processing. So quite quiet. Let me just turn it up so you can hear it.So that's a little bit of chopped audio from that section. So you can hear that. Let's take it back down.And what I've then done is process that because that's okay, but I wanted it to feel a lot more weighty, a lot lower and a lot more kind of energy down low and that's going to really help drive the track. So I then add some what's called EQ equalizers to boost some particular frequencies and cut others. And then something called compression.So it's starting to get a little bit louder and more equalizers and compressors. And that's how it gets to in the end, right? And I can now, I'm playing this on the keyboard, or I could play it on a drum pad, but I'm playing on a keyboard, right?And so I can now use that instrument however I like. And so I've programmed in, in the song, a pattern which will come to you later throughout the song played by the band that uses that kick drum. So that's how the kick drum sounds.I've then done the same with the snare, which is perhaps the next most important bit of the kit. So here is what I've done with the unprocessed sound of the snare if you like. So I've used that little slice of that same heartbeat.And then with this, it's a little bit easier than the kick drum because I don't need all that low end energy. So I've basically just turned it up and made it a little bit punchier. Now we're starting to build a very rudimentary drum kit.Right, so next up we've got the kick and the snare. And that's both built out of this same sample. And now we need the hi-hat.The hi-hat is very important in a lot of electronic music, particularly things like styles based on hip hop like trap and that kind of stuff where the hi-hat really runs a lot through the track and is repeated a lot. And you get these very, very fast hi-hat patterns that aren't necessarily playable by a real drummer. On a drum kit, the hi-hat sits on the drummer's left normally and is two cymbals that can be closed and opened.So you might think of it as a that kind of sound, right? So what I've done with this hi-hat sound is if I just play it without any processing, it sounds like this. So quite quiet.So let me turn that up so you can hear that.So that's kind of click, click, click, click, a bit of a clicky sound. And if I then do the same with a little bit of processing, you can hear that's just slightly different. Okay.And then a bit of distortion just to get it to cut through. And a little bit of echo or delay right on there. So that now sounds like that.We've got the kick, the snare and the hi-hat. I've now got some toms. So these are the round drums that you would see on a drum kit, normally above the snare drum.So you've got the kick drum, you've got the snare drum, which is the one with wires on that sits in the middle. Very, very important role in the drum kit. And then you've got tom-toms.And these are quite resonant drums that you often see above the snare and below the cymbals. And this beat that I wrote, when I originally wrote this tune, I wrote this beat to be played on drums. And so I wanted some tom-toms.And of course, then when I made this sample and this drum beat, I have made kind of virtual tom-toms out of my daughter's heartbeat. So it sounds like this. So that's one.You can hear it's slightly kind of grainy sounding. An electronic sounding. But I quite like that slight, you know, strange electronics nature to it.And that's the other one, right? So, and again here, I've done the same sort of thing. I've added lots of different effects that I showed you before.Eventually, what happens is this drum beat builds so that I'm able to play all of these different sounds on the keyboard or on drum pads or whatever else I want to control. This is using something called MIDI, which we will cover in future episodes, but is a way of keyboards or what are called drum triggers or drum pads playing notes on a computer or on synthesizer. It's a way of basically musical instruments talking to one another, sending different control messages.So when I press this key, there's no sound in this keyboard that I'm playing. The sound is in the computer and the keyboard is telling the computer to play that sound, right? And here is the snare, and here is the hi-hat, and here is the tom-tom-one, and here is tom-tom-two.Now, I can play what becomes the beat of this song. I'll just try it slowly.So that is really the kick drum, the bass drum, and the high tom and the low tom. All right. And then if I now go to the tune and play it with the brassin, you can hear what I mean.And you can also hear some real cymbals behind, because Bonny and Luke from the band playing real drums with it. You can hear that hi-hat quite prominent there.So this is an unmixed version of the tune, so it would sound a bit strange.But you get the idea, right? And that is really the basis of the beat for this tune. So that warbly stuff that's going on underneath the introduction is that same sample, that same recording that I made in the scan, that's the same sample chopped up and put into little bits, processed a bit and turned into a drum kit.Now I'm going to play the full track now and so that you can hear how it fits in and how it works within the context of the song. But the reason for telling you this is, firstly, I hoped it might be interesting. Please let me know, drop me a line at podcast.stevepretty.com or originthepieces.com or my socials at Steve Pretty and all the usual places.Let me know what you think, if it's interesting, if it's something that you'd like to hear a bit more of because there's obviously something quite new to the show, this clip and mix section. And speaking of the clip and mix section, this is just to really reemphasize that this is something that I would like to do with what you send me. So you can send me anything.It might be you noodling around on a piano in, you know, all these pianos in stations or airports these days. Just go and have a tinkle. And it might be that I end up turning that into a little tune I play along with on the trumpet or exploring some of the other crazy instruments I have in this studio that if you are watching the video feed, you can see a lot of these toys that I can try and sort of virtually jam along with.And the idea is that I will take a few minutes to narrate what I'm doing while I'm doing it. So I'll explain, okay, here's this little snippet you sent me. Okay, there's something interesting in this sound.Let's unpick that. So just over the course of, you know, five, 10, 15 minutes, I'll unpick what you've sent me and have a little jam with it in whatever way. It might be with an acoustic instrument, might be doing something like I've done today, using it as a sample, chopping it up and finding something musical.Because once again, if you look hard enough, pretty much anything can be turned into a musical piece, right? And that's what's kind of interesting about this way of approaching sound. It's a way of exploring sound and kind of adventuring within sound and not needing to worry too much about particular technique or particular experience levels.Now, of course, I've spent a long time as a musician practicing and learning this software that I'm showing you now. But there are so many tools these days that you can use to experiment with this stuff. There's free apps you can get on your phone or your tablet or your computer.That you can just mess around with. And that's what I want to encourage you to do, really, is just have a play around and see what works. See, just try and tune your ears into new things.And it might help you to appreciate some of the sounds that are around you. I'm recording this in spring, of course. And the bird song at the moment is absolutely amazing.Really beautiful hearing all these birds around. And so I find that by thinking about sound in this way, in this sort of way that anything can be perhaps thought of as musical or at least thought of as interesting, it just opens up this whole other dimension of listening for, it has for me and I hope that it will for you. Right, so I'm going to play the full track now.This is my tune, Reawake, played by Hackney Colliery Band. And of course, featuring my unborn daughter's Heartbeat. This is from my 2016 album, Sharpener, and I hope you enjoy it.This is best enjoyed with headphones. So if you're listening on headphones, great. Otherwise, maybe pop a pair on, it's fine just listening to your phone or wherever you are as well.But anyway, here we go, here's Reawake.There we are, Reawake, my tune, written partly on a walk in Cornwall, and partly during an ultrasound scan for my daughter, and about going to my own wake, I suppose, in some form or other. And I just want to dedicate that tune to the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their lives that day. And I suppose the millions who were affected by it, whether because they lost a loved one, or a family member, or a friend, or whether because their property or businesses was destroyed, whatever it might be.20 years on now, and so it feels like a sort of distant memory for a lot of people, I'm sure. But it's still something that I think about most days, just how lucky I am to still be here, to still be having musical adventures, to still be exploring the world, talking to interesting people, talking to you. Yeah, having a very fortunate, jammy life, making silly noises for a living.So yes, my heart goes out to all those people who are not as lucky as me in this situation. I know if I can try and sort of turn this into something a bit more positive, the world as I talk to you now in early spring 2025 is in a difficult place. Let's not get too political right now, but things are quite tough at the moment.I'm talking to you shortly after USAID in the US has been entirely cut. So the aid programs around the world are really suffering. And of course, the UK government has done something similar recently.And so, yeah, it's something that I feel particularly connected to, having been through this natural disaster and seeing the aftermath of it and the amazing work that those aid agencies were able to do in this situation. And I feel very sad that that has been challenged by recent political events. So I suppose if you've got any spare cash or any spare time that you can either volunteer your time, or give some money to any of the organizations who are trying to carry on their amazing work in the face of all these cuts, I think that is something that you should do if you're able to.I certainly try and do a little bit of that myself where I can, and I would encourage you to do the same. Anyway, enough of that. Thank you very much for listening.Hope you enjoyed the show today. Bit of a different thing, focusing on this one track and this new section, Clip and Mix. Once again, do send me your Clip and Mix ideas, podcast.stevepretty.com or on the socials.And I'm really interested to hear what you've got to share. I think there could be some really fun stuff and some musical adventures that we can have in a kind of remote collaborative way. Lots more news to come.I'm gonna be taking a break, as I say, for a few weeks now while I rejig things behind the scenes, but I might be dropping the odd little teaser here and there about what's coming up. So do stay tuned to the podcast feed as always, and my social media as well. And meanwhile, thanks again for staying with me and really value your feedback.So do drop me a line in all those places. Or also, once again, a reminder to sign up to my Patreon. There's lots of stuff going to be happening there over the coming weeks and months, and it really helps to support the show.So thank you very much. Even if you've just signed up for free or to my mailing list on originthepieces.com, all of that stuff is really, really helpful to stay in touch with you, to let you know about ticket offers and to share some extra bonus bits, full length interviews, behind the scenes stuff, lots of that coming up. So all that remains for me to say is to say thank you to my partner, Jo, for letting me record her womb all those years ago and to my daughter for featuring on this track and being part of the inspiration for this song about rebirth and reawakening, if you like, of positivity out of a very difficult situation.Thanks to Hackney Colliery Band for the theme tune as well and Angelique Kidjo, of course, who sings on that. And I'll speak to you in a few weeks' time. Meanwhile, stay tuned and stay musically curious.Bye!