Interdisciplinary Practice material

Yan Liang

What I did for the interdisciplinary practice could mainly contains the research of the inspiring music and some of them may directly related to painting , concert and night show I attend to , and communication with music producer . Also I try to compose music which may seems appropriate to my work.

The research starts from F.F.Chopin , whom I think may be one of the most special musician who went beyond his era. Schumann once considered chopin’s mazuka as “cannon hidden in flowers” which often turns out in an unexpectable and impromptu way.The abrupt  transformation between major and minor shows a sense of paradox . There always a comparison between dark evil twisty scene and a calm when you face to the sea. I have tried learning playing his music and trying to capture the sense which may be inspiried or seeking the common place with my painting through the delicate combination of the notes. The facicality in his music could often conveys an imagination of wonderland to me.

I also research for some music which the way of composing is directly based on painting. For example Debussy whom I think may be one of the most humorous musician from impressionism . He does not that focus on the connection of the whole melody but prefer to use the harmony and orchestrate in quite bouncing sense which could reflected in the paintings. Such as Estampes ,Moonlight.As the research goes on , I felt that the modernist music and comtemporary music may be more and more unconventional (sense of conventional may comes from impression of historical music) .Having listen to some music with various combination of harmony and instrument sometimes feeling shocked by the frequent abrupt transformation of melody.

With the interest in the multielement from compound of melody and intrusment,I attend to the show which invite some amazing DJs to show their latest work through electronic music and impromptu performance. Damacha is one of the amazing artist who either have cooperation with well known fashion brand. I think he is a kind of artist who breaks the culture boundaries and engage himself quite good in the contemporary. I wished to get some information about how he make his music engaging to the contemporary and how he seek the connections between memories and contemporary. He said he gets to a point where he just can’t make any more music when he stays in one place for couple of moths and has to go to new cities and new places .And its like the inspiration bottle has been emptied . You have to have stimulus input to have creative output As the place he living now is where traditional Chinese culture and childhood ideas of China and this is always been interesting to him for that reason . 

He thinks city can influence the way you think and the people you meet can influence the way you think and the way you feel that also can influence your music greatly . Since he lives in different cities in China, as a foreigner his interest in those cities may comes from the sense of fantasy memory from childhood. One of the things he keep doing is recording the things interested him frequently like writing diary and using different characteristic which represent different feelings through remixing of sounds from different instrument or devices . He also used some ignorant rap but play it with the style of IDM. Also there were some other artist like downstate , Khemist and Sleepdealer whom made make wave, grime in an odd way. It’s quite impressive to find the 808drum as an new added thing which made the whole music quite engaged through added bass beat.

In terms of the fansy of multi and unconventional , I start trying to make music which sounds like adapt to my painting in order to create the immersive experience that I caught up in the show. I try to write a basic single melody and attached with different polyphony just as attempts. Then I start to change the beats with the melody in an either relatively smooth and stumble sense. And this kind of transforming may have various possibilities. Then I also made the difference in harmony , I keep some in single forms in order to create the sense of singing. Along with different multi notes harmony accompanied. And I would also using different instrument to seek a balance of the tone , or do it in a completely different way which emphasize some certain sounds from the beats in order to conveys the sense of extreme and frightened. Though I try to make music with contemporary language but still keep some management which indicates my own obsessiveness which may have a different sense from an direct expression through unconventional notes appearance