I just released my new album „Chakra Activation For Musicians“. It is not what you would usually expect from me, because it is meant as a music you can use for meditation.
I always have problems with the usual meditation music, because as a musician I am used to listen to the harmonies, the melodies, the sounds. And everything that does not meet my criterias for quality music immediately grabs my attention and takes me away from meditation. So I decided to create my own music.
The „Chakra Activation For Musicians“ is based on three scale concepts to activate the seven chakras of your body. I used the Platonic Frequencies, the Solfeggio Scale and the Energy Center Carrier Waves. All three frequency systems are not related to the tempered tuning we are used to nowadays, so it might sound a little irritating in the first place, but as soon as you let go and just let the harmonics and octaves do their work you will be amazed how deep you can go. Give it a try!
As a musician I always have problems with the usual meditation music. The melodies are trivial, the synthesizer sounds mostly tasteless and a flute lurks at every corner. So I decided to create my own music. “Chakra Activation For Musicians” is the first release of my own music for meditation. You will find all information about the concept and a link to the prerelease after the click.
We are happy to announce the NOTPIA “Celebrate” Remix Contest!
On our BandCamp site you will find a free download the raw isolated recordings of every instrument on the song “Celebrate” of our album “Celebrating Life“. No EQ, no compressor was added. No effects or even panning. Please play around with them, rearrange them, mix them, cut them, put them in a different context. In short, please play around with these files and send your results to marc@mennigmann.com.
For those of you who are wondering if the download is really free: “Yes it is.” Just click the “Buy digital album link” and enter a zero as price. You of course can pay something for it, if you want to support our music, but we are giving these files away for free.
The best three remixes will be released as a free download EP on our BandCamp site, of course mentioning your name as the one who created the remix.
Deadline for sending in your remix is June 30, 2018. We hope you enjoy this project. Love is the answer.
During the sessions of the “Celebrating Life” album, we had Robert Vater joining us to film the process of creating something from nothing. Here is a video, that shows how something evolved from the void. The track was released as “Inspire” on the album. You can see the whole gang in action, working on every note, building this up to a great feature of Mike Keneally’s guitar playing. Enjoy…
The album “Celebrating Life” is available at Bandcamp, by the way. Just saying…
Today I released another NOTOPIA album. It’s called “Fifty Shades Of White” and contains about half an hour of trio madness. From the album description:
What would you get if you put a Chameleon, a particle collider and a cheese cake into a rehearsal room? Well, we don’t know either, but it’s almost as unpredictable as recording a NOTOPIA session.
This new 26 minutes EP called “Fifty Shades Of White” covers six tracks, which can not be more unpredictable. This is progressive free jazz with a spice of dark ambient Real Book phobia. Dive in and enjoy!
Okay, here is some food for thought. Maybe someone can help me and think it further:
I thought about intervals and chords only to be very fast rhythm. Like a4 = 440Hz, the 5th = e5 = 660Hz and so on. This means, that if the rhythm of a4 is a quarter note, the rhythm of the e5 is 1,5 times that fast. Can you follow me so far?
Then I started building a graph, where I can see a sine-curve per interval. Whenever it crosses the x-axis it’s a beat. As as example I added the three curves of a simple major chord. 1-3-5. The root is black, the fifth is blue, and the major third is green.
As you can see, they all meet after 4 beats, so it might sound strange, but this harmony can easily be transferred into one bar of 4/4. It’s not so easy with the minor third or notes like the 7 or b7, but there are also repetitive patters for that.
The rhythm of the intervals of a minor 7 chord will repeat after 10 beats.
The intervals of a major 7 chord will repeat after 8 beats.
Has someone else already experimented with this? Do you have any idea how I could transfer this into real rhythms? Maybe some LFOs and a modular setup will work. I’m in explorer mode, so hit me up with questions and ideas…
