My name is James Sanger, I am creating a stream of experimental pieces around the theme of making music that 'Sounds like Opium'.
I am using all sorts of scientific and productional techniques I have discovered within my work with acts like Brian Eno, Dido, U2 and Keane...These songs here are mainly from my catalogue of trippy ambient material.
I think music is vocational and therapeutic and I am trying to re-establish it's true value by exploring its restorative and psycho-acoustic properties. Looking at how to create alpha and beta states of consciousness using bin-aural entrainment with the sub harmonic beating properties of a micro tonal scaling system. (*)
I'm also currently looking at vocals and vocal effects and how they affect mood in the listener.
I've found all sorts of amazing stuff over the years and am in no doubt that one day I'll discover the true elixir of aural opium, a music that really does 'Sound Like Opium'.....
For those of you who think that everything in music has been done and there is nothing new and original anymore, then think again because, the future is now and here it is.
(*) The Lucy scale is a new musical scaling system based on pi (3.42) (www.lucytune.com) I've been making music in it since it's inception, I feel it has a very delicate and subtle beauty.
If you know anything about the life and work of John Harrison, the 17th century horologist who won the King's price for discovering a workable means to find out Longitude at sea, you'll know his life was one long struggle with the establishment... He was proved right with his clocks at the ninth hour but what he devoted most of his time to still isn't widely recognised, his tuning system, it was his idea to use pi (3.142) to construct the long and short intervals in his scaling system which Charles Lucy then deciphered from Harrison's 'missing' manuscript. This music is made in this exciting new scale....
For those of you who can understand advanced mathematics AND the 17th century deliberately veiled and obtuse writings of John harrison can be found at Charles Lucy's site (www.lucytune.com/) where he simplifies it into this...The essence of what Harrison said is as follows:
"The natural scale of music is associated with the ratio of the diameter of a circle to its circumference." (i.e. pi = 3.141 etc.) "This scale is based on two intervals;" 1) The Larger note as he calls it; This is a ratio of 2 to the 2*pi root of 2, or in BASIC computer terms 2^(1/(2*pi)), which equals a ratio of 1.116633 or 190.9858 cents, approximately 1.91 frets on a conventional guitar. (L). 2) The lesser note, which is half the difference between five Larger notes (5L) and an octave. i.e.(2/(2^(1/(2*pi)))^5)^(1/2), giving a ratio of 1.073344 or 122.5354 cents, an interval of approx. 1.23 frets. (s). The equivalent of the fifth (i.e. seventh fret on guitar) is composed of three Large (3L) plus one small note (s) i.e. (3L+s) = (190.986*3) + (122.535) = 695.493 cents or ratio of 1.494412. The equivalent of the fourth (IV) (fifth fret) is 2L+s = 504.507 cents.