This four-movement quartet is based on photographs taken by music writer Sid Smith whom I sometimes chat to on Twitter. He posts pictures of the rain on his windows and, after gathering a substantial collection, earlier this year decided to ask if anyone would like to record them.
Obviously I did, and I also decided to record them as an actual string quartet, although that wasn’t a compulsory part of the brief. I chose String Quartet Number 1, and elected to record all four movements.
Most of the movements were recorded using electric violins – I’ve been meaning to do an electric string quartet for a while, so this was a great excuse. Note that there is no cello here, I’ve used the octave violins (the electric has a low C string) for the ‘cello’ parts, and the low four strings of a five-string violin for the ‘viola’ parts.
For the electric movements, the first violin is the melody instrument (as it were) so is stereo spread wide while the other three instruments sit close to the centre, so it sounds like the solo is happening above and separate from them. For the acoustic movement the panning is pretty much the classical standard quartet arrangement.
I’ve used a minimal number of effects on each movement, to keep some form of consistency of sound, but I’ve decided to treat each picture slightly differently, with different effects, to give some variation.
1st Movement
I decided to read this both vertically and horizontally at same time. Vertically I have used the idea of independently moving harmonic lines (the streaks of water on the window) and horizontally I have used the structure. So the 1st (high) violin depicts the black part of the picture and the other parts depict the density of the brown colour.
FX pedal used: BOSS DD-20 delay
2nd Movement
This movement was recorded all on acoustic violins, partly for a bit of variation and partly because of the different colour scheme on this photo. The structure is is a rondo, because of the recurring cream stripes in the picture, led by the second violin. The sharp-eared might notice that the viola player arrived late for this recording and left early, you can hear the sounds of an instrument case near the start and end. The first violin part was recorded on my soprano violin and the cello part on the octave.
FX used: Reverb from Ableton
3rd Movement
This is a very monochrome picture so I just used the cello and viola. The lumpiness of the cello parts reflects the lumpy streaks on the window and the viola wanders around them.
The slow ‘cello’ trems on the first draft of this movement made it sound very much like Pink Floyd’s ‘One Of These Days‘, mainly because of the intervals I chose – especially with the intermittent viola on top. So I had to rethink it after listening back, and kept the trems but changed the intervals. Who knows, I might do an actual ‘One Of These Days’ cover some time 😉
FX pedals used: BOSS DD-20 delay, EHX Qtron+ auto-wah
4th Movement
This is the ‘distortion’ movement 😉 I used a different distortion pedal for each of the cello, viola and 2nd violin parts here to get a wider variety of sounds, perhaps breaking my ‘minimal number of effects’ rule, perhaps not. I also decided not to distort the 1st violin as it just got too hard on the ears! The main part of this is the viola ostinato (green) with the cello filling in for the darker parts of the image, the 2nd violin fills in the raindrops and streaks with the gated-style distortion. The 1st violin fills in the red parts with a melody reminiscent of the 1st movement.
FX pedals used: BOSS MD-2 (cello), EHX Big Muff (Viola), Twin Earth fuzz (2nd violin), BOSS PS-5 & RE-20 (1st violin)
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