Bill Seaman - Erasures And Displacements (2017)

"I often work by making libraries or asking people to contribute a library. With the contributed library I often give the players simple verbal instructions, or sing notes I am interested in including. With the piano, I sit down and do a series of improvisations. I then go though these and edit my favorite parts, building a series of fragment libraries, some with little or no abstraction, some greatly abstracted with Ableton Live. To make the library I basically “erase” most of the recording, and “displace” it by building up a new set of musical relations in Live (hence the title of the album) [although there are many readings to these two terms]. I compose in a very sculptural manner with Ableton, dragging things in from the libraries and trying things out often exploring chance related juxtapositions. I build up structures, cut/copy/paste complex layered sections, erase sections that are not working, loop things, and slowly construct a track going though many iterations. I often later cut away at the built up tracks, and edit the piece down, further articulating a structure. I often finish with having between 30 and 50 tracks. In the final set of passes I fully articulate the psychoacoustic space, working with panning, eq, distortion, abstraction, and reverb. I further edit and structure the parts that begin to “work”. Along with the piano I make Libraries of DX7IIE sounds, electronic beats, mellotron, electronic micro-rhythms, non-location recordings from noises found on the internet, orchestral abstractions, midi instrument libraries— violin, cello, woodwinds, and I also employ highly abstracted piano. I have additionally included a library of supercollider abstractions. I also build libraries of ‘abstract’ guitars, playing alternate instruments through synthetic and or real amps. This method allows me to work very quickly and intuitively.