Funky Cockroach

Music

Title:

Funky Cockroach

Dates:

22-Jan-2025 (inception), 25-Jan-2025 (finalised), 31-Jan-2025 (released)

Artists:

Music composed, performed, produced by Norman Freund

Artwork by Norman Freund

Description:

So here I was sitting in a restaurant waiting for our order to come through, chatting and pondering about life, then this rhythm kept floating around in my head. I quickly transcribed it onto my iPhone and just to be sure to be sure, recorded myself tapping out on the iPhone. As it turned out, iPhone did too good a job of filtering out the tapping and all I could hear was people talking and plates clattering. By the way, for those of you that read way too much into a title; the meal, service and cleanliness of the restaurant was perfect.

When I got home that evening, I transcribed the imagined rhythm into Ableton Live using a drum set, turned out to be a 7/8 time signature, ok, this sounds interesting, let's take it further. With my Ableton Push2 plugged in, I improvised a few more layers into the percussion section. A funky bass line came next, just an ostinato. Then pulled out my standard piano layout keyboard, yes shock horror, twelve equal divisions of the octave (EDO12). Doesn't need to be some unknown microtonal tuning all the time.

I just pressed the record button and recorded raw the electric piano part. Was rather pleased with this and after dinner, handed over my headphones to my son for a listen, he thoroughly enjoyed it.

It's mostly in the pentatonic blues scale as a subset of 12EDO, but with a few variations here and there. The bass line was performed on the Push2 whereas the piano parts on a standard piano keyboard layout.