DUO WITH FREDRIK RASTEN
In the fall of 2023 I had some extra days in Berlin which I spent together with my guitarist and composer Fredrik Rasten, to make some music. We have a working duo since 2019 but this was the first time that we worked with this folk music material as a basis. Our working method has usually been that we decide on some harmonic framework and then we improvise with that as a basis. At times we have also worked on some more structured overarching forms, that we arrive at through practice followed by discussion. This time I brought some scales and ideas to have as a starting point, from there we developed the music together using our previously mentioned working methods .
It is yet to be decide wether we will release anything from this recording session. If we do, I would consider it a part of the artistic outcome of this project.
GUDS GODHET
Guds godhet is an old hymn with German origin, that probably came to Norway via Denmark. I’ve previously transcribed a version by Hallvard Dahle from Setesdal. In the recording he accompany his singing with playing the fiddle. To me his version clearly sounds like a folk interpretation of this hymn, both in terms of phrasing and tuning. The tuning which I’ve approximated is:
1/1
28/25
16/13
15/11
3/2
18/11
20/11
2/1
The idea of this piece was for me to play the melody at the start and possibly at the end with improvisations in the middle, like a standard jazz form.
NORAFJELLS
This piece is in the category of folk music being broken down to smaller parts that are then put back together using minimalist compositional techniques. It’s all based on the tune ’Norafjells’.
The percussion part is based on the ostinato pattern that the change in bowing direction on the fiddle creates (transcribed from the tune). Later on I slightly develop this idea. Throughout I’m keeping time with stomping my feet in the traditional style. I choose to play percussion rather than synth because I could much better articulate this idea this way, on the synth it would be too flat, it needed the rattling of the tambourine and the varied response of the drum.
In Norafjells there are two distinct harmonic planes, one in the lower octave:
19191
1919191
19191
And another in the higher octave:
191919
19191
19191
Fredrik tuned his two guitars so that one was in the mode of the lower octave and the other one in the mode of the higher octave.
The common form for the tune is to start it in the lower mode and gradually work your way up to the higher one and then start over. We decided on a form where, for the first third Fredrik would play on the guitar tuned in the lower mode. Then for the second third he would play the guitar tuned in the higher mode and then finally in the last third of the tune, he would play both guitars simultaneously.
SPRINGAR (EFTER HANS P. KJORSTAD)
This is an experiment in live processing of Fredrik’s guitar juxtaposed with me playing the mouth harp. Fredrik is playing an open tuning based on the harmonics of the mouth harp and I’m playing a tune I’ve learned from Hans P. Kjorstad. The processing is the same that I used for Langeleik with good results so I wanted to see how it worked in a live setting.
According to Fredrik he was torn about playing with this effect on his guitar. On the one hand it felt like it bridged the sonic gap between the modular synth sound and the acoustic guitar in an interesting way, but it also felt like this effect distorted or concealed the acoustic qualities too much.
FISKAREN
On this one we had the idea to base it on a common pulse that we would both play on. I would play the tune fiskaren (which I’ve learnt from a youtube video by Sigurd Brokke) but I would linger on the individual cells that the tune is based on for much longer than one normally does. And on top of that Fredrik would improvise ostinatos.
It was challenging for me as a novice of this instrument to play these repeating patterns while keeping a consistent tempo and dynamics in my foot stomping. For the kind of expression we where after we wanted to have a very steady and unchanging beat throughout the whole tune, therefore we decided to let the synthesizer take over the foot stomping duties.
However even with the synth helping out it proved to difficult for me to play the mouth harp in a satisfactory way. Maybe next time!
(next: duo with isak hedtjärn)