Posts by :
- Reinterpretation of Huronic Minor from 09/11/09,
SCENE Metrospace performance, East Lansing, Michigan (with Michael Teager) - Matt Borghi and Jason Sloan – Guilford – Full Album Mp3 Download
- A Distant Tomorrow
- Approaching Slowly Part 1
- Approaching Slowly Part 2
- Ashes
- May 2003
- June 2003
- July 2003
- August 2003
- September 2003
- October 2003
- November 2003
- December 2003
- Burned Down (featuring Michael Teager)
- Come Back to Me (featuring Michael Teager)
- Deep Side of Tomorrow (featuring Michael Teager)
- Desert (featuring Michael Teager)
- Fancy This (featuring Michael Teager)
- KOSIK – Plastic Piano and Slow Kid – Full Album Mp3 Download
- KOSIK – Fastas – Full Album Mp3 Download
- KOSIK – Removable Pieces – Full Album Mp3 Download
- KOSIK – Live at WCBN (w/Jim Owens on Drums/Percussion) – Full Album Mp3 Download
- KOSIK – Tiem Parade - Full Album Mp3 Download
Can you hear me now?
August 26th, 2010Before work this morning, I was laying in bed listening to the ceiling fan and the morning birds singing and it got me thinking. How can you enjoy music without the element of the ambient sound serendipitously entering the aural fold? I mean, Ok, it’s a rhetorical question, but so often there’s been crazy extra-musical serendipity that comes out of the blending of “composed” music, and the music of a space or place — the sound of just whatever is going on. John Cage really got this, matter of fact, I think that a lot of composers and music fans get this, but they don’t bother to write about it, or think about it, or plan it’s inclusion into their compositions.
On the one hand, though, maybe something’s lost when we can’t hear pure music, or pure sound without outside noise coming in, but I’ve never been much of a purist. I think of Beethoven composing his 5th Piano Concerto and the canons and drums of Napoleon’s approaching army and how it influenced this work, or their’s the sound of humming telephone lines and how Harold Budd has talked about that influencing his work, and more importantly his listening. I think of R. Murray Schafer’s Soundscape: The tuning of the world where he talks about how the glazing of people’s windows increased gradually, and so did the volume of activities in the street.
I think we’re better listeners now, maybe more so than those who preceded us, and almost certainly more so than those folks that lived in a pre-Industrial Revolution world. We’re able to more carefully discern sound even within the presence of many other sounds. We can be walking down a busy street with car horns, many people having conversations, squeaking truck brakes, and a variety of other sonic ephemera and still be able to listen to, and hear, the sound of our favorite music on our iPods. There’s a a lot of sonic information, all coming at us at once, and as a listener and composer I find that pretty freakin’ cool!
Vague Terrain Feature
August 25th, 2010As I mentioned here, I’ll be featured artist over at the Vague Terrain site to kick off a new series for them. I’ve been working diligently on pulling together all the pieces, and I’m particularly pleased that my friend and collaborator Michael Teager was able to join me on the saxophone for this composition. It’s a long form work, about thirty minutes in length, and most certainly broaches new sonic territory, while also remaining true to my sonic direction. In parts I feel like this recording really brings in Jan Garbarek, or Dave Liebman influence to my work with, at times, a bit of an homage to some of the more contemplative works of Sun Ra. In sum, I’m very pleased with the work, and when it’s live over at Vague Terrain I’ll post again here.
Interesting Post on Disquiet.com
August 13th, 2010Came across this post on Disquiet.com, Marc Weidenbaum’s highly recommended Web site, and your truly left a comment there, underscoring one of Marc’s points. I’m posting this here, because Marc touches on something that’s very near and dear to my heart, and subsequently worth referencing here on the site – site specific sound, or the sound of a particular place and the impressions it leaves with you as a listener having the experience. For me, this is, absolutely, the critical intersection of ideas for me as a composer: I’m trying to capture an emotional impression, sonically… Marc’s post is a good read, and there’s a lot of great music downloads posted there, as well. Enjoy.
Upcoming Artist Feature in Vague Terrain
August 13th, 2010Vague Terrain, an online journal for Digital Art, Culture and Technology has selected my work to kick off the audio edition of their journal. I’ll be doing this by presenting a newly created, and not available elsewhere composition that will be available at the site. This is set to go live in September. I don’t have a lot of details yet, but I’m pleased with the compositional work I’ve done thus far, and I think fans of the work will appreciate this, as it definitely taps into the sort of impressionistic soundscape work I’ve been writing about here for the last couple months.
Free Mp3 Music Downloads of Matt Borghi’s Songs and Soundscapes
July 18th, 2010Hours of soundscapes, songs, and other Mp3 music downloads consolidated for ease of download.
Free Mp3 Music Downloads of Matt Borghi’s Soundscapes
Free Mp3 Music Downloads of Matt Borghi’s Songs
Free Mp3 Music Downloads of KOSIK w/Matt Borghi
All Music/Sound by Matt Borghi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
The fork in Gales of November
July 12th, 2010Gales of November has forked.
I’ve never really had a project do this before. I’ve had things evolve and change, even be abandoned, but something interesting has happened with this one.
As I’ve written here, here and here, I started working on a new ambient project in the vein of The Phantom Light and Huronic Minor.
That project sort of got side tracked when I started developing a narrative for that, which I wrote about here and here.
Well, I’ve sort of found myself pursuing both directions. I finished one level of production for about 85 minutes of music this weekend, which will need to be cut down. I’ve also been writing and recording a song structure on the same theme. I thought of taking a Radiohead approach and merging songs and ambience. I may still do that, but I don’ t hear the songs merging with the already recorded material, which means I’m looking at another 50 minutes, at least, so far, of music that doesn’t have a home. Will it be a two-disc set? Two sides of the same coin, kind of thing, or will it be two different recordings. I’m also kicking around the idea of assembling a band for the purpose of documenting these songs in a band format, but progress on that front has been slow.
In any case, I just wanted to give an update as to where things are.
Gales of November recording – The composition process and other tips…
July 2nd, 2010As I’m continuing to develop the sound of Gales of November, or whatever it may be called, when all is said and done, the more I think about the instrumentation, arrangement, etc… The formula that I’m using right now has me cutting a voice and guitar track and then layering on top of that with synths, bass guitar and light percussion. It’s with this process in mind that I thought I’d post this interesting article called The Art of Combining Instruments and Sounds. The article touches on areas that fairly rudimentary to the composer or producer, but it was nice to see these laid out in such neat and consolidated way.
Here are a few of the best excerpts:
Consider the musicians and instruments you have available, and start there. The combination might be original from the start, and hopefully sounds good too.
Find two instruments that blend well in a unique way, and see what else you can add to the mix to enhance the sound.
Find a unique sound combination for the rhythmic infrastructure, and build on top of it.
Experiment with using native instruments such as the didgeridoo, sitar, sticks, steel drums and hand drums.
New Blog – Tin Cans and Twine
June 30th, 2010Conflicted, as I’ve often been, by my seemingly willy-nilly approach to what I write about on this site I’ve tried to reign things in and deliver more focused content. I have readers who want music and music downloads, and other who want life experience stuff, and I also have those folks that come here to read about my electronic communications work.
I tried the life experience blog in the form of The Life Suck, but that never took off for me, because I ended up talking about a lot of that stuff on here, so since I promised not to let the The Life Suck go the way of a ghost ship I killed it today. The Life Suck, RIP.
In so doing, I was struck with a fever of inspiration to come up with a new blog, a blog that’s been on my mind for months… the name Tin Cans and Twine, a blog about experiences and best practices in electronic communications. This is, for all intents and purposes, a blog that revolves around my professional work, my second great passion (after music), so gone will be those kinds of posts from this site. You can view the new blog here: Tin Cans and Twine
The evolving sound of Gales of November.
June 30th, 2010The narrative and the structure of Gales of November continues to change. Whereas, I wrote that the narrative for Gales of November was being developed, a change in the narrative and the musical direction started to occur.
As an artist you’re a bit of an explorer, but instead of going out into the world, you go into yourself, and see what you can dredge up, see what you can find, get to know your deepest self and what inspires you. This has very much been the case with Gales of November. Even with nearly 80 minutes of music recorded, as I started to flesh out the written narrative I couldn’t help but see it, somewhat, taking shape as a song, or a series of songs, like a song cycle. The music and the words, together, with a variety of complimentary timbres and textures started doing a better job of completing the overall impression or living picture of the sound.
This is the crux for any artist. You do one thing and folks get interested in that, and when you depart from that fans of the work have to decide to grow with you or leave you behind. Inevitably, that’s the fortunate/unfortunate path of any artist who’s truly working with their being and their soul, but whereas I thought this might make a great recording for a Hypnos, or Infraction Recordings, that ship will have most certainly sailed with this new musical direction. Instead, something more like Radiohead mixed with the folky textures of Gordon Lightfoot or Dylan is being born.
In many ways, it’s truly the extension of what was born on Olagra, and no matter how much I’ve fought it or been unsure of that direction, over the last few years, this is the direction the work is taking. Thanks for taking the trip with me.
Making your way, building your ladder
June 28th, 2010I’ve got a lot of notions about what it takes to be successful in life, business, etc… I spend a lot of time reading, learning and observing the world at work. I’m constantly looking for a new way, a better way, a more productive, or even a more satisfying way of doing things; whether it’s music, writing, Web and electronic communications work… whatever it is I’m always looking for ways to make things a little bit better.
This approach is a major piece of why I write. I learn through writing and I learn through doing. I’ve been lucky enough, to take some of these skills that I’ve cultivated, and make a pretty good life for myself.
I love the rush of making something new, doing something new, or learning something new. After a while the good feelings wear off, I get restless and I’m back looking for something new to learn, something new to undertake and learn. This is how I’ve made my way, and built my ladder, so to speak. I’ve had a lot of help from great people and friends, as well as from people who very much disliked my hunger to learn and know and saw it as a threat — those folks were some of my best teachers.
All I’m saying is all you have is *you*, and nobody’s going to build that ladder for you — go for it!
