Cassius Lambert - Newsletter 1

Hello!!
Welcome to this first newsletter. I’ve always felt very restricted (and bad) at communicating through social media. Due to its limitations and fast flow. My hope with this newsletter is that I can show you more in depth what I am doing in my daily life. Hopefully you will find it intresting! My ambition is to do one of these every month (if time allows me….)

So with no further do. Here is Newsletter nr 1 (June edition)

June has been a very eventful month. With a lot of releases and concerts. Two projects i play in has released singles. CB3 witch is a space-rock trio leed by the amazing guitar player Charlotta Andersson released its first single “Daydreams” from our upcoming album. A song that happens to have a 6 minutes long bass-solo……
Listen to it here:
https://open.spotify.com/track/0IJy6bB7XmdB0dOk4MgS64?si=319e73e9ba6d4ee2
Pre order the album here:
https://majesticmountainrecords.bigcartel.com/product/cb3-exploration

Another band I play in Tarabband also released its first single “Yekhaf” from out upcoming album. Tarabband is a six piece band led by the great Nadin Al Khalidi. With the single came a music video.
Watch it here:
Tarabband Yekhaf | طرباند - يخاف (Official video)

My project Cassius Lambert Orchestra also released a single. This one is called Aralia Pt. 2. Aralia Pt. 2 was composed using a process called Sonic Voicing. Which is a composing technique I made for transferring a real-life sonic environment into a musical context. In this case, the environment is a forest in the south of Sweden I visited in 2019. So you will e.g hear the sound of a blackbird played by a celesta, a cuckoo played by a saxophone, a blue tit played by a guitar and rain played by drums. The song is performed by a 10 piece orchestra recorded in Malmö, Sweden.

With this song the extremly talented Yuvia Maini, made a crazy 360 music video. This means that you can move around in the video with the help of your cursor (computer) or placement of your phone.

Link to music:
https://open.spotify.com/track/7dxTEFMKRoqXJDCXl5Smgd?si=670606cd0a004ea9
Link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DUe1JFlFfg&ab_channel=CassiusLambert. Link to more of Yuvias work (check it out!!):
https://yuviamaini.com/

For you who are interested in compositional techniques here is the steps to implement sonic voicing.

Sonic voicing:
1A. Start with doing a field-recording of some kind, prefereble in a place with a strong sonic identity (e.g a forrest, construction site, kindergarten).

1B. Transcribe everything you here in the field-recording. E.g, if you done a recording of a forrest, transcribe the insects, birds, leaf blowing in the wind etc. Both rhythmically and harmonically.

1C. Arrange these individual stems to “musical” instruments.

1D. Transpose the stems to a key of you choosing

1E. At additional elements (selectable)

This is a great technique to put the listener in a very site-specific place, but a very musical site specifik place.

On the topic of composition, here is what I am working on at the moment.

Earlier this year I got a commission to do 45 minutes music that will have premier in April next year. (more on for what this is later on) But I decided to create music for choir and electric bass. This because the instrument voice is something I for a long time been fascinated by.
But Im also interested in the meeting between the electric bass and the voice. Partly because its differences. The voice has always been a part of us, and is an instrument that existed everywhere, wich makes it the most diverse/used/investigated instrument we have. The electric bass on the other hand is an instrument that is very young, and it is often put in the same context no matter the genre. My goal/ambition with this project is to try to merge these two entities to one bigger monolith. Mixing up the perspectives/roles on what these instrument can/cannot do.

So lately i’ve been investigating the voice (not my own, Im a very bad singer), but the voice as an instrument. And I am very fascinated. So the reference material on what you can do with a voice feels almost like a endless hole. But its a hole I love being in at the moment.

Here is some of my latest finds:
Tahitian Choir - Morotiri Nei

Suite de cithare inanga avec voix chuchotee

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qdFqnY-3ng8

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1708989339138826

Mawal (A Capella)

Kassahun: Ethiopian Masenqo Minstrel

Tilahun Gesesse - Netsaneten | ጥላሁን ገሠሠ - ነፃነቴን

This also made start investigating lyrics as a compositional tool. Something I never worked with before. Not so much what is being said, but more on how the lyrics sounds. Right now I am taking a lot of inspiration (on the lyrical side) from a book I got to borrow from my grandfather called, “Alla europas fåglar, i färg” (All european birds, in color). In the description of each bird, the authors tried to text the bird sounds with latin letters. Something that results in a lot of beautiful words.
Here is some examples from the book:

Bass:
So since I started my Cassius Lambert Solo project (A project where everything is composed and peformed on electric bass, without loops or overdubs) a main goal with my playing is to make the electric bass more expressive (something that feels like a impossible mission sometimes). But It forced me to look at the outskirts of what a electric bass can do. Wich had led me to a lot of interesting discoveries. One of them is preparering my instrument. Prepered instruments is done by placing various objects (preparations) on or between the instrument's vibrating strings (or other sound source). And during June i’ve been exploring preparation with the help of crocodile clamps. This makes your instrument sound more like gong than a bass. I never managed to get so much sub from my bass a i did when I used a 80mm crocodile clam (see picture 1). Try it!!!
Here is a good video, a preparation I will try in July:
Janet Feder: WeirdGuitarLessons.com Special Guest teaches Prepared Guitar, with Scrolling Notation