El Nino Mateo

I used to wake my brother in the middle of the night by whispering a rhyme and his name. Although I’m not proud of this, I wanted to create a scary version, using garageband to record vocal samples and sound effects.

I started with sounds of breathing and vocal clicks – recording them with different tempi and rhythms. I added chimes to introduce the theme as an innocent childhood lullaby, before adding spoken whispering motifs of ‘Mateo’ and ‘Ayudame’ (help me). The footstep motif and the first softly sung lullaby enter and crescendo poco a poco, combined with dissonant reharmonisation and a dramatic crescendo that leads to the rallentando of the laughs and whipsers accompanied by dissonant chords played in 3 different registers, low to high on the korg synthesiser. I edited the vocals to have echoes and transposed some of them to different pitches. Some of the tracks were panned left and right with automation. I found low chromatic, suspended chords and the addition of breaths gave mystery.

When I first started I wasn’t sure if my vision would materialise but the piece came to life as I structured and developed ideas using variation in texture, timbre, adding musical dialogue, adding rhythmic ostinatic and dramatic dynamic variations. When I was listening to the piece towards the end I felt it needed something to tie it all together which is why I added suspenseful chords.

I learned that music can be made from anything and how to use Garageband, specifically more about audio effects, such as echo, delay, reverb and filters; and how to arrange layers to take the audience on a journey. I also learned how to manipulate musical elements and develop ideas with sounds, rhythms, dynamics, atonality and bitonality.