Hi everybody, and congratulations for your surprisingly mature and intriguing album “Where Memories Combine.”
I’d like to know first what is the meaning of your band name, please.
– When it came time for me to choose a name for the band I really wanted a name that wouldn’t be cliche or run-of-the-mill. Most metal band names sound like they just chose two words out of the dictionary and made it into their moniker. Here, I’ll try that right now for an example….Famish….aaaaaand…..admiration….Okay, our new name is Famished Admiration. That was easy.
I wanted a name that when you tried to look it up on the internet you wouldn’t get a thousand other variations of unrelated links. If I wanted to name the band Animus I would have a ton of dream related sites pop up before the band’s site did. I decided to take a different route with the band name search. I really wanted the name to stand for us as a unit; to stand for the music in audio, metaphor, and dramatic form. I wanted a name to be like a crest for our psychology, philosophy, the applied theories, lyrics, articulations and lifestyle. So instead of searching for a couple of words that would somehow feebly stand for the band’s namesake I decided that I must make up a name on my own. Pull some syllables and letters out of the open air and string them together. I wanted the name to look good on paper, to sound nice as it rolled off the tongue and wouldn’t be mistaken for something else.
When I’m not in a room and someone asks for me, not only are they asking where my physical body is, they’re asking where my personality, opinions, gestures, beliefs, etc. are currently residing. Many times I’ve explained what the band name means and many times people don’t understand what I mean. I’ll explain it and they’ll say, “so it doesn’t mean anything?” No, you’re not listening to me. A name is just an association for a larger entity. The definition of a word is just the meaning behind how we pronounce a given ‘something.’ Cea Serin is just the pronunciation of what we are all about. It is a direct representation of our goals and dreams, what we plan to accomplish, what we are going for in the music, the drive behind the lyrics. Everything about this band, everything about the music, everything that revolves around this unit is pronounceable by simply uttering the phrase “Cea Serin.”
Why did you decide to put some more aggressive vocals alongside the clean ones?
I guess for me, as the singer, it can be traced back to when I was first into Dream Theater and really working on my vocals, however, I was also into bands like Carcass and Morbid Angel. So when I’m playing Fates Warning, or something similar to sing along to, and a heavier part comes up it would seem natural for me to switch to a heavier voice. When the lyrics were dealing with a more extreme subject I would feel the accent of extreme barbarism to suffice in the place of melodic accompaniment.
When you argue with your girlfriend and the argument gets more and more intense do you continue to use the same tone of voice? Of course not. The angrier you get the more your tone changes to the aggressor. The way I use vocals is just a natural form of expression in the words and emotions behind them. With this kind of medium, of course, there are some slight exaggerations. Obviously, we don’t sing to people as we go along our day. That being said we also don’t yell at people throughout our daily routine either. The music medium is just emotions, opinions, and statements exaggerated into colorful metaphors and dialogue (ad infinitum).
I choose to sing the way I do to fully express the words and statements behind the notes more accurately. If I sing about a woman who has lost the ability to speak and can only communicate with her eyes then her dialogue will be strained and desperate. I’m not going to sing that melodic and pretty. There is nothing beautiful in that kind of suffering. Death isn’t a pretty goth girl in fish-net stockings, death is cold and lonely and should be expressed in such a manner.
Would you define yourself as a prog band, even in a modern sense of the definition?
The modern sense of the definition of “progressive” shouldn’t be applied to any “prog bands” right now I believe. I don’t consider Cea Serin to be a progressive metal band right now because I don’t think we sound anything like other progressive metal bands. I’m not a progressive metal singer and I don’t pretend to be. Vocals are an important aspect of the prog genre and I don’t associate with that right now. I’m more interested in being a vocalist as opposed to a singer.
By definition, these progressive metal bands should be taking steps forward for every album. Whether they are baby steps or quantum leaps, the prog genre should be at a different place right now. Instead, what I have seen is that when Dream Theater came out there came a slurry of bands right on their tail. Sure, there were bands like Fates Warning and Queensryche that had prog tendencies before Dream Theater, but “Images and Words” really gave a jolt of adrenaline to the genre’s circulation. So now we have this field of music where musicians can cut loose a bit more…but that’s all they do. Album after album its the same thing over and over. I see no growth, no experimentation, no chances being taken. Everyone is so scared of losing a fan base (among other things) they won’t dare set new boundaries for themselves.
I’ve also seen a trend now in certain bands releasing a couple of albums and suddenly they see a certain aspect of their sound being more accepted. Let’s say the band Sex W/ Stereotypes releases a couple of CDs and they are praised for their passionate vocals and wild playing, even though they may have equally effective piano ballads. It seems to me once they see that they have reached a point of acceptance they latch on to this and beat it to death for the next couple of albums. Year after year, Sex W/ Stereotypes gains higher levels of wild playing and more exaggerated singing. Then, people get tired of that and won’t to hear something else…possibly the new syncopation rhythms of Famished Anticipation. Suddenly, Sex W/ Stereotypes begins to use nice syncopated rhythms a la Famished Anticipation. It’s all a follow-the-leader game. Even the leaders become followers. Band find their niche and they never leave it; they’ll just scrape at the ground above them for some kind of inspiration to apply to their already tired formula. All the while true innovators are slagged in the media for not being contemporary and listener friendly.
Progression in metal? I haven’t seen any real progress in years. I’d like to be known as a progressive metal band simply because each CD we put out aspires to something better. However, we only have one CD coming out shortly. Only time will tell if we’re actually a “progressive” metal band. Most bands think bigger is better. Just because you rent an orchestra doesn’t mean your progressive. That’s why I use the term “mercurial” metal. I think Cea Serin is an ever changing entity. If I feel the need to release a CD of just me singing to piano music, I’m going to do that. I don’t write for an audience, I write for myself. Odds are if I think it’s really cool, someone else will. That doesn’t sound like a progressive mind set to me. I would hate to base the career of Cea Serin on the idea that every CD we put out is going to be leaps forward in growth and style. Like I said before, we might reach the point where we just want to do ‘adult-contemporary instrumental.”
I noticed that sometimes the music is filled with something like movies excerpts or stuff like that. Is it correct? Which movies (or anything else it is) are there, and why? Is it logically or “meaningly” connected to the lyrics?
This is the first time I’ve been asked this and I’m glad you did. Yes, I will often take a line from a movie that is representative to the subject of the song. Probably the best example of this is during the song “Scripted Suffering: Within and Without” where I use a sample from the film Requiem for a Dream. There is a point in the film where a mother is talking to her son about her current situation, saying: “I’m alone..I’ve got no one to care for…I’m lonely…I’m old…it’s not the same…they don’t need me…i like the way I feel.” And that is exactly what I was trying to get at with my own lyrics.
A lot of bands just use random samples from movies and TV for some kind of ambient effect, however, I like to use lines that are connected to the song. I’ll search for months for one sample that goes with a certain song.
The actual movie itself isn’t the important part. Often times I’ll hear a perfect line in a movie that you wouldn’t think would correspond with a serious Cea Serin topic. For instance, I used a sample from the comedy Drop Dead Fred where the main character says, “I’m scared to be alone.” Along with “i just want this to be over” from Sleepers, and then “remember me” from Hamlet. Three unrelated movies but three lines that work great together.
I’ve recently started to use books as a similar source of impact. I’ll take a passage from a book and route it through a text-to-speech engine to get this eerie inhuman quality that works very nicely. With that I’ve used excerpts from Maldoror and MacBeth. I’ve used text-to-speech in the past as well. You can hear an example in the song “Meridian’s Tear” where the very beginning has narration generated from text-to-speech. Quite an effective way to get this inhuman and anonymous quality across.
Why you distributed a promo copy that contains some particular photographs or some kind of modern sculptures? Is your music framed in a deeper or bigger aesthetical project?
What are you trying to communicate?
I’m glad you mentioned that as well. The pictures of the modern sculptures were actually done by me. As I’ve said in our bio and in other interviews I don’t like the idea of band photos. I think it is just vanity to display yourself on the CD or in magazines. Now, there are pictures of Cea Serin available if you know where to look on the internet. Back when Cea Serin started, 1997, I actually took some promo shots for band representation. So there is one pro quality photo of me up here and there, and there is one pro shot of Keith Warman up as well somewhere. That was before I really thought about why bands use promo pics and before I came to the conclusion where I’m at today.
However, labels and magazines want publicity photos for their ads and columns so I had to think my way around this. Everything we do has to have some meaning behind it, that includes our promo pics. So what I ended up doing was getting some supplies to make myself a trio of Cea Serin mannequins. I got a ‘skeleton’ for each person which was actually three sign stantions that stores used to hang ads on. I’d bend these into various human style forms to represent our bodies and posture. I had to make a chest cavity, but it had to be see-through so I could fill it with objects that represented who we were. So I ended up getting some very large balloons, blew them up to a decent chest size proportion and wrapped quilting thread all around it. Then, when the string was nice and in place I would paint glue and water all over it and hang it up to dry. Once it dried I popped the balloon and the string held it’s shape. I could then cut it open and place whatever I wanted inside and you could look through it to what was inside. I then bought Styrofoam heads and took various pictures of our faces and burned the edges and pinned them in place. I burned off the eyes, ears, and mouth of the Styrofoam heads as well. One arm for each manequin was wrapped in steel chains, while the other arm was wrapped with roses. Some examples of what we had inside us are: a broken light bulb, yards of black audio tape, spirals of gold emanating from inside to out, black plastic, modified inner images of ourselves, wings, etc.
Whenever I completed work on the mannequins I knew that I wanted to get a really busted up, old, dirty and tattered couch to be placed outside in a very serene and natural location. I found the location and set up the scene the way I wanted and just snapped a couple of digital photos of the “band.” Hopefully, by looking at the ‘band photos’ you can grasp where we are coming from with out sound and approach.
I think if there is any “frame” for Cea Serin it would actually be the image that we convey – while the actually center piece are the lyrics and music. I think the lyrics are just as important as the the music in a lot of ways. A lot of the times I’ll read lyrics by bands and I’ll interpret them the wrong way because I assume they are trying to say something deeper than what they are. With Cea Serin, there is a deeper and much bigger picture than what is being presented. So in that respect, our image is only supplemental to the actual content of our material. Our image isn’t even important, that’s why I don’t bother much with a website or photos. It’s the initial reactions and the depth that I hope we infect people.
I don’t really think there is anything that Cea Serin is “trying” to do. I feel that whatever our attempts may be, they are presented in the correct manner and in a just way. I would really like to eventually accomplish a learning cycle for people, i.e. the assumptions and associates people have with us are completely different than what they’ll get with other bands. The meanings of the words in the lyrics mean something different in our band than what they mean in other bands. But ultimately the greatest knowledge that I can ever achieve or happen by is that there was someone out there that has their hands on a Cea Serin album, and this album in held in such a deep regard that they will be listening to it for the rest of their lives. I want to give to people albums that convey the soundtrack of their existence and experiences. When they hear a Cea Serin song that is 10 years old to them they’ll remember the time they were driving towards their first date with the girl they would eventually marry, and when they associate a certain song with a particular hard time in their life and it gave them solace, or maybe when they see an old man that looks like their father and a certain lyrical phrase comes to them, I think that that is the greatest achievement for an artist. To affect someone in such a way that you become part of their lives is such an honor and a fantastic thing to be proud of.
I can remember many moments in my life where I was immensely happy. One of them was the time I got a phone call from Belgium. It was from a guy that ran a magazine there and he had just got a demo I had sent him. He wasn’t calling for an interview or anything like that, he was just calling to say ‘thank you.’ He just wanted to say thanks for giving him that demo because he would be listening to it always and it brought him something he had been looking for in music for a long time. I could have stopped playing music and releasing Cea Serin material right there. We’ve already achieved the biggest goal in that respect. Hopefully with this next release we’ll do the same on a larger scale.
I suppose this sophisticated music you play is just the point you reached after an important evolution that perhaps started with something a bit different. What (if I’m right)?
For me, I began practicing music to become better at translating the music I heard in my head to my hands, mouth and pen. We all grow as people and as music fans. I’m not into the same stuff I was into when I was in school, that’s for sure. If that was the case I would still be listening to old school thrash and speed metal. Don’t bet me wrong, I still love Overkill but I feel that I have broadened my horizons a bit.
One of the most important lessons I learned growing up was to listen to music for what it was. You have to listen to country music for what it is and not try to compare it to something else. What Alison Kraus and Union Station do is a bit different than what Samael does. Both are great, but very different. You have to know where they are coming from and what they are trying to do. Dance music has no deeper meaning, it’s only there for immediate gratification, and it should be treated as such. I hope that more people come to this conclusion and allow themselves to accept a larger spectrum of musical variations.
Looking back I have always loved the music of Yanni and Sarah McLachlan; they can do no wrong in my eyes. But the evolution begins with the desire to aspire to greater things. Never be content at the level you are on. What else is out there? Plenty. I draw influences from all around: the rhythm of footsteps, the tonal quality of a car alarm, the chaos of a water fountain.
I don’t think I have changed my path much since I began playing music over 15 years ago. I have just slowly absorbed more so that my output can be more diverse and fluent for whatever whim may breach me. The first kind of music that ever really caught my attention was when I was listening to country music and, at the time, had no idea what the purpose was for the guy over the music. I was too young to realize what singers were and what they were up to. But it was my mother who told me to listen to his words, that he was telling a story. And as I listened to the lyrics I remember feeling this overwhelming sense wash over me like something had just dawned on me that had always been staring me in the face. He was singing about a story. It was so strange to me then.
Are you planning to play onstage all this complicated stuff? Do you think that the onstage dimension can be suitable for recreating the clear and relevant atmosphere that characterizes you album?
We’ve already played the material onstage and it worked out pretty well I think. There were those people that didn’t really understand the instrumental gaps between the songs, like in “The Surface of All Things” but that doesn’t bother me. The songs aren’t really that hard to accomplish live. As far as the vocals go, they’re not over produced at all. I don’t double or triple my vocals so it will have a more intimate feel to it. There are backing vocals but it’s never those huge T-Ride style backing vocals, just a two or three part harmony.
All the keyboards were sequenced and routed directly to the board. The drummer just played with a click track along with the additional percussion. Keith handles the melodic backing vocals and Forrest handles the death metal style backing vocals. The only thing is that we have the tap dancing on samples. Can’t really bring a tap dancer along with us where we go so that part will be a gap in the scenery. I don’t really feel the material is all that complicated. The only hard part is finding adequate members for the band who are dedicated to the music and vision.
What is your lineup?
So far, when we record it’s really just Keith Warman on guitar and me doing whatever else is needed. As far as live goes, it’s Keith on lead and rhythm guitar with clean singing backing vocals, Forrest Osterman on rhythm guitar with extreme backing vocals, myself on bass, keyboards, and lead vocals. We’ve had a drummer and another bass player before but it didn’t work out.
If we have to play this live with a drum machine we’ll do so because currently we can’t find a suitable drummer in the area. Plus, I’ve always had bad working relationships with drummers. It’s also difficult, being primarily a bass player, to deal with other bass players.
There are some strange – unusual – sounds in your album: are they the simple result of some synth or there’s something else?
Yes, we’ve done quite a bit of tinkering around with conventional sounds. That’s not to say that we’ve experimented with inorganic sounds and electronics in place of conventional instruments. No, I want to present the material in a very real and intimate fashion to the best of our ability and to the maximum extent of our resources. In order to accomplish this we had to actually perform and record all the oddities ourselves. For example, I’m sure you’ve noticed the tap dancer on “The End of Silence.” Well, that is no sample. We actually found a tap dancer to record those parts for us. I used to take singing lessons at this school of performing arts and I asked the tap teacher if she would be interested in doing a number for us one day. Months later when it came time to actually record it we took a portable 8-track, a tube-mic, and some headphones to the location of the school. I remember that being quite a tough day because not only was the air-conditioning out in the place but there were painters at work. So we were sweating and spinning at the same time not to mention we didn’t really have a clue on how to relay to her what the choreography was.
We ended setting the mic up on stage by her feet and played the part she would be dancing over for her to get a feel for what she was working with. She commented, “this isn’t something you would normally tap over.” I said, “I know, but here is what I’m thinking.” I proceeded to sort of beat out on the stage what I was going for with my hands as the song played. We all had headphones on so I was trying to explain to her what it was I was going for. It was difficult because we were taking a performer from one world and thrusting her into totally different territory all the while being poorly directed by first time choreographers. What we ended up doing was just getting a lot of different takes of her doing different things to assorted sections. Keith then took that and put it on his computer and chopped it up into sections and basically made a tap solo from all the different pieces. I think he did a really great job with that and I know it took him hours to accomplish that from what we had.
To stick with “The End of Silence,” in that same section there are additional performance pieces that I performed over the tap dancing. That whole section is supposed to represent the death of all intangible things. For instance, the tap dancer being a metaphor for our art, along with me tearing up pieces of paper to be the death of language, a dusty record skipping over and over for documented history, and finally at the end there is the final burst of a TV tube which was for the media. I actually took a small TV in my vocal booth and waited with a crowbar for the right moment in the song to hit it. When the time came and I broke the TV the sound wasn’t exactly what I was going for. Apparently I needed a bigger TV. So to solve that problem I just propped the same TV back up and did another take over the one I had just done. I smacked the TV so hard that it flew across the surface, hit a wall and then slammed onto the floor. With that take there were a total of about two really strong hits (crowbar and floor) and we just took all three hits together and made one big glass shattering break. Again, Keith was responsible for spicing them all together. He even recorded Forrest and I cleaning up the glass in there with the vacuum cleaner…we didn’t use that though. However much we cleaned we still missed a couple of pieces cause I had a shard of glass find its awkward way into my heel a couple of days later.
We also used text-to-speech for the beginning of “Meridian’s Tear.” That particular area I wanted the voice to sound disconnected and mechanical so that’s why we used text-to-speech for that. The backwards singing part before “Embracing the Absence” was achieved by me singing the line “brazen” forward then reversing it. I would then learn how to sing it backwards (“neh zay or ib”) do a take of that, and then reverse it to forwards. So that gave it the strange backwards sound to it while being understandable. I got the idea from a Twin Peaks movie.
I have some other ideas I’d like to work out for the future as well. It’s fun coming up with things that wouldn’t normally work in music and then incorporating it in a way that works and is complimentary to the song. Sometimes I’ll want an instrument like a hammer dulcimer, which is actually a keyboard sample that I play myself. I like how in Yanni’s performances his musicians will trade of solos. Well, I don’t actually know any badass hammer dulcimer players so I’ll have to try and recreate that performance with the timbre and the slides and all the other things that particular instrument can do with my keyboard. We have a hard enough time trying to find musicians in our own area to join up with us, it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to find a dobro player that we’re going to hit it off with.
Do you think is there any band around that could be suitable for touring with?
I’m sure there is. I’m just wondering who the fans of Cea Serin would like to see us with. I honestly don’t believe that fans of Symphony X will want to see us along side Symphony X. My experience, albeit only in America, that when fans are really into a band like Dream Theater or In Flames, they don’t give a damn about the opening band, they just want to see the band they came for. That’s just my experience with the U.S. and watching how fans react to opening bands. It makes me angry because when I saw Samael and Dimmu Borgir over here I noticed that not a lot of people were giving Samael their attention when they should have been. Samael was the band I was going to see and they were incredible. I also remember seeing Dream Theater with Star People and man let me tell you, the people in the crowd were not happy with Star People. I personally thought they were cool as hell so it was sad to see the crowd react the way they did. But anyway, I’ve thought about whom I would like to tour with, not because of the compliments in sound and style, but for those I would like to see night after and night; those who I appreciate for what they write and perform.
I actually think it would be cool to go on the road with bands like Dornenreich and Angizia. I would love, absolutely love, to play some dates with Devil Doll…however, I’m sure that would be an impossibility. I think it would be cool for us to play shows with bands like Sixpence None The Richer as well. I like their lyrics and their particular style of songwriting. I mean, if it was up to me I would tour with Yanni and Sarah McLachlan – that’s my dream tour if you ask me. But I think in terms of realism the metal bands that would sound great for us to play with would be bands like Samael, maybe Opeth and the Providence. Of course, and again, if it was up to me and I had the money I would make something totally different. I wouldn’t want to go on tour with other metal bands. I would just have us with a variety of other performers that didn’t fit the metal mold. I would like to compose music for a Cirque Du Soliel type act and have that open for us. That might upstage us though…unless we could do flips on top of poles or play under water.
Your main influences?
- As I mentioned before I’ve been into Yanni and Sarah McLachlan for years: two very un-metal musicians but two crafters of songs that I respect and admire from year to year. If you want to trace it back to my early days and have me list some bands that shaped my current mind set and paved the way for who I would become today I can do that as well. Keith and I both were into Barry Manilow growing up, and we still are to this day. He recently let me borrow two Barry Manilow DVDs to check out. The first metal band that I remember really hitting me hard was Megadeth. I heard the song “In My Darkest Hour” off the Decline of the Western Civilization soundtrack and I was like, “who is that?” So for years I was really a die-hard Megadeth fan. Any bass tabs I could find for Megadeth I would learn or figure out. I remember being excited about bands like Anacrusis, Overkill, Annihilator, Lord Bane, and anything on the Shrapnel Records label. I was huge into Satriani and Randy Coven as well. While most my friends were into White Lion, Faster Pussycat or something I was into Yngwie Malmsteen, T-Ride, Damn the Machine and Fates Warning. I liked the technical stuff, but back then there wasn’t a lot of that around. When Dream Theater came around it just blow up in my area. That changed me as well as my friends. “Images and Words” just demolished our conceptions of how songs were supposed to be written. It was that album that cemented the fact that you could have long and involved songs while being catchy and memorable.
Besides Dream Theater and the prog based stuff I was also finding more comfort and relation with bands like Morbid Angel, and Carcass. It was that style of brutality coupled with the intense playing that I liked so much. The aggression that I felt inside myself was audible through the death metal but the intricate precision and involvement was satisfied by the prog stuff. Keith was similar to me in that he was really into Vinnie Moore and the bands that had those shredding guitarists. I remember him telling me about the first time he heard Yngwie. He was in a record store and someone put on Deja Vu over the house speakers. His ears perked up and was into Yngwie for years to come. Forrest is more inclined to the death and black metal side. So it’s a strange spectrum to behold: Keith on one side who grew up on christian metal and solo guitarists, Forrest who grew up on the thrash and speed metal and is currently basking in the majority of black metal, and then there’s me in the middle I think.
Besides the strictly musical point of view, I think you take a lot from different fields to create and elaborate your music: could you please clarify a little bit what arts/artists play a role in this sense?
Yes, it’s very important to draw influence and glean knowledge from other sources besides just music. Obviously, this goes beyond what I usually talk about when it comes to listening to more than just metal to help the approach of songwriting. I get a lot of questions from people when I tell them I listen to Josh Groban, Sara Brightman, Chasing Furies, and other kinds of pop music. The really successful pop artists out there must reach as broad an audience as possible to gain commercial success. This is why Ricky Martin has songs in Spanish and English on his albums. Not only the language is important but the music is coming from every nook and cranny of the world as well. You can get a song off one of his CDs that have a salsa feel coupled with a rock edge and in the next bridge it will switch to a Mediterranean percussion feel with hip hop. I find that marriage of styles to be very interesting.
But getting away from music and speaking beyond that realm I’ll discuss in short on how literature, philosophy, performance art, etc. can influence someone.
When I first saw Lord of The Dance and Riverdance for the first time, I was blown away. Not only did I love the music but I loved what the dancers were doing; it was amazing. When I bought the soundtrack to the shows I noticed that it was just the music and the tap dancing had been taken out. It sounded like a rock band missing a drummer. I couldn’t understand why they would not include the tap dancing; it was so percussive, necessary, and ornamental to the score. This is what gave me the tap dancing idea for “The End of Silence” – to use a dancer as an instrument as opposed to a visual supplement to a musical number.
Also, when it comes to literature, I’ll use Antonin Artaud for an example. If you read his work and philosophy, his ideas can be translated into musical form. For instance, by listening to Devil Doll you can tell an Antonin Artaud influence to the overall sound and approach by the composer. Artaud believes that words and script are not as meaningful as the gestures, inflictions and overall body language that can be accomplished by an actor. For example, it’s well known that our body language conveys 75% to the 25% of verbal articulation. Apply this and exaggerate it to the theater and I believe you have what Artaud was talking about. But this is my interpretation; I don’t know that much about the theater. But you can see my point when I discuss Artaud’s beliefs and hear the way Mr. Doctor (Devil Doll’s composer and vocalist) delivers his lines…much like an actor and vocalist than just a singer.
I hold similar convictions when it comes to performance art and music. If you watch Cirque Du Soliel or similar productions you can see how the artists interpret the music into their dance. Reverse that and you can apply it to your music. Watch how a person weeps in grief, throws their hands up in frustration, slams their fist down in anger, contorts their face in disgust, and you can see my point. These emotions can be interpreted using music and its various musical instrumental voices.
However, I don’t know much about art to really catch any kind of real inspiration. I say that but I have been studying the Golden Ratio for the past couple of months to apply it to my music as well. DaVinci and Bartok supposedly used the Golden Ratio in their works to give them a certain aesthetic value. It’s a technique that you can use to divide certain sections into ratios to each other. Whether you are using it to paint a spiral in someone’s hair-bun, segment a human body like in the Vitruvian Man, or just use the ratio to segment your song in two parts: the time before your modulation and after for example. It has a lot to do with the Fibonacci Sequence and is really just an interesting thing to study and understand for possible inclusion in my own work. The Golden Ration can be seen in a seashell and the swirl of a galaxy as well as honeybee colonies and our own human form. I don’t take it as seriously as I may sound I do though. I don’t want to use a formula to write a certain piece.
What are you project for the next future?
As the CD is coming out we are already almost finished with the next album. I’m talking about the writing process, not the recording process. I want to be extra careful for the next album because the material is so much different, better, complex, unique, etc. I want it to be done in a specific way and its presentation is crucial to the overall finished production.
However, I don’t really predict anything for the future. I always have lived in the moment. That is why my memory is so poor and I can’t hold on to the past. What has happened a week ago for me seems like it has never happened and what has happened years ago just seem like they were days ago. It’s strange how someone can remember as far back as being in a high-chair but can’t remember what happened a couple of days ago. My mood and my interests are always changing and I really don’t know what is in the future for Cea Serin. I don’t want to write the same album twice though, that’s for sure. I want every album to be different, retaining the same quality that Cea Serin will be known for, but not having album after album acting as if they were just companion pieces to the previous effort. I might feel the need to make an entire piano and vocal album. I might feel inclined to do a whole instrumental album. Whatever the case may be I hope to actually “progress” further: learning new things, experiencing different styles from different cultures, challenging our own skills as musicians, rewriting our own formulas and convictions, and constantly aspiring to reach higher and higher.