Grozny Gamble

Grozny Gamble is a tune I produced about a year ago. I was dinking around with a Middle Eastern percussion software kit and I was coming up with some rhythms I liked that had a near eastern feel to them. I started imagining a little combo playing in a coffee shop some place and opted for a zither and flute to carry the lead and chords, and an oud to carry the low end. Looking for something to name the song after, I found Grozny on the map and "Grozny Gamble" had a nice ring to it.

Backgammon is a popular game in that part of the world so it occurred to me to open the song with dice rolling. To achieve the effect I used a felt-lined guitar case and suspended two microphones above it about two feet apart. I recorded several dice rolls (and the shaking of the dice in leather cup) and picked the version that sounded best. Because of the two mics and their position above the board I was able to achieve the effect of dice rolling across the sound stage (between the stereo speakers).

Most of my time was spent sequencing the percussion. I wanted to give it a natural, dynamic feel. Tinkering around with one of the oud's bass lines, I discovered I got a nice ominous sound with a synthesized bass played an octave lower. With that the idea occurred to me to transition from a kind of acoustic belly-dancing theme to a heavy techno sound. The scene I imagined was man moving from the combo playing inside to a war-torn environment outside. Grozny is a very war-torn city. The transition from inside to outside is done in a slow fade-out/fade-in. The Oud gradually turns into the synthesized bass and the percussion morphs into pulsing techno with a gun-cocking sort of back beat. I then introduce distorted, metallic versions of the zither and flute.