Here are three tracks from my poetry and CD pamphlet The Spiritual Recluse and the Bebop Prism. I have put the tracks up on to YouTube, so here are the links.
Track 1 - Staggered Stones
Track 2 - Speechless
Track 3 - The Sandworms Scroll
composer’s notes
This project was a collaboration on many levels. It was a collaboration between word and music, person and place, and faith and possibility. It was also about finishing the unfinished.
The ideas, influences and impressions in this music are like those in the poems: drawn from my whole life, even those chapters I have forgotten or tried not to remember.
I’ve just given a flavour of the musical pieces here. More details can be found on the CD sleeve notes. I hope you find these sounds uplifting, mystifying, healing.
I would not be here without music: my poetry was my scramble up the sand dunes to get to the oasis of song.
staggered stones - an electric group piece, building up from a four note phrase to an exchange between soloing instruments
speechless - a vocal piece, with elemental and mantric tones creating a landscape of wordless sound
wind and wave - an acoustic guitar piece, rising from single lines and drone chords to a meditational peak
here lie the bones - an acoustic guitar piece, based around the chordal possibilities of the guitar’s open strings
the sandworms scroll - a semi-acoustic guitar piece, in the form of a jazz ballad
coiled calligraphy - an electric group piece, experimenting with unusual guitar chord voicings and scale structures
a monastery of marigolds - a keyboard and acoustic guitar piece, with improvisations between piano and guitar
the shell-capped sage - an electric group piece, using egyptian and indian scales as an interweaving framework
the ruins of memory - a keyboard piece, with wind-chimes, singing bowl and percussive instruments
disconsolate sea - a keyboard piece, exploring the relationship between consonance and dissonance
st monan - an electric group piece, drawing on themes and modes used throughout the other pieces
equipment
guitars: aslin dane jazz 335, washburn n2 nuno bettencourt, schecter s1 elite, eko ranger re-thought 12 string, classical, legacy bass
keyboard: casio wk3000
other instruments: wind-chimes, singing bowl, rain stick, finger-cymbals, whistles, magnet ‘e-bow’
vocal: me
amp: roland cube 15
recording and software: br900cd, toneport ux1, laptop, ableton live lite 7, boss me-8, pod2, pod farm, amplitube jimi hendrix, shure mic, behringer ms15 monitor speakers, ath m30 monitoring headphones and lots of cables
Here are YouTube links to some of the music I was listening to from John Coltrane, Tal Farlow and Thelonious Monk when I was writing the poems. The tracks are Naima, I Hear A Rhapsody and Round Midnight.
