Mother Nature is One Creative Diva

13 – Triology 6:32

Layers upon layers of ambient field recordings blend together to evoke a sense of being amidst a lively crowd of people while strolling through the carnival or perhaps at a circus. A warm dreamy baritone flute emerges from the din of the crowd to utter a few sparse flute words, not really musical notes, but more like slurred, drawn out words. or a monk chanting. Listen to the ever-evolving, morphing crowd sound.  You may assume it is live human crowd noise at first.  Listen deeper, and you may recognize many other subtly nuanced sonic elements in the mix. There soundbytes generated from some of our early digital manipulation experiments using the Ensoniq Mirage Sampler, using spoken word samples, steam whistle samples, and numerous others.

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Trilogy Bells 0:40There are cars and boats and planes, frogs, geese and numerous other feathered performers murmuring, squawking, shrieking, honking, laughing, yelling, or yakking,  commenting in a wide range of sonic frequencies, timbre, dynamics and articulations.  Dissonances build up and transform as polytonal, polyrhythmic layers of ambient sound and music bits tumble and swirl in a cacophony of diverse voices. Various horn and woodwind instruments, both domestic and ethnic flavored, proclaim their opinions. These include alto sax, soprano sax, flute, zurna, pan flute, and harmonica. They were all performed on the Motif XS8 and recorded thru a Digi 003 interface into a Mac Pro running Protools DAW software.

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Trilogy Blast 0:41Anders and I have had many creative production sessions over the years. A common scenario is overdubbing additional instruments and SFX/MFX, usually in a spontaneous improvised exploratory mode. Then he will take all those isolated overdub elements back to his production facilities, and juggle, re-order, and re-combine them, devoid of the original context, which is, of course, the music bed they were enhancing in the first place. If they are played back simultaneously with the music, their role is supporting and enhancing the music.  But what would they sound like, what effect would they have if the primary track is muted. Wonderful magic often happens, that’s what! Music has been captured in the wild, free of human control.  Sort of like tricking the universe into doing the conscious work and making the decisions.  That Mother Nature is one creative diva!… Denver Clay

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Trilogy ending 0:41Trilogy is one of the most complex Final Cut Pro sequences in the Lava Songs project. Over two years multiple sequences of stacked tracks were bounced to a stereo .aiff file. These were added to new sequences, stacked with other tracks and again bounced to a stereo .aiff file. The final sequence is 18 tracks deep with four overdub tracks housing multiple instruments and voices. The operative word for Triology is multiple. The usual urban and refuge voices have been added with the bounced tracks: Palos Verdes shoreline, Upper Klamath Lake shoreline, Allied Gardens traffic, Lower Klamath Lake Wildlife Refuge herons and friends, Klamath River Watershed crowd, frogs and… Triology features Denver placing overdubs voices across the width and breath of the song. The sonic spacing adds depth and import to the overdubs. I also enjoy the quiet ending that resolves from the complexity that Triology is… Anders Tomlinson

Lava Songs:
Piano with a View
Nourish … Just surrender to the virtuosic universe, and immerse…
Pianomomento … Floating on a delicate bed of distant murmuring humans and birds…
Wishy-WashyFarmer In The Dell reinterpreted on the Yamaha baby grand…
Fantasee … This is one of Denver’s all-time favorites from his library…
Angerlee Wangsdt … Music is excerpt from song Wonderlone created in 1989…
Under-OutLava Songs’ epilogue begins with The Perfection of Simplicity…
Simplexity
Over-Into … The world we live in is filled with musical sound / soundful music…
Fangalina Riffa … Blended syncopation and layered with rhythmic percussion section contributors, man and nature…
Cistern Blues … Straight ahead mainstream chaos with a heart…
Triology … Mother Nature is one creative diva in this surrealistic sound-scape…
Davey Crocket’s Dream … The universe is always ready to play with you, you just need to be loose and playful and open to all outcomes…
Atmosonics
Floatus … You may feel swallowed up by the primeval enormity of this track…
Float-Me … The “Rumble of Youthful Enthusiasm” envelopes and sustains…
Floatees … This is an exquisite sparkling living breathing sound-scape space…
Lakecide … Beautiful and gentle, yet it sweeps us up and propels us along powerfully on this journey like a small raft floating down a mighty river on its journey to the sea…
Amournacana … Tone poem of an anonymous loner serving out life’s remaining days somewhere on the frontier of earlier Americana…

©2012 Anders Tomlinson and Denver Clay, all rights reserved.