Saturnine (Alt Mix 1)

Bass removed--only guitar and keyboard parts, with added ambient padding. Sometimes randomly placing a found voice against existing music brings out the hidden musical aspects of the spoken word.

Saturnine Alt 1

Saturnine (Final)

Final Mix with all instruments

Tempo=126, D Dorian

Chords: ||: Dm - F - Gsus - D :||: C - G/B - F - Dm || Bb - C - F -G | Bb - C - F - Dm ||

Saturnine (with guitars)

Several layers of guitars and keyboard parts added in this third mix.

Saturnine

Started with a bass line on a fretless in D dorian (with borrowed chords from natural minor). I added a 'circular' loop of a hammer dulcimer sound for a Saturn-like treatment. (Sounds like Sting circa 1995)

Saturnine

Derecho

Bass line idea in 2 parts.

Echosystem

This started with a noodling around with the tetrachord G-Ab-B-C on a fretless bass, with the bass gravitating finally to C, defining a C minor tonality. I tuned a 4-string to C-G-C-G and did a loping contra bass part, then did another quasi-ostinato part employing lots of open strings. Finally I added a Floyd-ish guitar part to drive the music even further. There is an 'egyptian orchestra' part that I left out, but if included and more well-composed would make this tune sound more Arabic. The tetrachord used as a cell for melodies is decidedly Arabic-sounding, but is merely part of a C harmonic minor scale--not exotic at all. But that is the interesting thing about tetrachordal playing: it is a fragment of scale that can be used to make something sound ethnic.

5 Against 4

(18x24 oil pastel on board)

Inspired by Paul Klee and Josef Albers, 5 against 4 is visual representation of the music polyrhythm 5 beats against 4 beats. The 4 hues correlate to a tetrachord of G-Ab-B-C (Blue, Orange, Gray, Black)