Lee Barry Composition (And Photo) Diary

  Ink Fireworks (2015) Stills from the video of same title. Print size: 8x10 @300ppi.  

Composed in 1984 in a Mozart-age-9 style. If you like challenges on the bass, this could be for you. The recording is very lo-fi, recorded on a cassette 4-track with (ugh) reverb on it. I also did the calligraphy. I used to enjoy engraving. It was a rigorous as composing and performing. The use of the treble clef is non-traditional and unusual but as far as I know electric bass players don't read tenor clef, and this piece does a lot of switching in both parts. The third movement is the most fun to play. The Recording:   The arrangement for string quartet done a few years later: 

  Music For Places V: Music For Photographs by Lee Barry

   What once had the working title of Sea of Horizontals , is now Boden Sea 1993 . Apparently, this image was used for the cover of U2's No Line on the Horizon , which I learned only recently. A great photo has a resonance. Music For Places V: Music For Photographs by Lee Barry

 A "Standard" blues. It's an extended mix with diegetic elements (in the "world" of scene), as if you were perhaps inside the gas station in earshot of the street, with 2 radios playing, one an excerpt from The Jean Shepherd Show in 1963, and the same track looped back in, with a binaural recording of street sounds. The Station 2015 More Amarillo   Part of the mythology of the United States is its highway system built postwar and one of the more popular roadways as we know is Route 66, one of the main thoroughfares to the west coast. There's this idea of heading west that I've come across in various books as a metaphor for moving towards the future. It's interesting that it is more of a universal and not unique to the United States. One of the images that I picked for the album was taken on Route 66 while the artist was heading west from Oklahoma to California. The photo is in effect a milestone from that point in his life where he steps out of the c...

    The original image idea for this piece wasn't taken in New Mexico. It was a snapshot of Rudy Van Gelder's house at 445 Sylvan Avenue, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. It was where Coltrane recorded A Love Supreme .     The Robert Frank photo seemed to fit better with the mood that was emerging as I tracked it. The piece abruptly shifts to the minor mode at the end and becomes very spooky. I used a radio clip from 1955 as perhaps would have been on in his car. There appears to be a cloud in the distance, with streaks of rain falling, which I see as perhaps being "omenesque". Music For Places V: Music For Photographs by Lee Barry The image is decidedly contrasty. If you look at the images on the internet, you'll see a wide range of contrasts, some very light and some even sepia-toned. What I thought was interesting about the contrast issue is that it informed the mode switch in an abstract way. The assumption is that this photograph was taken at night and was ins...