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MP3 Kent Sparling - Evening Air, Freeway Birds, No Wind Birds
1 MP3 Songs
ELECTRONIC: Ambient
Details:
Kent Sparling describes “Evening Air...”:
From my earliest days of composing experimental
ambient music I have been fascinated with the modern
incarnation of the musical drone.
David Reck writes, in “Music of the Whole Earth”:
“The reinforcement of tonal centers by one or more notes
of a continuous drone is found in Euro-America, Africa,
eastern Europe, central Asia, the Arabic-influenced belt
from north Africa to Malaysia, and in the pockets of tribal
culture in southeast Asia. Elements of the drone
can perhaps be found in every musical culture of the world.”
And as with traditional musical forms, so too with modern
music. Around the tonal center of the drone, the
musician is free to find expression along the full range
of simple to complex harmonies and overtones.
The drone acts as a structural scaffolding, and the satellite
subsidiary tones of the melody circle around the tonal nucleus
(as Curt Sachs has put it) “like butterflies around a flower.”
“Evening Air, Freeway Birds, No Wind Birds” was built
around a slow rhythm meant to support deep breathing,
a pattern of 3 breaths per minute. This rhythm was built up
from a hand played vinyl record, something like a hip-hop DJ
in super slow motion. Surface elements of Rhodes piano,
synthesizer and dense clusters of raw electronic sound come
and go in a random evolution of combinations, since each
element is of a different length, and is repeating continuously.
Finally, the whole piece was mixed in three differing
arrangements, and each of these were intercut, and
crossfade from one to another over 30 seconds, resulting
in pockets of calm and clusters of activity.
Because of it’s slowly pulsing core and drone center,
I’ve found this music to be an excellent accompaniment
to gentle exercise, meditation, sleep and
(not personally!) childbirth. It is no coincidence that the work
was composed for my wife to listen to during labor and
delivery of our son, Finn, and it has played no less than
twice a day for several hours at naptime in our home
for the past 17 months.
I have yet to grow tired of listening to it,
which I consider the greatest success.
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