Nomads (Song for Earth Day 2016)

[Balder]

Here's a new song (and video) I created for Earth Day 2016.

[Balder]

Here's a new song I wrote this week (maybe the last in the short series of songs I've been doing with a faster beat and the "seaquence" synthesizer used for the repetitive backbone melodies).  "White Peony" is a reference to the Chinese goddess, Bai Mudan.

[Ambo Suno]

Amazing photos - shapes and colors.

Your music is pretty different in this one - in my meager knowledge and silly attempt at labeling, I get an Asian-Celtic blend. Ha.

[Ambo Suno]

You may be interested in these images from a different source than eco geography - more formal, man-generated science experiments:

Maybe there is a slide show in here somewhere:
https://www.ted.com/talks/fabian_oefner_psychedelic_science#t-692529



Balder said:

Here's a new song I wrote this week (maybe the last in the short series of songs I've been doing with a faster beat and the "seaquence" synthesizer used for the repetitive backbone melodies).  "White Peony" is a reference to the Chinese goddess, Bai Mudan.

[Balder]

The images are really striking, aren't they?  Most taken by satellites.  And Asian-Celtic?  I can live with that.  The flutes are supposed to have a middle-eastern flavor (if you listened to the song, Nomads, rather than White Peony).  The song following it, White Peony, is much more strongly "East Asian" -- with Chinese flute and samples of Chinese strings.  Looking forward to checking out the video....

[DavidM58]

Thanks for sharing, Balder.  I especially like "Nomads," which I just now discovered here.  Are the various markings of red on the topographical maps indicative of being susceptible to climate change effects or some such?

[Balder]

Hi, David - thanks.  And, interesting...I hadn't noticed the red markings.  I just went back and watched and think the red coloration is a natural part of the environment, maybe intensified in the treatment of the photos as they are developed, but I wasn't thinking they are deliberate markings.  But who knows? 

[Ambo Suno]

Balder, here's another TED that I think you might enjoy and be inspired by.

"Artist and TED Fellow Christine Sun Kim was born deaf, and she was taught to believe that sound wasn't a part of her life, that it was a hearing person's thing. Through her art, she discovered similarities between American Sign Language and music, and she realized that sound doesn't have to be known solely through the ears — it can be felt, seen and experienced as an idea. In this endearing talk, she invites us to open our eyes and ears and participate in the rich treasure of visual language."

As a sweet and poignant presentation, it can stand alone; it also might awaken possibilities for bringing an expression pointing to "silence", and to permutations of "music". I feel presumptuous as I imagine you doing a show that finds additional creative ways to suggest silence, quiet, and different forms of 'hearing' and 'seeing.'

http://www.ted.com/talks/christine_sun_kim_the_enchanting_music_of_...

Balder said:

Here's a new song I wrote this week (maybe the last in the short series of songs I've been doing with a faster beat and the "seaquence" synthesizer used for the repetitive backbone melodies).  "White Peony" is a reference to the Chinese goddess, Bai Mudan.

[Balder]

Thank you, Ambo -- very interesting, indeed.  With some of my more contemplative compositions, especially, that is something I'd like to explore ... though I must say I am short on the artistic skill needed to do that really well.  But I hope I can grow into it.

Here is a new composition I made this Father's Day weekend -- in a similar style to other recent ones, with an electronic emphasis ... and a busy, bubbling, not very silent melody and rhythm, as you'll see.  :-)

[Ambo Suno]

Bruce, that is a lively show of sun and light animating nature's basic elements. I like the flute that comes foreground here and there and especially at the end.

My suggested possibility of somehow conveying silence was a bit ambitious. Though I had a very few fleeting thoughts and images about that, evoked by Sun Kim's presentation, no obvious or solid ideas came to me, either :) Sometimes, I guess, when we ambitiously try to represent or point to things that have ephemeral aspects or that we grok through abstraction, we can have fun, AND there could be a high dorkiness factor. Huh, What'dIsay? Or not.



Balder said:

Thank you, Ambo -- very interesting, indeed.  With some of my more contemplative compositions, especially, that is something I'd like to explore ... though I must say I am short on the artistic skill needed to do that really well.  But I hope I can grow into it.

Here is a new composition I made this Father's Day weekend -- in a similar style to other recent ones, with an electronic emphasis ... and a busy, bubbling, not very silent melody and rhythm, as you'll see.  :-)

[DavidM58]

I was very fortunate to have a music professor who was a deep thinker, and who provided a definition of music I've always liked. 

"Music is sound and silence organized in time and space as a manifestation of human's creative urge."

- Americole Biasini

Emphasis mine.

[Balder]

Nice - I like that.  Years ago, one of my favorite spiritual teachers was Jean Klein, a musicologist and advaita teacher who emphasized silence and listening a great deal in his teachings.

[DavidM58]

Jean Gebser emphasises that in the mythic consciousness structure, there was a strong polarity between listening and sounding.  There was a need to go inward for reflection in silence before bringing forth a saying or a sounding that was worth something, and not mere babble. 

I participate in a sacred sound circle that meets a couple of times a month to improvise music with a sacred intention.  There is no talking between the tunes that we generate, but an invitation to meditate for several minutes between tunes.  The whole experience is a meditation, some of it in sound, and some in silence.  It's difficult to get people to fully participate in the silence - I can sense that it is uncomfortable for some, or they come out of it and start the next piece more quickly than I would like. I find it to be quite an amazing experience to go directly from enthusiastic music making directly into absolute (well, relative) silence, when the music vibration is still in there in the quietness. 

I imagine doing a concert in this format, where the listening audience is invited to meditate in this way.