telescope
Thank you for your willingness to listen. This is an ambient concept that I have been working on through 2021. I’d appreciate other ears giving one of some of the pieces a listen and any of your thoughts. Please dial up a track. Unfortunately this page won’t keep playing on a locked phone once a piece ends.
What’s going on?
The concept is a series of ambient pieces suggesting both an olden-days astronomer’s night looking through a telescope and also having a “dark night of the soul”. Ambient: more atmospheric than rhythmic, slow and spacious, equally interesting and ignorable, somewhere between songs and noise.
The concept follows an old song of mine, “Mare Tranquillitatis”, about an astronomer looking through his telescope at night but missing out on life during the day. Each track is based on a song I wrote, but mostly wouldn’t play today. So, for me, it was a way to reconnect with them. This and all of the reasoning behind the choices aren’t really supposed to matter, it’s the skeleton on which the music is built, but hopefully the music can be enjoyed on its own without all the back-story.
1. one eye
This is how I imagine we begin the evening, looking at the skies through a telescope. A short piano piece in monophonic sound — to suggest one eye.
2. evenfall
Early evening is a time of quick changes in the sky. Here we move from mono piano to stereo, and on to a few contemplative moods, from guitar and synthesizer sounds.
3. swan
This one is still in the works. It features acoustic guitars heavily and relates an ugly ducking story.
4. winged horse
As the telescope drifts past the constellation Pegasus, we imagine ourselves at sea as a party approaches celebrating this possibly imprisoned creature with a repetitive little piece of happy/sad music. Finally it escapes and ascends to the sky, in an extended improvisation based on the theme of the piece.
5. sea of tranquility
This was the first arrangement after “telescope”, a series of chord changes were outlined and played over by guitar. There are a few swells but it otherwise keeps to its tranquil mood.
6. horn of plenty
Where the first five pieces set their own moods and reached resolution, the last six pieces work together. In this piece, the astronomer is back noticing the sounds of the night when a memory begins to repeat itself, coming into focus and going out at the end as we are left alone in the night.
7. wanderers
The darkest track, wanderers are the lonely planets circling the sun.
8. little bear
A lullaby as we drift off, following wanderers.
9. green man
The descent into despair, or the dream of an alien?
10. toward heaven’s roof
This is a short orchestral piece that links “green man” to “firmament”. It’s the beginning of clarity.
11. firmament
This one is still in the works. It’s the final track and the resolution. “All is well”.
Other tracks
galileo
Building on the effects near the end of “green man”, this isn’t based on any pre-existing melody. It’s a series of asynchronous guitar loops, all mostly playing an E major chord or in the key of E but sometimes not, with different levels of distortion, each of which drifts in and out of focus and clarity, being named for the 1990’s space probe which crashed itself into Jupiter. I described the effect as being like slowly stirring a simmering pot of stew, different ingredients rise to the top and down again.
telescope
The start of it all. This was recorded in early March 2021, with no rehearsal, one main guitar improvisation with two other supporting lines and some samples from a 2003 recording of the song “Mare Tranqiullitatis”. To me, its joyous for reconnecting with an old song, and I hope that feeling translates out without knowing the original song. There’s a feeling near the end where the notes overflow and it feels a little like the end of a fireworks display.
The song “firmament” wraps up the original project so completely, this piece became an unnecessary appendage so I dropped it from the sequence of songs.
everest
I found a nifty set of distortion effects on “green man” which I wanted to explore more deeply. This is pretty noisy, it’s the same basic guitar loops as “galileo” (thus the same run time), with a majestic orchestral line repeating a few times. The sound is how I imagine it must be at Mount Everest base camp, in a tent with the wind whipping around outside and this splendid mountain sometimes in view.
as sure as this guy
This began as an experiment ahead of an acoustic guitar project, but after seeing a photograph of a very plain sky, took on a life of its own. It’s a very long drone piece, with voices being added very slowly; melodic lines appear to flicker in and out as a result of the interactions between parts. Some of the lines I hear in this muck then become real melodic lines later on, but what’s gripping to me is the nearly sub-sonic elements that come and go.