My friend Natalie Wright, has a new book out called Emily's House. It is fantastic, young adult fiction, a story with a female heroine, adventure, magic, humor, and mystery. I just finished reading it and I'm going to read it again. When I first heard about the book, Natalie was putting together a book trailer of music and scenes from the book. I decided I wanted to do a song for the trailer and created music called Emily's Theme, after reading a few early chapters and getting to know the character a little. Here is a link to the trailer:Emily's House.
When I made the music, Natalie told me it should have elements of the ancient, for parts of the story but also needed a modern feel, because the main character Emily is a modern girl. I mixed percussion, harp, chimes and bells with bass guitar, electronica, voice, and a bit of distortion and delay. The main musical theme I built the song around is the sound of someone knocking on a door. Why is that the theme? You will have to read the book to find out!
You can find the book on Amazon, available in paperback or kindle version. If you liked Harry Potter, Twighlight, or Lord of the Rings, I think you might like this series. I highly recommend it.
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Saturday, December 3, 2011
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Saturday, July 2, 2011
What is this song about? The Arctic Fox of Svalbard
Svalbard. An archipelago that is the northernmost part of Norway, 20 degrees longitude east of Greenwich. I saw it one morning on the world map that hangs in my kitchen. It was intriguing. I wondered what kind of a place it might be, and if anyone lived there. In my imagination it was a desolate, frozen place. I imagined giant, snow-walking machines and weatherbeaten, windburned inhabitants in parkas and fur boots. I was not totally wrong (though mostly). Although a little over 2,000 people live on the three islands that constitute Svalbard, no roads connect the settlements. There are seven national parks, and 23 nature reserves. 60 percent of the archipelago is a glacier. The islands are used for mining, research, and tourism. You get around by snowmobile, by aircraft, or by boat. The midnight sun lasts about 100 days out of the year. Why does anyone write a song about this?
I can't answer that precisely, except to say that Svalbard completely captured my imagination and would not let go. As it happens it was appropriate that my thoughts of Svalbard came together in my kitchen, because the most intriguing thing about Svalbard is the Global Seed Vault, which contains over 1.5 million distinct seed samples, a resource that can be relied upon in the event of global environmental crisis, global war, global or regional level pestilence, drought, or other events that would wipe out regional food supplies, or destruction of the world's other seed vaults, many of which are unfortunately in politically or environmentally unstable countries. Norway, which entirely funded the construction of the vault at a cost of about nine million dollars, owns the building, depositors own whatever seed samples they deposit. Several countries, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and other organizations have contributed funds for the vault and its seed resources.
The vault is uniquely situated for protection of this resource of plant species diversity due to its extreme cold temperatures, lack of tectonic activity, in general remoteness, and elevation above sea level.
If you've made it this far, you're probably wondering: "A song about a seed bank on a desolate group of islands? Really?" And that would be a pretty fair question. Until you started reading about how we have managed to rid ourselves of huge swaths of the diversity in plant and animal species that our ancestors spent, oh, 10,000 years to domesticate. Fun facts from this month's National Geographic (July 2011): an estimated 90 percent of fruit and vegetable species have vanished. Well over the majority of the world's wheat crop is vulnerable to a particularly fast-mutating and fast-spreading fungus. Then there's population growth generally and the challenges of feeding the world into the future.
I'm not a chicken little kind of a person. I prefer science to rhetoric. It's just a song. But now at least you know what it's about, and maybe will hear interesting things in it too: a beautiful but harsh place, desolate. Atmospheric sounds of machines, engines, mines, industry. Sounds of the beauty and rhythm of animals and nature, of an arctic fox, falling snow, ice, wind, mountains, rock. A vault, something hopeful amidst the desolation, but not a vault of treasure, or of gold, or weapons, or secrets, but just of seeds.
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| Worker housing at Svalbard. Uncredited photo, wikipedia. |
Svalbard. An archipelago that is the northernmost part of Norway, 20 degrees longitude east of Greenwich. I saw it one morning on the world map that hangs in my kitchen. It was intriguing. I wondered what kind of a place it might be, and if anyone lived there. In my imagination it was a desolate, frozen place. I imagined giant, snow-walking machines and weatherbeaten, windburned inhabitants in parkas and fur boots. I was not totally wrong (though mostly). Although a little over 2,000 people live on the three islands that constitute Svalbard, no roads connect the settlements. There are seven national parks, and 23 nature reserves. 60 percent of the archipelago is a glacier. The islands are used for mining, research, and tourism. You get around by snowmobile, by aircraft, or by boat. The midnight sun lasts about 100 days out of the year. Why does anyone write a song about this?
I can't answer that precisely, except to say that Svalbard completely captured my imagination and would not let go. As it happens it was appropriate that my thoughts of Svalbard came together in my kitchen, because the most intriguing thing about Svalbard is the Global Seed Vault, which contains over 1.5 million distinct seed samples, a resource that can be relied upon in the event of global environmental crisis, global war, global or regional level pestilence, drought, or other events that would wipe out regional food supplies, or destruction of the world's other seed vaults, many of which are unfortunately in politically or environmentally unstable countries. Norway, which entirely funded the construction of the vault at a cost of about nine million dollars, owns the building, depositors own whatever seed samples they deposit. Several countries, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and other organizations have contributed funds for the vault and its seed resources.
The vault is uniquely situated for protection of this resource of plant species diversity due to its extreme cold temperatures, lack of tectonic activity, in general remoteness, and elevation above sea level.
If you've made it this far, you're probably wondering: "A song about a seed bank on a desolate group of islands? Really?" And that would be a pretty fair question. Until you started reading about how we have managed to rid ourselves of huge swaths of the diversity in plant and animal species that our ancestors spent, oh, 10,000 years to domesticate. Fun facts from this month's National Geographic (July 2011): an estimated 90 percent of fruit and vegetable species have vanished. Well over the majority of the world's wheat crop is vulnerable to a particularly fast-mutating and fast-spreading fungus. Then there's population growth generally and the challenges of feeding the world into the future.
I'm not a chicken little kind of a person. I prefer science to rhetoric. It's just a song. But now at least you know what it's about, and maybe will hear interesting things in it too: a beautiful but harsh place, desolate. Atmospheric sounds of machines, engines, mines, industry. Sounds of the beauty and rhythm of animals and nature, of an arctic fox, falling snow, ice, wind, mountains, rock. A vault, something hopeful amidst the desolation, but not a vault of treasure, or of gold, or weapons, or secrets, but just of seeds.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
Photo Shoot, Current Projects, New Blog Series
It's summer, and I can't help feeling a little homesick at this time of year for Geneva on the Lake, and a frozen lemonade from Eddie's Grill. I'll get there later this summer, but in the meantime I'm keeping busy with a bunch of projects I'm totally digging.
Just finished a photo shoot with Scott Yates yesterday. It was a blast. The studio where we did the shoot, located in the Mills at Salmon Falls in Rollinsford, New Hampshire, is a great place, full of texture, light, and beautiful, rugged, pine-plank floors and weathered brick walls. The studio just happens to be same one where I will be making an EP with guitarist Jonathan Blakeslee and some guest artists later this summer, 1130ft Creative Media, owned and operated by Chris Chase.
Meanwhile I'm working on a project for writer Natalie Wright, for a book trailer due out late summer/ early fall. The book is called Emily's House: Book I of the Akasha Chronicles. I'll be posting more about this project in the coming weeks.
In response to some conversations with listeners, I'm going to post more about some of my songs and my process in composing and recording music--where do the songs come from, what are they about, why did I choose to make them? What the heck is Svalbard? Why did I make a song about roller skating rinks? What is a Caspian Tiger?
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Review of Animalia in Today's Portsmouth Herald
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Surf Soul Jazz at the Blue Mermaid
Penhallow 3 at The Blue Mermaid Saturday June 18. New, original, surf/soul/jazz. Our set starts at 10 p.m. Free CD samplers from Penhallow and Jill Robinson (Animalia).
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