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Riff for Solo Flute

Here is another recent recording of a solo improvisation of mine.  Just prior to recording this one, I had finished another solo improvisation and had a rhythm suddenly stuck in my head.  I’m not sure where it came from, but that rhythm is the vehicle for this recording.  The opening rhythm functions as a riff that remains present throughout the way it would in a pop song – a pop song with dark and funky twist.  As I listen again, I can hear the beginnings of other instrumental parts accompanying the flute; this may very well become a piece in the future…

 

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Beginning of a New Project

I have been doing a lot of solo improvisation at home lately.  Just by myself in my room – a luxury I haven’t had since last summer.  And this time, it comes with the strangeness of my new freedom.  I have been out of school before but this time, I have a degree.  I am working towards applying for grad school, but I also realize I don’t have to.  I should if I want a better “job” to pay off the debt I will be in until I hit retirement age – but I don’t have to.  I feel like I’m free-floating.  At any rate, I have been pumping out solo improvisations that use some of the new extended techniques I’ve learned as well as some I’ve know for a while.  I dive into the new stuff just to see what will happen; I experiment with familiar material to see where I can take it.  This is the first recording I have uploaded so far.  I began this improvisation with a long held note using an unconventional fingering.  I often use this technique to get me started: hold a tone and wait until I hear something before I play it.  The results are always surprising.  In this recording, what begins as hollow tones and delicate multiphonics becomes a wild exploration of a quote from a Robert Dick piece I learned a few years ago.  This quote takes me in a totally different direction than either the improvisation or Robert’s piece did, leaving me with a piece that sounds like a circus gone haywire. There will be more of this coming soon since I will be making a project out of recording my improvisations and documenting my process and the results.  I hope you enjoy this recording and the material to come.

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Flute Player Tackles Technology!

Finally, after weeks (yes, weeks) of frustration, I have finally learned how to cut off parts of a sound file I don’t want, add fade outs and export the newly fixed file as a .wav.  I am not computer savvy, and I have a bunch of recordings lying around that just need a little patching up.  For me, this is a victory.

The first track I have chosen to unleash upon the digital world is a recording of one of the first free improvisations I ever did.  Recorded in 2009 in Denver Colorado, it features my wooden or “Native American” flute.  The other musicians in the recording are members of the band Still Light.  They were fascinated by my flute and asked me to just start playing and that they would follow along.  I complied despite feeling nervous and exposed, and this track is the result of that experiment.  It is interesting to look back at some of my earlier work as a flute player and see how far I have come as a performer and improviser.  Not to mention the instrument itself, which is beautiful in its own right.

There will be more of this soon, since I have finally figured out how to make recordings presentable for the internet.  Thank you for listening, hope you enjoy!