Blessing of Fertility: Spiritual Prayers for Abundance, Native Flute Meditation, Beautiful Life Creation

Indian Medicine

Title:
Sugarloaf

Dates:
12-Jan-2025 (inception), 13-Jan-2025 (finalised), 17-Jan-2025 (released)

Artists:
Music composed, performed, produced by Norman Freund
Artwork by Norman Freund

BandCamp Purchase:
https://normanfreund.bandcamp.com/track/sugarloaf

YouTube Video:
https://youtu.be/2FDyn82uAVg

Description:
A cold Southerly blows through the Port Hills,
A glider cuts through the updraught,
Nearby transmission tower,
On Sugarloaf hill
Speaks many tongues.

Wind swirls through the tower's structure,
it's voices echo in the valleys.
Electromagnetic messages spill out.

The tower takes on many identities.

Full details of the composition process can be found on my BandCamp page or on my FaceBook page https://www.facebook.com/norman.freund.545/

Sugarloaf

Title:
Crackle

Dates:
28-Apr-2024 (inception), 01-May-2024 (finalised), 28-May-2025 (released)

Artists:
Music composed, performed, produced by Norman Freund
Artwork by Norman Freund
Photography by Zachary Freund
Astrophotography by John Holgate

BandCamp Purchase:
https://normanfreund.bandcamp.com/track/crackle
YouTube Video:
https://youtu.be/WeRj2nls07A

Description:

Midnight Run Through The Port Hills
	
Valley run,
Moon light night,
Tree shadows sweep by.

Forest behind,
Sweeping bends ahead.

Tension builds,
Revs increase,
Hill climb begins.
City lights flicker below.

Sky lights appear,
Ascending light beam,
Hatch silhouette,
Galaxy engulfs,
Silence,
Darkness.


Behind the scenes music notes:

The main motivation behind Crackle is the Just Intonation (JI) tuning used, taking all the harmonics from octaves 0 to 5, octave reduce, remove duplicates and re-order in ascending order. This resulted in a 29 frequency ratios (not including in the 2/1 octave). These 30 frequency ratios were then transposed by JI perfect fifths (3/2 ratio) to expand the scale in violin style ready for a four string violin. When applied to violin, this means there are 30 notes per string spanning one octave.

The scale outline (** full details see my social media and BandCamp **):
Scale Index(i), [string number], JI Equation, Cent
0[1], 1/1, 0c
1[1], 33/32, 53c
2[1], 17/16, 105c
3[1], 9/8, 204c
4[1], 37/32, 251c
5[1], 19/16, 298c
6[1], 39/32, 342c
7[1], 5/4, 386c
8[1], 41/32, 429c
9[1], 21/16, 471c
10[1], 43/32, 512c
11[1], 11/8, 551c
12[1], 23/16, 628c
13[1], 47/32, 666c
14[1], 3/2, 702c
15[1], 49/32, 738c
16[1], 25/16, 773c
17[1], 51/32, 807c
18[1], 13/8, 841c
19[1], 53/32, 874c
20[1], 27/16, 906c
21[1], 55/32, 938c
22[1], 7/4, 969c
23[1], 57/32, 999c
24[1], 29/16, 1030c
25[1], 59/32, 1059c
26[1], 15/8, 1088c
27[1], 61/32, 1117c
28[1], 31/16, 1145c
29[1], 2/1, 1200c
30[2], 3/2, 702c
31[2], 99/64, 755c
...
59[2], 3/1, 1902c
60[3], 9/4, 1404c
61[3], 297/128, 1457c
...
89[3], 9/2, 2604c
90[4], 27/8, 2106c
91[4], 891/256, 2159c
...
118[4], 837/128, 3251c
119[4], 27/4, 3306c


It was then time to start playing around with the scale. The reference note used for this scale was not as per a concert pitch violin, rather concert pitch middle C, then some differing octave transpositions for the various string tracks.

The string sections were played on a 64 note midi controller, the Ableton Push2, so only a subset of the full 120 notes could be played at once. Played "organ style", as chords, well beyond double stop capabilities of a single physical string instrument. These tracks provided the basic harmony and melodic concepts.

Next the Soma Pipe (hardware synthesiser, here accepting the human voice as input) was played to provide improvised lead and percussive parts. The lead parts used various Pipe algorithms (Filtera, Harcho, MadDelay and Synth), the tuning was not necessarily strictly as per the table above, but rather improvised live tuning, where I as the performer, used my ears and emotions to guide the tuning choices. Some of the Pipe parts used a digital amplitude modulation device (Max for Live, custom programmed, the NOF_AENV Release 06). This amplitude modulation tool, used two simultaneous sine wave modulations with JI frequency ratios.

A wave table synthesiser in Ableton Live was used for the string section and for one additional instrument.

** See BandCamp and Social Media links for video production notes. **

Artist Links:
Norman Freund; Social media: https://www.facebook.com/norman.freund.545; YouTube: https://youtube.com/@normanfreund; Music: https://soundcloud.com/norman-freund, https://normanfreund.bandcamp.com

John Holgate; Social media: https://www.facebook.com/blundering.fool.3; YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@quedecree; Music: johnholgate.bandcamp.com

Zachary Freund, Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/zac.freund.9, Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zac_freund

Crackle

Title:
Whipbird Bowerbird and Lyrebird Meet In A Pub

Dates:
20-Jun-2025 (inception), 20-Jun-2025 (finalised), 21-Jun-2025 (released)

Artists:
Music composed, performed, produced by Norman Freund
Artwork by Norman Freund

BandCamp Purchase:
https://normanfreund.bandcamp.com/track/whipbird-bowerbird-and-lyrebird-meet-in-a-pub

Description:

DUE TO SOUNDCOULD SPACE LIMITATIONS, A BRIEF OUTLINE IS PROVIDED HERE.
See my BandCamp or FaceBook page for the full story.

A Whipbird, Bowerbird and Lyrebird walk into a pub ... the Austinmer Headlands Hotel. They share their ideas about the songs and sounds that interest them. The Whipbird reckons a high pitched crack in the sound is needed, the Bowerbird is distracted by the blue wrapping on the counter and the Lyrebird was busy imitating the Juke box. But soon, the conversation began to be musically more serious and they decided to have a music jam.

I spent most of my youth on the Eastern sea board on the state of NSW, Australia, walking in the forests (or the bush as it's known in Australia) and listening to the natural sounds of the trees and the birds that inhabited them. If you listen carefully, and are familiar with the calls of the Whipbird, Bowerbird and Lyrebird, you will hear where I got some of my inspiration from for this piece. Sure this is electronic music, but it is still played by a human with an organic feel and input.

Instruments featured in this piece are the PulseRectOsc, Soma Enner, Soma Pipe and the Soma Cosmos. Midi input comes from the Ableton Push2.

Read the full story on my BandCamp site or my FaceBook page.

The signal chain was as follows:
Audio:
Soma Enner or Soma Pipe -> Soma Cosmos -> Analogue to Digital Interface -> PulseRectOsc Audio Looper
Digital Synthesis:
Ableton Push2 midi hardware -> USB -> PulseRectOsc synthesiser -> PulseRectOsc Audio Looper

The scale used:
The Tuning is microtonal, combining two one dimensional frequency ratio vectors. The inner most frequency ratio vector defines the basic tuning, a untonal harmonic sequence of eight notes (fits nicely on the 8x8 pads of the Push2):

10/10
10/9
10/8
10/6
10/5
10/4
10/3
10/2

and the outer most tuning vector which transposes the first vector by increasing powers:

1/1
3/2

This is equivalent to tuning an eight string instrument in perfect fifths where each string has this untonal harmonic series.

See my BandCamp or FaceBook page for the final tuning system.


References:
[1] Eastern Whipbird, Psophodes olivaceus, native to the east coast of Australia, link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_whipbird
[2] Satin bowerbird, Ptilonorhynchus violaceus, endemic to eastern Australia, link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satin_bowerbird
[3] Lyrebird, Superb lyrebird, Menura novaehollandiae, south-eastern Australia, from southern Victoria to south-eastern Queensland, link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrebird 
[4] Austinmer Hotel, AUSTINMER Headlands Hotel, 1932, Samuel Wood, Wollongong City Library, link: https://wollongong.spydus.com/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/FULL/OPAC/ALLENQ/95517605/17538511,4

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Freegarden