Voice Notes 2017-2019 grew out of my desire to seek out dwellings with pianos to stay at while traveling. These pieces, recorded on my iPhone SE, were not recorded with any intentions or aspirations other than to capture an idea, a sound of a piano, or an emotion in the moment. They were attempts at capturing a mood, responding to the weather, or experimenting with a new instrument. The act of recording was almost unconscious. One was recorded for a romantic partner who was living abroad, another to be sent to a friend, most for no reason at all. 


It was only in going back over these voice notes on my phone, searching for an audio sample to use in another song, that I discovered the pieces fit together to tell some kind of story. I went into engineer Chris Sorem’s studio with the idea of running the lo-fi recordings through his analog tape machine, keeping it simple but adding some grain. But Chris, being the wizard he is, set me up to perform various effects live to tape. We decided that this live performance, improvised and not discussed, was in a similar haphazard vein as the original recordings. We also liked how it sounded. The final result is an album of iPhone recordings being manipulated in single real time pass. 

 

The last piece of the puzzle for me was rediscovering old video tapes, 8mm and VHS, from my Grandfather’s honeymoon, my father as confused toddler, me as a baby, and me as a 6 year old sitting at a piano. The grain and deterioration of the film reminded me of the rough quality of the music recorded on my iPhone. I decided to pair this found footage with the found audio, creating a work that not only tells the story of the last three years of musical ideas, but also three generations of Greenberg men; post-marital bliss before divorce, childlike wonder, and myself as a young child, captured because someone forgot to hit stop on a camera, improvising with two fingers at a piano for 5 minutes and 15 seconds straight while a loud party swirls around me.

Voice Notes 2017-2019

take the pillows inside

Good Morning, Ruby

Come Out And Play - Chris Simon Remix

I'm Here (from Netflix Dating Around)

The 1st track of the 1st episode of the new Netflix series Afflicted - premiering 8/10.

The docuseries follows the lives of seven people with misunderstood chronic illnesses.

Afflicted (from Netflix Afflicted)

This is a theme I wrote and recorded for Jamison for the Netflix show Afflicted. 

Jamison handles his struggles with such poise and strength. 

I made this track recording my Yamaha upright piano with a piece of felt draped over the strings and then pitching the recording up and down one octave each and blending the three.

jacksongreenberg

Pinned to spotlight

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