Dance Smile

Explain a green world to a child
who has never played in the grass
Explain how it sounds to hear a bird sing
That flies through the sky in the wild
Explain the sound of a babbling brook
With sweet wind as it blows through the trees
Lay in the grass and watch the clouds pass
Feeling happy, so lazy and free.

My grandchildren cried when I said, "Go outside,"
as they clutched their phones in their hands
Playing meant games, addicted to screens
Play outside? I don't understand
Their memories of childhood, how will they explain
When playing outside was remembered as pain
I'm glad I'll be gone. I won't have to know
What the world was like when the food wouldn't grow

So many are waiting for somebody else
To wake up and fix the mess that was made
Who cares if the children are hungry and poor
You had to give birth since clinics locked doors
Who cares if the storms, the fires and drought
Destroyed their homes and made them afraid
The rich need more money, corporations say,
"Climate change is here to stay."

The wars, the bombs, refugees fleeing
Leaving their family by the side of the road
Thank God it isn't us, we say
Fox News tells us every night and day
We think we are safe if truth be told
God will save the religious right
Leave all others out in the cold
Stupidity has the largest price to pay

When the bees are gone and the birds stop singing
When the oceans are dead, only trash on the beach
We sucked out the life the world had to give
Only corpses of the dead now beneath our reach
We struggle to breathe, no healthcare for all
No backyards to play in, fading stars in the sky
Teach the children about green grass
Dreams to all. Goodnight

Explain a Green World To a Child

Tom Mills is an electronic musician based in London. In addition to his solo work he plays Theremin in the group Bobhowler with Alicia Gardener-Trejo and Andrew Woodhead and also played on the album ‘Improvisers Inside Electronics’ alongside Antonio Acunzo, Tony Hardie-Bick and N.O Moore.
credits
released February 3, 2023

Tom Mills: Electronics

Mastered by Rashad Becker at Clunk
Photograph by Tom Mills
Design by Earshots

EAR019 - Tom Mills - Material Structure [sample]

Using the drip from a spout recorded in Helsinki:
https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/helsinki-downspout
Record an original piece of music for which the provided music is the underlying rhythm.

--

Using Ableton Beatseeker M4L device, I locked in to the beat of the drips.
https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/beatseeker/.

You'll feel the track tempo follow the drip, it's close to 131 BPM, but varies with each drip. The magic of brownian motion and chaos.

To the drip sample, I added Mr. Wiggly's Incinerator. 

Dominic Hawken, aka Mr. Wiggly, passed away Monday, 6 February 2023. 
Dominic touched so many people lives, with his joie de vivre. A truly inspirational man, he made being a great guy seem effortless. I didn't know him, only from his channel, SonicTalk, ProSynthNetwork channel, and his relationship with Kent - "Kent Spong, can you tell me what's wrong?". 

God bless Mr. Wiggly and his family.

-- 

More on this 581st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Helsinki Downspout (The Assignment: Use a rhythmic field recording as the foundation for a new track), at: https://disquiet.com/0581/

Thanks to Scott Fletcher for having provided the original material. It is used thanks to a Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). Original track at: https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/helsinki-downspout/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0581-helsinki-downspout/

disquiet0581: Helsinki Downspout (dedicated to Mr. Wiggly)

Drone (All Sounds from Novation Summit)

VIKINGS (march groove)
Production music, old unused groove cue, reworked march 2023
Electric guitars
Electric bass
Drum beat
Hand percussion

For this poem:
naviarhaiku484 – misty daydream

misty daydream
Vikings land on the shore
of my childhood

haiku by Michael Dudley

Photo by Robin Mikalsen

Vikings - naviarhaiku484

StudioJam 100523.
Torso T-1 is sequencing Gr-1 (Tasty Chips). Reverb with Rooms (Death by audio). Drone soundscape with some of my tracks in Ableton.
check the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT45KH9O_gk

Interference I

"The Separated Starrs and Skies" for harpsichord was composed between July and August 2018. I am grateful to Timothy Roberts for his invaluable help and advice on matters pertaining to harpsichord technique.

The piece was suggested by “The Starr” by the Welsh Metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan (1621-1695).  According to Helen Gardner, the poem refers to a passage from "Magia Adamica", a Hermetic treatise by Vaughan's twin brother, Thomas, part  of which stands at the head of the score: “To speak plainly, Heaven it self was originally extracted from inferiors, yet not so intirely, but some portion of the Heavenly natures remained still below, and are the very same in essence and substance with the separated starrs and skies”.

This performance is a MIDI version of my score.

The Separated Starrs and Skies

Entry for KVR One Synth Challenge 177
All sounds from Synful Orchestra & VSCO2 Percussion, in Ableton, with free FX.

Zarf - Wonekut

Thinking about it

British composer James Erber was born in 1951 in London of an Austrian father and an English mother. After studying Music at the Universities of Sussex (BA, 1973) and Nottingham (MA, 1975), he was appointed Music Editor at Peters Edition, London. He left Peters Edition in 1979 and began work as a freelance editor, writer and translator.  Still largely self-taught as a composer, it was at this period he produced his first acknowledged score, "Seguente" for oboe and piano (1976-1978, revised 1980). The guidance and encouragement he received from Brian Ferneyhough (whom he had met at Peters Edition) prompted him to a serious study of composition, firstly with Jonathan Harvey at the University of Sussex (MPhil in Composition, 1983), then from 1981 to 1982 with Ferneyhough himself at the Musikhochschule, Freiburg-im-Breisgau. In 1984, at Ferneyhough’s suggestion, he made the first of five visits to the Darmstadt Ferienkurse, winning a Stipendienpreis in 1988. From 1982 to 2016, he combined activity as a composer with teaching and lecturing. Since 2016 he has been able to concentrate solely on composition. 
James Erber's work reflects a wide range of interests, including Renaissance and Baroque music, the music of South-East Asia, Jazz, blues, Mediaeval and Renaissance philosophy, Kabbalah, green politics, recent scientific developments, film noir, Jacobean tragedy, the Gothic novel and historical slang.  His music is multi-layered and complex (especially from the point of view of rhythm and form). Its complexity is, however, combined with harmonic clarity and lyricism as well as a tenuous sense of optimism and a concern with intellectual and spiritual continuity.
It has been performed and broadcast widely by soloists such as Pavlos Antoniadis, Antonella Bini, Mario Caroli, Diego Castro Magaš, Matteo Cesari, Franklin Cox, Gianpaolo Antongirolami, Gleb Kanasevich, Carin Levine, Ian Pace, Jonathan Powell, Nancy Ruffer and Michele Selva, as well as by ensembles including 175 East, the Arditti Quartet, Duo Galeano/Javaid, Exposé, ELISION, Lontano and NOISE. James Erber’s music has been recorded on NMC, Metier, Centaur Records (USA) and Convivium Records. Many of his scores are available from Composers Edition. In July 2022, his complete writings on music (1978-2021) were published by Vision Edition under the title "Fragile Continuities".

The Separated Starrs and Skies

James Erber

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