Been enjoying the music from this exhibit.  Wonderfully imaginative.

Drone-y multi-track jam with a Ciat-Lonbarde Tetrax organ, RareWave Grendel Drone Commander, and Korg Volca Beats.

Sketch: Tetrax Creamy Jam

Fractals are the tiny design cells that are replicated upon themselves in  self-similar patterns to build bigger, more complex forms. They exist in nature, and are used in CGI environment designs. Musically, they might be the 3 or 4 note melodic cell that is expanded to create an intricate melodic form.

That is the idea I began working with when creating soundscapes for visual artist Gabriele Worgitzki's visual installations. Worgitzki employs a camera technique, that she developed, that is akin to ghost writing still pictures in succession to emulate dream-like movement.

This particular track is from a composition that was designed to accompany a visual journey into the Black Forest... a forest, I can personally attest, that has not yet shed its ghost memories of WWII.

Here is another example of my collaboration:
http://www.uncool.ch/2005/Gabriele_Secretpath.html

Geisterwald

Music from http://michael.futreal.com/skebal -- my collaborative multimedia exhibit with salvage artist Steve Zihlavsky.  On album:  The Court of King Skebal http://michael.futreal.com/music

The Yet Vital Remains

A long-held dream of mine has now been realized with my recent purchase and assembly of a gourd banjo kit from Carver Banjos.  It was cheap, easy and fun, and who doesn't like that?  Learn more about Brian Carver's quest to ebanjelize the world: http://carverbanjos.com/

So now, I've got little Ranger Gord (any Red Green fans out there?) standing by when I get a break in afternoon chores and want to blow off a little musical steam...which is what this is.  Being new to a fretless instrument, my intonation is a little dodgy, and my fingernail keeps hitting the gourd with an annoying click, but I'm having fun.  Hopefully, you will, too.  If not, don't despair--it's only a minute-and-a-half, and I'll be outta here in no time.

The name of this monkeying around comes from an epithet my grand-dad used to hurl at me whenever I played a trick on him or got the upper hand in one of our wrestling matches (which I always did, of course).  "You cockeyed monkey!", he'd say, in fake(?) exasperation.

My other grandfather called me a "cooteroo".  There's a simple tune for that, as well: https://soundcloud.com/hanklebury/cooteroo

Cockeyed Monkey

THE CRYSTAL FORTRESS is the new imaginary soundtrack by Lantz & Giacomelli, the follow-up to their haunting Synthetic Resonance soundscape. Available 26/1/18 from Hohm Recordings at http://lantzgiacomelli.bandcamp.com

The Crystal Fortress

The Crystal Fortress, part 3 (The Diodes' Prophecy)

More music live from Dan's Basement, Music Weekend 2017, with Tilbury, Greenwood & Burns. Yes, we're still working through the pieces, even though I'm supposed to be working on another @LoranOtzer track now. 

This came around on Sunday around noon when Hank pulled out a variety of kalimbas. Of a small one made I believe of a sardine tin, he said 'Well, the only thing I can do with this one is this sort of generic Latin riff.' We said 'Oh? Keep it going' and before long my boy (then age 12) heard me trying, and failing, to play a bossa beat on the kit and came down to show us how to do it. I jumped to uke and Jeff laid down some heavy bass. Hank had heard the Headhunters version of Watermelon Man on the way into the Greater Wayne PA Region, so we added some empty bottles and hoots to the background along with some extra percussion and melodica. Whole thing took about 45 minutes, and it only took us a year to edit it. 
End result is vintage 'world' music: aLatinate calypso riff, anchored by a lamellophone of African origin, a Hawaiian stringed instrument, a Brazilian drum beat, and a free reed developed by a German company but played here on the offbeat in pale imitation of its greatest proponent, Augustus Pablo.  Blend it up in the basement.

Hank: kalimba, beer bottles, vocals, composition, production & engineering
Dan: Uke, melodica, beer bottles, 
Jeff: bass, beer bottles, percussion
Matt, age 12: Kit drums

Dan did most of the mixing in Audacity, which explains a few things. Now you know why Jeff usually does the mixing!

pic: not where we ended up on this one

Hankalimbossa Dub (Tilbury, Greenwood, Burns & Greenwood, 8/6/17)

"Well, ya get to pushin' those buttons and strummin' those strings, and before long, you're someplace you never thought you'd get to, pickin' northern lights outta yer teeth with a comet-tail toothpick, with stars a-whooshin' past."

A Mouthful Of Aurora Borealis

I was out on my bicycle yesterday when I came across a bridge construction site in the woods. On this site were several pipes to be installed for sewer lines--they were about half a meter in diameter and between two and twenty meters long.

I've always found it hard to resist checking out unusual spaces for sound quality, and this setup looked pretty ripe with possibility. In the past, I would have enjoyed a few minutes of experimentation and then moved on with a pleasant little memory of the sounds. But now...now, we all carry a pretty decent recording device in our pockets, so I bagged these sounds for later use.

What's here is just a little foolin' around after picking through sounds and making samples. (So glad I lived long enough to see this technology become affordable and easy to use.) There are no effects like echo, pitch shift or any of that stuff--it's all just what came out of the pipes.

The Pipes Are Calling

New Year's Night At The Cuckoo Clock Factory

Sometimes you set up parameters to explore, plug in, and see what happens. Sometimes it feels pretty good, and it goes places that surprise you.

This piece is an improvisation for electric autoharp and two square-wave-modulated delays in my digital audio workstation (Presonus Studio One). Long ago, I was inspired by the recordings of guitarist Henry Kaiser, who used this technique extensively and wrote about it in Guitar Player magazine. I was a recording engineer at the time and had access to studios equipped some of the very expensive gear that would produce this effect, and I would often try it myself after work was over. It was a delightful thing to play with, and I missed having it available after I went on to "civilian" life. Fortunately, I've lived long enough to find I could re-create this effect on a DAW that cost me all of $50.

I won't go into a description of how square-wave modulation works...but here's Henry Kaiser explaining it pretty thoroughly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbJFlX_L6To&t=514s

Unexplored Corridors #1

Final track from the album "Unexplored Corridors", available right here: https://hanklebury.bandcamp.com/album/unexplored-corridors

Image: Improvised Landscape, watercolor, 2020

Unexplored Corridor #13

Rural space music for dulcimers, gourds, ukuleles, guitars, flutes, banjos, and things.

The Yet Vital Remains

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