"Winds"
Valhjim

"Winds" opens with a haunting melody that floats through a landscape of echoes and unusual spaces. The song soon unfolds into arpeggiated electric guitar chords that gently waver, creating a shifting foundation. 

A pan flute weaves its melody over the guitar, its notes transformed by flangers and effects into a constantly morphing soundscape. A girl's voice enters, carrying a melody that leads into an electric guitar solo, rich with a sense of yearning. 

The piece closes with an intimate exchange between the girl's voice and the guitar, their melodies intertwining in delicate dialogue.

Hope you like it, folks.

Thanks for listening
and for your kind words.

Many thanks to Martin Miers for his magic 
percussions on this piece.

Valhjim

(C)2024 Valhjim (all rights reserved).

Winds - Valhjim w/Martin Miers

https://brianhiggins.bandcamp.com/fan-club 

A&R Reps and scammers will be blocked and reported.

Kickstarter album launch campaign coming soon!


Many of the tracks reposted here are from my followers, so if you are discovering anyone here, please let them know I sent you! And thank you for listening and all your kind and  constructive comments

Born in Virginia, raised in Maryland; survivor of an alcoholic  family; graduated High School and Union Carpenters Apprenticeship; a student of Algebra, a student of Life, a  brown belt Samurai Chess Player; gave up clarinet in 2nd grade because he was too young to understand;  gave up French class 5 years later because he could not speak the language; turned down Ms. Maria Blautzig for the Sadie Hawkins Dance because she had turned  down his request earlier in the school year; walked out of typing class on day one, hell HOUR one, because he could not handle the stress of it;  walked out of Oklahoma State University because he really needed help at that point and did not know how to ask for it, so ‘tear it all down and blow it up’ seemed to be the only way to find any; experienced the deepest loneliness of his entire life to date out on that highway, with no direction anywhere.  He has worked as a ditch digger, a grass cutter, a TV Guide door to door salesman; he has been a farm worker, carpenters’ helper, apprentice, a Journeyman carpenter in Local 132, a Home Improvement contractor and a Facilities Maintenance Engineer.  He has passed up more opportunities than cars on a freight train; he has hitchhiked, hobo’ed and walked across tens of thousands of miles of America's roadways, and a few in Canada, for good measure.

By virtue of  a chance encounter one snowy January night in 1993, when he met and eventually married the revolutionary communist, aspiring novelist, multi instrumentalist soprano and as yet unheralded expert at fitting leftovers into the refrigerator, the  beguiling, and sumptuous Ms. Juliana; this union subsequently created the talented, smart, bubbly, and eye-catching Ms. Sophia, she of the musical pipes.
Mr Higgins first picked up the guitar at age 23, the harmonica at 57, and wrote his first book at age 5, or 6. It shall remain forever unpublished, as the only handwritten master of it is lost to the dustbin of history.


Numerous of the photos here are by my friend Charles Steck, who recently unexpectedly passed away. Thank you so much Charles, we are missing you .Thank you for listening to my music.  Voting link for Distrokid/Spotify playlisting
https://distrokid.com/spotlight/brianhiggins/vote/

How it works

Anyone (not just DistroKid members) can listen & vote on their favorites. Songs with the most votes will be added to a big DistroKid Spotify playlist. Playlists are updated each week, and votes are reset to zero.

I put Ave Maria up for voting on this week. 
Thank you for your support!
Brian

This project is about different styles of music and pushing the edges to see where they go.
You can find downloads on Bandcamp, just follow the link.

at the crest of time
catching fire as the wind Blows
burning for beauty in all dimensions

Composer and songwriter living in Germany
piano, guitar u.a.
DAW: Logic Pro X


👌💎🌟🔥🙏🙂🌈😎😇🌺🌸🌼🍀🌞
🙏🙂💛🌟✨

I am the NTT. Stranded Alien is my synth rock project.

I have a side project called the NTT's Funk Odyssey. I have started posting these tunes here with the precursor label - The NTT

I have played and recorded in international settings, a multitude of percussion instruments, guitar, bass, harmonica, some flutes, keyboard, and if you push me - a very fine jaw harp.

In fact, if I break it down.... I just love to offer-up music, in a living room, a bar, a concert hall or an intercontinental, interactive satellite coordinated concert. 
  
I became fascinated with percussive sounds from around the world… especially African and Latin American rhythms. I fanatically traveled the world collecting anything that you could bang, scrape or hit.
What I learned? Border customs people really don’t appreciate the true value of handmade African caxixi shakers or a Brazilian berimbau. They just want the serial number.
More importantly, a single clicking or ringing sound in a song can make or break that song.
  
I toured Canada, USA and Europe and recorded many “world music” albums (before it was called that), with my late, musical soul mate, Dario Domingues. We played in grand churches, the water reservoirs under Munich, on an island where 100,000 doves were released at the climax of our performance, the first-ever “simulcast”, live satellite, intercontinental concert and then, the humbling experience of being involved in Berlin, in front of 500,000 people, for a series of anti-apartheid concerts featuring ‘Sting’.  For our 'world music' efforts, we were awarded the Deutscher Schallplattenpreisan (1983) accolade by the Deutsche Phono-Akademie, an association of recording companies of Germany that recognizes outstanding achievement in the music industry.  
What I learned? Music is truly a universal language. Around the world people are drawn to music. Of course, different strokes for different folks! 
Whether you play in front of a half-million people in a field, or 10 people in a bar, your role as a musician never changes.  
 
“Dream of the Drum” – I was commissioned to compose and conduct a score for 40+ percussionists from all corners of the world... Jamaican fire dancers, Trinidadian steel drummers, Japanese kodo drummers, African djembe players, military drummers,... the list goes on.
What I learned? The language of music respects no geographic borders. 
Also, never start your outdoor concert, with a lone Native Elder's rain drum song. The drum's magic works!
 
I helped build three innovative recording studios plus, my current production studio. I academically taught musical acoustics and production for several years.
What I learned? All the mathematics and physics in the world can’t replace a good ear.
 
As a producer, I've had the wonderful opportunity to work in great studios in NYC and Nashville with amazing session musicians such as: Eric "Roscoe" Ambel - best known as lead guitarist of Steve Earle’s band the Dukes; Dan Baird of the chart-topping 'Georgia Satellites'; guitarist extraordinaire, Warner E. Hodges, founding member of 'Jason and the Scorchers'.
What I learned? Great musicians tend to be humble but they sure have opinions! In Nashville, I was bluntly told -"No, I won't raise the tom level - in country music, we use toms for holding our bourbon glass." I never did get the toms louder.
 
I spent many years as President of the Ottawa International Jazz Festival and met some of the greatest musical geniuses in the world.
What I learned? "Man, if you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know."
 
Music for jingles on radio and TV. Documentaries.
My personal favourite was coming up with suitable music for the mating rituals of pigs or, how to create 60 minutes of Arctic wind sounds for the movie 'Never Cry Wolf'.  
What I learned?  You can tell an entire story in a 29.5 second radio jingle and music is the glue that holds a great video together.

Experimental dark ambient (Fugue in Sea) and light melancholic ambient (Nonestica)

Valhjim is a music composer with an eclectic approach to different genres: rock, pop, folk, New Age, and experimental electronic music. Greatly driven by imagination and poetic imagery, he combines multiple instrumental textures to fire the imagination of his listeners. 

His more experimental ambience and electronic music is built with layers of suggestive sound textures, rhythms, and melodic lines that stir the imagination into suggestive imagery and worlds unseen, true architectures of sound that open up limitless spaces to explore. Often Valhjim's melodies sail through genre thresholds, crossing over from one genre to another, from neo classcal to electronic, or from jazz to rock or new age.