Improvisation #21 - Second Flight of the Sunrise Flock

Samples: Melanie Walters flute, Dan Thorpe piano/saxophone, Rachel Johnston cello, Ruby Michael spoken word

Created in Maslins Beach, South Australia

Software: Fields

About: After the second night of drinking the wine called Pure Vision, I woke early and came to this view of the beach to make this piece. I felt the atmosphere really come through the sounds, maybe for the first time. This seemed like what I'd expected In Sound Surrounds to be - the environment I was in genuinely infusing into the music. The vanilla colours of the morning turning gold appeared in the sounds. The distant whistle was somehow true of that place.

But on listening back, the music itself was so whimsical and repetitive. It was like I was a child just given my first set of crayons, and just realizing I could draw what I see. This piece was repetitive beyond all reasonable limits. I considered the Cagean axiom of repeating something until it becomes interesting again, but it didn't seem authentic in this case.

I considered not including it here at all, but I had a strong intuition instead to break my rule, and change the piece in post-production. So I edited much of it out, and added Ruby's spoken word piece. So this is the first piece that is not strictly an improvisation in the same sense as the others, but at any rate, in the world of sampling the question of origination in improvisation tends to eat its own tail.

It only struck me after I'd added the spoken word, that I'd met Ruby a week earlier at a sunrise ceremony (which her poem is about) and I had named this piece The Second Flight of the Sunrise Flock before I'd even considered putting the poetry in. Even more amazingly, the day before I'd made this piece, I opened a book of Rumi's poetry randomly to a page entitled 'The Sunrise Ruby'.

For those curious and patient, below is the original piece:

Second Flight of the Sunrise Flock (Original)