Cranes Fly West – Limited Schiphorst Edition

RICHARD: "An Open Window..." was recorded live in concert May 16, 2004. In this piece, I play the piano with the e-bows only, silently depressing and releasing the keys to allow the notes sustained by the e-bows to sound or die.

The doors were open in the performance space, so you hear the spring birds outside. I extend my special thanks to my audience for listening so quietly.

"Threshold" creates its soundscape through a process called cross-filtering, which runs on the Kyma System. In cross-filtering, the tonal characteristics of one sound, called the impulse response, are imposed on another, called the source, so that the end result is a sound that contains only the characteristics common to both. In this case, ambiences recorded in and around New York City provide the source, and my guitar playing provides the impulse response. You hear neither directly, but only the result of the interaction between me and my environment.

Recording sources and locations in NYC: street traffic during a cab ride from 53rd Street to 89th Street; the lobby of the Museum of Modern Art, and a floor buffer in a side gallery; the lobby and galleries of the Guggenheim Museum; a trash compacter in the mid-50s; an air-conditioning compressor in the mid-50s; an industrial document shredder in the mid-80s; Olafur Elliason's New York Waterfall #4 at Pier 35; traffic on the FDR Drive at South Street. Recording sources in Rockland County, NY: nocturnal insects and thunderstorms.

 

Discography:  These Last Days │ Ten Thousand Shades of Blue │ I, Mute Hummings (compilation) │ White Night │ Lux │ Luminous Accidents │ Cranes Fly West │ The Wave Sounding Sea/The Course of the River │ Polychromatic Integers │ An Abandoned Garden │ NEW! – Modulisme Session 101