space music

space, ambient, dreamscape, planetspeak, conversations between stars

my rabbi told me to make space music, so i am. 

i started with the loops (pre-made musical sounds from a variety of instruments and genres that repeat, start and stop as you wish)  i discovered from garageband (for ipad). i slowed them down as slow as they would go and tweaked them. i judged myself hard - how is this "making" music if i'm using other people's sounds? my rabbi, a beautiful thinker and performer/composer/lover of sacred - dance - prayer - music inter alia, said that i was curating those sounds and creating something new. like the beastie boys construction of "songs" from their own fury punctuated with samples - borrowed - from bebop, television commercials, early rap and every other fucking thing they find around them.... yes, you can buy a t-shirt with the cover of 'paul's boutique'. i, too, was using what i found. to express something that needed planets and cells and boundless emptiness. like the backwards way i fall when i sit still and contemplate my relinquishment. 

then i got brave. i made my first drum loop. i made time with high hat and a crash cymbals. then long tones - 'drones' - in the spirit of the master of ambient music, brian eno. so many sounds to choose from using the basic keyboard garageband provides to shape the sounds. it snowballed. i was unstoppable.

i can use words to make my thoughts, feelings and experiences available to others, but that's only the starting point. eugene gendlin, father of the "felt sense" and of the genius practice of focusing, would say. after words give out because their frames are too thin - limited - and not built to contain the buried and unreachable things we know and feel - we arrive at the place of metaphor. meteor. flying, hurtling, screaming space things that know how to give relief. they are built for that. 

here is my soundcloud page, if you scroll to the bottom, you'll see the beginnings of my space exploration. as you scroll up, you'll hear works comprised of some garageband loops, then towards the top, my own.

this is my invitation to you to enter my heart of space. while you wait patiently, and i thank you so much for doing that, look into my inspiration, the long-running transmission i discovered one quiet, still vermont evening: hearts of space. it's worth a subscription, even if it's just the most basic. you'll have access to this week's "transmission" all week long. if you choose "voice on," you can hear learn about the artists. tell them i sent you.

p.s. if you click the link embedded in "conversations between stars" in this page's heading, you can listen. please tell me how it lands.