(17.11.2023)
More recording, slow and steady. There are enough pieces of music now that the whole thing has some form and I can start to think about how it sits as an entire object, rather than bits and pieces of unrelated material. So I can pinch and punch on the potter’s wheel and get it looking like something and arrange the pieces so you can stand back and say “ahh, that’s what it is.”
Did some composing with the keyboard under the big red tree in the schoolyard, sun going down and shafts of light and the whole scene almost vaselined.
Went up to Falls Creek, which was busy and dead at the same time. Amazing to see, as you’re nearing the town, the landscape change from something green and dark and dense, to this sad open space with dead white trees bristling the mountain range like acupuncture needles. I kept on a little further to have a look at Wallace’s Hut, and the road was very smooth and the air from the low scrub smelled like shortbread, sweet and buttery, on the High Plains road. Arriving back, I improvised three pieces in a short spurt, thinking of the bogong moths, the mountain explorers, and sounds of the kids that were once here in the schoolhouse before the BCSC.
Some listening through field recordings I’d made (and just listening out the door) to mine the air for birdsong. More concerted shaping of the project, sequencing the music, figuring out what music is and isn’t necessary, making final additions of overdubs, and as much mixing as possible. Then on my last Friday here, going down to pump the music into the dam wall and record what came back. Down there for a few hours, eaten by mosquitos, feeling the full swell of the music I’d made and the strange recurring sensation of the wind picking up through the tunnel as the breath of the clarinets rise, the wind with the music, lifting and lilting in sync.
So I think it all came to something… A lot of filming around the town, and 10 pieces of music that I wrote and recorded while here these last three weeks, most with some sort of programmatic meaning, at least to me. Now, off for a swim!