Randallopry

Sleep Talking

Perhaps I’m so fond of Ornette Coleman’s “Sleep Talking”  because I used to do quite a bit of talking in my sleep as a kid.  I also engaged in a lot sleep fighting with my brothers when they would try to wake me from my late night David Letterman slumber.  Almost as crazy as street fighting.
Anyways, the track below is a free improvisation on Coleman’s “Sleep Talking” which I already mentioned here on el blog.  I use some of the ideas from my previous post on repeated notes, but in the context of a more concrete melody.   I like the idea of doing Ornette Coleman in a solo piano context, since one of his contributions to improvised music was doing away with the need for a chordal instrument like piano.

Repeated Notes

In this piano track I was exploring the use of repeated notes in the right hand while the left hand changes through a series of loosely related chords. It definitely creates a certain mood, but can get a bit tedious. Towards the middle of the recording I moved the repeated notes into the harmony of the chords so that the lower repeated note was played by the left hand.  Maybe would be good for some kind of movie or series of photos…who knows?

Bird on the Tracks

Since I live close to the train tracks, it didn’t surprise me when I came across a bird singing the blues.  The unidentified bird sings a classic blues phrase, the minor third bend to the major third and returning to the tonic, over and over again.  If you listen to blues singers like Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Blind Willie Mctell, etc., you hear how they bend certain notes to construct a phrase.  Playing the blues is not necessarily about a certain scale or particular notes(#11, b3, b7, etc.) but rather the tensions in between those notes.   In the following track, I combined my recording of this bird with Rose Hemphill singing “Rolled and tumbled” from the Alan Lomax Collection.  Notice the bird’s repetitive phrase and the bending strings of the guitar that lead back to the tonic and you’ll hear it.

Listen to This one on headphones

I shot this telling photo at the Atlanta jazz festival a few years ago and thought it would interesting if you could actually hear all of the music in this photo. Regina Carter is playing in the background and I have no idea what is playing in the headphones, but I did some speculating based on the billboard hits of 2005 and created this “dys-mix” (i don’t know…made up the word. find me a better one).

The voice in the foreground is the voice of William Orten Carlton, (also known as “Ort”) recorded at Copper Creek Brewery in Athens, GA. He was a significant DJ and record store owner in the 70s and 80s. Check out the wikipedia entry for Athens Music for more info. Also check out the onion article about Athens record store owners.