PROCESS
Thank you so much, Marc (@disquiet) for thinking of Sterling in this project. As I told Marc in an email exchange where he told me of the dedication in this week’s prompt, my thinking about how the sound waves we produce may somehow go on forever began with the Junto’s week dedicated to the death of Jefferey Melton (@Nofi). This week brings much of that exploration full circle.
Nick Drake’s ‘Northern Sky’ open tuning resolves to a Dsus4 chord (with the suspended G as the center note and F# up high)
D-A-D-G-D-F#
I was gifted knowledge of Drake while working at Rolling Stone as an intern in 1992, and ever since, ‘Northern Sky’ is the song I turn to when skies darken. Felt right to invoke it here by striking its open chord for a few minutes. (Note: Soundcloud’s auto-compression revealed my perceived silences to be not so silent. Hi ho.)
Sterling passed in our home at the hand of kind veterinarians, on a soft rug, with easy, knowing caresses on 22 December 2016 ~6:20 EST. I trust he’s suspended somewhere now between space & time in painless parallel peace. Fwiw, we had David Bowie on random shuffle and ‘Absolute Beginners’ came on as the process began. Perfect is a strange word in this context, but life works in curious ways sometimes to deliver solace.
All the love.
:^D
RELEVANT EXTERNAL LINKS:
My reflections on Sterling:
https://medium.com/westyreflector/sterling-at-the-gates-dcff944b76df
Alan Watts on how the universe is made of vibrations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhHfKqLR6NI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmkwqn0mSQs
My prior piece “Riding Waves” to honor the passing of Nofi:
https://soundcloud.com/thereflectors/riding-waves
RIG
Guitar:
Jolie (2000 Gibson ES-335 DOT reissue, modded 100% with custom http://peekamoose.com electronics)
Pedal Board:
EQ Devices The Warden optical compressor -> Lotus Pedals SnowJob Underdrive -> tc electronic Flashback delay -> Diamond Tremolo -> EQ Devices Grand Orbiter -> EQ Devices Afterneath -> Strymon blueSky Reverb
Recording:
Line6 POD-XT (Blackface Lux emulator) -> MOTU 828mk2 firewire interface -> AcidPro 7.0 -> Harrison Consoles Mixbus (Mastering)
META
More on this 260th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Tone Fade: An exercise in when a sound ends
(This project is for Sterling.)
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Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
http://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0260-tone-fade/5809
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Photo associated with this project is by Michel Banabila, used thanks to a Creative Commons license:
flic.kr/p/5GB7bn