I am because We are - African Proverb

Went to yoga at jivayoga this morning (4/2), took a new class with my nephew's wife and in the end as we were floating out of Savasana, the leader inspires us by the quote, "I am because we are."  This reminded me of the wisdom I hear from the birds.  It's their message to me.  I looked up this quote and found the movie (by Madonna) and a definition in wikipedia:  "Ubuntu is an idea present in African spirituality that says "I am because we are", or we are all connected, we cannot be ourselves without community, health and faith are always lived out among others, an individual's well being is caught up in the well being of others."

So this is why I am writing to you, my friends known and yet unknown: so that you also can live your passion.  By connecting with me in this lonely process, perhaps you can connect to yourself and your art.  Just try it--even if you risk not having it be the perfect form that you've heard others achieve.  Creating art is about "personal best."

Art makes us more alive.  We make it ourselves to make ourselves more alive.  We appreciate the art of others so that we are inspired to make our own art better.  All the rest of criticism is a pointless distraction;  it only keeps one from taking on the difficult task of one's own art.  Just do it!  Join me!

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO TODAY'S DRAFT 9. Today's draft is an overview of the entire eight minute work.  It includes the symphony writing for only up to the 3rd minute, which is where I left off in draft 8.  Basically, we start at dawn with the cardinal who wakes me up just BEFORE daybreak. (Basically, if I haven't gotten my gear out by the time he sings this call, I'm about to miss the tapestry of songs!  He's my "get ready here we come" alarm.) PS - there is about 15-20 seconds of silence in this mix to allow the symphony room to wind down from the birdsongs....I'll most likely put the frogs into a second playback file to give them more latitude during live performance.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE AUDIO MIX.  This will show you what my screen looks like for the entire mix.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO ONE I THREW AWAY.  I thought it would be dramatic to open with this fabulous cardinal who started singing for me on Pinkney Island at daybreak last January. I chose a more haunting, and more frequently heard cardinal daybreak song to give you the real experience of my day. Also, this one has shore birds and water recorded at the shore of Port Royal Sandy Beach. The shore birds sound so much like the baby carolina wrens, I decided to remove these sounds in favor of giving the orchestra some leeway.

WORKING NOTES FOR THIS DRAFT
After all my questions about details in the strings I thought I better step back and take "a birds eye view" of the whole piece.  What I'm doing here is to show the entire work using the best selections of recordings.  One of my readers asked me why I didn't just get the recordings I want off the internet.  I'm sure that would be a lot easier!  I have two main reasons for not going this route: 1-Unfortunately, even though people publish/share their work freely online, they might not be willing to allow me perpetual usage rights for this project.  I don't want to get entangled in legalities when it comes to the finished product.  2-I want to respect and honor the actual region I live in.  I don't want to use just any Carolina Wren.  I want to use the ones that actually live here in the lowcountry.

So for these reasons,  I've spent about four months traveling around the lowcountry to record birds, insects and shore sounds. The equipment for this part of the project was very generously paid for by the Coastal Community Foundation. Now that I'm selecting and embedding samples into the symphony, I've been disappointed in some of the sound recordings.  Some of my favorites that I planned to use are not usable -ugh! - mostly because of my own noise while recording, or other unwanted, background noise ruins the effect.  In general, the signal to noise ratio hasn't been great.  So I spent an entire day cleaning up the noise in the tracks (audacity has a really good noise reduction tool, plus the bass reduction removes most of the wind and motor sounds).  The tracks in this Draft 9 have all been processed this way.  I made only minimal changes to the actual tracks, keeping the bird's timing in the song.

Daybreak on Pinkney Island, SC (Beverly Gaddy)

The beautiful five-star recordings from my collection are used in this order: (click each one to play.)

1. Cardinal Daybreak: Basically, if I haven't gotten my gear out by the time he sings this call, I'm about to miss the tapestry of songs! He's my "get ready here we come" alarm.
2. Carolina Wren: Song A  This is the first song I identified for the bird. I have identified five different songs, maybe more.
3. Carolina Wren Song B
4. Carolina Wren Song E (yes this song is out of alphabetical order; I want it here because of the implied harmony.) 
5. Carolina Wren Song C
6. Carolina Wren Song D
7. Woodpecker
8. Cardinal Daybreak (explosive)
9. Crow This strange sound is unusual for the crows.  They have such a wide variety of calls.  They aren't songbirds, but this sound is so gentle...then they switch to their usual calls & fly away.
10. Mockingbird:Here, he sings only one note. I actually sighted him singing this at Pinkney Island. Another day, this bird deserves his own symphony!  Normally, he's very annoying, singing many songs one after the other, endlessly, for HOURS!  It gets on my nerves! 
11. Chickadee : this whispy four-note song is so sweet!  It took me a long time to figure out which bird this was! It's such a tiny bird and it's the first one to show up on your bird feeder, according to my animal-wise friend, Holly Cope.
12. Baby Carolina Wrens: three in a nest at my colleague's home in Beaufort. One day I said to my friend, "If only I could record a baby carolina wren learning its song." and she said, why there's a nest in the flower box right next to my front door!  This week Beverly and I will go out for more photographs and recordings.  The father bird is singing nearby every time the mother bird swoops in to feed them. You can hear her hit the flower box! 
13. Frogs at Sunset: I have always adored frog serenades.  This recording sounds exactly like I pictured the book Marsh Music by Berkes. I wsh I could use this whole recording but I cut it down into only 4 minutes.
14. Ocean: I need to replace this recording with a better one.  I'm just getting the feel for screening out the wind with umbrella and correct placement of the bowls. This recording was made early morning at Folly Beach.  What I need to do is go out at night time when no people or animals (shorebirds).

Next Steps:
I'll get to work on writing for the instruments! I have a list of string textures to explore. Thanks to my readers for some suggestions.

I visited with a Brass Quintet with members from the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra and got feedback that my trumpet writing is "too risky." So I'll need to rewrite those parts without such wide leaps.

Also, I'd like to give this score and my first symphony to the new conductor of the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra, John Morris Russell .  I'm trying to get an appointment to give them in person.

I priced out the binding and booklet making at Staples. It's going to cost about $11.00 to print the whole score when I'm done. (I'll email them a PDF file with directions.)  This is such a nice departure from the days when I did my books by hand at the copy machine at Eastman! SIGH.