New Music for Meditation: Flute Recordings

Beginning work on a new recording project. Having had several flutes restored to me recently, I have been planning to do some new recordings towards a new album project. This past winter, recording Darshan, a new album of music for meditation, yoga, healing, and Reiki, has also renewed interest in recording more new music in that mode. I am also continuing to write new lyrics for new songs. I'm not writing many poems right now, but that's normal when I'm working on music.

Tonight I was finally able to set up the microphones and do some recording. (I'm writing this while taking a short rest break.) I've had some computer issues lately, but now things in the studio are working again. I've got the stereo mic pair set up in the living room, and when I'm done tonight I'll leave everything set up so that all I have to do to record some more is throw a few switches and start playing.

I recorded a first piece with the Zen flute, and another with one of the shakuhachi I hadn't played in awhile. Mostly I'm exploring. I'm recording everything, expecting to trim most of it away later, leaving just the best music. I will probably make one piece from this session with a lot of space in it, to make an ambient piece with flute events widely spaced apart.

For tonight's session, I'm just improvising. Getting to know my flutes again. You record everything just in case you come up with something really good. I've made several piano pieces that way, and even more Stick pieces. Tonight's session is a reintroduction to some old friends. Finding our voices together again. I'm not worried about perfection at all for this session.

When I play back a solo flute piece, sometimes I hear Stick or keyboard parts to go with it: they emerge from within the gestures and spaces of the music. What I'm doing for this session is also listening to play back with reverb added, to hear how things sound in a large acoustic space. (I have some of the best software reverb emulators ever now: the software algorithms just keep getting better.)

I feel like working on into the night. If I run out of air, I will keep going with other instruments.

I am making raw tracks here. They will assembled later. This is all raw material. Some of it might turn into finished pieces, some of it may be mixed in elsewhere. It's like a painter taking sketches to later repurpose them into finished paintings. That's a good analogy, actually. Tonight I'm recording sketchbook pieces. Something good may emerge from them later. Meanwhile, it just feels incredibly good to playing my old flutes again. A year ago, I'm not sure I would have even had the breath and stamina for this; so I guess it's true that I'm getting stronger, now, even if still very gradually.

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I've put in about two hours now tonight. Time to stop and let the ears rest. I find that I can't really go much more than four hours at a stretch without my ears getting tired. Two hours of continuous recording is pretty good, overall.

I recorded some ambient soundscapes, when I was tired of playing flute. Some of these larger bamboo flutes require a lot of air to play, so they're actually tiring to play for a long time. I recorded another take on the Zen flute, and some more shakuhachi.

Then I fooled around for awhile trying out ambient synth patches. One or two ideas that won't escape the sketchbook, probably, but one or two that might be good music beds, once I massage them a little. One in particular might end up being good to blend with one of the flutes, later on. I'll see how that goes.

Zen: Stop when you're tired. Eat when you're hungry. Chop wood, carry water. Sleep wherever you fall. Live in the moment. Play.

First Flutes

Since I began playing flutes, some 30 years ago, I have focused on ethnic flutes, especially bamboo flutes. I own a concert flute, a glass flute, a jade flute, flutes made of various hardwoods, and several dozen bamboo flutes. I specialize in suling, from Indonesia, and shakuhachi, from Japan. I don't claim to be a virtuoso flute player, as I am primarily self-taught, with the occasional guidance from more professional players. I play well enough for my own purposes: music for meditation, for ambient music, for my own compositions for flute and other instruments.

Playing flute for myself, I find it to be an instrument that calms and centers me, based as it is on the breath, the prana, qi, ki.

This is my first flute:



Not the first flute I ever owned, which was a flute of lesser quality that was a gift from a relative. This is the first flute I ever bought for myself, and which I taught myself to play. It has shown up on more than one recording over the years.



It's a large instrument, sounding in the alto flute range, with limited pitch range, a unique tuning, and very sensitive to breath pressure. It's called a Zen Flute, and was made by John Niemi in Hawai'i, in the early 1980s. I have three or four bamboo flutes made by John Niemi, all of superb quality, and all possessing a soul, an earth spirit. That's not just my opinion; other players and listeners have made similar comments to me, unsolicited.

In December 2011, when I was commissioned to record a new CD to be used for meditation, yoga, Reiki, and/or massage, which I titled Darshan, this flute was one I wanted to use on the recording. But I couldn't find it anywhere. I tore the house apart looking for it. I looked all through the studio, all over the basement, I looked in travel bags from my last camping trip last year. I thought with horror that it had somehow been lost, that I would never see it again. I had given up hope. I went ahead with the recording project, and was well satisfied with the music I was making, but there was a hole where this old friend had been.

Just this past week, it was returned to me. I had last used it on a recording project at the studio in Chicago, when I was living out in California, and in the turbulence of recent years I had lost track of it. Without remembering, I had left it in Chicago intending to record more with it later. My friend found it when he was cleaning out his place in Chicago, a few months ago, and had been waiting for the right time to return it to me, along with a half dozen other flutes all bundled together.

Having this flute given back to me is the best thing that's happened to me all month. It's like being reborn. Now that I have my Zen Flute again, I can hardly wait to make new music with it. I have plans to record more music for meditation, yoga, etc., and this flute will be featured prominently, you may be sure.

Here are the first two flutes I ever bought for myself:



Alongside the Zen Flute is my first shakuhachi. (Japanese end-blown flute, with a long and important musical tradition to its name.) It's a rough-hewn example of the breed, also made by John Niemi. This shakuhachi is featured prominently on Darshan, appearing on several tracks. It's my first shakuhachi, and even though I have acquired other shakuhachi of officially better quality, this instrument has a special place in my heart.



Here are several of my best-quality bamboo flutes, including three shakuhachi:



Three of these flutes were just returned me on the aforementioned occasion. The evening after I was reunited with these flutes, I spent a fair amount of time playing, caressing, just getting reacquainted. To have them all back again is inspirational. I am finding new music in them, each voice being as fresh as if never heard before. It's been long enough that I am rediscovering each old friend with great pleasure.



I spent some time tonight just getting to know all these flutes again, looking for new melodies. Each of them will appear on the next recording project, and I'll be sure that they are not parted from me again.



The three shakuhachi above grouped for a family portrait:



Making these photographic portraits of some of my favorite flutes from among my collection of musical instruments was an exercise in more than one photographic technique. All of these were made using a tripod and long exposures, with directional lighting from more than one source. It was a late-night photo session made in celebration of their return. These are all relatively long exposures. I used narrow depth of field to create the close-ups, desiring to emphasize the parts of the flutes where the mouth is placed, where the breath gives life to the music. One or two of the resulting images are iconic enough to be enlarged to poster size, and printed as decoration for the recording studio walls.