Approaching the Eternal Now

I had been working on a new album of auraloramas since the Promenade event at the local arts centre (Norden Farm), when I was fortunate enough to work alongside Julie Potter as she went through her yoga routines. It was a tremendously worthwhile event and opened my eyes to possible applications for my soundscaping.

Some of the results of this session can be found on my Youtube page. The event threw up four basic improvisations, which then became Clearing the Mind, Relaxation, Uncertain Start, and Walking Home in my studio over the next couple of months.

I was actually getting into gear with the pieces and was about to start work on others when that old beast called desire stepped in and I decided that I wanted to get a guitar synth. Well, as is so often the way with desire, obstacles throw themselves in front of you in order for you to be absolutely sure that this is what you really want.

Immediately became Christmas, became the New Year, Became February, became March and, finally, in April, I was up and running with the new Roland GR-55 guitar synthesizer – and a jolly fine piece of kit it is, too.

Thus, six months after I started work on the Meditation album, the direction has changed considerably – not to mention the sound. Before I was using a selection of Boss and Digitech pedals to create the pieces, but now I am down to the delay unit, a echo unit and the synth – it has certainly made the floor before me when I play a far tidier space.

While trying to get a handle on the synth, I did what I assume anybody would do and simply went through the patches, making note of what sounded good, often getting distracted by a particularly nice noise and going off on a tangent to see how an idea might develop. At one point I came across a number of brass instrument sounds close together and started noodling with these.

The effect was, I thought, extremely dramatic, so a couple of weeks later I was back in the studio working on the piece. It starts off with some bells and vibes, played quite randomly and then a ‘Dark’ trumpet comes in, followed by a high trumpet. Then a French horn and finally trombone.

The sounds of these synthetically produced instruments is not quite natural, yet certainly reminiscent, and the looping creates a quite ethereal sound when each sound begins to layer over itself.

I remember speaking to Theo Travis after the Travis & Fripp gig at Gloucester University and he said how he liked the looping of woodwind instruments because it created a sort of Mellotron sound. It certainly does – and it lifts my spirits very much to be able to create such drama.

I chose the title of the song from something I have heard along the way from various people that are into spiritualism of one sort or another – the Eternal Now… a moment when everything is in harmony and time seems to stand still. I certainly can’t claim quite such a moment, but I thought this might be something like the moment before everything falls into place… What happens afterwards goes beyond representation, I should think. I am really pleased with this first synthesized auralorama and I hope you are too.