We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

June 2022 Full Moon in Capricorn Miniature: Man and Nature

by Nathan Goheen

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $1 USD  or more

     

about

A couple of influences, Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, have expressed and experimented with the idea of making music as a collaboration between man and machine. I like this idea but am choosing to substitute nature for machine.

This piece is an experimentation of the physics of sound. I have taken 2 bass, or fundamental tones and, within my computer, built up their 2 unique harmonic series. Each harmonic series generated contains not only melodic information, but rhythmic information as well. For example, the harmonic series starts with a fundamental. The next tone in the series is an octave above that, and it sounds at twice the frequency of the fundamental, which gives the rhythm of 2-to-1. The next frequency above that is a fifth. This gives the rhythm 3-to-2. The next frequency above that is a fourth, and gives the rhythm of 4-to-2, or 2-to-1. So if our harmonic series is based on a "C", then the first 4 notes are C, (an octave up) C, (a fifth up) G, (a fourth above up) C. The highest C sounds four times in the time it takes the middle C to sound twice and for the lowest C to sound once. So in a harmonic series, not only is melody given, but rhythm too.

The 2 harmonic series I used were based on C and G, a simple I-V progression. I made recordings of each different tone found in the 2 series, up to the 16 tone. After I had all these individual recordings, I then listened and mixed them in or out of the piece. Since the harmonic series is very much the nature of sound, this is the "nature" in Man and Nature. And I am the man who decides what pitches I will let sound, and what pitches I will mute. It's a humble attempt at reconciling man's nature to peacefully and creatively co-exist with nature.

Another influence is Caspar David Friedrich, particularly his "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog."

A last little tidbit, the sound throughout the entire piece was taken from a little waterfall in the Bronx Botanical Garden. Interesting how falling water sounds and effects people so similarly to white noise, no?

credits

released June 14, 2022
Written, performed, recorded and produced by Nathan Goheen on an Oberheim Matrix-6R

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Nathan Goheen New York, New York

contact / help

Contact Nathan Goheen

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this track or account

If you like Nathan Goheen, you may also like: