And so it was that maybe a fortnight later, after Ronald had returned to Angola, that I sat down at my piano one evening and turned on a newly-acquired Sony Discman recorder.<\/p>\n
I started with a simple piece by Arvo P\u00e4rt,\u00a0 \u2018F\u00fcr<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>Alina<\/em> \u00a0\u2013 so simple so slow that I could read the music!<\/p>\n (Audio:\u00a0 Marilyn <\/em>\u00a0F\u00fcr<\/em> Alina, Arvo P\u00e4rt)<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n It ended on a deep disappearing bass B, allowing my piano to vibrate\u00a0 \u2013 and then I picked up on that note, playing it again which then flowed into something coming from me, coming through me.\u00a0 I got lost then.\u00a0 But later in the silence which followed this musical transmission, when I examined the recorded evidence on the Sony recorder, the results were very interesting.<\/p>\n There were seven distinct little \u2018pieces\u2019.\u00a0 The first was my interpretation of Arvo Part\u2019s \u2018F\u00fcr<\/em> Alina<\/em>\u2019 and then six pieces followed.\u00a0 My improvisation started from that deep B resounding under my left hand and then suddenly there was a phrase emerging in the right hand:\u00a0 F#, G, D repeated twice then D to B, echoing the left hand which was still ringing six octaves below.\u00a0 The theme was set, and that little piece which became known as Chamonix<\/em> was captured, held forever in a little Sony recorder.<\/p>\n The entire recording session lasted 33 minutes.\u00a0 The six \u2018pieces\u2019 or themes following F\u00fcr<\/em> Alina<\/em> were each very different, reflecting the scope of my musical language at that stage.\u00a0 This rather \u2018artisanal\u2019 recording, done in a one-take session with the microphone placed in a far from optimum position, was later tuned into a little CD called Elements<\/em>.\u00a0 It stands as a record of the music which flowed soon after and perhaps during my weekend Harmonic Chant retreat at Pommereau in October 2005.\u00a0 The first of several retreats over the subsequent few years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The process of recording… my interpretation of Arvo Part’s Fur Alina and then improvising and finding my musical ‘language’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":410,"template":"","categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408","episode_posts","type-episode_posts","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-part-2-music-and-my-soul"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/episode_posts\/408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/episode_posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/episode_posts"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}