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Composed Music

Drone for Rudy

Ambient Synth Drones

Published July 4, 2020

Above you can hear my latest ambient piece. Inspired recently by a 15-hour Tidal playlist called Autopilot, I realized that I have always loved the ambient genre and particularly find drones to be of utmost value in terms of intellectual concentration. I meditate in silence, but if there is a genre suited to help with that, then it is Drone.

This is my second piece driven by the Arp Odyssey this year. I plan to make it central to most of the drone pieces forthcoming. There is this ongoing line noise problem within the synthesizer that I hope to resolve the next time around. It is noise music, anyway.

Typically, I associate the music I make in improvised sessions with activities surrounding that event. I was repairing my new Volkswagen at this time, and I had recently published stories about my old V-dub.

I bought a non-starting Passat. It is the same model vehicle that I owned before, only this one is 37 years newer than that one. My first was a 1977 Dasher, which was the Americanized version of the Passat. They dashed that marketing differentiation and stuck with the Passat name across international markets. It is also the first Audi and the original modern design from VW. These are now and have always been sweet rides.

This drone is for Rudy the Dasher, which I sold and have lost touch with long ago. The new Passat kicked ass on a recent trip across Pennsylvania. I took it down the shore yesterday as well. I waited until the car agreed with the name before declaring it, and that name came to me as Sonny. It’s a smooth vehicle, son of the Dasher, but aggressive and rough around the edges, like Sonny Sharrock and Sonny Rollins, two of my favorite musicians.

Sometimes I think of where I was when something else happened. For example, in 2003, when this vehicle was manufactured, I had just moved to Portland, Oregon, with my 1990 Toyota Truck. By the time this vehicle was taken possession of, I was enrolling in community college. This car has put on a lot of miles and so have I.

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