Sneaky Spirit (disquiet0030-nonsilent)

I knew I had some field recordings from one of the last times I visited Connie & Bob May's home while they still lived in it, back in 2007. Before they moved. Their home was an enormous A-frame built halfway down a hill in the woods a few miles outside of Toddville, Iowa, but so far back off Feather Ridge Road you couldn't see it.

For this piece, I took an 8 or 9 second segment of the field recording. Originally, I placed my Zoom H2 on the deck of the main level of the house (the 2nd floor) near the bird feeders to get bird sounds. The wind chimes were a good 25 feet beyond the feeders. But this day mostly yielded a spoiled field recording due to occasional wind on the microphone and also the sounds of guns being shot at the Otter Creek Sportsman Club a couple miles to the south.

The segment I used was from when the wind was momentarily declining. In the original recording you can barely discern the chimes and there's only a hint of wind sound near the end. Increasing the volume of the segment by a considerable amount brought all this out.

After creating the base segment, I layered more of the same sample in Sony Acid and eventually created the composition. Additional samples were pitch-shifted down either an octave or two (the piece starts off and finishes with a "down two octave" part) and the clip properties were stretched in Acid from 16 beats to 38 beats. Then it's just a matter of mixing and listening.

I've known Connie since about 1996. She was a dear friend of my late mother-in-law. I've helped her out with computer and web site issues over the years. She's had her own web site, a lectionary study site, since the mid 1990s.

How did I come up with the title of Sneaky Spirit? Well, that's one of Connie's sayings. This is from her About page on the web site http://www.theark1.com/

"I have an image that might help here. The river Jordan flows into two seas: the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. The main difference between the seas is the life in them. One is full of abundant life, the other has very little. The one receives the river and lets it flow on through. The other only receives. This site is the way that I can let the river "flow on through". In this metaphor the water is the gift of the Holy Spirit, or as my friends will tell you, I call the Sneaky Spirit."

More on the 30th Disquiet Junto project at: http://disquiet.com/2012/07/26/disquiet0030-nonsilent/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at: Disquiet Junto/