Soundtrack for The Memory Tapes of John I. Pearl

I very much wish for something of the grace odyssey of my work carries over into your listening and guides you to realms of your own discovery and making. 

Follow these links for the soundtrack to each of the three books.

All music composed and performed by James Farrelly. All rights reserved (C) 2021.

Clicking on the nebulous image of The Golden Gate Bridge will direct you to the corresponding book in the series.

The All-Circling Thresholds (Book 1)

LINER NOTES:

For over thirty years, I have been a home-recording enthusiast, moving through whatever evolving technologies my budget could manage on a social worker or teacher salary. Most necessary was the finding of a piano. In this instance a 1933 Lauter upright that made its way to our home on Saylor’s Lake close to the Poconos in 1981. I had been trained as a jazz drummer, veered toward rock and progressive forms, but I wanted to step outside from behind that sound palette or enlarge upon it if I could. After months of practice, I decided to purchase a 4 track reel to reel to learn multitrack recording. Then synthesizers started to further shape my interests. The Korg Mono/Poly, the first to arrive on the scene with all those knobs and buttons and wheels with which to play. I recorded and recorded over things until I felt I had captured something more or less complete rendering of the music I would hear in my head and heart. And those happy more than accidents that visited from time to time on a wave of its own. Then the African percussion instruments started to assert their privilege. And a fascination with ethnic as well as early music.

Piano, synths, African percussion, drum machines, environmental sounds. I branded the stuff I was doing as Whole Family Music and kept exploring. Around this time, I met some friends who had just started an 8 track recording studio, Red Rock Studio. Kent and Lois Heckman were the owners of the studio they had built within their farmhouse in Saylorsburg. Kent, especially as an engineer, provided me with a lot of sound advice on the studio as a compositional tool. In exchange for tutoring lessons for their son, and with whatever sparse funds I could scrape up every week or two, I worked on a number of sketches that became the cassette classic, Our Fires Return. Some of that music ended up being used as a soundtrack for a documentary about the return of the osprey to the Poconos after having been wiped out by DDT. Thanks to Thomas Ardizzone and Michael Fitch for that valuable learning experience in the production of the film, Return from Forever.

I’d like to acknowledge some of my favorite electronic artists beginning with Isao Tomita, whose landmark album, Snowflakes Are Dancing, introduced me not only to synthesizers but also Debussy’s canon of works. Larry Fast’s Cords was especially fascinating to me and I wore out the grooves of that white vinyl offering. Larry’s Synergy project is well worth exploration and has certainly withstood the test of time. The dynamic triumvirate of Eno, Fripp, and Gabriel also helped feed my own experiments in ambient and world music.  Finally, to all those inventors behind the evolution of MIDI, Sequencing, and Digital Audio Workstations—thank you for delivering the tools of what once could only be found in high-priced studios to the homes of Everyman.

Because of my first love as a drummer, my approach to composition is very much rooted in rhythm and percussion. I am a self-taught pianist and synthesist, fortunate to have a decent ear for music. Some of these pieces, especially those composed concurrently or after the publication of the trilogy, could be said to be computer music. Three different Apple computers to be exact--a G5 tower with Logic 6 then later two different MacBook Pros equipped with Logic IX and X. For those of us who are home recording enthusiasts, you’ll grok well what I am about to say--how easy and delightful it is to become immersed in Sound World. 

As often happened over the years, music came -- as a source of Help. So composing the soundtrack in itself became an integral part of the labor of love for the book. Some of the pieces imagine that place in us where our interior life meets at the edge of natural or supernatural events. For example, one impression I attempt to create in the first few pieces of Book 1--the sounds of the city, the sensation of flight, the imminent otherworldly encounters beneath the sea and being given the eyes and very being of cetacean intelligence -- for a time. For the pieces that are hyperlinked by CHAPTER HEADING -- these cover that chapter’s events in totality. Others are more connected to a particular moment in John’s journey; these are hyperlinked to key sentences or phrases within those chapters. All the product of one who has been fascinated with the world of sound, timbre, and tone. 

Technical Elements:

All music was recorded using Logic Pro X on a MacBook Pro unless otherwise noted. 

Hardware Instruments : 

Kurzweil 2600 XS; Dave Smith Prophet 12 Module; 

Korg Karma; Roland V Drums; Roland Handsonic

Acoustic Percussion :

Balafon, Shakers, Agogo Bells,  Slit Drums; Tongue Drums of Michael Thiele, maker of handcrafted quality percussion @ Hardwood Music

Software Instruments : 

Spectrasonics: 

Onnisphere, Stylus RMX, Keyscape, Trillian

Native Instruments: 

Absynth 5

Rhizomatic:

Plasmonic by Brian Clevinger

Logic Instruments: 

Alchemy, Space Designer and other effects