The Ryno Pen

Downloadable mp3 stuff under Creative Commons included.

Around the end of 1988, I kind of lost it…

… “it” had been getting more consistently lost as I failed to deal with the dual strains of Horrid Woman’s increased nastiness (let’s just say my doctor insisted I go to the police once he’d patched me up) and the weight of lifting the lid on the tin of marine worms that was my job¹.

Eventually I wound up blowing my retirement money on an ill-advised farming venture in the Snowy Mountains.

I won’t dwell on the business, the people and what ho, during this post. There were a number of positive factors, like Maggie, the orphan magpie.

^{Maggie was allegedly killed by a TERRIFIED policeman: she always loved to swoop and land on our shoulders.}

The country is beautiful too.

^{The red tree was hollow, and you could hear little birds singing inside the trunk}

^{To stand on this hill in the wind, arms outstretched and eyes closed, is to almost fly}

And that’s where the music kicks in. “In The Wind” is about that feeling. Because it’s quite long and there is still a cost in “free” downloading, I made an edited version (still 7Mb in size), as well as offering the complete piece (33Mb) for those who like long, boring ambiences to help them fall asleep.

Way back here I went into detail (probably unnecessarily deep detail, as is often my wont) about composing pieces where harmonically-compatible items of differing lengths are allowed to repeat alongside each other, producing different patterns of coincidence³.

This piece was composed in the same manner. I hope you enjoy it.

TFF^™0

⁰ Those Fornicating Footnotes^™.

¹ Lid being lifted, it took over a year to get anybody who would act to peer into the mess. By the time Bums Were Kicked², I was already long gone.

² Mostly the wrong bums, of course, and one of the most guilty was Punished By Promotion: this actually succeeded to some degree by removing access to, shall we say, peripheral incentives.

³ Brian Eno, discoverer of this technique, describes it best. More here and here.