FreePlay

FREEPLAY began its nascent development at a time when Charlie Ringas was working on a text in preparation for the future while at the same time rediscovering a live concert recording from the past. Made with one of his groups years before, this performance, consisted of cello, clarinet, guitar, and percussion in the form of two lengthy improvisations. With the notion of a potentially new musical entity combining both the new text and the older set of improvisations Charlie set to and divided the first Improv. into four movements, and the second into six, creating ten pieces to frame the newly written text.

Although the pre-existing audio score was not used after the beginning stage, it served as both score and impetus for the recording, preserving similar tempi, tonality feel, and phrase lengths while being entirely supplanted with newly generated material.

On a ‘wholly other’ plane is the Trombone, which had been recorded as part of a set of completely unrelated sessions and was later brought into Freeplay at Charlie’s behest. With a good deal of meticulous editing, the trombone was slowly integrated.

The final step was to bring in the narrator, who read the words from a script while improvising the timing, the pitches and occasional burst into song.

The majority of the recording is tuned to 12-tone equal temperament, with some short and adventurous sojourns into 55-tone equal temperament.

The CD was mastered to retain its punch and wide dynamic range, so average loudness is lower than many modern CD’s, so please feel free to Turn It Up.

Notes

February 2014 by Garnet Willis