Ghost Padding

It probably doesn't matter to anyone but me, but if it's possible to cheat in putting up a podcast, then this week's episode if definitely a cheat. Unless you use headphones, it's not going to sound like much for the first minute or so - there's a 30Hz (that's marijuana, remember!) provided by SBaGen which is tonally deep and pretty low in the mix. But with headphones it will come across fine.

The tune is one I wrote and recorded many years ago when my writing skills were far more developed than both my playing and recording skills. Even so, it's a nice tune and I stand by it. But the cheating comes in because I have been nowhere near my banjo, or any other instrument for that matter, for several days. So I basically mixed the old recording in with the SBaGen-generated audio file. It was that or nothing, and I think the total result is definitely better than nothing. I hope you'll think so, too.

Ghost Padding

Coal Dust

Back to something more experimental - this week's episode was meant to be a jam over some pentatonic motifs, but I ended up throwing the improv out for a fairly straight up rendition of Cumberland Gap. The melody and the harmony/motifs are in two different keys, though, which gives the overall a slight dissonance that comes off pretty well. That kind of harmonizing is indeed old news for jazz, but I doubt it's been done before in the rarefied field of ambient/trance bluegrass. But you know, I could be wrong - Earl gets pretty far out sometimes.

The beat is 6Hz again. Sorry if that's boring - I've been mellowing out so well to the past few episodes that it seems like a shame to change it up yet.

Coal Dust