My plans to make a sound with a long fade definitely failed, but I did end up with an interesting “one-note” piece!
I thought playing my baritone horn in a basement stairwell would provide a nice but of reverb and “fade.” (Turns out this was not the case). I put my Zoom H4 on the basement landing, my laptop on the 2nd floor landing, and I stood on the 3rd floor landing with by baritone horn. I played one note (but in different octaves). F2 twice, F3 twice, F4 once, and F2 once. Turns out running up and down 3 flights of stairs winded me a bit, so once I started trying to record long tones, my diaphragm wouldn’t cooperate and interrupted my notes by spasming and apparently trying to get me to inhale. I told it we all need to suffer for our art. So there are some interruptions in the tones, but I think that adds a little variety.
Then I put it all into Ableton Live to edit it. The “fade” from the reverb was negligible, but I left in the dead space because I think it gives a sense of phrasing (and kind of Cageian, no?) I took my recordings from two locales (basement-level, 2nd-floor landing), and altered them so they both play at half-speed and an octave lower. I panned them left and right, and then brought two more copies from those locales but didn’t alter the speed or pitch of those. But I did edit them so they started at the same time as the low notes.
But, that was actually kind of boring. So I moved them so that the notes ended at the same time. That was much more interesting and added a sort of antiphonal/call & response feel. There was one part where I didn’t move them: at about 3:00, some really interesting overtones showed up in the note (I guess that’s the stairwell’s resonant note or something?) I left that part “solo” to let it shine.
The title comes from what I have to say 1,000 times to people whenever I bring out my euphonium.
