While Im catching up on my writing and reading, Ive been planning out various projects in advance. It just feels more satisfying to cross tasks of a list instead of listing things as I’ve completed them.

I decided that the first book soundtrack project I would take on is the Kushiel series by Jacqueline Carey.  I already have one theme sketched out and Im looking through at two specific scenes that contain music themselves. So that would be three themes for the book which is a good place to start. The section that intrigued me most occurs in the land of Alba in the book and would primarily be vocal, though I might through a light instrumental in the background for effect, which leads me to my nex point.

I’ve been reading lately about aeolian windharps. They intrigue me.  The harp (or box with strings) is placed in a window or anywhere that will catch a gust of wind, and the strings resonate creating a unique sound. Ive been experimenting with a few of my instruments and this is definitely something I would like to try.

Here’s a video for an example.

Aeolian harp, windharp, same thing. This looks like fun and I want to try.

Yesterday we had a huge storm. There was rain and wind lasting most of the evening. What interested me more was the windiness before the rain came. It was strong enough, I thought to be able to play the strings on my harp.

Unfortunately, the rain came before I was able to finish setting everything up.  I have a covered porch, but that would not have been enough to protect everything, or prevent me from getting zapped by lightning.  There was barely a breeze where I placed my harp.  I’ll have to keep an eye on the weather and take all of my recording stuff to the nearby field next time. Im hoping that works out.

Instead, I was able to catch a moment or two of the rain falling with the birds in the background. The microphone I have really does pick up everything in the area.  Now that I know what kind of recording I can get, Id like to try having a longer recording of the rain. Maybe I’ll make up one of those meditation/soothing tracks that I hear everywhere on occasion.

What I would like to do when I get a chance, is see if it’s possible to write music to go with the aeolian recording once I get one. The music produced itself is random enough that it doesn’t really have a key, so I would like to play around with that as a track.

Unrelated news: I found a  small xylophone for children recently.

They call it a glockenspiel, but no..I refuse to call it that. Anyways, I wrote a tiny theme song a year or so ago called The Happy Peach (I still have dibs on that. Mine!)  and I wanted to find one of these to play the main melody. I have one, so it’s my new project to rerecord that track. I haven’t decided yet what Im going to do with it. It might work well for video intros if I branch out in that direction.