![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Three, Two, One, Airtime
Feb. 20th, 2009 07:34 pmI've always loved the sound of the flute. Bands like Jethro Tull and Focus that include flute among rock instrumentation fascinate me, and the Moody Blues is still my favorite band. So writing music for flute was always a natural.
In high school we always had a flute player in Jazz band to cover the occasional parts, and this sound was natural for me.
In 1987 a friend of mine turned me on to the band Focus while I was waiting at his apartment for the cable guy to show up. I started doing things like listening to rock and jazz flute players while copying the lines on a synth patch -- flute is fairly easy for synthesizers to copy. This led me to write several songs for flute and rhythm section.
As time passed, this evolved into enough songs for an album, then two, and then a writing style. By 1991 I was really working with this idiom, and the concept of virtual bands came to mind -- create music using set instrutation, and with specific characters and techniques for each player. The name Airtime came up in my mind, and it fit as sort of a double meaning -- the flute is the only true wind instrument, since all other standard woodwind and brass instruments use either the buzzing of a reed or of the player's lips to create the sound.
Things are in place, and after a bit of work in the studio this weekend, this first album, Soundcheck, will be out at a lot of online sites fairly soon. I'll announce when it is.
The second album, Liten Up, will be out in a few months. I may do a third album with this project this year if I can get enough tunes together for it.
In high school we always had a flute player in Jazz band to cover the occasional parts, and this sound was natural for me.
In 1987 a friend of mine turned me on to the band Focus while I was waiting at his apartment for the cable guy to show up. I started doing things like listening to rock and jazz flute players while copying the lines on a synth patch -- flute is fairly easy for synthesizers to copy. This led me to write several songs for flute and rhythm section.
As time passed, this evolved into enough songs for an album, then two, and then a writing style. By 1991 I was really working with this idiom, and the concept of virtual bands came to mind -- create music using set instrutation, and with specific characters and techniques for each player. The name Airtime came up in my mind, and it fit as sort of a double meaning -- the flute is the only true wind instrument, since all other standard woodwind and brass instruments use either the buzzing of a reed or of the player's lips to create the sound.
Things are in place, and after a bit of work in the studio this weekend, this first album, Soundcheck, will be out at a lot of online sites fairly soon. I'll announce when it is.
The second album, Liten Up, will be out in a few months. I may do a third album with this project this year if I can get enough tunes together for it.
