posted 11/29/2007 4:34:12 PM

Rainbow Delta

by Patrick Gleeson

Each side of this album is a suite of related pieces. The underlying conceptions of the two sides are quite different, as were the means of executing the music.

Rainbow Delta consists of 4 pieces composed at different times and under different circumstances. What unifies them was the intention to describe a kind of ecstasy. At the times of composition I felt a strong connection between myself and the natural world. The first piece composed, “Take the 5:10 to Dreamland” came to me on a beautiful spring afternoon while I was sitting by a flume in Dutch Flat, California, listening to a wonderful assortment of songbirds. The last piece, “La Grange Point Five,” I wrote after reading Gerald O’Neill’s High Frontier and it expresses my joy and optimism about his vision of self-sustaining artificial planets.

Each piece was written in sketch form, then laid down on a 24-track, one part at a time, using E-mu Systems and Sequential Circuits analog synthesizers. Much of the orchestration was improvised as the pieces progressed.

Draconian Measures was conceived under almost contrary circumstances. The title is a pun about the method of conception, because the core of each of the 4 pieces in the suite is a single measure stored in computer memory and manipulated and edited on an E-80 Miicroprocessor integrated in the Emu keyboard. In execution, various manipulations of the original measure were assigned to synthesized instruments. Up to 16 vertical voices of these were stored in separate banks in computer member. Each piece has from a dozen to eighty-one storage areas and these were called out sequentially and in some cases several were called out at once.

Consequently the forms of the pieces were generated in part by compositional choice, partly by real-time performance choices and above all by the edit and storage structure of the computer.

Looking back on this album and my comments above from the perspective of late 2006:

First of all, it would have been a little more forthright to say that Rainbow Delta, the first suite, began from an LSD session—I was sitting by a flume in the woods, listening to songbirds and, to put it in the 70’s vernacular, stoned out of my mind.

Next, I think it might be interesting to look at the technology of Draconian Measures from the perspective of 21st Century digital technology. At the time of the original compositions and performances, the technology was entirely new and exciting. Dave Rossum, from E-mu Systems, had designed the world’s first digital scanning keyboard, which allowed a small computer (a very small 8 bit computer) to store keystrokes. From today’s perspective, it is surprising that something this limited contributed to music-making at all, but, in fact, I think the limitations were useful. Draconian Measures is essentially a live performance based on a very limited number of note-storage areas. The synthesizer, which the designers always referred to as “The Blue Box,” was itself a unique hybrid that the guys at E-mu put together for me; the last I heard it was in a synthesizer museum (there are such things!) in Montreal, painstakingly restored by David Keane.

The Blue Box had 16 very large custom-made analog voices that were painfully programmed with a tiny screwdriver applied to many, many microswitches and miniature pots (as in gain and pan, etc.) that were accessed—again I’d have to say, somewhat painfully—by taking one of the voice cards out of the computer bin and putting it on an extender card for programming. The capabilities were further enhanced with a large E-Mu modular and two Prophet 10s, all hardwired into the central keyboard system via banks of switches. A couple of years later I did a modest tour of a few colleges and clubs using this instrument “live.” It was always terrifying: what could go wrong? (A: you name it). But Lenny Pickett and David Blossom and I somehow managed to finish the tour without anything blowing up. That came a little later during a recording of one of these pieces with a local symphony—in mid-recording one of the Prophet 10s began an endless12-tone arpeggiation with each note having its own indeterminate amount of FM.

Next, there’s the matter of composition to reflect back on. I think at this point in 2006 I’ve pretty much figured out what it is I have to say as a composer. This happened gradually and almost unconsciously over the years; I never really felt that I solved any compositional problems; they just went away. But at this earlier time I was struggling to make some music of my own out of various influences. I’d come out of Herbie Hancock’s first synthesizer band—I’d introduced the instrument to the band when we recorded Crossings—and I’d been influenced by Herbie, but also by Steve Reich and Tangerine Dream. These are still, to me, some of the most interesting composers/groups, and in retrospect I can see what it was that I found—or was going to find—in common in these different musics, but at the time I really had difficulty in seeing the connections between them—and yet, I was trying to find one. Of course, finally, one (you, me, any other composer) has to drop all this searching and just write what comes to mind. Unfortunately, it takes most of us—certainly it took me—a long time to arrive at this simple truth.

Lastly, the name: Rainbow Delta. I’ve water-skied all my life, and for 20 years or more I spent most weekends between April and October up in the Sacramento Delta. The farmlands surrounding the Delta can be somewhat uninspiring, both geographically and culturally. But once you’re in the 300 miles of Delta waterway, it’s a different and enchanted world. Continually curving water channels with overhanging jungle-like trees and high ferny banks with just enough riverlife—run-down biker bars, gasoline docks, old-fashioned steak houses and burger joints—to keep it unpredictable. Coming back to the marina in the evenings the sun was behind us, and if you were sitting facing the stern, and the angle of the boat and the boat speed was just right, the spray off the transom created this continually changing rainbow in the air. By this time in the late afternoon the sky above us was still bright blue, but the river-channels themselves were already darkening; consequently the rainbows appeared almost unnaturally bright. After hours of skiing everyone was pretty tired, filled with endorphins, and very content just to sit quietly and absorb this scene. To date, life has never gotten any better than that.

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