Each Day We Lose 5 minutes and 21 seconds of Daylight

At this latitude, (just shy of 60 degrees north) we will be losing 5 minutes and 21 seconds of daylight each day for the next few days. This number is slowly decreasing by about a second every three days until the winter solstice.

I found this hand-made structure in the woods, just north of Oslo. I'd like to think it was left over from the days of Odin and Thor, but I think it was probably just made by some Norwegian boy scouts or something.

The piece is composed of several melodies that i've written over the last few days in combination with improvisation. Each melody has a corresponding improvisational section. 

Here is another tippee near by:

I hope you enjoy this! Anyone can be a part of PINECollective and I hope that some more people will want to get involved! Just send me some video or audio or some pictures or some words and I will post them!

How Nature Inspired the Creation of Musical Notes (according to Pt. Shiv Dayal Batish)

"Like commands from a superior, man received cues and impulses for discovering music from mother nature. Just as beautiful environments, scenes, shadows and perspectives inspired him in discovering the art of painting, and physical shapes and images of stones inspired the creation of sculpture as an art, early humans realized that the sonic environment - waves of the ocean, gentle ripples of rivers and brooks, the chirping of birds and humming of bees, love calls of the peacock, and the infinite variety of fascinating living sounds - was similar to his emotions and sentiments. He started to interpret his hopes, wishes, and his ecstasy and excitement of appreciation, by imitating, repeating and composing phrases from this wide variety of natural sounds. With the advent of time, this process became music."


 An excerpt from Rasik Raga Lakshan Manjari, volume 1, History and Theory of Indian Music, by Pt. Shiv Dayal Batish, Publisher - Batish Publications, 1310 Mission Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95060, USA. 
Brought to my attention through raganet.com - a valuable resource for westerners interested in Indian music.

I thought this was a nice turn of phrase for a Sunday morning. Pictures are from Honolulu, Oslo, and Honolulu, respectively.

Improvisation from a city park overlooking Grunerløkka

Here is an improvisation from a city park. Ordinarily this might not qualify for PINE material, but in the city sometimes we have to make do with what is available as far as natural environments go.

Bygdø Royal Manor - Oslo, Norway

Bygdø Royal Manor is a park and functioning farm in Oslo, Norway. It occupies approximately 495 acres, of which 183 are used as farm land. During the 19th century this land was developed into a public park at the request of King Carl Johan who was inspired by European ideals of the time to make a place for the citizens of Oslo to use for leisure activities similar to the ones available in Stockholm and other major capitals.

Much of the area is under the protection of the state as a nature preserve including large areas of unique calcareous pine and broad-leaved deciduous forests.

This is a performance of a new piece i've written called 'An Incident at Akershus.' The title comes from the place where the main themes were written.

The piece contains two main themes and three areas of improvisation. The two themes are unrelated at first but through the use of both compositional methods and improvisation they becomed intertwined and mixed, creating new themes of familiar material. In light of this, the improvisational sections should not be thought of as episodic so much as developmental in nature.

This performance took place at the edge of a field which has been farmed on and off for many years. It is currently not being used for agricultural activities.

Fire Song from Jackson TWP Land Lab

Andrew Meyer playing 'Fire Song,' an original, largely improvisational piece at the Jackson TWP Land Lab in Canton, OH. The piece contains two main themes, and three improvisational sections. Also used are many microtones and two multi-phonics.

Blue Hen Falls Duets

These improvised duets come from Blue Hen Falls, in the Cuyahoga Valley, near Peninsula, OH. Jenna Barvitski, Violin; Andrew Meyer, Saxo.

While improvising near the waterfall, Jenna observed that distinct rhythms seemed to come out in the sound of the water falling as different timbres and textures were created. Due to the large amount of rock the sound seemed to fill the area and was thrown right back along with the sounds of the water.

In another location, further up into the woods, the sound was drastically different. There was still a natural reverb, possibly even more than when surrounded by rock at the waterfall, but with a different quality. In this location the sound was more fleeting and seemed to go out into the landscape for as far as it could be heard before dissipating.

Three Shorties from Sand Run

Here are three short pieces that were improvised at Sand Run in Akron, OH. The first one ends with a large section of a tree falling just behind the camera.

enjoy...

Tuesday Morning Improvisations from Virginia Kendall Ledges

One of the best things about living in North-East Ohio is our proximity to nature. For many of us, nature is as close as the undeveloped, wooded areas near our homes, or local parks. For others it means the Cuyahoga Valley or Metro parks systems. Wherever we choose to go, we need not travel far.


This morning I found this spot in Virginia Kendall Ledges Park.

I spent about an hour and a half improvising freely, enjoying the reverberations from the rocks. For me, space in music seems to take on a different weight when the performance is done out of doors.

Welcome to PINE Collective!!! {Performance In Natural Environments}

Hello all. PINE Collective was originally created in 2006 or so in Youngstown, OH by Andrew Meyer and Kyle Farrell in order to encourage the ideal set out in the name. PINE stands for Performance In Natural Environments.


The ideal of the PINE collective is simple; to take music and other performance out into natural environments.

"A taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house and no housekeeper."

-Thoreau

PINE collective wants you to join!!!!!

We are not a group of elitists or extremists, just people dedicated to the promotion of performance in natural environments.

****In order to join, we ask that you complete at least one performance in any natural environment of your choosing and write a little bit about it. This will then be posted on the blog. Also, any photos or video you provide will be posted as well.****

We aren't making any membership jackets or anything like that, but you will have done something cool, thought and written about it, and posted it on the site for like-minded people to see. Hopefully we can create a dialogue here where we can share our experiences as performers working in natural environments.

Please take the time to participate in this project, even if it means simply spending some time improvising by yourself in a natural environment and then reflecting on that experience.

Nature can provide so many interesting dimensions to performance. From the sounds occurring in an environment and the natural light to the way sound reverberates and wraps around the landscape, there are many elements that are distinct to a single location, and a single performance.

There are silences so deep

you can hear

the journeys of the soul,

enormous footsteps

downward in a freezing earth.

                        -John Haines

"Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating."

       -John Cage