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Island Rain Suite

by Chad Crouch

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Island Rain Suite 47:14
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And now we conclude this spontaneous series from Hawaii. I didn’t intend for my vacation to yield work, but lo and behold it did. This one is a bit of departure.

For starters, there is no piano. Now, I’m no stranger to ambient, but I’ve never composed a 40 minute ambient suite. You’d think it would be easy: just drone on with a reverb soaked synth pad, right? Well that didn’t work for me. Creating this was a challenge. It kind of warped my mind.

The approach I took at the outset was less an engineer or architect, and more of a floral arranger. One thing I learned from my mom is florists always work in odds. 3 stems, 5 stems, 7. Composers tend to work in a grid of 4s. 4 beats in a measure. 4 measures in a phrase. Chord progressions are often grouped in fours, often predictably mapping to the phrase.

I usually start with a chord progression and feel my way through the changes. For this suite, each part consists of 7 chords and the chords are all *seventh* chords. Odds. The result is almost like a mobius strip that never resolves. If you are used to resolution in composition, like I am, this is unfamiliar ground.

I will say that I think it pairs well with the field recording, also a departure. This is a stationary recording made of rain showers in the pre-dawn hours. The stormy sounds and the unpredictability of the wind gusts kind of match the unpredictability of the composition. Will it let up soon? Don’t know...

Clearly this is also not a recording made while waking. I’ve been on a massive soundwalk kick, but I’ve been making these more typical field recordings as well, all along the way. In fact it was my album Rain Suite, released in March of 2022, that gave rise to the concept of a soundwalk being a model for a new kind of listening experience. Here too is a long recording where the action in the soundscape is the sweep of the rain. A soundwalk approximates some of that sweep, by walking with a recording device through an environment.

Composing music as a score is just my attempt to map a wordless emotional layer on it. I think there’s a lot for me to learn in long form ambient, but I’m pleased to have finished this in the nick of time to share with you.

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released October 7, 2023

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Chad Crouch Portland, Oregon

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