Barrel of the Kells

Listen to sample of "Barrel of the Kells"
Sometime in mid-November, I dreamed up another Nike musicians' challenge that we called "Raid Santa's Refrigerator." Everyone contributed 3-5 short wav files which were then stored on a shared drive (the "refrigerator").

The challenge was to raid that stash, take as many of those files as you liked, process them any way you wanted, and then use them in some composition that was "holiday related." We left that door wide open; if you could even vaguely relate it to the holidays in your own mind, we deemed it acceptable. Greg Lawrence, a South African/Londoner, came up with a composition he named "Wet Duck," and stumped all of us U.S.-born people. "Duck!" he insisted. "It's the traditional Christmas dish!" We chalked it up to him being from the other side of the pond.

I contributed the sounds of M&Ms being poured into a bowl, tearing wrapping paper, snorts, laughs, shouts, and various squishy mouth noises. Greg processed my tearing paper until it became crackling thunder! Awesome.

This piece needed several tracks for the Chapman Stick Touchboard. The melody line is just a single-note wav that's been pitch-shifted various ways to make the melody work.