EMMANUEL, J.D. - Rain Forest Music

This complilation is created from the original tapes and LP. The tracks were cut from the original tapes and digitized at 196 hHz/24 bit for the production of this CD. Rain Forest Music - Take recordings of rainfall and thurnder from the East Texas forests, and bird sounds from the Houston Zoomixed with soothing, electronic music and it creates a peaceful, listening experience. This is the original version of Rain Forest Music created in 1981 on a cassette titled, Sound Paintings" and named "Rain Forest." I then give its own tape title, "Rain Forest Music" with "Ocean Music" as side two. I have kept the title names as used on the original tapes. Ocean Music - Inspired by many early morning and evening walks on many different beaches sets up this musical experience! This originally was side two of the "Rain Forest Music" tape. It consist of four jazz/electronic pieces with synthesized ocean sounds in the background. Visions of Life "Visions of Life" was originally a tape with "Rain Forest Music" as side two. Then I presented it on the Rain Forest Music LP as "Visions During Movement." I used a recording technique called, Continuous Tape Looping. It was used on albums by Terry Riley, Robert Fripp and Brian Eno, to name a few artist. I used two reel-to-reel tape decks placed about a foot apart, though you can set different distances to control the loop timing. This was all done in real time by starting the recording on deck 1, playing it back on deck 2 feeding the signal back to deck 1 carefully keeping the recording level stable, all the while adding new music and letting old music fade out. This image from the back cover of Brian Enos Discreet vinyl album illustates how this works. I used the Crumar Organ as the only instrument, adding different riffs and themes as it developed. Then I did the final master using a tape delay for the movement between tracks and a synthesizer for the ocean sounds. Album cover was from an orginal water color created especially for the LP in 1982 by a local, Houston artist, Molly Khan. The sunrise photo was taken one morning in Virginia Beach, VA, during the 70s. The instrumentation is a Crumar Traveler-1 organ and Yairi accoustic guitar processed with an EchoPlex EP-4, a DOD Phaser and a Ross Compressor recorded on a Teac A-3340S." - North Star Productions.