“Il Giardino” (The Garden)

Title/Theme: “Il Giardino” (The Garden)

Structure:  This piece is in Ab Major. It starts with a simple theme (a motif repeated throughout) followed by the primary melody. The piece follows a typical pop-song structure: Intro-A-B-A-B-C(Bridge)-A-B-Outro. Certainly, much different than my previous ‘meditation’…

Inspiration/Idea:  In order to explore different mic and piano positions, I wanted to write something ‘simple’ –  easily played multiple times without great effort. The melody for “Il Giardino” came to me while thinking about adversity – more particularly how we literally can change the world around us. “Il Giardino” (the Garden) is a symbol. Certainly we need seeds, water, nature for a garden – but it’s the human element which makes it truly materialize. Idea becomes ‘real’ only through our thoughts, energy and effort. In short – each one of us are creators. This ‘garden’ analogy applies to so many situations/circumstances – and I thought it was particularly relevant during this time of Easter and Passover. It certainly fills me with peace, hope and joy and I hope it does the same for you.

Equipment/Setup: I’m playing on my Steinway Model B, two Earthworks QTC40 stereo-matched omnidirectional microphones. Mics are about 8″ above the strings – with the LH mic 2′ back over the bass strings and the RH mic about 10″ back from the hammers over the treble strings. I’m using an Apogee Duet interface and a MacBook Pro with Logic Pro X. On this recording, I built a “middle” prop (between the pianos’ full and short prop stick lengths) and covered the piano to eliminate external noise (see the photo).

It looks odd, but covering the piano gave me a more controlled environment. We have major construction going on next door and external noise was bleeding into the recordings.

I played around with “wet” versus “dry” sound (which just means adding effects to the recorded sound – “wet” = more effects, “dry” = less or no effects). I’ve provided both versions for you so you can see what I mean. The first version includes reverb and compression. The “dry” version is raw recording with no effects.

Download:  GG Piano Meditations: Il Giardino

Download (“dry” version): GG Piano Meditations: Il Giardino – dry

Simply unzip the folder, then drag and drop the files into iTunes or any other appropriate folder.

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MOBILE USERS

If you are accessing via a mobile device just use the download app of your choice to save the track to your phone or tablet.

Or if you prefer, you can stream the track here.

Stream Link:  GG_Piano_Meditations_Il_Giardino

These Meditations are a ‘work-in-progress’, and I’m not completely satisfied with the sound (yet) – I will continue to explore and thank you for sharing in this journey…

Enjoy! And feel free to share…

Note: To honor my craft and spend more time/energy creating music, I rarely check social media or email – the blog is the best place to communicate with me. Please share your comments and feedback below the post – I really enjoy hearing from you!