Sunday Dance Music: Weathersongs Voumel 1

WEATHERSONGS VOLUME 1: DAYS IN WALES

(£12.00 plus p+p)

Weathersongs volume 1: Days in Wales is an album of 14 short pieces of music derived, in real time, from the weather conditions in Southern Snowdonia on 14 different days over one year. Each track was electronically generated by a computer program connected to an electronic weather station at Richard's home in the foothills of Cadair Idris, North Wales. This program uses data output from the weather station (wind speed and direction, temperature, pressure, humidity, rainfall) to compose music as conditions change.

To make the album, selected output from this installation, was recorded and edited to present the music within the confines of an audio-CD.

All the tracks on the album have common features: Temperature and Humidity provide bass drones; Air Pressure gives higher pitched accompaniment; while the Wind produces the lead voice whose pitch, intensity and phrasing all change as the wind shifts direction, ebbs and flows. Rain, when it rains, is heard as random percussive events (typically bells) whose statistical density changes with the rate of fall. When each track is edited, however, different timbres are applied to the music accentuating the character of the individual pieces/ days. Thus, the music ranges from the gentle ambient electronica of a cool spring morning to wild, almost Free Jazz, saxophone as the westerly gales of autumn hit Cardigan Bay.