As an avid hiker, I've been lucky to find a great number of natural geographic spaces to play flute, these include colorful Echo amphitheater N.W. of Abiquiu, N.M. (where Georgia O'Keefe did a lot of her paintings). Natural Bridges is good as well as Arches N.P. which has plenty of intimate spaces (which provide more of a natural reverb effect than delay) some of these are difficult to squeeze into. Zion N.P. has some really cool places, two of my favorites there were way up a side wall in Hidden Canyon & Echo Canyon passage (AKA the Catwalk) Which both have a nice combination of echo & delay. The trailway unfortunately got wiped out by a rockslide in 2019. Utah of course has lots of slot canyons that all sound nice, one in particular is Buckskin gulch which also has cool petroglyphs, this canyon is very colorful. My all time favorite place to play (so far) is an absolutely beautiful canyon called Singing Canyon UT. it's a long way from nowhere but the acoustics will make your hair stand up! A great combination of reverb and what sounds like a multi-tap delay! If I could only carry a bunch of recording gear there. Probably better to reserve that as a once in a lifetime experience. Texas has three cool areas to play, all in Big Bend: Closed Canyon which is the only public slot canyon, Lower Burro pour-off which appears as if a volcano was cut in half, and the enormous Santa Elena Canyon. I hiked up the Rio Grande into Santa Elena about a half mile and found a ledge I could climb about 20ft. above the water. This turned out to be the ideal location for playing flute, it was as if I was playing in the largest cathedral in the world with a somewhat long delay and a not so long reverb decay, great for playing slower passages, UPDATE: I went back in November 2022 to discover the Rio Grande had flooded (rare event) which changed the acoustics greatly, I found an incredibly rich reverb while playing and had several folks tell me that it was the highlight of their day to hear me play in the canyon! How very nice to hear these comments from complete strangers. Every natural space I have the opportunity to play gives me the feel of "Natural Surround Sound" as it were. I'm always looking for nice acoustics so If y'all know of any other places lemme know!
“You may cry when the sun is gone from your sight, but your tears will hide the stars” - Old Icelandic proverb
Paul's Bloggy Thing
Statements & Wonderments
About awareness: When attempting to expand our awareness, how many of us make the observation that the awareness we are looking for, is the awareness we are using?
About the Rainbows for God cover, It's one of those things that hit me to make a statement without an explanation. It will mean something different to each person. I will ask one thing about the rainbow: Can a rainbow just be seen as a rainbow without having a label attached to it?
About desire, so we know all things come from God however strange and amazing, but all the diversions we encounter don't always lead us back. Gotta try 'em out though sometimes, and maybe sometime have the ability to be in the world but not of the world.
Russian Handpan
I have yet to find this bell-like kind of tone from a handpan manufactured by a russian company called Rav
Home built cajon
Easy enough to build one, now I built mine with three playable sides all based on Euclid's Golden Ratio: 1.618...although many attribute it to Fibonacci. This ratio of course is found in the smallest components of nature all the way up to the formation of galaxies