Sarah Peebles - shô improvisations (tracks 1,2) and multi-track composition (track 2). Full album Delicate Paths at andymoorunsounds.bandcamp.com/album/delicate-paths-music-for-sh and unsounds.com/shop/delicate-paths.

2023 Circleback acoustic notes & link to Freesound trio's Toronto premier below.

Resinous Fold works feature acoustic shô solos and an electroacoustic work, and highlight unusual approaches to recording the shô. The intimate, dry sound reflects the instrument in its most exposed context. The listening experience is contemplative and sensuous, immersing one in the luminous sound of this traditional instrument, approached in a contemporary way. (full album link below)

Resinous Fold shō solos explore the harmonies of gagaku and create paths between what I think of as listening zones. Unlike the chordal drones which underpin melody in the main body of gagaku (which is more widely known), resinous fold shifts between smaller tone clusters drawn from gagaku's harmonic centres, and is inspired in its flow by gagaku tuning pieces known as chōshi (music for one or multiple instruments without orchestra). Simple tones from individual pipes transform to rich, complex timbres as air flows through several metal reeds, travels up and out smoked bamboo pipes, and collides as it emerges from multiple points. Sum and difference tones and interference patterns of sound emerge and create a striking, immediate music which envelopes the surrounding space in a sort of opaque cloud, at once mesmerizing and yet somehow unsettling.

Each of the Resinous Fold solos was played in traditional tuning of just intonation at A=430, and was recorded at close range, employing a unique (stereo) microphone placement so that the 14 respective pipes of the instrument appear in a distinct position of the stereo field in each solo recording. We recorded in a relatively dry room, with minimal treatment when mastering the recording. This up-close, dry sound is how I have usually experienced playing the shō in traditional Shinto cultural contexts in Japan, which reflects the architecture and materials of the small spaces in which I played. This intimate, dry sound reflects the instrument in perhaps its most intriguing context.

In 2+4+3, I further investigate acoustic and psycho-acoustic characteristics of the shō in layering three of these stereo solo recordings. Sum and difference tones and interference patterns one normally experiences when playing the shō are further transformed in the loudspeaker (or headphone) playback process. The listening experience becomes a dance between instrument, player, performance space, microphone, recording engineer, loudspeaker, listening space, and listener. The feel of the composite piece reflects traditional performance practice, where multiple players use staggered entrances to perform a given chōshi.

The shō's elegant external design alludes to natural forms yet hides an intricate free-reed technology within. Resinous Fold refers to the mixture of human-gathered beeswax and plant resin which is used to both tune and hold its metal reeds in place. Each work in the Resinous Fold series is dedicated to present or historic elements of the instrument.

2+4+3 is dedicated to the malachite preparation which coats the bronze reeds; the development of bronze used as free-reeds; and cerumen — the resinous wax produced by stingless bees used on early, as well as many present-day mouth-organs in tropical mainland Asia, where the distant cousins of honey bees – known as stingless bees – are central to rainforest ecology. (Cerumen, also known as black beeswax, continues to be a significant cultural material to rainforest peoples around the globe).

Resinous Fold 2+4+3: Circleback (2023)
for 2 shō & accordion or 3 free reeds

Circleback is a transcription of the original recorded multi-track work 2+4+3, with some flexible timing and octave doubling choices incorporated, and was created through dialogue with Toronto's Freesound trio in response to their unique instrumentation and skills as versatile performers of contemporary Western music with gagaku experience. The feel of Circleback, transcribed but altered, reflects traditional performance practice, where multiple players use staggered entrances to perform a given tuning piece, and perform in relatively unmetred time. Toronto-based collective Freesound: Michael Murphy, shō; Wesley Shen, shō; and Matti Pulkki, accordion. Freesound's premier of this work - pitched at A=442 and in Pythagorean tuning - is online (video): www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd3Qu1yVrxU

See the foreword for Delicate Paths (42U) for a photo-essay on the shō's ethnobotanical and ethnozoological connections to ancient Asia, which touches on the instrument's history, evolution and present-day connections to people, habitat, animals and culture - attached here and at Unsounds: unsounds.com/shop/delicate-paths