Node Song

Program Note

This piece was written for Weathering Steel, the Plein Air Sound Collective's debut album of site specific music, and recorded in May 2023 at the Tank Center for Sonic Arts in Rangely,  Colorado. The Tank is an empty steel water cistern with extraordinary  acoustic properties, including a natural decay reverb of up to forty  seconds.

Node Song is an exploration of the timbres and resonances available on the tone bars of the vibraphone and the way that they interact with the acoustics of the Tank Center for Sonic Arts. When the tone bars are struck in the middle, the sound is at its most resonant, with a clear tone. The closer to the nodes (where the bars are attached to the frame of the instrument) that one strikes, the more dull and percussive the sound becomes.

Throughout the piece, the performer maintains uniform pressure while very gradually transitioning from striking the node of the bar to striking the middle, continuing in the same direction until they reach the node on the other side. This creates very subtle, gradual timbral shifts underlying the simple harmonic progressions. The tank layers its own music atop this by extending each resonance, causing them to wash together into an ethereal song.