"Steel Strings"
produced by Don Ross and Kevin Cardamore 2002
(c)2002 Kevin Cardamore, All Rights Reserved
Copyright Notice: All songs are composed by Kevin Cardamore. Unauthorized duplication is strictly prohibited. You may download a single copy of each of these samples for your own use, but you may not copy or distribute these samples without my written permission.
The following mp3s are samples of all tracks of the CD encoded as 128Kbit stereo. They are the first 70% of each track time.
Parts
of this piece remind me of the sound of data as it flows through computer
networks. As I continued to work on
this, I was constantly thinking of how the Internet has brought people closer
together, allowing us to connect in ways we could not before.
I couldn’t name it “The Internet”, so I played it for several years
without a name. When in Rome a few
years back, we were on a bus to the Colosseum and passed an advertisement for a
Leonardo da Vinci exhibit. The
title of the exhibit was “Machines and Gods”.
This
was originally composed for a Songwriters Compilation CD.
Since it has no lyrics, the title seemed appropriate.
A
few years back, on two separate missions, NASA lost contact with their space
probe as it entered the Martian atmosphere.
NASA does not know why; could it be there is a civilization on Mars that
does not want us to know it exists?
Micheline
and I traveled through Italy for a month last summer. After the first five days I was missing my guitar so we
stayed over in Napoli waiting for the Strumenti Musicali shops to open.
I purchased a three-quarter-size backpacker guitar and wrote most of this
piece as we continued our travels through Italy.
A
storyteller in the process of telling a story.
Our
son Daniel was getting ready to move away from home for university and I was
working on getting used to the concept that he would not be coming home on a
daily basis anymore. During this
time, I was writing this piece which to me is about our most important
relationships and how they need to be both strong and flexible.
In
memory of Ryan Redmond, who lived his life with enthusiasm, energy, generosity,
compassion, honour and courage. Truly
he was a great young man and an inspiration to all of us who loved him.
During
the 50th Anniversary Celebrations of D-Day in Ottawa, the veterans,
demonstrations and display of equipment of that time left me with a strong
impression. Two songs that I have
always loved “Somewhere Over the
Rainbow” a song from 1939 at the start of World War II and “The White Cliffs
of Dover” which was sung throughout the war as a song of hope, have both
somehow managed to have an influence on this piece.
When
our daughter Robin was very young, we played a game where we would move our
heads left and right as we said “no” and then up and down as we said
“yes”. As Robin got a little
older, I tried to mix her up by moving my head up and down while saying
“no”. She thought for a second,
then corrected me by moving her head left to right while saying “No!” then
up and down while saying “Right?”.
Imagine
in your mind’s eye, a river that starts out moving slowly, gradually building
speed and ending in a waterfall.
I
attended the Walnut Creek Music Festival in Winfield, Kansas to compete in the
fingerstyle guitar competition. On
the night following the competition, there was a round robin concert put on by
four winners of the competition from previous years. It was very humbling to watch the first three players dazzle
the audience with their speed and accuracy on the guitar. Finally, the last player got ready to play and said that he
would “slow things down a bit”; he played a beautiful, slow and melodic
Celtic piece that he had created. I
realized that it is not so much the difficulty of the piece you are playing but
rather the relationship between the piece and what you put in as you play that
is important. I left Winfield
inspired by the experience and wrote this shortly after returning home.
There
is a large lake in Québec,
an hour or so north of Ottawa where we like to go camping.
On a particularly clear and calm night, we spent the evening on the rock
peninsula of our favorite island; the stars were out and you could see the full
moon’s image rippling across the water as the loons sounded from distant parts
of the lake.
Playing
a guitar over a period of years allows it to “open up”, producing a rich
sound of its own.
(c)2002 Kevin Cardamore, All Rights Reserved