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1. Bob writes these beautiful songs and invites me to collaborate. I take great liberty to play whatever strikes my fancy as I play along with him, all of which meets his unbridled approval and laissez-faire enthusiasm. So when we play it's different every time, like a bottomless Christmas stocking.

Listen to #5 on Black Futon CD here

Comments from
Steven Coolidge
about his music
for our slideshows.

2. The title of this slideshow was suggestive to me of course. I can't write real Arabic or Persian music but I tried to get an exotic feel without pretending to be authentic. The second part of this piece (except for the synthesizer toward the end) is made from sampled sounds of bowls and pan lids from our kitchen! Diana and I had fun going around with a microphone and a felt piano hammer, picking up things and bonking them. Eating asparagus from dishes that sound like bells and gongs imbues our meals with a spiritual aura. Maybe.

3. I have lots of percussion sounds on my computer but I prefer real drums. The underlying background to this piece is me carefully playing my new djembe to a metronome for several minutes. The arpeggio theme I made up then cut and pasted forwards, backwards, transposed and overlapping. Such manipulation is in the great tradition of J.S. Bach and Milton Babbitt. They didn't have a computer to help tho, they ran their musical themes through a bicycle-pedaled sausage grinder I think.

All images and content © 2000-2011 Diana Jahns. All rights reserved.