Bird Loop Study No. 2 (Meadowlark)

THOMAS LIMBERT

Bird Loop Study No. 2 (Meadowlark)

for electric guitar and electronics

Duration: 9 minutes, 22 seconds

PERFORMANCE NOTES:

Te composition uses Ableton Live, a fully functioning sofware trial of which may be downloaded from abelton.com. In addition to containing the electronic accompaniment, recorded birdsong, and optional click track, the Ableton Live project includes all the processing and effects necessary for the live electric guitar. Te clean, direct signal of the guitar should be plugged into an audio interface in order to be fed into the sofware. Te opening section (to reh. I) features reverse reverb to obtain live guitar swells, while the rest of the piece employs distortion, amp simulation, and automated delay.

Te score includes transcribed approximations of the recorded birdsong featured in the composition. In the opening section, these notations serve as cues for the guitarist who responds to the birdsong with swelling chordal and melodic gestures. While the tempo is strict, allowing the live guitarist to follow a click track, the texture should be free until reh. I when an eighth-note groove takes over. Te section from I to S features delayed chords altering with guitar imitations of the birdsong and some added guitar fourishes. Te closing section (S to the end) features further guitar birdsong imitations (some of which are half-speed) and solo fourishes. Here, large downward arrows are included at harmony changes so the guitarist can better follow the music given the complexity of the accelerating gestures in the electronic accompaniment, the rhythms of which are marked in the score with slash notation.

ABOUT THE MUSIC:

Similar to my frst Bird Loop Study for vibraphone and electronics which features a hermit thrush song, this composition incorporates recordings made as part of Soundscapes to Lansdscapes (S2L, soundscapes2landscapes.org), a NASA-funded Sonoma County biodiversity study for which Sonoma State University Geography, Environment, and Planning Professor Dr. Matt Clark is the principal investigator. Since Dr. Clark graciously granted me access to the project’s audio database, I have sorted through the thousands of remote recordings and spectrograms to fnd the most musically rich bird songs that could serve as raw material and inspiration for future compositions. All of the pitch content for the piece is directly related to the recorded bird song I discovered. Tese pieces are celebrations of the sheer musicality of certain local bird species, highlighting the unique nature and beauty of Sonoma County, CA.

If the hermit thrush is the Billy Holiday of the bird world, the western meadowlark is certainly the Jimi Hendrix. Bird Loop Study No. 2 (Meadowlark) uses S2L recordings of western meadowlark songs made in late March, 2019 at Sears Point and during the early Spring of 2021 at Tolay Lake. In both spots, the meadowlark songs rang out over a soundscape that included traffic and plane noise, other birds, and frog choruses. Afer a swelling harmonic introduction of the Sears Point motives, a grooving section has the guitar alternating between delayed chord arpeggios and direct imitations of these same motives. Te third section uses the recordings from Tolay Lake, alternating between repetitions of slowed and real-time fragments of meadowlark motives over a series of accelerating trill-like chords, before arriving at a faster and rousing conclusion. I am forever grateful for the talents and energies of my friend, John Mayrose, for whom the piece was written.

for John Mayrose

Bird Loop Study No. 2 (Meadowlark)

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