Reward Music

These are three memories of being with my pack goats.   All these dear animals pictured in the photos are gone now.  To see these incredible athletes in action, go to the Media--photos and video tabs, or visit my YouTube:  steinwaygoat.

I discovered the alpine wilderness area in the Snowy Range when I got lost, back in 1986.  When I came upon Mutt and Jeff Lakes, I had already walked about 8 miles.  I sat on the edge of the lake, too tired to walk down to its water, knowing I had at least another 8 miles to go to get back home.  I didn’t know about pack goats at that time, and I wondered how I could eventually return to that beautiful spot.  It wasn’t until 1994 that I was able to get back to that spot, now with my dear pack goats.  There were huge thunderclouds when I arrived at that top meadow overlooking the lakes, and I was fearful of getting hit by lightning.  I settled down under the trees and pulled out my tiny ocarina to play a bit of song while I waited.  The first few notes frightened the goats, but they soon calmed down.  It was one of the most magical moments of my life.

The top ocarina sounding melody is constructed from the same sample I took from the bird recording I used for “The Evening Visitor” pieces.  The lower drones are that same bird call, but now developed as a grain wave in HALion to give it a bit more bite, using Steinberg’s Multitap Delay set at a ½ note sync with pitch shifting on 2 of the 4 delays, split into a 5th and octave.  The wood block sounds were developed from the pipe sounds used in “Pipe Dreams,” now run through Equator on the Seaboard Rise, giving me control over the cutoff and resonance.  It also uses the Multitap Delay.  Finally, the breathy part comes from the same top melodic instrument, but with the chuff isolated and the tone muted--and the chuff initially comes from the attack of one of the irrigation pipes I sampled for the “Pipe Dreams.”