Walk in Beauty

WALK IN BEAUTY

An album of music for meditation and massage. It was designed to run around 45 minutes, the time of a massage session. There are three tracks that can in fact be played in any order. The music is soft and undramatic allowing the listener to go within.

The titles of the tracks are from different images. The first, “Walk in Beauty” comes from the ending of a Navajo ceremony, the Night Chant:

In beauty may I walk
All day long may I walk
Through the returning seasons may I walk
Beautifully I will possess again
Beautifully birds
Beautifully joyful birds
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk
With dew about my feet may I walk
With beauty may I walk
With beauty before me may I walk
With beauty behind me may I walk
With beauty above me may I walk
With beauty all around me may I walk
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty,
lively, may I walk
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty,
living again, may I walk
It is finished in beauty
It is finished in beauty

The second track “Kyoto Garden” gets its name from the Kyoto Garden in Holland Park, London where the sound of the waterfall was recorded.

And the last track, “Hymn of the Pearl” takes its title from the apocryphal Acts of Thomas, telling the story of a young man who is sent to Egypt to obtain a pearl from the possession of a snake. He gets seduced by the magic and culture of Egypt and forgets his mission. His family then send him a letter reminding him. He reawakens and remembers who he is and what his mission is. The story of the poem is interpreted by the Gnostics as a reminder to us that we are spirit trapped in material existence.

Kyma

The pieces on this album were composed in a sound design system called Kyma with the addition of a couple of notes from the ting-sha, a Tibetan cymbal. Kyma allows an incredible range of exploration of sound synthesis and modification that would have been beyond any but the most well-equipped sound studio a short while ago. I am very much a beginner with this system and I look forward to exploring its amazing capabilities in further albums.