the latter of the two, "i have been...", is my take on the "field recordings" approach that bang-on-a-can has done as of late. i found a video (completely by chance, i was on youtube watching different instruments), and i came across this really high quality video of a young woman playing the Japanese shō, which is a polyphonic woodwind instrument that plays high cluster chords. well, she goes into talking about traditional chords, and playing this rising gesture, and i thought immediately, "this would make a great basis for a piece". so i downloaded it and spent hours just thinking about how to approach this new idea. i wanted to fuse several musical things together, namely the instrumentation and scalar approach from India, the gamelan music of Bali that i've been involved with, and the minimalist structures i'm so fond of. i figured to leave the Japanese music be represented by none other than the video itself, as that speaks loudest and foremost.
i go into more depth about the construction of the piece on my soundcloud. i hope you enjoy. there is a score available here.
