Third Podcast in the Girl Can Dream Series

The previous two podcasts were about my heritage music, gospel and blues.  This third one features some of the work I do using the computer and effects. All the music in this series is written and performed by me, Victoria Gibson, and I have imposed the limitation that I be able to perform it in a live solo concert. I am playing with a computer in one of these examples, but I still count it as a solo work.

The title, “Echoes of You Far Away” comes from the memories of the interesting people that I spent time with this summer who are far away now. The style is a recollection of the naturally echoing space called “The Cistern Chapel” that I speak about in the podcast audio.

In May, I met Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster and David Gamper, the trio known as The Deep Listening Band, in Port Townsend. This ensemble first recorded in the cistern 20 years ago and many sound artists have followed them down the narrow entrance to experience the 45 second reverb since then.  My mission was to document the 20 year anniversary return of the Deep Listening Band to The Cistern Chapel located nearby in Fort Worden with video and photos and to assist with the audio recording.

I journeyed to the location on my Yamaha FJ1200 motorcycle loaded down with all the required gear.

The video and photos that were taken of the band may be released by The Deep Listening Institute as a DVD or on their website, but I am giving a preview of the photos I took of the Cistern Chapel.  I do not include any photos of the band as some of them may be used in the commercial release and we have not finalized the details. The audio was recorded by Jonas Braasch, a colleague of Pauline’s from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, School of Architecture, Architectural Acoustics Program who is a fine saxophone player. The audio of my experiments was recorded by me using my Zoom H4.

This slideshow gallery includes photos of my trip and some of the cistern itself. It was very dark under the ground and the feeling in the place was unique.

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Thank You.

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The second podcast of Girl Can Dream, moves into the realm of electric slide guitar. I also realized I don’t have many photos of myself on-line, so I started using the timer feature on my camera. This one came out fairly Ok, but the focus is not really sharp yet. I am trying to take a photo of me with no makeup in natural light. I have seen some great portraits lately, so I am inspired to move in this direction.

As always, comments or donations encourage me to keep going in this direction. I would like to hear from you. Girl Can Dream is a new initiative of mine as I usually play with a band. The high costs associated with touring in an ensemble have given me the idea to experiment with a solo project.

Performances will become more polished as I become used to making all of the noise myself.  I may start to add electronics to give me some support, but for now, I am trying to go back to my roots and keep it simple.

Thank You.

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Paul Plimley and Victoria Gibson have formed the duo, You Are Here and are excited to announce their first podcast. This podcast contains samples from the first three musical works completed from their upcoming disk “Twilight Zone Love Affair”.  Paul and Victoria discuss the meaning and the making of the three tracks, Condensed History Patterns, In A Ghana Havana and Sleepwalkers Vacation.

Download a pdf file outline of the three tracks and some information about Paul and Victoria here.

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My newest available technology is the podcast and I have decided to start a weekly singer/songwriter podcast titled, Girl Can Dream. I am producing this using low technology, my Zoom H4, set on stereo and an open source wave editor, Audacity on Ubuntu Linux. I am doing a minimum of editing as I plan to record these songs in the studio for a paid download. The next step is to add a payment system to my site and start making material available, for now I will thankfully accept donations.

The music business is changing so rapidly now that I hope I will be able to reach people through my podcast and find an audience for my songs. By minimizing the production, I am keeping costs reasonable, but I am donating a lot of my time. I am hoping that my podcasts can become self-supporting and then I can continue making them. The title of the series, Girl Can Dream, is inspired by my work with Ione at a workshop held at the Western Front in Vancouver.

Last December, I went to a dream workshop and had to  confess that I did not dream, or  I didn’t remember my dreams. I was given some directions to work with my sub-concious self and I have been writing down my dreams now. I still do not remember them well, but now I have opened up to dreaming and I realize I dream every night.

Songs come to me from a meditative space that is similar to the sub-concious dream state, but I have learned, through my studies with my Guru Sunitha Bapooji, how to meditate properly. Meditation now helps me to solve my problems and develop my patience. Patience has always been a difficult virtue for me to remember because everything always seems to take so long to develop. Now I must be happy and excited that I can record my songs and you can listen to them.

Please comment and let me know your opinion on the podcast. This is my first step towards distributing my music and I hope that it is a success — after all a –  Girl Can Dream.

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