These are sonic studies from an on-going project with a beach in San Simeon California and an artist-friend who makes found-object instruments from gifts on the beach. These musical pieces contain both field recordings of different locations on the beach and a 6 string driftwood lyre made by the artist. (If you are up on your Greek mythology, a lyre is an ancient 7 stringed instrument, plucked, similar to a harp. It’s creation is attributed to the god Hermes. It’s a fret-less plucked instrument.)

I took audio samples of each string, and transformed into a sampler instrument in Logic Pro in order to “pitch” the instrument and explore melodic possibilities. Here are some of the results. The first in the series was a whimsical musing on a tiny boat sailing upon a tide pool:

Here is the most recent one, more developed with several different “sounding” lyres and a pentatonic approach to the harmonic structures: