Jim Chappell - Honey Wind: Solo Piano (CD)

Click here to hear 30 second samples before you buy! You need Windows Media Player installed on your computer to listen.

Tracks:
1. Reunion of the Loved 
2. Honey Wind 
3. Ancient Flame 
4. Lily Bound 
5. Sunbeam Serenade 
6. When Love Turns Gray 
7. Little Kisses 
8. Wink 
9. Ode to What We Had 
10. Missing 
11. Miracle 
12. Ceremony 
13. July Night 
14. The Road

Melodically rich, inspirational, contemplative solo piano.

My experience creating Honey Wind was a nice surprise for me. By that I mean it is probably 90 percent “first take” improvisations, as opposed to me sort of slaving over my arrangements and presentations of my music, which is the way I usually approach things.

During my live shows one of the experiences I’ve always enjoyed was having an unplanned audience volunteer come onstage and plunk out 3 notes of their choosing. The idea being I would attempt to weave those 3 notes into a full piece, right there in front of everyone. Lucky enough for me, as time went on I got better at this and it has become one of the highlights of my concerts!

This process sort of tapped me on the shoulder one evening in my recording studio and said “Why not just try it now? Just keep doing takes of some little melodic inspired thing that you can pretend someone else gave you. Try to make full pieces flow from each little riff and let the music take you where it will. If you do enough of these you’ll probably have a nice variety of songs you can choose from and create a whole CD for release if you want.”

So concerning the creation of Honey Wind, to make my little story come ‘round here, that’s exactly what I did. I sort of just flowed along with the process and didn’t really listen to the longer version of each improvisation until I had collected 30 or so. I figured I couldn’t get too bummed out if they didn’t really turn out, because out of 30 there would have to be a few good ones! Looking back I suppose I had a lot of trust in myself.

Lucky for me I really felt at least half of the pieces had something to say, and my task became more of what to cut from the proposed CD. The whole process of “writing” the music took me only around three weeks. What a blessing with my little three year old daughter always trying to tug on my shoulder these days!

Anyway, I do hope you’ll give it a listen and see if there is anything there that reaches inside of you and touches that beautiful musical nerve we all carry inside us; that almost spiritual connection we have when we know we’re really getting into it. When sound does that we are truly blessed aren’t we?