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CD44

CD 44 Opening the Sphinx
"I Ching Harmonic Signatures"
                                                                             Released Fall 2019 (Sept. 21 2019)

Find this CD for sale on Bandcamp

This recording provides the listening with chords based on 64 equally spaced toned within an octave of sound.

In essences this is a vitamin pill of colors that are not in our normal auditory diet.

It contain some fastening octave displacements of the French horn sound done in the recoding process both up to really high and down to impossible low - mind opening sounds.

Richard O. Burdick, horns

CD 44 Opening the Sphinx

This Cd has one different work on it:
                            (Yes, it is different than anything I have ever heard).
1) I Ching Harmonic Signatures, Op.232
by Richard Burdick

On this CD:
Tracks 1-64: I Ching Harmonic Signatures, Op.232
by Richard Burdick

About the Music:

This recording provides the listener with chords based on 64 equally spaced toned within an octave of sound.

In essences this is a vitamin pill of colors that are not in our normal auditory diet.

It contain some fastening octave displacements of the French horn sound done in the recording process both up to really high and down to impossible low - mind opening sounds.

This recording is step-two in the process of releasing Mr. Burdick's I Ching cycle music. Step one was a presentation of "I Ching Base Tones, Opus 176" Where the tonic tone of each scale is presented in the rhythm of the I Ching with a video showing the related color and I Ching Hexagram.

One other I Ching Cycle piece was release before: CD28 WAVES AND PARTICLES, Op. 159, but this work is in his "Scales version 3", where every tone in the scale was tuned to fit in the harmonic series and not necessary meant to sound good. Richard has revised his scale set and his version five scales seems to be be holding firm and good since in was created in the Fall of 2012 (seven years now.)

This step-two work is title Opening the Sphinx, because we believe that since the stabilization of equal temperament with tuning at A=440 n the 19th century, that there are in essences colors that we are not getting in out auditory diet. This work is a great piece for calming and healing public spaces, if you can believe and allow it to happen.

The number on the track list like "01-01 & 02-44" refer to the I Ching. Mr. Burdick's I Ching cycle uses the shau-yong circle, so the first number is from that; around the circle clockwise from the "top", and the second number is the traditional I Ching number.

The title of each of the 64 sections are the one's invented by Richard and each track is tuned to a unique 'key" where each of the 64 pieces are all tuned to a different fundamental pitch. The track list shows tuning in relationship to A=440.

About the Recording:

This recording was done note by note tuning each and every one.
(8 tones per chord and 64 different tunings).

Cover Photo : a 19th century photo of the Great Sphinx being excavated

About the Composers & performer:

Richard Burdick as a musician:
French hornist: Richard O. Burdick is the first horn of Regina Symphony Orchestra and the Regina Symphony Chamber Players in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. He is a prolific composer.

His move to Canada in 2003, with his wife Rebecca and his two boys, marked the start of the fourth major period in his musical Career.

In the 1980’s Richard was first Horn of Napa Symphony, a member of a San Francisco based theater orchestra and played lots of chamber music as manager of Trinity Chamber Concerts, a chamber music series in Berkeley California.

Starting in 1990 he played fourth Horn full-time for Sacramento Symphony, which went bankrupt in 1996. He then won auditions for Fresno Philharmonic, Napa & North State Symphonies and played in Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera.

He is a prolific composer and has many self produced CD’s of his own compositions, Bach, his classical natural horn playing and multi-track performances of many of his favorite pieces.

He performs on a variety of horns, a baroque natural horn (1720), a classical era natural horn (1800), a romantic era (1840's) natural horn, a single F horn from the 1880's, his main symphony horn is a Brendan Model Finke triple horn.

He has also done many music related jobs such as arranger for Sacramento Symphony, librarian and personal manager for Sacramento Philharmonic, and manager of Trinity Chamber Concerts (chamber music series) in Berkeley, California for 19 years starting in 1984.

Richard Burdick as a writer of music:
Composer: Richard O. Burdick is a prolific composer of chamber and orchestral music. He has a large volume of works for chamber music settings and concert halls, including a growing number of works for live musicians with video.

He frequently uses the I Ching as a structural foundation to his music.

His works vary from quite tonal to improvisational and avant-garde. They also range from minimal to quite random. He has written minimal styles both in the highly sustained and highly repetitive types. His works are very creative, but often have forms and structures that Bach used.

His variety of works fall into the categories of: avant-garde, expressionist, minimalistic, microtonal, modernist, neo-classical, and new-age-meditation styles.

His use of harmonies is generally freer and is freeing to listen to. He is developing a New-age meditation style of music based on the vibratory spectrum of sound.
Since 1980, composer Richard Burdick has been using I Ching inspired scales as a foundation for his compositions. The I Ching is sort of a fortune telling system of the ancient Chinese. Being a binary system, it suggests scale intervals of either half steps or whole steps. It is ideal for scales structures and patterns in music.

Like the scales of Northern India, the scales are divided into two tetra-chord like sets of three intervals. Mr. Burdick uses the perfect fifth to separate the two sets of three intervals. He also has a complete system of fixed tones for each scale that organize the whole system into 64 unique vibratory signatures.

Richard has worked professionally as a transcriber and/or arranger for the Sacramento
Symphony, Concord Pavilion Pops Orchestra, Regina Symphony Orchestra, Regina Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players and others. He has been a recipient of Meet The Composer funding, Concert sponsorship funding from the city of Davis, California, and was the winner of the 1983 Kensington Symphony Composition Contest with his "Six Medieval Fragments for Orchestra, opus 14."

Mr. Burdick began composing in 1975 and has had premieres of more than 150 of his over 250 compositions.