This is the second version of Rain Forest Music. The original version was created in 1981 on a cassette titled, "Sound Paintings" and named "Rain Forest." The foundation is set up with original recordings of East Texas forest, rainfall, thunder sounds and bird sounds from the Houston Zoo mixed with electronic music.
The vinyl version has one less musical piece, "Joy of Rain," than the cassette version due to time limitations on vinyl albums.
I changed some of the music titles from the cassette version, too. "Dance of Water and Air" was renamed "Song of the Birds." "Gliding Between the Raindrops" was changed to "Raindrop Fantasy."
On "Visions During Movement," I used a recording technique called, Continuous Tape Looping. It was used on albums by Terry Riley, Robert Fripp and Brian Eno. I used two reel-to-reel tape decks placed about a foot apart, though you can set different distances to control the loop timing. This was all done in real time by starting the recording on deck 1, playing it back on deck 2 feeding the signal back to deck 1 carefully keeping the recording level stable, all the while adding new music and letting old music fade out. This image from the back cover of Brian Eno's Discreet vinyl album illustrates how this works. I used the Crumar Organ as the only instrument, adding different riffs and themes as it developed. Then I did the final master using a tape delay for the movement between tracks and a synthesizer for the ocean sounds.
Each side is designed for and play as one continuous piece of music without breaks.
Album cover was from an original water color created especially for this album in 1982 by local, Houston artist, Molly Khan. I used the same album cover on the CD version.
The instrumentation is a Crumar Traveler-1 organ and Yairi acoustic guitar processed with an EchoPlex EP-4, a DOD Phaser and a Ross Compressor recorded on a Teac A-3340S.
I originally designed this music to enhance relaxation and meditation, as a background for massage or for counseling to help a person relax and open up faster. Dr. Robert Pennington, PhD., a clinical
psychologist and friend, was very interested in the idea of using music in this way. So he
used the Rain Forest Music in his counseling sessions as background and noticed a marked difference in
the quality of the patient's sessions. He continues to use this and similar music as a
background for his counseling.
The production of the original LP was made possible by Frances and Bob Pennington.
