I like the architecture of songs, and the way that the same song can soundtrack different visions. My song 'Sawmill' is one I built using samples from ccMixter.org. The samples used go a bit like this:

"Sawmill" by Gurdonark
Attribution (3.0)
"Drums1" by eggodeus
Attribution (3.0)
"Little Bit" by Raymond Martin
Attribution (3.0)
"Percussion on LSD" by MrDumBass
CC0 (CC Zero)
"011009 drums 04" by Morusque
Attribution (3.0)

with better links set out here.

This all translates to mean that I put samples in my sequencer, and built a new song structure from the sounds above.

In a Creative Commons world, people then can take this song to new places, and yet still build structures sawmills would appreciate.

I wrote the songs about the sawmills of my youth. I never worked in a sawmill, but I
grew up in a sawmill town and my grandfather bought cross-ties for the railroad from little rural sawmills to which he would travel from town to town.

Yet "Sawmill"'s use in video has had a non-sawmill orientation:

In "Eine Film", Abby Brandon uses it for a mini-documentary about graffiti artist Ben Eine:



In "Dome in Peka Peka", video-maker Gaby Lingke presents a documentary about Fritz Eisenhofer, who designed and built an earth dome in Peka Peka, Aotearoa / New Zealand.



In "Ollie", video maker Pritika Nilaratna uses "Sawmill" as the soundtrack for a feature about an ambient robot blimp:

Ollie from Pritika Nilaratna on Vimeo.

As I view each film, none are about the south Arkansas boyhood to which my song originally refers. But each is about building something new. What I love about instrumental music is that it is a canvass for daydreams--one paints one's own.

My song "Library" appears on Classwar Karaoke 13, which has just been released.
Here's the song:



Here are the notes I wrote for the release:

Gurdonark: In a time when information is more available and more important than ever, access to information is being treated as a commodity. Among the potential casualties of this change is the public library. In Library, the music explores the quiet complexities of this common but un-commonplace institution. The music was created with the Sawcutter 2.0 software synthesizer, using simple samples I created. I used two Bolivian flutes, a tarkas and a ponquillo, as well as a pewter cup and a circular kitchen bowl, to create the sound samples used in this song. I believe in self-education, in upward mobility through learning, and in closing the educational gap between rich and poor through libraries and schools. The image is a view of the surrounding mountains from the rooftop of the Salt Lake City, Utah public library.

Here is a link to the whole album: