Spare Change - Michael Hedges (Aerial Boundaries)

[wood nacho]

When I first discovered the music of Michael Hedges, it felt like I had stumbled upon a whole new solar system. A new enviroment with weird, colorful planets, with civilizations both ancient and modern, with things I could have never dreamed of. His music really was (and still is) that different and refreshing.

Michael passed away in 1997. I often try to imagine what sort of wild new landscapes he would be painting today.

Spare Change is a tune from his album 'Aerial Boundaries'. It has always been one of my favorites. In the original recording, the lead melody was recorded by a guitar and then played backwards onto the recording tape. The result is a melody with a lot of interesting lines and swells which would nearly impossible to do justice with a guitar (but seems to works well on violin!). Here is my attempt at recreating this tune with 3 instruments and no studio tricks. Hedges fans will notice that the ending of the tune is completely different that the original. I found a few live recordings of the song (with Liz Story doing the lead melody on piano) in which they had developed a whole new outro/bridge. I copied a lot of what they were doing and also added in a little bit of my own color. Thank you to Daniel Wright for sharing some of these precious live recordings with me. If you are insterested in hearing them, please contact.

The guitar and hammered dulcimer were played by myself and the 5 string electric violin was recorded by my partner Ariana Nasr.

The timelapse was taken from St.Joseph's Oratory in Montreal by Sébastien Petit.

[Glennwillow]

Hi Curtis,

Wow! What a great video! Wonderful playing and wonderful sounds! Fantastic job!

I really enjoyed every second of that!

- Glenn

PS: I commented on your YouTube video and subscribed.

[three4rd]

First of all, kudos to you for even tackling something by Michael. I found myself "cheating" so much in coming up with reasonably playable renditions of stuff like "Rickover's Dream", "Aerial boundaries", etc. that I felt so guilty about it I basically abandoned most of what I had figured out. Just wasn't doing justice to it. As Will Ackerman aptly put it, Hedges was truly the "guitarist from another planet". He was the undisputed master of the new age acoustic genre, along with guys like Alex Di Grassi and Will Ackerman (who probably has influenced my own playing style more than anyone). Interesting arrangement you came up with there!! Enjoyed it.

I saw Michael live in concert once...was totally blown away. Your thoughts on him and his music are very well written. Indeed, what a guy with that creative ability may have come up with is almost unfathomable. He left us way too soon.

Thanks for sharing it...not too many of the old Windham Hill pieces appear here on S&T the way it seems.

[islandguitar]

I was totally engrossed in what you offered here........mesmerizing and beautifully done.
A great effort and compliments to you and your partner's very high level of skill and interpretation of this song!!!

[sportycliff]

That was really cool!

[SprintBob]

Just wonderful, I bet it was a lot of fun and very gratifying to put together.

[JonnyBGood]

That was excellent. Great job you and your colleague, sounded great!

[pickinray]

That sounded fantastic! Thanks for sharing it with us.

[wood nacho]

Originally Posted by SprintBob

Just wonderful, I bet it was a lot of fun and very gratifying to put together.

Thank you! Yes, it was a lot of fun. Also, it was my first recording/mixing project of this size in quite a while. Makes me want to do more of it.