Improvisations

This piece conjures up cold, dark images for me. It feels like the emptiness of space. Europa is one of large moons of the planet Jupiter; incredibly cold and covered in ice (the image shows huge canyon-like cracks in the ice on its surface). The process for this improvisation began with one take on the electric mandolin using the Ebow which allows me to sustain notes indefinitely. The Ebow operates magnetically and causes the string to vibrate without being plucked. A wonderful way for us mandolinists to pretend we can bow our strings... I took the recording and doubled it with itself at the lower octave and with itself in reverse (similar to what I did in Mandolin Improvisation 7). Then I added one track of synthesized sound (using Native Instruments Absynth 4). The recurring synthesized sound first appears as the high, sighing sound you hear just after the opening note; all else is sound created on the electric mandolin. Once I relax into listening to this piece, I find it very meditative, though others mi