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01 Es Ist So Einfach Zu Sterben (It is so easy to die) is improvised on Dan Senn’s Shmoos Harp by the artist. The recorded sound file is unprocessed, made in about 1994. The title were the last words spoken by Carl Schurz, an American Statesmen, Civil War General, friend of Lincoln’s and musician born near Köln, Germany. Schurz immigrated to the US in 1848 due to his involvement in the German Revolution (he escaped jail) and eventually lived in Watertown, WI from whence Dan came. His wife, Margarethe, was an experimental educator who set up America’s first kindergarten.
02 Late Takes, was recorded about 1991 at Ball State University, Muncie, IN where Dan was then teaching. The sounds are those of Dan’s Scrapercussion #7 sampled and manipulated using Joel Chadabe’s M software, this, while audience members tossed coins at the actual sound sculpture outfitted with contact mics. Most of the coins miss their mark. The joke was “the piece encouraged patrons to throw money at art and was thus socially relevant.”
03 Big Brown Lyde was recorded using a single Lyde between within a stereo field.
04 Hissy Fit is made from recordings of scraping the inside of the bell of a single Lyde.
05 Ms Schlei was improvised on Dan Senn’s Fayfer Harp in the mid-1990s in Tacoma, WA. Ms Schlei was Dan’s third grade teacher, a nice woman.
06 Gandydancer is the soundtrack for Senn’s experimental video by the same name. The video was made in Tacoma, WA in 1992. The soundtrack was performed in the late 1990s by Dan playing a bass fiddle while using a cyclical bowing technique. All the strings were tuned to E-natural. The voice is that of a retired rail worker from Tacoma telling Senn in an interview of his experience with gandy dancers during the Great Depression.
