The Mantra Experiments: Sweet Sitar

The Mantra Experiments is a lovely, slow, organic project that I started in the Winter months. It has no deadlines, targets or planned end goal other than for 2 musicians to enjoy an afternoon of experimenting in a laid back and loving recording environment.

When the timing is right, and the right musician comes along, I organise an afternoon of recording at my place Ty Canu, with my life long collaborator Jeff Beer, behind the scenes, kindly engineering. 

We move our recording studio down into the lounge & get in cakes & make a pot of tea ( tea and cakes always make an afternoon feel special)

It is so lovely working one to one with another musician in a completely experimental way.

So far, I have been very lucky to have worked with Susan Berry on Welsh Harp, Tim Shaw on Didgeridoo, Shey Edlington on Handpan and now this month, the lovely Gareth Davies on Sitar.

Gareth and I met at Peace Mala Head Office in Swansea, a few months back, at a meeting for Sound Healers.

It was great to get to know him better over a cuppa and improvise sitar and mantra together.

We recorded 2 wonderful mantra. It stands to reason that the sitar and mantra will sit well together but what was a real stroke of luck, was that my singing bowls sounded absolutely AWESOME with the drone of the sitar.

I love that the sitar has 'sympathetic strings' that resonate and make the drone sound. Then there are 7 main strings to pluck, that just would not sound as beautiful without the sympathetic ones. Lesson for life there, me thinks.

One piece reminds me of being on a boat in the middle of a still ocean and the other feels like sari's dancing on the wind.

Both will be released on my bandcamp page to raise funds for Sound Memories Dementia Friendly Radio Project. 

Here's the Bandcamp link:

www.cherylbeer.bandcamp.com

Here's the Sound Memories Radio link: www.soundmemoriesradio.com

Much love & Gratitude to Gareth ...

Gareth is in a band called Deep Hum

You can catch them playing live ...

at Caffi Iechydda 

in Carmarthen 

on October 8th 2016

Much love & Gratitude to Jeff Beer

Jeff  is the MD of Zero One Guitars 

making bespoke guitars for the discerning musician