Chris Conway - Dream Ocean Strings

Notes

This album is the string-instruments-only mix of my album Deep Ocean Dreams.

My Deep Ocean Dreams album had 2 foundation layers -
1. “theremin waft" - heremin through harmonizer, delays, reverb, & filters.
2. open stringed instruments - zithers, kanteles, harps, plus electric 9 string guitar.
Over these, the keyboards, and other instruments were added.

I realised that the theremin & strings layers sounded great on their own, and relaxing without the structural elements of the keyboards etc. and decided to release them as companion albums. I doid something similar with my Piano Dreamer album, when ”Piano” (a piano only version), and “Dreamer” (a version with the background music and no piano) were released. So I released Theremin Ocean Dreams on the electronic music label Zorpin at the end of 2023, and here is Dream Ocean Strings.

With the strings, I mostly just play glassandi, but picking out the occasional notes or micro melody. But my aim was to build up ebbing and flowing layers of sound.

I first fell for open stringed instruments when I heard the Breton musician Alan Stivell’s Celtic harp. 2 friends and I, in The Rain Garden group, all wanted to get steel string Celtic harps, but they were too expensive. Then we found zithers, which were much cheaper, and found when close mic’d in the studio sounded similar to the harp. For a while we were playing concerts with our 3 zithers! Along with Carl Peberdy’s sitar, my 9 string guitar and Dave Everitt’s bass, tuning up took a long time - we had more strings than a small orchestra! We recorded a track with 3 zithers called The Reflecting Pools on our Ritual Of The Sky People album in 1999.

I hope you enjoy all 3 versions. Despite their different sounds and vibes, they still, to me, evoke the sound, feeling, and wonder of oceans. - CC 

trivia
The Celtic harp used was a gift from good friend Mo Coulson. She and CC have recorded 3 albumms together.

During the mixing of Moonlight Over The Water, the fade out was suddenly sounding really good. CC stopped the track and found a helicoopter was hovvering over the loft studio. CC put microphones out of the window to record it, and mixed it in the fade out.

all music composed, produced by and ®2024 Chris Conway