Shortwaving Taki-san

 "This piece blends snippets of the original recording with minimalist notes and rhythmical accents which were written and produced as playing an homage to the Mr. Rentaro Taki, the composer of "Kojo no Tsuki" a folk-inspired piece that has long served as interval signal for NHK World Radio, the Japanese public broadcasters shortwave services, and shown here. Mr. Taki died long before the introduction of the radio as a broadcasting medium, but his melody has been part of the aural image of Japan for us beyond the archipelago. Designing this piece was done following a complex song form, ABCBA, being the pink noise (a very natural sound for shortwave radio broadcasts) that connecting thread between beginning and end. Worth to mention too that I've tried to keep the fluctuation of the dynamic sound range of the original broadcast taped as much as possible, to retrieve the sense of being in front of the SW radio, finding and following that broadcasting relayed from who-knows-were in the middle of the night (which brings me child nights along with my grandpa doing exactly that on his old- huge Hammarlund HQ One Eighty back in Venezuela, long ago)."

Composition by Miguel Angel Santaella.

Part of the Shortwave Transmissions project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of shortwave radio - find out more and see the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/shortwave