Robert Owen's Quickstep

Robert Owen's Quickstep (mp3) (pdf)

This tune was mostly written on May 14, the birthday of Robert Owen (1771-1858), who, among other things, is remembered for financing and engineering the creation of the memorable utopian communal experiment at New Harmony, Indiana in the 1820s. I have long been inspired by the history and physical beauty of New Harmony and I hope to visit there again soon.

The tune itself, while quickly written, has been repeatedly revised during the last few weeks. I think it is a little improved over the original but at some point things get a little blurry and it's time to stop.

On a technical note, this is the first tune appearing in this blog that has been recorded using the Izotope Spire Studio device that I recently purchased. It's a fun gizmo and I'm enjoying playing around with it. In this instance I used a nice condenser mic of my own rather than the built in Spire mic and I did some final tweaking using Audacity but, overall, the Spire was very easy to work with.

I hope you enjoy the result.