Vox Orion

Dave McDonnell Group

↳ “Vox Orion is a good example of my fascination with music that uses triple meter (3/4) and duple meter (4/4) at the same time, a lot like what you hear in African drumming.”

“When I first wrote it, the whole piece was in 4/4 time, but only the guitar part (vibraphone on this recording) looked normal while all of the other parts weren’t lining up with the bar lines. I re-wrote the whole thing in 3/4 so now the guitar part looks weird but everyone else is readable.”

“For me it’s very much like those perspective drawings where depending on how you look at it you may see different images except in this case depending on how you listen you can hear different time feels.”

“I was using more of an Eastern-flavored scale for many of the riffs in the piece, so I thought of a title something like ‘Looking to the East’ or ‘Songs of the East’. Songs turned into ‘Vox’ and then I was looking up different words for East and came up with ‘Orion’.”

Composition by David McDonnell (Invisible Library Music, ASCAP)

• Dave McDonnell: saxophone

• Jason Adasiewicz: vibraphone

• Joshua Abrams: bass

• Quin Kirchner: drums

Recorded live at The Whistler by Alex Inglizian
Mixed by Erik Hall
Mastered by Anthony Gravino
Artwork by Lisa Armstrong

Dave McDonnell is a composer, computer music programmer and jazz saxophonist. A Chicago native, McDonnell currently resides in Cincinnati, where he teaches computer music, recording and arranging at The University of Dayton, and laptop music at The University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.