the brief
the brief
The current body of 50+ karosongs have largely channeled forward in four major periods or phases. These major periods were years apart, and the 'type' of song channeled changed in each of the first three phases:
phases / songs
An initial first or 1.0 phase that started Christmas Day 1988 and lasted about 18 months.
There were ten all-original or 1.0 karosongs produced in this period (meaning the melody and vocal were taught to gordon on the guitar). Some of these songs were occassionally recorded on a cassette deck using a single microphone for vocal and guitar.
Followed about 18 years later, starting in 2009, by an intermediate spokesong phase, in which gordon recorded the lyrics of the existing 1.0 songs as spoken poems.
The spokesong period lasted several months, and then blended into a second or 2.0 phase and lasted another three to four years.
The eight 2.0 karosongs produced in this period were asynchronous collaborations that married the existing 1.0 lyrics with instrumental tracks by Robert Haig Coxon and Yanni.
And followed again, starting in late 2016 / early 2017, by a third or 3.0 phase. The karosongs produced in this period were (mostly) entirely new 3.0 asynchronous collaborations with artists that included more Yanni, several tracks by Jesse Cook, as well as tracks by Kitaro, Govi and Candy Dulfur/David Stewart.
The songs in this phase came in three groups or sets of 7 - 8 songs that are classified as 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3.
Each of these sets has taken upwards of 2 years to complete, and they have slightly overlapped each other. Each set has come in its own way, with its own singing lessons.
The current or fourth phase began in November 2021 when eight songs all started (more or less) at the same time. That coincided (more or less) with gordon learning he had a cardiac condition that reduced his heart's ability to supply oxygenated blood to his body. Despite that setback, that first or 4.1 set of eight songs completed in about 16 months, with a new set already forming at the time of writing.
singing lessons
Across the years, the songs have slowly taught gordon to sing, and trained/reshaped his vocal mechanisms to be more open and smoother. These singing lessons started in the first phase, accelerated in the second phase, and accelerated again in the third and fourth phases.
Apart from the singing itself, the lessons in the third and fourth phases have been directed towards achieving what gordon came to call the whole/full/on karo — the point when:
- his voice can fully convey the songs (the whole karo)
- his psyche has become transparent to the song energies channeling through him (the full karo)
- and the performer has emerged to pull the other two together (the full-on karo)
Manifestly, those are not fully separate things, and each flows into and out of the other during the act of singing. There is only one vox.
Still, the process of the whole/full/on karo coming into physical expression happened across three song sets, reaching successive plateaus towards the end of the 3.2 and then the 3.3 set. Those two sets were dominated by bringing forward the whole karo, and then the full karo. In the 4.1 set, the focus shifted to bringing out the performer, the full-on karo.
(See on singing for more on the process of learning to sing across all these years.)
numbering / classification
Gordon is, charitably, a bit OCD, and likes to keep his marbles lined up in neat little rows. So karosongs are numbered by the order they came in, and classified by their phase / type (usually the same) and sub phase or type where useful. In those few instances where phase and type are not the same, the song is classified by type. Variations from standard are explained on their songsheets.
but first . . .
Among his other finer qualities, gordon is, also charitably, more than a few standard deviations to the right of normal on the introspection spectrum. His condition is technically diagnosed as living on another planet. Some of the time. Ok, most of the time.
And he tends to ruminate (such a wonderful word) on his inner experiences to the point they fully breakdown and contribute to global heating.
And never forget . . .
(You did forget, didn't you.)
OCD!
phases 1.0 / 2.0
the first phase
The guitar chords, melody and lyrics for ten complete songs channeled during this initial period, which started with a bang on Christmas Day 1988, when the first two songs (Transformation and Proposal) snuck up and smacked gordon over the head. As well, there were several stubs that seemed to be the beginnings of other songs, but had generally gone no further than a few lines of lyrics.
Complete or incomplete, the karo energies pushed the songs into this existence through gordon's untrained voice and (badly-played) guitar, each song literally teaching him how to play it, how to sing it.
The songs weren't fancy musically, the chord progressions were simple but they pulsed with energy. And emotions. Gordon's. Every song was an exhausting rollercoaster of triggered emotions and realizations.
The songs were sporadically (and rather haphazardly despite gordon's OCD) home-recorded on cassette tapes using a single microphone to capture voice and guitar.
arc01 / incomplete bit of Bluebirds 1.0 — circa Christmas 1989
During this period, the 5th karosong Away is no longer there (a cry for the protection of wildlife habitat) was arranged and recorded professionally, and used in an educational television program on that subject.
But then the energies pushing the songs forward withdrew, the songs stopped coming, and a devastating breakdown left gordon in a long fallow recovery.
A few years later, Bluebirds (karosong #7, the first in a series of karosongs exploring karma) and Better run boy (karosong #8, the very first funi-flavour karosong) were arranged and recorded by a musician friend, using gordon's marginally-improved but still untrained voice.
(At the time, another musician friend told gordon, "there's nothing wrong with your songs that 10 years of music instruction wouldn't fix". Gordon decided to take that as encouragement.)
arc03 / studio version Bluebirds 1.0 recorded Easter weekend 1994
. . . a (not-so) brief interlude . . .
About three years later, after further major life changes for gordon — including separation from his first wife Leanne and meeting his eventual second wife Ellen — an 11th song started to channel.
Like Transformation, the new song started coming forward as lyrics only. But unlike that first karosong, It was a gift came entirely (well, at least to the degree that gordon's singing voice permitted) acapella . . . without guitar or any musical accompaniment. It was a joyous love song for Ellen that, ironically, seemed based on the melody of a raunchy old rugby song.
Because it came so far outside the main 1.0 period and had no guitar, gordon came to classify it as a 1.1 karosong. (Remember, OCD.)
During the same period, gordon began to channel what became the comic spiritual-adventure novel, tHe PoEt & i. He was surprised to find that the song Transformation not only featured in it, but its verses provided the novel's main structure.
(Eh? Oh right, good question . . . "tHe PoEt" is what gordon called the 1982 GoldWing motorcycle he rode coast to Canadian coast in the summer of '93 after separating from Leanne. It's an acronym for the piss on everything toy, which may reflect his attitude to life at that time.
That's the GoldWing on the cover of the book by the way. It talks. In the book I mean. Not in real life — that would be crazy.)
But I digress.
While Transformation provided the novel's structure, the cross-country ride provided the novel's 'road map'. The central character of a pontificating Goldwing might have resulted from gordon riding several thousand miles alone. Same for the bike's nemesis — a shape-shifting seagull sometimes presenting as a doddering old chicken tycoon, sometimes a preening cockroach [ cricket! ].
But I digress.
. . . another (not-so) brief interlude . . .
More years passed again. Then more. Towards the end of 2009 — with the energies long gone, the chords and melodies for the songs just vague memories, and the novel completed but unpublished — gordon decided to return to an earlier passion and record the lyrics of the songs as spoken poems, what he called spokesong. It was the only way he could see to make any use of them.
spokesong
It was a project that harked back to gordon's earlier years as a young poet doing public readings, strengthened by the narrative voicing skills gordon had developed during his time as an educational television writer. It was possible thanks to Linux and the open source audio production software Audacity and Ardour.
Over the next several months, gordon recorded spokesong versions for 10 of the then 11 karosongs (one of the original songs had gone AWOL and didn't reappear until the third phase). While the spokesong period was short compared to the major phases, it had a profound influence on the karosongs style, and many songs still use spokesong for all or part of their lyrics.
arc / a bit of raw spokesong for Transformation 1.0, recorded late 2009.
Then a slow 'serendipity' slid the songs into a new stage.
the second phase
One evening, alone in his living room listening to music, a song from one of his wife's yoga CDs came on. It was from the album The Silent Path by Robert Haig Coxon. Suddenly gordon was 'hearing' the spokesong chorus from Transformation over the music from that track. They seemed to fit together like a hand and glove.
He promptly forgot the experience. It had to happen at least twice more over a couple of months before gordon finally figured out there was a message there.
So gordon tried it on the computer, dropping parts of several tracks from The Silent Path (including the full length of the track Towards the Light) against the recorded spokesong version of Transformation.
That created a new karosong, a 2.0 version of the original 1.0 song.
arc / an early version of Transformation 2.0, recorded mid-April 2010.
Just that new version was amazing but 'serendipity' had only just got slithering.
Suddenly an entirely new song — Awakening — channeled forward. It was musically based on Towards the Light but lyrically it was both an echo and an overview of Transformation itself. In fact it overlaid the last three parts of that first 2.0 karosong, creating almost a call-and-response between the two songs; look for the combined version in the song vault.
arc01 / early version Awakening 3.0, — late December 2010 [8]
(In retrospect, even though it came at the start of the 2.0 period, Awakening was actually the first 3.0 type karosong — an entirely new asynchronous collaboration.) (Remember, OCD!)
a new collaborator
During this period, gordon was also auditioning music from other artists against the spokesong versions of the other songs. By another 'serendipity', there was a Yanni CD in the house (it's provenance unknown; it likely came from the library).
If Transformation and Towards the Light were like a hand and glove, karosongs and Yanni were body and soul. Starting with Highland for It was a gift, seven of Yanni's songs matched up with gordon's work to create 2.0 version songs.
(Not all 1.0 songs got 2.0 versions. The two funi-flavour songs Better run boy and The nightmare run remained as is.)
The process of identifying a new asynchronous track for those seven songs, and then fitting the existing lyrics into their new musical homes took better than three years.
But — to be clear — there was no 'fitting' the lyrics into their selected asynchronous track. They came prefitted, Because he already had the lyrics, gordon just had to let each song teach him exactly how to sing it. By recording the song over and over in his home studio. Over and over. Until every vocal nuance was mastered.
Mastered well enough for an idiot musant at least.
a near perfect fit. . .
The 1.0 lyrics for four of the eight songs stayed the same in their 2.0 versions. And the original lyrics fit damn near perfectly into their new asynchronous music beds once gordon had been taught to sing them correctly
arc01 / early version of Bluebirds 2.0, recorded late April 2011. [7]
Gordon came to call these works asynchronous collaborations because of that exquisite fit between the original 1.0 lyrics and their new instrumental beds, recordings created entirely separately, years and large distances apart.
Yet, like yin and yang, each half of the new song flowed into and out of the other. The new songs had a unity that transcended the original lyrics and music.
At least, that's gordon's idiot musant opinion. Have a listen to any of the 2.0 songs and you be the judge.
. . .but changing
But not all songs remained the same in their 2.0 versions. A few changed dramatically. Finding the voice (the first karosong about singing and music) needed extra refrains and choruses, and a more aggressive singing style, while Just could never feel added a layer of lyrics around my relationship with the karo energies. And Away is no longer there was basically rewritten from after the opening lines (while maintaining the structure and style of the original).
These three songs are classified as 2.3 to reflect their hybrid creation.
arc01 / first "release' Away is no longer there 2.3 with November Sky by Yanni, circa 2012. [6]
The first 2.0 versions were painfully slow channeling. Where the 1.0 versions of the first 10 songs channeled forward in about 18 months, It was a gift alone took several months to fully integrate with Yanni's Highland. Away is no longer there took well more than a year. But either gordon got better or the songs started to complete much faster. The price, a tale from the headlines of that era's 'mens' movement, and the last of the 1.0 songs to be re-versioned, came in little more than a month.
. . . and still another (not-so) brief interlude . . .
3.0 / 3.1
the third phase
Unlike the first two phases, the third did not have a dramatic or even a specific start. Rather, there was a 2-3 year transitional period after all the 2.0 versions had finished coming forward before the first third phase set started.
a transitional time
Outwardly, apart from Gordon retiring, little seemed to happen during this period. Gordon began to work on a kind of duet during this period, singing with his younger self on the three studio recordings from the first phase — Away is no longer there, Better run boy and Bluebirds. (These then-and-now duets are classified as 1.6 versions, and can be found in their respective vaults.)
The energies also continued working on gordon's singing. A couple of all-original acapella songs — City on the hill 1.3 and Come forward 1.3 — started (but did not complete).
However, inwardly there were key changes happening, all pushing towards a new phase of the channeling, which gordon could sense, hoped for, but wasn't certain of happening.
a return to the guitar
In all the years of actively channeling the 2.0 versions in his home studio, gordon never played guitar, made no attempt to resurrect the 1.0 versions of the other seven first phase karosongs.
In fact, apart from the three studio recordings noted, the 1.0 songs were largely gone from gordon, their melodies lost to memory. Gordon was left with just the lyrics for those other songs with — only sometimes — the guitar chords above the lyrics.
That changed in April 2016 when (long story not told here) a new acoustic guitar was placed in gordon's life and he took it up again. Which changed gordon's daily practice, splitting it between singing asynchronous collaborations on the digital work station, and relearning what he could of the all-original karosongs on guitar.
One of the songs he was able to resurrect (more-or-less) was karosong #10 The nightmare run, which was the second funi-flavour karosong and like Better run boy did not get an asynchronous version.
arc02 / resurrected The nightmare run 1.0 from Oct/Nov 2016. While gordon's singing has improved, his guitar playing still sucks big time. [6]
the lazurus song
Prior to and during this period, gordon attended a number of concerts by Yanni and by Jesse Cook. While in their audiences, he direct channeled entirely new songs, 'hearing' the karosong lyrics nearly complete as their asynchronous partners were played on stage. But gordon forgot the lyrics, even that he had channeled songs at all (except for one Jesse Cook tune; see the songsheet for I remember it all 3.1).
It was one of these 'concert' songs — with a 30 year-old twist — that finally got the third phase rolling.
Sometime in later 2016, gordon's wife Ellen was showing him how her latest interest Spotify worked. Gordon suggested to try a search on Yanni and instantly 'recognized' the very first song that came up, One Man's Dream, but didn't know why.
Long story short, gordon found he had channeled a new asynchronous collaboration with One Man's Dream at a Yanni concert, and then that the lyrics he had 'heard' at the concert had actually been channeled almost 30 years before.
It was Teddy bear, the 1.0 song that had gone AWOL during the second phase. Not only was the song almost entirely gone from conscious memory, gordon only remembered it as incomplete, one of several stubs from that period, short bits of lyrics and/or melody that had never gone anywhere.
However after going back to old files, gordon discovered the song was actually complete back then. The lyrics were there — a sorrowful yet hopeful contemplation on friendship and the struggle for personal growth.
is it any wonder then
all those years we tried to be friends?
and yet when it came right down
all i ever played was the clown
it was all i knew
And bonus! There were guitar chords too! (But even so, gordon still had no memory of the melody. It remains forgotten.)
After dropping the last verse from the original five (which gordon thought actually improved the song), the lyrics as usual fit into One Man's Dream near perfectly. The challenge was in good enough mastering a vocal for a far more skilled voice. But even that happened within a few months.
arc01 / an early Teddy bear 2.3 'release' recorded mid-2019, before the title changed to For the record.
It was working on this new? old? asynchronous collaboration (gordon decided to classify it as another 2.3 karosong to reflect its creation) that led to a last key change.
youtube
Rather than work with his recording software, gordon started channeling the new song by singing to the asynchronous track as it played back from youtube. No microphone. No headphones. No recording. (Yeah, yeah, still over and over, over and over, that part's just like the old part.)
It was an easy way to work with a song, and the freedom to move as he sang let the energies work on heretofore untouched parts of gordon's vocal expression.
(Even more importantly — it turned out — it meant that with his playlists of existing and potential tracks for asynchronous collaborations on youtube, gordon was able to channel songs pretty much anywhere he happened to be as long as it had periodic privacy and an Internet connection. Which was good as — it further turned out — gordon happened to be in quite a few places over the next few years as he and Ellen separated after 24 years together.)
Even before Teddy bear was finished, it was followed by an actual 1.0 stub.
when i look into the future
and i see what will come to pass
and when i look into the past
and see what i've survived through
then i have to ask is there meaning?
is there meaning?
and who decides that?
and why?
Back then, the stub was just a set of lyrics, three verses, with no sense of melody. More of a poem really. Now they became the lyrics for the 24th karosong, Then i have to ask, a 3.1 asynchronous collaboration with Yanni's I Have to Tell You. It was the second youtube karosong, a philosophical discussion on the nature and meaning of "meaning".
Which sounds far less odd post-The Good Place than it otherwise might have.
By this time, gordon had simply stopped his daily recording practise, just working with songs via guitar and youtube. And the third channeling phase was ready to kick into overdrive with what turned out to be it's first subset.
the 3.1 set
Between about April and September 2017, while his marital separation flipped gordon's personal life upside down, four new asynchronous collaborations started coming forward.
Two came out of the ending of his marriage (The rain must fall and For my new lover ). The other two, Along the old Silk Road and Got to get back , carried on the eco/political themes that had emerged in Away is no longer there 2.3.
Another four songs started during summer 2018, the period when gordon was looking for a property to buy. There were two 'romantic' songs (I remember it all and In the morning light ) and the first 'funny' song since the first phase Nothing says, with fast-paced almost surreal word-play.
arc01 / an early version of In the morning light 3.1, an eponymous collaboration with Yanni — June 2019
(The fourth song, Let me sing lord was not an asynchronous collaboration, but was based on the traditional hymn Kum bah yah.)
What made them a set was that all eight channeled during the period gordon was not doing any recording because his recording gear was packed up and in storage. All except one were entirely new.
The exception was the chorus for Got to get back which came from another first phase stub.
new collaborators
And these were not just new songs. They came with two new 'collaborators'. While Yanni still dominated with asynchronous tracks for four of the new songs (including the 13th with his music), Jesse Cook provided tracks for another two and Kitaro a track for the seventh.
(At least one of those Jesse Cook tunes by the way was one that gordon had channeled at a Jesse concert in the period before the third phase got rolling.)
Nothing says 3.1 with Ocean Blue by Jesse Cook. arc03 / updated to whole/full karo vox mid November 2021. [7+]
It was an exciting time for gordon, despite the marital ending. These were the first entirely new songs that he had worked with since Awakening at the start of the second phase, and the two acapella songs that had started since but never completed.
Exciting too because these new songs were more sophisticated in their lyrics and more demanding in their singing. And the new collaborators brought new sounds and singing lessons.
a change in scenery
It was also an exciting time because gordon had decided that, coming out of his marriage, he would look for a cottage country lakefront property to use as a home base, but travel in the Canadian winter. Starting in late 2017, while gordon looked for and bought a property, he spent time with family and friends and the first of three winters in Australia with his younger daughter (the last ended because gordon had to return to Canada at the start of the Covid 19 pandemic lockdowns).
The opportunity to sing (and therefore to channel) was generally reduced in these periods so progress on the unfinished 3.1 songs slowed, particularly Along the old Silk Road, a bitter condemnation of our current environmental folly from its future survivors. The song started but made no progress for a year, then didn't finish until after gordon had resumed recording another year later.
songs in many flavours
With the growing number of karosongs, gordon began to see similar themes and concerns coming out in different songs, which he came to call "flavours" of karo.
By number of songs, the most common flavour so far is eco/poli-karo (an angry but trenchant critic of the economic and political systems sacrificing stable societies and a stable climate for next quarter's profits).
However, by number of appearances in songs, the most common flavour is funi-karo, with frequent wordplay and sometimes caustic irreverence that often turns up in the middle of otherwise not-funny songs. A bit of a character you might say. (Hmmm . . . where have I heard that description before?)
Other flavours are, for instance, the romantic rom-karo and the introspective sas-karo (short for self awareness shit, these are songs that come out of the self-awareness / meditation practice gordon learned in Australia and supervised in Canada (see on channeling).
Checkout the flavours tour playlist if you're interested in exploring this aspect of the karosongs story.
3.2 / 3.3
the 3.2 set
The 3.2 subset started in spring 2019 when gordon returned from Australia and took up residence in his new lakefront home.
For the first time in most of two years, he was able to set up his home studio and start recording the completed and uncompleted 3.1 songs.
As well, four new asynchronous collaborations started in the first months back, two with Yanni and another two with Jesse Cook. Their async partner tracks were all found and identified on youtube, and they shared a great many features, including still stronger, still more sophisticated lyrics.
Three of them were funi-flavour songs (Damn straight i'm a liar, Shake'n bake and Brick walls , the strangest of all).
The songs came through with the usual mix of sas (you should know what that means by now), singing lessons, and emotional lock-ins. One song in particular scared the bejeebers out of gordon (he's still looking for them, so send an email if you happen to come come across a gaggle of errant bejeebers).
As darkness falls, featuring the equally haunting Once by Jesse Cook is a song around the loss of the 'person' in dementia and the moral quandary/duty that poses for partners. When dementia became the clear topic of the song, gordon at first 'understood' the song was about the darkness of dementia falling on him. Soon.
(That's when the bejeebers took their vacation.)
The song wasn't about gordon but the energies had used his triggered dementia fears to lock it in emotionally, so that gordon could bring it through. It is a very powerful song in its structure, its lyrics and its impact. In gordon's view, in so many respects, the finest single karosong to date.
Should you take his word for that? Well, maybe. He is an award-winning writer after all, and his marbles are still mostly accounted for. (And still mostly lined up in neat little rows.)
Or have a listen and judge for yourself.
As darkness falls 3.2 arc10 / recorded early November 2021. [8].
As darkness falls seemed just short of finished before gordon closed the house down and went to Australia for winter 2019/20. The other three new songs were structurally complete but each had entire sections of lyrics missing. Gordon could sense what the lyrics might be but they would not clarify.
Across that summer and fall, as well as working on the existing songs, gordon would regularly review his youtube 'maybes' playlist. These were songs that he had felt some kind of connection with, that might indicate a potential async track. He had found four 'for sure' async tracks, two more with Jesse Cook, a second with Kitaro, and a first with Govi.
Three of these songs had even 'named' themselves before he left for the winter, but they also would not clarify.
a winter 2020 interlude
3.2 redux
The songs didn't came back with a bang. It was an alarm clock. In an old French hotel in historic downtown Bangkok. March 11, 2020. Gordon was there to join a two-week small group adventure tour through Thailand and Laos.
Well maybe the alarm clock wasn't real. Gordon seldom needs one to wake up. Everything else was real. Gordon was awake, having coffee in bed and using the hotel Internet to have another listen to those four maybes. Playing Jesse Cook's Azul — a song that had remained entirely nebulous for the 30th? 40th? 50th? time — gordon was suddenly bombed by energy and 'got' the title and subject for the 39th karosong:
Ah humanity — a "letter from mother earth" to humans. Not a good letter. You might say mom's ah ... a bit ... ah disappointed in us.
the Laos Chaos
Eight days later, the world was shutting down for covid 19. Gordon's small group tour was floating down the Mekong River in Laos when their guide informed them the tour company was abandoning the group that night.
It was one of those good news/bad news stories —"Good news, there's an international airport where we're dumping you on your own tonight". Within four days — after multiple flights across tightening restrictions as the pandemic shut the world down — gordon was sitting stunned in his Canadian living room looking out across the ice and snow of a frozen lake, something he had not expected nor planned to see.
(Sure to be a funi-flavour song one day — bound to be lots of word play in a ditty about . . . oh, i guess it depends on how you pronounce the country . . . is it the Laos chaos? or the Lao chao?)
However, now that gordon was back in his home studio, the four not-completed songs from the year before came roaring back, and their missing lyrics finally began to fill in.
As well, three of the now four named-but-unstarted songs started barreling in: Never-ending sunset with Azul by Jesse Cook (a song about karma partners); I remember that smile with Jacaranda by Govi (a joyful and pretty rom-flavour song); and the song that named itself in Bangkok. Ah humanity with Azul by Jesse Cook.
(The fourth named-but-unstarted song would not begin active channeling for more than another year.)
I remember that smile 3.1 with Jacaranda by Govi
arc01 / still channeling version — recorded July 2020, the early period of the whole/full/on karo emerging.
With seven songs coming, the first months back that spring were as intense as at any time before.
But there was a difference. As the songs started filling in, the singing lessons of all those years began to reach a new plateau, perhaps the final.
What gordon came to call the whole/full karo started emerging.
Which is neither redundant nor as ominous as it may sound. (And took quite a bit longer than it first seemed it might and ultimately included a third aspect, but more on that later.)
the whole/full karo
Across the years, the songs had gradually reshaped and opened up gordon's singing voice. At the start of the first phase he was singing from the back and top of his mouth. Over the years, the songs had opened up his vocal tract, gradually shifting the source of his singing lower down into the throat, then beginning to shift it down into his lungs and diaphragm (yeah, like a real singer). (See on singing for more on this process.)
The changes had usually been subtle, often almost imperceptible. By early summer 2020, that restraint had fallen away. Now the song energies were insistent, pushing gordon's voice towards his throat and diaphragm, widening it, smoothing it, using more and more of his whole vocal apparatus.
The whole karo.
As that happened, gordon could feel the song energies flowing more and more unimpeded through his conscious awareness and into his voice. The end goal he saw was the complete transparency of his conscious psyche to the songs flowing through him.
The full karo.
The two aspects are not unrelated of course. They flow into and out of each other, and each is a precondition for the other. They can each only exist in relationship with the other.
Hence, the whole/full karo.
For gordon it was an exciting period. Singing in the emerging whole/full karo voice was easier and more fluid, and the new songs further opened up his voice. It was akin to going through puberty again. Every song every day was different and his voice was constantly shifting, finding tones and delivery nuances he'd never managed before. It would even shift in the middle of a song, sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad ways. Getting a complete and consistent take on a song became difficult.
a matter of sets
To this point, gordon hadn't fully recognized that the songs were now coming in groups or sets of 7-8 songs, and that he was now working on the 3.2 set. The trigger to the realization was how the seven songs he was working on all began to finish at the same time, even though the first four had started a year before the other three. That was, gordon realized, because more of the whole/full karo had to be in place before he could sing those songs the way they needed to be delivered.
The whole/full karo continued emerging across that summer and into the fall. Gordon's voice became more consistent day-to-day and he started sharing the new songs with a few friends. For the first time, he felt no need to plead that people 'hear the song, not the singer'. Gordon also started reworking the karosongs.com website, the materials you're reading now, to bring it up-to-date with all the new songs and changes since the second phase.
At the same time, gordon was regularly reviewing his youtube 'maybes' list and could feel several new songs in the offing. But they stayed just that, in the offing, like they were waiting for the 3.2 set to complete.
However, by the time he closed up his house for winter 2020/21, gordon knew a new set was coming.
the 3.3 set
Because of Covid-19, gordon was not able to go to Australia for winter 2020/21. Instead, he spent the winter in southern Ontario, pandemic locked-down with friends in an old fishing port on Lake Erie, and working on this archive.
By Christmas, the new set had six 'for sure' songs but channeling by singing out loud wasn't practical. So gordon tried channeling sub‑vocally while listening to the async tracks on headphones.
Amazingly it worked. Lyrics and even the delivery for four of the new songs started coming right away. Each song was similar but different again from everything that had gone before, and pushed gordon's voice in new directions:
- You can say I said partnered with the brilliant multi-instrumental call-and-response of Lily Was Here by Candy Dulfur and David A Stewart to create a new karosong genre;
- then Since you went away with Jesse Cook's solo guitar on Cancion Triste added to that new genre but in a quite different style;
- a new dimension was added to the karma partners track by No plan 'B's featuring Govi's Tears of Joy;
- and Jesse Cook's driving To the Horizon made a biting 'taking it to the streets' protest anthem with the eco/poli-flavoured Turtle McTurdle.
Being subvocal seemed to make no difference to the channeling. If anything, not singing out loud made it easier in the sense that gordon could better 'hear' how the delivery of the lyrics tracked with the lead instrument in the new songs.
a return to recording
By the beginning of April 2021, when gordon returned to his lakeside property and resumed recording, most of the lyrics for those four songs had come forward but gordon had still not sang them out loud. He was uncertain how that would go. Would the delivery he'd learned sub-vocally even work? Would the whole/full karo still be there? Would it continue emerging and where/how far would it go?
No worries eh?Shouldn't have worried. The deliveries all worked. The whole/full karo was still there and continued to emerge, picking up where it had left off the previous November. In fact, there was more change in gordon's singing over the next several months than there had been at any comparable time before.
But it was still six-million-dollar-man change, happening at break-neck but slow-motion speed. The new songs and their singing lessons zeroed in on gordon's throat and larynx, pulling out notes and tones he'd never managed, or even imagined. His larynx particularly was terra incognito, an instrument he'd never really known how to use consciously, but now a tool under his growing control.
Singing the new songs became easier, as though the songs and gordon's vocal capabilities were coming together, the song matched to his singing, his singing matched to the song. A special favourite to sing — what gordon calls a 'signature' song for the set — was No plan 'B's, the third song in the karma partners track,.
No plan 'B's 3.3 with Tears of Joy by Govi
arc01 / first 'release' version — recorded mid September 2021, the later period of the whole/full karo emerging.
re-learning the existing songs
There's a well-established phenomena in education called state-specific learning. It means that something learned in a specific mental state is best or only recalled in that same mental state. By definition, gordon learns the songs in a specific mental state, what he calls the channeling space. As the whole/full karo continued emerging, gordon felt pushed to go back to all the existing songs and bring them into his new! improved! vox. Doing so, he found it was not just state-specific learning, but stage-specific.
In general, the older the song, the harder it was to relearn and remaster. So the 3.2 and 3.1 songs were pretty easy to update. In several cases, gordon 'discovered' small changes in their lyrics and/or delivery — refinements that improved their flow and feel, or resolved bits he'd always felt were not quite right but couldn't sing any better at the time.
The 2.0 songs were more difficult. In a sense, they felt estranged from gordon's new voice, and their old deliveries would not go gentle into that good night. Proposal 2.0 and The price 2.0 in particular would not relearn, even after months of trying.
The major exception to this was Awakening 3.0, which originally came at the start of the second phase. It had been a frustratingly difficult song to channel and a bear to sing.* So gordon had not sung it for several years, and expected relearning it would be a challenge.
No worries eh? The song simply shifted into the whole/full vox within a few sessions, fitting into gordon's improved vocals as though it had always been delivered that way. A challenge to sing became a joy.
Awakening 3.0 with Towards the light by RH Coxon
arc04 / re-mastered in whole/full/on vox — late Sept 2021 [7]
the set expands
By that September, all the new songs but Turtle McTurdle had finished and been mastered. Gordon started reviewing his youtube 'maybes' list again, and the other two 'for sure' songs from the previous December finally started coming forward.
The first was karosong #45, We were brothers (with Virtue by Jesse Cook). Gordon is the 5th of seven boys in his birth family, and the song was spurred by the approaching death of his next oldest brother from a degenerative disease. It would leave him the oldest of the surviving siblings.
The second, The phoenix must burn (with Oasis by Kitaro), was a song that had named and numbered itself about a year-and-a-half before, but otherwise not moved forward. It turned out to be the 4th song in the karma partners track (but unlike the first three, this one was narrated from the point of view of the deeper beings behind their physical incarnations).
a tipping point
In early-November — with just six songs in the 3.3 set to that point — gordon went back to his 'maybes' list on youtube, where there were several tracks niggling at his spidey song sense. He thought one or two of them might now start channeling and thereby complete a 7-8 song set.
But there were more than one or two songs itching to start. There were now at least ten songs pushing forward, and gordon 'saw' that he could choose any single one of them and the karosong would start channeling. Further, the musical styles for the potential async tracks were diverse, and gordon could feel that 'karo' was especially eager to work with some of the more musically challenging tracks. Karo seemed to think they'd be fun to channel. **
It was a mind-boggling realization. It suggested that gordon's relationship to the songs had changed, that he was no longer a passive channel for the song energies but their active partner (though the implications of that were not then clear).
And with that gordon understood that the 3.3 set was actually complete at just six songs. The new songs to come would be in a new set again, which he first thought would be the 3.4 set.
Wrong. It was not just a new set. It was a new channeling phase entirely.
The fourth.
* Looking back, gordon's difficulty with Awakening was that it was the first original asynchronous collaboration, and gordon had no understanding of the singing style that would emerge, and how it would track the lead instrument. He was just feeling his way towards this style throughout the 2.0 phase.
**Caveat. Remember, 'karo' is a label and not a name for the song energies. Those energies source from much deeper levels of the universe and have little to no personality in the human sense. This was one of the very few times the energies expressed to gordon as anything other than impersonal, imperturbable and implacable.
4.1
the 4.1 set . . .
Turtle McTurdle was finished and practically mastered by the time gordon shut his house down in mid-November and left for the winter of 2021/22. The lyrics for The phoenix must burn felt nearly complete, but the last third of the lyrics for We were brothers was still channeling.
And by then, eight of those ready-to-go-when-you-are maybe songs had either named themselves or made it clear they were coming. Which made ten songs on the go, the most ever channeling at the same time. (So many it led gordon to create a "now channeling" playlist on youtube separate from his "channeled" playlist.)
But the covid pandemic was still ongoing, and international travel to see his daughters was still problematic. So gordon returned to the old fishing village on Lake Erie where he'd spent the previous winter with friends, planning to resume the sub-vocal channeling.
Ah, the best laid plans.
death comes a'knocking
That stranger on the bus introduced itself formally the day he arrived back on Lake Erie. It would be — the stranger brusquely informed gordon — his boon companion for the rest of his life.
A heart condition. A literally broken heart, with a much-reduced pumping capacity. His heart, he learned, couldn't pump enough blood to support physical exertion. Even walking would cause him to feel slightly out of breath.
It was an anxious winter for gordon. Apart from the significant impacts of his heart condition on daily life, gordon found himself getting winded even just singing sub-vocally. He feared he might have lost the breathe to be able to sing out loud at all.
The songs did continue to channel sub-vocally — generally as quickly and effectively as the previous winter (though it was a challenge to channel that many songs at the same time). But it was unclear that gordon would ever be able to vocalize — nevermind adequately demo — any of the new songs.
Was this strange experience over? Had the songs been excised from gordon's life by his heart? Unable to sing out loud, he would not know the effect of his condition until after he had returned to his home studio in the spring.
not just a new set
The eight new songs were similar but different again from everything that had gone before. There were another two asynchronous collaborations with Yanni (taking his async count to 16), another Kitaro (the third with his music), and a third with Govi.
But the star of the set was Jesse Cook — four new songs bumped his async total to 14, just two short of Yanni's. Three of those were funi-flavour songs, the most playful, even experimental, to date.
Oh, and two of the songs in the set were eponymous with their async track, the third and fourth times that had happened.
In gordon's mind, the fact the eight songs all started at the same time made them a new set. But it was the timing that made them a new phase. Whatever the specific effect of gordon's cardiac condition on his singing might turn out to be, that effect would be a marker in his recordings, a definable change the way some sedimentary layers define geological eras.
By the beginning of April, when gordon returned to his home studio on Sunday Lake, We were brothers 3.3 and two of the new 4.1 songs were lyrically complete although they had not yet been sung out loud. Lyrics for the other new songs in the set were from half-ish to three quarter-ish complete.
Returning to singing out loud after five months and a cardiac event was pretty much as to be expected. Gordon's singing voice was barely there at first. It was tentative, weak, and without the whole/full karo personality that had been coming forward just prior to the winter. And it kept dropping back into sub-vocal mode, especially if gordon wandered in his thoughts as he sang.
It was almost as though gordon had forgotten how to sing.
So he didn't bother actually recording for the first few weeks of April, just sang the new and the old songs out loud, working to find his voice and get a sense of how it might have changed.
lingering effects
There was an effect on his breathing as he sang, and gordon sometimes felt winded where he would not have before. But not insurmountable. Not nearly what he had feared. In fact, it seemed his voice had changed in some positive ways: some of his deeper bass tones seemed reduced, and there was a new sense of openness and vibration in his larynx.
But gordon couldn't tell for sure what he sounded like. A several-weeks-long infection in his right ear had left it near deaf. A bit of muffled bass was the only sound got through that ear, and the unbalanced result was too muddy for gordon to process and evaluate. His take notes in that period often simply said "not sure what I actually sound like".
The hearing in gordon's right ear only began to normalize well into May. That sense of openness and vibration in his larynx became stronger, and gordon's voice — flowing out through the center of his larynx — seemed to have opened wider. Some of the whole/full karo personality began coming back. Gordon's singing stance and relationship to the microphone began shifting, becoming more confident, more purposeful. Gordon could feel there had been a change in his singing but couldn't pinpoint what that change was or where it was heading.
taking the plunge
By mid June, gordon had worked up 'releases' for We were brothers 3.3 and the first two 4.1 songs. These were the first recordings of any kind released since before his cardiac condition had introduced itself the previous December:
We were brothers 3.3 with Virtue by Jesse Cook
A touching meditation on family, growing up and dying out. arc01 / the first 'release' version from mid June 2022, still exhibiting the lingering effects of gordon's post cardiac condition. [7]
Your lingering touch 4.1 — an eponymous collaboration with Govi
A lament for a long-lost lover, and plea for the time needed to fully heal before moving on. arc01 / frst 'release' from tracks recorded mid May 2022. You can hear how much gordon's singing is affected by his cardiac condition at this time. [7+]
To take to hold 4.1 — an eponymous collaboration with Yanni
Marriage vows for secular realists, stripped of religious references and Hallmark sentimentality in a duet suitable for any gender configuration. arc01 / cardiac affected first release from tracks recorded mid May 2022. [7+]
Gordon didn't think these recordings were particularly good — they weren't, and would not normally have qualified for a 'release'. But they were lyrically complete and — given his cardiac condition — gordon felt he had to get the songs out of his head and into this archive. Describing these recordings to a couple of friends he shared new songs with, gordon said they were not as well sung as before the previous winter but much better than he had feared.
opening to the flow
Having got past the fear of not being able to sing out loud anymore, that sense of openness and vibration in gordon's larynx suddenly grew stronger again. Wider. Smoother. More than that, the source of gordon's singing shifted down again, below the larynx, and the whole column of gordon's vocal apparatus seemed to relax into a single flow. Even more, there was an increasing sense that, while singing, gordon's "i" consciousness was becoming just a balloon-like shell filled with flowing song energies.
That process went on over the next several weeks, through July and into August. Gordon wasn't certain what it was. Perhaps a continuation of the whole/full karo vox coming forward as it had been the previous two years. Or perhaps a new third stage, some other aspect of singing coming forward.
and a change of scenery
Whatever it was, gordon hoped it would be complete by late August. He had decided to sell his Sunday Lake house and find a new property closer to medical care and other services.
While the sale closed in late August, gordon decided to put off buying a new house until the next spring, leaving him "between houses" for several months. It was a gap he planned to fill by visiting with friends and family, including a car trip to the Canadian west coast and a trip to Australia.
Little singing and/or recording would be possible during much of that time, and any channeling would most likely be sub-vocal.
meanwhile. . .
. . .the other six songs in the 4.1 set dawdled like kids going back into the classroom after recess. Their lyrics had large sections missing when gordon returned to Sunday Lake in early April, and they stayed that way for months.
For instance, the first two verses of the (call it) "knocking-on-surreal" karosong Have you ever were already complete when gordon returned to Sunday Lake in spring 2022. But the third verse was just a blank. Nada.
However, in this case gordon knew the vocal pattern from the first two verses so he could sing the third verse using his patented da da dees. (To get the song out of his head and into this archive he even output what you might call a "two-thirds pre-release" recording with the da da dees for the absent third verse.)
Have you ever 4.1 with Number 5 by J Cook with Fethi Nadjem
A not for the faint of heart exploration of the things that happen going into and out of sleep. arc01 / incomplete 'pre-release' version from mid June 2022. The third verse lyrics have not yet channeled and so they are sung using da da dees. [5]
No such luck with the other incomplete songs. Their structures were more challenging, still unknown in a few cases, their gaps unbridgeable. They'd barely progressed by late August when gordon packed up his recording gear and left Sunday Lake for the last time.
It wasn't that the songs weren't channeling. They were. Often very strongly. The song Forever-more for example — featuring a grandfather talking to a newborn grandchild about its already-deceased grandmother — reduced gordon to tears numerous times. It was emotionally the most powerful song to channel since As darkness falls back in the 3.2 set, but it stalled and barely advanced lyrically for several months.
Forever-more 4.1 with To Your Shore by Jesse Cook
The 'grandfather song', the 14th asynchonrous collaboration with music by Jesse Cook, and a moving meditation on love, life and family continuity. arc01 / first complete lyrics — recorded late March 2023. [7]
At times gordon wondered if the missing sections of this and the other stalled songs could not channel because they had not yet come into existence.
huh?. . .
It wasn't a new thought per se. Even before the 'pick any song and it will channel' experience that had started the 4th phase, Gordon had long recognized a change in the songs that channeled.
In the 1st and 2nd phases, most songs had seemed to exist apriori their channeling. They were just there, whole and complete, from the time they started channeling.
But that had gradually become less so in the 3rd phase, and many songs started feeling as though — while their intent or message existed a priori — some of the lyrics were being figured out as they channeled.
However, for more than one of the new 4.1 songs, even the intent or message of the song remained uncertain long after lyrics started channeling. If I could be, for instance, didn't seem to know where it was going for months. The point or thrust of the song didn't clarify until the lyrics were nearly complete.
If I could be 4.1 with Auspicious Omen by Kitaro
A song for the days "the grind's got you ground, and you're not sure you can take even just another step forward." arc01 / first complete lyrics — recorded mid January 2023. [7+]
It increasingly felt to gordon that what he had intially experienced as a one-way channeling of existing songs had become a two-way collaboration of some sort, triggered by gordon/karo choosing an asynchronous track to work with.
In other words no karosong existed at the time the async track was selected. The karosong was an organic response of the gordon/karo/song energies complex to the selected async track.
It was yet another mind-boggling thought in the long process of gordon coming to understand the gift and provenance of these songs.
full-on approaching
As gordon expected, channeling became intermittent once he left Sunday Lake and started couch surfing, i.e., only when possible and mostly sub-vocal.
However there were times — in a motel room or a friend's empty-for-the-evening house — that gordon was able to sing out loud as he channeled.
He sensed more changes coming forward at those times. Even greater confidence in his physical stance. The source of his voice dropping further into his throat and chest. A growing resonance and command.
It felt like the continuation of the changes he'd been feeling back in the studio that spring and summer. But now he felt those changes coming into focus and sensed they were in fact a third stage or aspect of his singing moving forward.
The performer. What gordon came to call the full-on karo, and would come to understand as the full-on command of each song's performance though the song's emotional and musical dimensions. He sensed that that performer could unite with the whole and full karos, and the vox emerging from that joining would be the fully expressed fusion of those three aspects.
Hence, the whole/full/on karo. (Or the whole shebang as gordon sometimes calls it.)
the vancouver sessions
He sensed all that but wasn't certain until — almost four months after leaving Sunday Lake — gordon finally got setup for recording in Vancouver. After the many delays over the previous year, his goal now was to get all the songs he was working on completed, mastered and on to this archive site (along with their song sheets).
Gordon could hear and feel marked differences in his singing from his very first west coast recordings, differences that tracked with the changes he'd been feeling, and the emerging whole/full/on karo:
- the source of his voice dropped further down into his throat and chest, widening his voice, and enabling a growing command of each song's nuances (the whole karo);
- his sense of the songs flowing through him deepened (the full karo);
- the performer or full-on karo stepped into the limelight, becoming more confident and more capable.
The experience was akin to a virtuous spiral, with changes in each aspect triggering changes in the other two, as all three lifted further into the spiral.
Now that in itself was an exhilerating ride. For gordon, it felt like a culmination in the long, excruciatingly slow process of coming to embody these songs, to house this body or work.
Just as exhilerating, those changes in gordon's singing were enabling new and more varied singing styles, styles that were already coming out in the remaining songs of the 4.1 set.
From the medieval and choral . . .
Safe in the hands 4.1 with Playing by Heart by Yanni
A mythic story of the founding of a free state and its protector. arc 01 / first complete lyrics from takes recorded in the Vancouver sessions in mid January 2023. [7+]
. . . to the boppy and silly . . .
Da loup da loup 4.1 with Double Dutch by Jesse Cook
Raw silliness distilled into a song about the world of competitive ballroom dance (a topic about which the channel knows exactly nada). arc02 / recording from the Vancouver sessions, late March 2023. [7]
. . . to the surreal, even thorogood'ish.
& the chase was on 4.1 with Beneath Your Skin by Jesse Cook
An eclectic, darkly comic song about old Harley jokes and a partial answer to the question "how wierd can a song get and still be meaningful?" This version recorded mid xxx 2023. [X]
And those new singing styles fed back into the spiral, driving further vocal changes all around as the whole/full/on karo bloomed into gordon's default vox. Once again, gordon was hoping the changes would finish before he moved on to the next part of his rootless winter, a month in Australia to visit with friends and family.
Didn't happen. And as expected, no channeling happened while gordon was in Australia. Instead, he was strongly reconnected in energy back to Les, his meditation supervisor, and to other meditation students from his own cohort. The meditation path it seemed was coming back into focus.
As important if not more, the trip included meeting a couple of musicians, a husband and wife, who also channel music. It was the first time gordon had ever felt simply accepted as a channel for music even though he is an idiot musant.
Gordon is hopeful that meeting will lead into working together to move the songs forward.
Time was pressing when gordon got back to Vancouver from Australia near the end of March. He would only have a bit more than a week there before he had to pack up his recording gear for the return trip to Ontario. There would be no recording for some months after that.
The whole/full/on karo was also pressing. It's gordon's experience that there's a sudden upshift in his singing when he returns to recording after some time away. It's as though the singing lessons simply continued at an unconscious level while he wasn't consciously channeling.
The upshift on his return to recording after Australia was dramatic: the whole/full/on karo pushed forward, rounded out and consolidated even more. It was thrilling. Captivating. Immensely rewarding. It was starting to be everything gordon had ever hoped for in his singing.
But time was pressing. A couple of the new songs weren't quite finished lyrically; another couple were not yet mastered. Gordon did his best in the time he had but only managed to get 'in progress snapshots' of those last few songs.
Not perfect, not complete. Still, given gordon's cardiac condition, the songs were better outside than inside his head.
What's that old saying? There's no rest for the wicked. While the 4.1 songs still weren't quite finished, Gordon already had a new set forming when he left Vancouver at the end of March.
It would be the 4.2 set.
and beyond
the 4.2 set, and beyond . . .
Which brings us to today and the current moment, or as Never-ending sunset, the 38th karosong, describes it:
always coming always leaving
never starting never ending
the only moment there ever was
the only moment there will ever be
now
I stand on the sidelines of that eternal moment, waiting my next turn on the dance floor.
to be continued . . .
See gordon's blog ruminations for further thoughts on this and other topics. Most recent on this topic:
The various recordings on this website are not for download or release. They are just low resolution demos of the songs gordon has channeled into this existence. Interested parties can contact gordon @ this website.
