Album Notes

This is Mike Elkin's second album recorded, produced, and mastered by Craig Stuke. The first album was just Mikes beautiful flute performances with a little reverb added to sweeten the sound. This second album really started to evolve when Mike told Craig, "You can add whatever you want to my flute performances." Not knowing how far to take that, or how much time to devote to this project, Craig began the process of adding nature sounds and musical backgrounds to Mike's flute songs. First, the typical sounds of wind and rain were added, but it was soon discovered that unless you were in a good listening enviornment, the wind and rain just ended up sounding like static or hiss. Also, our CD started to sound like a million others that had wind, rain, thunder and birds chirping. As the thoughts of the typical accompaniment ideas faded, Craig started to really listen to and get to know these songs Mike had recorded in Craig's studio. Craig was able to take some of Mikes songs and edit them in his computer to make them fit a consistent time signature. Mike has the uncanny ability to play 'in time' naturally, always staying in time, but not being in strict 4/4 or 3/4 time. He kind of free wheels his flute songs. As Craig got to know each song better, he began to experiment with sounds and instruments that would always support and highlight the main event, the cedar flutes that Mike makes himself and plays. Another consideration was that the accompaniment tracks and songs needed to stay within the parameters and context of the album. We needed to be careful that the songs flowed, developed, and complimented each other. As you will hear on this CD, the end result is flute music that is beautiful, interesting, exciting, and inspirational. This album will carry you through 45 minutes of listening pleasure that you hopefully will enjoy each time you listen to it.