Into the Realm is a collection of Betsy’s songs, rich with variety and playfulness. The songs were inspired by weather, sunlit elephants, sangria, and much more.
The instrumentation includes not only plenty of cello, but also acoustic guitar, electric guitar, drums, marimba, latin percussion, and even more cello.
Preliminary mixes by Betsy Tinney (as released on Betsy’s Patreon).
Tracks 9 and 11 produced/arranged by Jeff Bohnhoff.
Final mixes by Jeff Bohnhoff at Mystic Fig Studios, San Jose, CA www.mysticfig.com
Mastered at Trakworx in San Francisco, CA www.trakworx.com
All songs and this recording copyright ©℗ Betsy Tinney 2024. All rights reserved.
Track Info & Stories
I wrote this piece after the extremely hot and dry summer of 2021 (with temps as high as 114F – rare for the Seattle area). Whenever the forecast suggested “a chance of rain”, we all eagerly hoped that water might actually fall from the sky, the way it used to. And, each time, we’d be disappointed – and still dry.
But early one morning, I awoke to a strange sound: a sort of a tapping… pattering… dripping sound. Rain! Real, wet, rainy rain!! I actually ran outside in my nightgown to stand in it, with outstretched arms and upturned face and puddle-eager toes. (I might even admit to dancing a bit… though that’s a completely different song.) It was glorious — and far too brief!
This piece, A Chance of Rain, was originally going to be a very spare piece, mainly pizzicato and descant guitar, with just a breath of low cello here and there — more like the light sprinkles we usually get. However, the cello got away from me, so now there’s a glorious downpour in the middle. So, get out your umbrellas, kick off your shoes, and enjoy!
Cello & guitar: Betsy Tinney
Music by Betsy Tinney
When creating this piece, I inadvertently built myself a beautiful gilded musical cage, using a seemingly benign chord sequence and a catchy rhythm. And then, still unaware of my peril, I blithely settled down inside, closed the door, and unwittingly locked it with a lovely lyrical melody. I spent several hundred pleasant measures inside that cage, chirping and cheeping cheerfully away.
Eventually, I tired of the cage and its chord structure and rhythm, and even with the pretty melody, and told them that I would like to come out now, please.
And they said Nope.
For several days, I tried to change that musical cage into something less confining — after all, it’s easy enough to change a chord sequence and a rhythm, right?
Wrong. Once established — and they were FULLY established — those gilded musical bars were practically set in stone, and any changes I made just sounded weird or downright wrong. And, that lovely lyrical melody utterly refused to unlock, and wouldn’t let me change either the chords or the rhythm. Hmm…
Once I realized that the lyrical melody was the crux of the problem, I went to work with a pair of musical wirecutters, carefully snipping and trimming until I’d pruned it down to a 4-bar motif — still recognizable, still lyrical, and much less controlling. And then, finally, I was able to change the rest of the piece, open the cage door, and blessedly stretch my wings.
And so, I give you this piece: Uncaged.
Snip, snip… Flap flap flap.
Cello, cello, and more cello: Betsy Tinney
Wall of cello: Betsy Tinney
Drum: Logic Pro’s inimitable virtual drummer Darcy
Drum programming: Betsy Tinney
Composed & recorded by Betsy Tinney; Patreon mix by Betsy
Final mix (for Into the Realm) by Jeff Bohnhoff
Cover image: © Photoschmidt; licensed via Dreamstime.com.
Graphic design: Betsy Tinney
In 2022, we had a very smoky fall here in the Pacific Northwest. Due to the many wildfires burning in our (unusually dry) forests, the entire area was blanketed in heavy smoke from early September until late October. The air quality got progressively worse, eventually exceeding 400 (300 is “hazardous”). Our desperately-needed seasonal rains were nearly a month late; the weather remained stubbornly dry for most of October. Thankfully, on October 20, the rains finally came, and blessedly, the terrible smoke quickly cleared. (The wildfires, although still burning, were dampened to a lurking, smoldering state, though it took a lot more rain before they were actually out.)
I started on this piece the day after the rains came. I began by playing the smoke: a thick, dissonant, drifting miasma with acrid notes and deeper smudges floating past. I had thought the rain would come in early on, but (as in real life) it arrives later than expected. Instead, the drifting smoke carries with it the ghostly voices of trees from the torched forests. (Hmm, I hadn’t realized it until just now, but I seem to have written a spooky ghost song just in time for Halloween!) Finally, the rain arrives, bringing us out of the smoke.
The cover photo is of our very smoky meadow, taken when our local AQI was 380; the rains arrived the next day. I have always loved rain, but I love it even more now, both for restoring our clean air (which I will never again take for granted!) and for giving our poor forests a fighting chance.
Music & cello by Betsy Tinney
Cover photo by Betsy
Halloween being the season for spooky and creepy things, I had planned for my October Patreon piece to be about spiders. My favorite spiders are Orb spiders, which build large, lovely, and intricate outdoor webs. The cover image is an Orb web, covered in dewdrops and glittering in the morning sun; the artist herself crouches in the center of her masterpiece, patiently waiting for her breakfast to join her. I chose this image because I thought it was gorgeous; I didn’t consider whether it would sound spooky enough. (It was a spider on a spiderweb… and all the Halloween marketing says spiders are totally creepy. What could go wrong??)
Well, as I so often do, I put the image on my music stand and began to play what I saw — improvising based on the colors and the lines in the image. However, I quickly realized that this was not going to be a spooky, creepy, dark Halloween piece after all. Instead, it’s a glorious, colorful celebration of the beauty of an Orb spider’s creation: The Web.
In this (not at all spooky) piece, the guitar catches the glittering dewdrops and the intricate lines of the spiderweb. And, instead of evoking the darkness of a Halloween night, the cellos sing of the deep dark greens and teals of the evergreen branches and the brilliant blue, gold, and russet of the morning light. The (not at all creepy) Orb spider, a red-black dot in the center of her web, is barely noticeable in the image, although she is at the focal point. She’s in the music too, albeit subtly: her color makes her a “B” to my synesthesia, so she appears throughout all the verses as the quietly dissonant B (sus2) in all the Asus2 chords, as well as the 5th in the E major chords. The choruses express the blues and greens of the evergreen and the sky, but we always return to that subtle, patient Asus2; and that little B, that small and patient spider, is always there, right at the center of her web.
I really wanted to give my Patrons a nice dark spooky song for Halloween… Instead… well… at least it has a spider in the middle?
Cello: Betsy Tinney
Cover image by Darius Strazdas; licensed via Dreamstime.com.
These little sweethearts have been my favorite boots for well over a decade. They’re black lace-up ankle boots with a wingtip toe and brogueing, and are super cute and comfortable, with a low heel and a gently pointed toe. I can dance in them, play the cello in them, be a pixie or a dryad or even an elephant in them. And… I’m really sad, because they are disintegrating and can’t be fixed (being made of fake leather), and they aren’t being made anymore. I’m now in the slow, frustrating process of shopping for real leather boots that both my feet and I like — and I mourn my sweet old boot-babies every time I try on a new pair. (I don’t really want a new pair; I just want my old boots to be young again!)
This piece started out as a semi-melancholy requiem for a dying pair of boots… but I soon found that there was no keeping these boots from dancing, even at this point in their life. <3 <3 <3 (Hmmm… since they’re such good boots, shouldn’t they go to heaven when they die? It seems to me that they should — after all, boots do have soles.)
Cello: Betsy Tinney
Cover photo by Betsy
This piece is my musical interpretation of the Pantone Colors of the Year for 2021: Illuminating (a sunny yellow) and Ultimate Gray (a quiet but substantial gray). (As you might already know, I am synesthetic, so colors have specific sounds & pitches for me.)
To be honest, when I first played this piece, I didn’t realize I was creating a musical homage to Pantone’s 2021 colors. I was simply improvising without an agenda — and this small stuffed elephant happened to be in front of me at the time:
Later that day, I happened to see Pantone’s announcement of their 2021 Colors of the Year, and while my forebrain was thinking, “Huh… gray and yellow… interesting combination; not sure I like it,” my hindbrain was playing the piece I’d just improvised. Even so, I didn’t make the connection until I went back to my studio — and found myself gazing at a gray elephant atop a sunny yellow tapestry. Hello, 2021 Colors-of-the-Year!According to Pantone’s website, Illuminating is a warming yellow shade, suggesting optimism and brighter times ahead, while Ultimate Gray is a deep, quiet, reassuring gray — the color of wisdom, steadiness and strength. The combination of these two colors grounds us and gives us hope — both of which are essential to the human spirit.
And so, I give you Illuminating & Ultimate Gray — with musical colors both somber and sunny, with an elephant dancing in the middle, and with a blessing of quiet but steady hope for the new year.
(FYI: The stuffed heffa at upper right is the elephant who initiated the song It All Started With A Small Blue Elephant, the melody of which somehow crept into Illuminating/Ultimate Gray without my conscious assent.)
Cello: Betsy Tinney
Piano: Dr Mary Crowell
Photo of stuffed elephant by Betsy
Cover photo by Panom Bounak – Dreamstime.com
(This piece was originally created for Betsy’s October 2020 Patreon)
Today, October 31, is Hallowe’en, a day of trick-or-treating, costumes, and spooky decorations. It is also the first day of Samhain, an ancient Celtic holiday that welcomes in the harvest and the dark half of the year. During Samhain, the fabric separating the physical world from the spirit world becomes thinner, making communication between the two easier.
In this piece, a lone cello tests the border between worlds, and finds that the Veil has, indeed, become thinner.
May you all have a blessed Samhain and a happy (and safe!) Hallowe’en!
Cello & synthesizers: Betsy
Cover image by Brett Critchley (licensed from dreamstime.com)”
This piece is named after my very first cat, Periwinkle Blue, a solid black Maine Coon (and the reason I fell in love with Maine Coons as a breed). We adopted him from a cardboard box that had been abandoned outside our local Nature Center. He was just a few weeks old at the time, and his eyes were still a startling shade of bluish-purple, so nine-year-old me dubbed him Periwinkle Blue after my favorite flower (lush beds of which surrounded our 200-year-old farmhouse).
We called him Winkle, and he was the light of my young life.
This piece is a blend of synesthetic inspiration (periwinkle = F#, to me), logical inspiration (the periwinkle flower has 5 petals, so this piece is in 5/4) and emotional inspiration (an ode to my beloved Winkle, who could share his love, optimism and serenity with you simply by lying on you and purring.)
Cello & guitar: Betsy Tinney
Music by Betsy Tinney
Periwinkle wreath art by artist Ksushsh; licensed via Dreamstime.com.
The photo of the cat Winkle was taken, developed and printed in 1969 by 10-year-old Betsy, using her own SLR camera and her Dad’s photo-development equipment.
When I was about five years old, I was fascinated by the moon, and wanted to know how she did the things she did (starting the night as a huge orange orb, and ending up as a small white dot – or changing shape from a circle to a slim crescent over the course of a month).
My dad, a scientist and astronomer, carefully explained that although the moon was constantly changing as she moved through the sky, it was actually just our perception of her that was changing: the moon herself was always the same moon.
But he never quite convinced me that it wasn’t just magic.
This piece sings of the graceful and magical progress of the moon as she moves through the sky, changing from a richly-colored orb at the horizon to a silvery beacon at its zenith. It uses the same backline throughout, but the melody changes and evolves throughout the piece. Even so, it’s always the same moon.
Cello: Betsy Tinney
Guitars: Jeff Bohnhoff
Cover photo by Kmiragaya – Dreamstime.com
Sangria is one of my favorite tastes of summer. I am half Spanish, so our family gatherings often included traditional dishes such as paella, picadillo, flan, and (of course) sangria.
As kids, we had the “kid sangria” (made with fruit juice instead of red wine). I didn’t think I was missing much; I had tasted, and hated, the cheap red wine my parents normally bought, and had always figured my mom’s sangria would taste equally nasty, since it was made with the same wine.
I didn’t find out how wrong I was until I was 18 and one of my cousins finally convinced me to try Mom’s “real” sangria. I reluctantly took a sip – and was amazed at how fruit could transform cheap red wine into such utter ambrosia. As my cousin explained, “When red wine dies and goes to heaven, that’s Sangria.”
Cello: Betsy Tinney
Percussion programming: Betsy Tinney
This piece was inspired by two prompts: one musical and one visual. The musical prompt was to step outside my comfort zone and start with a drummer from the Rock genre (normally, when using one of Logic’s e-drummers, I stick with the gentler Songwriter or Percussion genres). The visual prompt was the Midnight Garden image above, which sat in front of me while I was improvising, in lieu of a chord chart.
For me, that Midnight Garden image would normally inspire a soothing, quiet “garden at night” piece. However, with the drums in my ears and that “step outside your comfort zone” requirement fresh in my mind, I ended up with more of a rock garden. The image’s colors and textures and shapes are still represented in the music, which came out much more energetic and edgy than my normal stuff. Once I got used to the cognitive dissonance between the image and the drums, I had a lot of fun with this piece.
For the album version of this piece, I handed it off to my engineer, Jeff Bohnhoff, and asked him to rearrange it as he saw fit. He did so, and also added lots of beautifully tasty, crunchy electric guitar. I love Jeff’s version of this piece!
Cello: Betsy
Drum programming by Betsy (using Logic Pro’s e-drummer Kyle)
Cover illustration by Julia Dolzhenko; licensed via Dreamstime.com. Graphic design by Betsy.
From the moment I first saw this magical artwork, I wanted to play it. I had expected that my cello and I would slip sweetly through that oh-so-inviting portal, leaving the dark and sleepy forest behind. Then, we’d be in the Realm, and there would be magic and music and faeries and dancing — and probably something gorgeous, sparkly and immeasurably powerful that would like to have our mortality for breakfast. With cream and sugar on top.
So I put the art on my music stand, and together, my cello and I eyed that portal, and the Realm beyond, with fascination, longing, and dread. And neither of us dared to take that first step. We could see, and hear, and even play the magic on the other side. It was certainly compelling — the stars danced and the lights shimmered and the music did its best to draw us in — but it took us a long, long time to finally gather our courage, jettison our common sense, and take that single (and possibly irrevocable) step into the Realm.
And you never know… we might even come back someday.
Music composed & recorded by Betsy
Cello & synth by Betsy
Original forest-portal illustration by Elena Schweizer; licensed via Dreamstime.com.
Image editing & graphic design by Betsy
