Recording with Laosang Samten

I recently met up with my good friend and badass-in-training Andy Bruce to collaborate on his latest student project. By the time I arrived in Chico, CA., 8 hours from where I've been staying, Andy had already received proper clearance to record with Laosang Samten. Laosang, at the behest of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, has been creating art in the form of sand mandalas for all of twenty years. You guessed it, he's pretty dialed. And the sound of his Chak-Pur tool was perfect for Andy's project. We met with Laosang during one of his daily breaks, and later recorded the sound of his tool as he worked on the mandala which would take him six weeks to complete. That afternoon we edited the sound into short chunks using Apple's GarageBand. This editing would allow Andy to reproject it using the speakers of the Bell Tower in the middle of town. As an aside, we also created what might be the Tibetan scholar's first cell phone ring tone.

-andrew