Paul Horn – Inside The Great Pyramid, 1976

I’ve been hesitant to share this record because I can’t tell if everyone already knows it—it seems a bit dadcore, and I think it sold a bajillion copies—but it’s something I keep reaching for when fall turns to winter, so maybe y’all will enjoy it. I mentioned Paul Horn in my post about Pauline Oliveros the other week, and have been appreciating it even more in light of her recent passing.

Paul Horn was a legendary jazz flautist, saxophonist, and composer, and considered to be a new age pioneer. Inside The Great Pyramid was part of his “inside” series, in which he recorded site-specific music in places of spiritual significance, oftentimes making him the first person to record music in those locations. In addition to sneaking a tape recorder into the Taj Mahal, he was the first westerner to be granted permission to perform in the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, considered to be the spiritual nexus of Tibetan Buddhism. This was the first recording made in the Great Pyramid of Giza, and I think that most or all of it was recorded in the King’s Chamber right at the heart of the pyramid. The story goes that Paul began by hitting the large granite sarcophagus in the center of the room with the flat of his hand, which emits a resonant tone of 438Hz, slightly lower than an A. (You can hear this in the opening track previewed below.) Horn tuned his flute to that and improvised from there.

As you might expect, the natural reverb and room tone is arguably the most interesting part of the record. Horn is an incredible flautist, and he vocalizes a bit too, but the weight and air of the pyramid steal though show, especially given that the pyramid’s strong resonance was a deliberate feature of its architecture.

4 thoughts on “Paul Horn – Inside The Great Pyramid, 1976”

  1. To who I may concern,
    My name is Joe Sidore. I have been a recording engineer/music mixer starting in 1960 until my later years. I’m 81 years old as of this last October 7th, 2021 and I have personally recorded Paul Horn several times at Western Recorders starting in 1964. During those times I had told Paul that I was one of his many fans and that I enjoyed listening to him play during my younger years. Since that time we became good friends, seeing him at the studio and recording him more times than I can remember. Like most good musicians who had the “chops” you could count on, he was definitely in the “first string”!
    In around 1965 or so, Paul had relocated to Canada, where I believe he was from originally. When he left he gave me his phone number in Canada so we could still at least communicate.
    Come 1983, I had started a new job at Warner Brothers Records
    heading up the very new “Compact Disc” format which came out that same year.
    I would remaster over 600 titles in order to flood the market with CD’s, eventually making the LP a thing of the past. Like everything “camp”, the persistence of the LP has endured to this day, with an such a resurgence as to have the ability to bring back the phonograph as we used to know it. For the Millennials or newbies to analog, it was like having a whole new medium!
    But you ask, what does that have to do with Paul Horn? Well in 1984,
    I called Paul after hearing about his recording in the great pyramid to tell him about the new Digital Compact Disc and its ability to be free of “ticks and pops”, as you would hear on an LP. I explained to him my experiences with Digital and the Compact Disc, to which he seemed very interested.
    As I’m new to this site, my reason for coming here was to see if Paul Horn had ever made a CD of his recording in the great pyramid. If one exists, perhaps I was the person who inspired him to release it in CD form. Whether or not I’m responsible is not the point.
    I miss him, his playing… and his presence on the planet !

    1. hi joe, this is all so cool–it sounds as you’ve lived several audiophile lifetimes over! i’m always thrilled to hear anecdotes from the people responsible for shaping the way we listen to music. based on the discogs listing it appears as though “inside the great pyramid” wasn’t released on CD until 2006, but who knows if your prompting encouraged paul to release other albums on CD before then. thanks for sharing all these stories, happy new year 💙

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