Recent Blog Posts
Moors Songs Demo
post a comment | posted Dec 30
The new demo is a soundtrack to the ghost of a ghost story. I wrote the bare bones of the plot, and started working on an "audio encapsulation" of the atmosphere i was trying to invoke........
End of disco album notes
post a comment | posted Dec 9
The End of Disco ep is a collection of warped disco tunes - they toy with preconceptions of the genre and go way beyond the harmonic and rhythmic spectrum usually associated with it. The track "You're Dancing" for example is based on a 5 beat isor...
Composition 3
post a comment | posted Dec 6
Continuing on the subject on structure, it is worth noting some "formal" structures. These are a mixture of old classical forms that evolved over a long time and newer, more constructed forms that were created to help give shape to longer pieces of...
Not-So-Recent Blog Posts
Composition 2
post a comment | posted Dec 4
To follow on from the last composition post, I'm going to talk some more about devices to stimulate your musical thinking.
As mentioned before there is what i call a "conversion" chart - you draw something striking and visual, and create music wit...
More exploration
post a comment | posted Nov 29
My efforts to learn more about music have been continuing recently with my attempts to understand "The Aesthetics of Music" - a rather interesting book by Roger Scrutton. The general idea is to explain why music affects us in the way it does, or rather - analyse how we interact with music. What makes a piece of music different from another? Why does a chord sound different from the notes that it is made of? Is a cover version a new piece of music, or a variation on some created entity? The theoretical answers are very interesting and have profound implications for those who write music.
There is some interesting stuff on how we hear music, and the levels that we tune into. A musician will hear things very differently to some one unfamilir with the idea or harmony and metre. Most people know that most popular music is in 4/4, but why should this be natural? Interesting stuff indeed!
Composition 1
post a comment | posted Jun 28
I'm slowing writing a short book on composition. The subject is so vast and varied that it is best broken up into smaller chunks. I would mainly like to concentrate on an area that may be of interest to people reading here. Composition techniques ...
The Bits and bobs album
post a comment | posted Jun 23
I've uploaded a ragtag selection of tunes that I've done over the year - and there is plenty more to come. Of special note is "All the Stars in the Sky" which is ancient but I love it. I recorded it in my very early days of computer mayhem and it shows in the production, which is not very subtle. It is also notable for being the first "cosmic epic" love song that I wrote - something of a signature style for me.
Orion - label news
post a comment | posted Jun 20
The fizzing, jellied energy of the sounds I was creating matched perfectly the concept - long drones with infinite details echoing the dual scales of the human life and stars lifespan..themes within themes..the atom that looks like a solar system...my childhood memory of first seeing this constellation, and the true meaning of the encounter being revealed 25 years later.
End of Disco Ep
post a comment | posted Jun 19
As of last weekend the End of Disco ep is complete - finally ready to go. The music, anyway. There will be a bit of a delay before there is anything else to report.
This has been an interesting project for me. I had been away from "beat" music for about a year, mainly working on Regolith material. I was immersed in soundscapes and had barely put together a drum beat - Regolith have a few tracks with drumming, but they are more of a tribal sound, pulse rather than rhythm.
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