Farewell to Dreams

The next in the "Dreamers" series, this one took me a long time to complete and has been driving me crazy! That's where the reference to an exit strategy for a dreamer comes from..it sounds much more (my)s(t)erious but I'm just glad I was able to find a way through this piece. I have another, "In the Shadow of Narcopolis" that's giving me a spot of bother, hopefully that will be complete soon or it goes into the musical deep freeze for a while. Oh and the link to it is here; http://www.soundclick.com/util/streamm3u.m3u?id=4771973&q=hi

Native Instruments - a catalogue of mistakes

This is an odd and happy tale, rather than the usual "we hate NI" rant. I bought NI's Pro53 Prophet 5 emulation when I first started buying softsynths, largely on the basis of the first killer preset (why is it most other companies have some dreary bass synth sound in that first slot?). Soon, however I came to the conclusion that it really wasn't cutting it, I wasn't using it and it was basically taking up space. Then the Komplete2 offer came along and pro53 was my golden key to get Komplete2 at a knock down price, which gave me the sampler, Reaktor and FM7, all things on my "to buy" list. So mistake one, but with a happy ending.

Then I got Komplete Care 2005 and got all my updates free for 2005. I decided to get Komplete Care 2006 even though I didn't expect the same level of upgrades. Towards the middle of the year, nothing and I started to think I'd made a mistake. Then I got a free gift from NI. Basically they said they were late with the upgrades, don't worry and here are a couple of instruction DVDs. Nice! Never really got far with manuals.

Then the really good news..because they were so late they were giving us Komplete4 for free (makes sense, means everyone is now on the same upgrade path), so I get Guitar Rig, Acoustik and Electrik Piano, as well as the Absynth and FM upgrades. great! And also because you have been so patient, here's a voucher for $180.

I've taken a while to sort out my upgrade as I've needed to get a new external drive to host the additional 12Gb of samples associated with the pianos. In the meantime NI made a mess of their registration programme. So..they given us a copy of their new "Massive" synth for free!

So many blunders..so many gains!

Beyond the Walls of Sleep

Where is it we go when we sleep? This track attempts to answer that question! It's actually based on one of my earlier tracks, "Fugue for an ever darkening land" but there is not much left of the original, only some of the chords and a lead line are retained. The title comes from a short story by HP Lovecraft. Track is at http://www.soundclick.com/util/streamm3u.m3u?id=4564579&q=hi

Retro'd version (Berlin Nights)

Some time ago I was listening to alot of music from the early 70s and it got me thinking what I would have sounded like in those days, a decade before I actually started making music. So I tried a little experiment, I took an existing track, "The Lost Harvest" and re-recorded exactly the same track with old style equipment. Now here comes the twist, I don't actually have any synths from the early 70s, so I used software copies. The original track used cutting edge tools such as Reaktor, Spektral Delay and modern processing. I replaced that with emulations of Mellotron, EMS and ARP synths. The reverb was spring or plate reverb, the delay an emulation of tape delay. And what came out was kind of interesting! Have a listen at http://www.soundclick.com/util/streamm3u.m3u?id=4514579&q=hi

Creation resumes

With a track, working title "Deep Star Song" which puts me firmly back in ethereal cosmic music using both the new hardware and more familiar musical colours. The picture seems appropriate, Crab Nebula, courtesy of Nordic Optical Telescope taken by Walter Nowotny, for anyone interested go to http://www.not.iac.es/general/photos/astronomical/milkyway/

Sao Paulo Nights

Tonight I've uploaded the first track from the song cycle, "Dreamers" to soundclick. It's "Sao Paulo Nights" and is dedicated to my wife. As such it's a sort of sonic impression of the nights in that Brasilian city, some of the excitment but also some of the quiet times. "Dreamers" as a whole is loosely themed on sleeping, dreaming, memories and thoughts that are just out of reach. http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=3854126&q=hi

Shedding Oxide

Finally taken the plunge and tried to transfer my old tapes (some go back to 1982) onto the computer. I'm amazed, they play fine...but...my lovely Revox (beautifully styled in 70s teak) is having a probably with the weight of the tapes. result? The test tape worked fine but the first master tape broke and because I was short of money at the time, I recorded on both sides of the quarter track..so I have two breaks.

Quite an interesting exercise I found a copy of "Transmixxion" which was supposed to be my next release after "PaperWorlds" and "Crystallography". It was the first release to start using polyphonic synths (I couldn't afford one in those days, I spent several years using just one simple mono synth..now you can download 20 polyphonic softsynths in a night for free!). It was much more varied than previous releases there are even fast fairly aggressive tracks, but I sort of shelved it because the pre-release tape didn't a good reaction from a couple of people. What I did was to keep what I thought were the best tracks, added more material and came up with a more consistent album "K2". I'll probably offer the really old material for free but re-release the last two albums re-mastered...if the tapes don't break.

Dreaming....

Now that the "Lost harvest" cycle of music is complete (although not all released just yet) I'm now working on a new set. Currently under the title of "Dreamers" it's a collection of pieces loosely around sleeping, dreaming and waking dreams of certain locations, some close to home (Port meadow) some much further away (Sao Paulo). So far it's more synthetic than "Lost Harvest" and feels a little less contained than the recent stuff..but then, everything goes in cycles!

New track - Spirited away into a clear blue sky

As previously trailed, this track is now out, can be played by going here http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=3345217&q=hi
Alternatively go to the main page http://www.soundclick.com/markgriffiths

New track - Isle of Exiles

I did this following a dream, one part was about a government infecting political agitators so that they could be exiled to some leper colony island. So there is a line of grey shivering people being injected and then sent to a queue for the boat.
Enjoy and no cutting in on the queue. http://www.soundclick.com/util/streamm3u.m3u?id=3370291&q=hi

Mark