Oxford Dawns (May day mix)

I've been working on this one for a while, actually I started it last year but didn't finish it for my deadline, went off and did some other things and then returned to it. It's a sort of aural picture of May day in Oxford, with the chimes from Old Tom, the choirs greet the dawn and the follow up revelry of people attempting to jump into the river.

Every note and sound in the track has a specific meaning and everything was entirely planned.

http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=10647848&q=hi

Clockwork UFO

“Clockwork UFO” is short sound picture, a heavily re-worked splinter from the longer piece “Through the Gates”.

Download “Clockwork UFO”
http://www.soundclick.com/util/downloadsong.cfm?id=8789118

Stream “Clockwork UFO”
http://www.soundclick.com/util/streamm3u.m3u?id=8789118&q=hi

Download “Through the Gates”
http://www.soundclick.com/util/downloadsong.cfm?id=8666852

Stream “Through the Gates”
http://www.soundclick.com/util/streamm3u.m3u?id=8666852&q=hi

Sunburst

Something a bit different, this is the first time I've used drums in nearly 30 yrs so it's a bit of a departure, it's a dance track to boot. I managed to get it done just in time for Valentines Day.

The track is here 
http://www.soundclick.com/util/streamm3u.m3u?id=8762743&q=hi

Through the Gates

Through the Gates is a spooky Sci Fi/Horror romp through the Lovecraftian abyss.Enjoy, but be careful what you dream of tonight.

Download http://www.soundclick.com/util/downloadsong.cfm?id=8666852

Stream http://www.soundclick.com/util/streamm3u.m3u?id=8666852&q=hi

Do you remember the day?

Very different from "This House is like a ship", "Do you remember that day (in 1969 when you asked what I was going to do with the rest of my life?) is a melodic New Age style piece. But then "Janus" is an autobiographical work so that is probably to be expected.
The idea came from a barely remembered conversation at the age of 10 when I was asked by my friends what I was going to do with my life. I had grand dreams of living in California.
Nursery rhyme motifs repeat through the music, starting with a musical box. The music, as life, is through of some twists and turns, but overall this is a hopeful and happy track, the childish skipping rhythm continues to the final heartbeat. Dedicated to Martha.

http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=7531641&q=hi

This House is like a Ship

The track is an every day tale of a man that retreats to his house, loses touch with reality and becomes convinced his house is a ship, to the extent he won't even look out of the window to see that it is not the case. The text is vaguely like:
"Sometimes this house is like a ship, and this room seems like a ship's cabin, with the creaking of the timbers and the ebb and flow of light it seems as if I am on some kind of immense sea. I travel forever. I hardly ever look out of the window these days, I know the sea is there...it's just waiting there, immense, impassive and primal. Windblown or becalmed, I travel forever".
http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=7509400&q=hi

Lonely People (Shedding Oxide)

Back in 2006 I transfered some old music from tapes from the 80s. I planned to release these under the general heading of "Shedding Oxide". A mere 3 years later, here is the first track "Lonely People" recorded entirely using a Yamaha DX9 synth, using a bit of spring reverb and ReVox echo onto a Tascam 4 track.

The track appeared on "Like the passing of summer rain" released 1989(?) on the Electronical Dreams label. (If anyone knows what happened to that label I'd be interested to hear).

This was the track that got picked up by a few radio stations in Canada, US and apparently Russia. Links below for stream or download.

Stream: http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=7207296&q=hi

Download: http://www.soundclick.com/util/downloadsong.cfm?id=7207296

Experimental Track released

I have now completed a short experimental piece “I had lost my friend (No way out)”.

The text came from a dream recorded 30/6/2007. It is only a part that appears to deal with the fragmentation of the self into a number of personas, hero, scientist, servant and victim. It’s no co-incidence that the personas are within a graphic novel, they are literally “paper thin”. The significance of the conclusion which adds (No way out) to the title, still eludes me. But I won’t lose any sleep over it.

I had lost my friend.
I was afraid I had lost him.
And then I found him, finally, trapped in a black and white graphic novel.

He was a between the wars butler, but he cannot remember who he used to be before.

He was part of an expedition to Africa with an aristocratic group, but the expedition had gone wrong .

His face appears in one panel. Another scene shows other members of the expedition staked out by the natives.

Yet another scene panel shows one of them, Werner von Braun, dead in the plane crash,

Now my friend appears as superman, but he is only in the garden we started from.

Everywhere else he sees himself dead.

Now he can only exist as a fantasy figure, in this one place.

(Coda, not part of the dream)
I can only exist here as a fantasy figure.
I can only exist here as a fantasy figure
I can only exist here as a fantasy figure


Listen (will open the Soundclick player)
http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=6814438&q=hi


Brought to you under the Freedom of Too Much Information Act.

Titus Alone

In addition to working on the “Strange Stars” theme/ album I’ve also been working on ideas for a largely autobiographical set, “Janus”. “Adieu” released a while back was the first, today I released the second element “Titus Alone”.

It’s at http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=6441216&q=hi

Catch Up - April 2008

I've released three tracks as part of the "Strange Stars" theme. All are available on Soundclick.

The most recent is "Point with no no reference". It’s actually an old track. In the early 80s I created a short piece of cosmic/ space synth work called “Depayse”, it was probably on my first cassette release.. Later in the 80s it was reworked for a compilation promo for the Electronical Dreams label “The Dream is just beginning” and re-titled “Point with no reference”. It’s now reworked yet again. By accident when messing around with one of the keyboards I used in the second version I quoted from one of my other pieces of the time and left it in. My first synth was used to take the bass part it had taken about 25 years ago.
After all those years the structure remains very simple and close in feeling to the original. The text that accompanies this version is



“Somewhere in the far reaches, a place with no name, something sings a song of eternal solitude.”



It’s at http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=6423309&q=hi

Adieu

A very short piece, written very quickly in late July 2007. As usual it can be heard at

http://www.soundclick.com/markgriffiths

Four Reveries

I created the Four Reveries for F4b.com last year. They offer music to therapists and others interested in music and textures to accompany healing, relaxation and meditation. The music I produced for them is slightly different to the tightly packed material I usually create.
I put an excerpt up on Soundclick and like another track I put up there it played too fast (it's been an issue there for years but it's the first time I experienced it). I got it re-encoded on the site but though the tempo is right it still seems rather toppy.
So to listen to the Reveries best go to www.F4b.com, the link for my page is http://www.f4b.com/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=20
Over the summer I had been looking at algorithmic/ aleatoric music tools in the software domain. I was auditioning a couple that looked promising and will be looking at them again as a tool for creating the basic material for long tracks for F4b.com.

In the Shadow of Narcopolis

I've managed to get this track off the computer and released. There was a lot less that needed to be done, actually it was complete and waiting for about 6 months.

I'm hoping now to start getting back into the swing of recording, seeing as my creative year usually starts in October and goes through to May (ish).

The whole “Dreamers” series is about, sleep, dreams, and those things that lie just beyond our perception. This track takes a gothic lens, borrowing heavily from HP Lovecraft. The story behind “In the Shadow of Narcopolis” involves a Victorian explorer who is plagued by outlandish nightmares. To satisfy his curiosity and perhaps find some relief he travels to a strange city in the middle of a desert. There he discovers that his nightmares are generated by some ancient race that sleep within the walls and the city breathes out these malign thoughts to the world of men. Unfortunately, although the grotesque dreamers are asleep the city itself is not. It captures and entombs the explorer so that he now dreams forever within the city of Narcopolis.

http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=5963317&q=hi

May Night (Experimental)

I decided to try and create something a bit more experimental and abstract using the small modular here. Problem was I don't really know the context or "rules of the game" for experiemental stuff so I decided to be guided by a couple of ideas themed around a Russian May Night. May Night itself refers to the Rimsky-Korsakov opera and here I used the image of the stage setting of dark blue when I went to a dress rehearsal for the opera. I then started thinking about Nabakov's description of his childhood in Russia and his delight in seeing the sphinx moths appear. Finally I added in a bit of Stanilav Lem's playful idea of the stars being originally arranged in rows and lines in the sky. So with the pseud police hammering on my door as I write, this ended up with a piece where first the stars come out one by one, then get bored and appear in a rush, frogs croak, a nightbird calls and the sphinx moths arrive. Out hero starts to nod off and starts to fantasise about stars clumsily dancing with comets rushing in and out.
http://www.soundclick.com/util/streamm3u.m3u?id=5544505&q=hi

Wonderful PPG emulation

I really love the sound of the PPG when I first heard one back in the 80s and that love has never really diminished. When I restarted my music one of the first software emulations I got was the Steinberg/Waldorf one that I still use for tinkling sequencer runs. I was very surprised when I downloaded this version, it immediately sounded even better and general opinion was that the Waldorf one was pretty good. This one also has some interesting quirks, it's an exact emulation, so sound creation and saving, boot up etc are just as awkward. But the sound! Hermann is working on a EVU/ Wave2.2/ Wave2.3 system, but he's doing it in his spare time. In the meantime a Wave 2.2 emulation is available for free though a donation, or just a thank you might not go amiss ! http://www.hermannseib.com/english/synths/ppg/wavesim.htm

Double blogging

What's new? Well lots. Behind the scenes I have big backlog of partly completed tracks that I'm working on.

More significantly I've started a new venture via F4b.com http://www.f4b.com/help.php?section=about who distribute music for healing and therapy, mainly aimed at the professionals that work in that area..but others might like to buy it. For me it's slightly different from previous releases in that the tracks are longer (e.g 15 mins) but are less "ear catching" so they can be used in the background..ambient music in the truest sense.

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