Once Upon A Time
This image accompanies my blog entry "Once Upon A Time", about my 1993 foray into electronic music composition. Now that I have a digital recorder I've captured the selections in .wav files (with some distortion, unfortunately, since I had the mic beside the speaker on my tape player). The selections here include:
Dragon Love (5:22): I wanted to play around with a koto (a stringed instrument, whose name means "dragon"). At first I wondered what it would sound like with a guitar, but I think I decided against that combination. Used bells and gongs, though.
Aerial (4:36): The title comes from the street on which friends for whom I composed this live. One plays the cello, which features in the piece. The other had chosen the first two synthesized voices I laid down, called Tinker Bell and Resting Pad.
Once Upon A Time (8:58): A meander through various fairy tale moods.
Caravan (9:56): This has one of my favorite beginnings. Very dynamic. But then it gets a little squishy.
The Winding Path (6:54): My version of meditation music.
Oceans Away (4:43): My version of a sea shanty.
The Drowned Cathedral (3:58): My personal favorite of the bunch, though perhaps a bit macabre. It was inspired by M.C. Escher's 1929 woodcut "The Drowned Cathedral" -- which for all I know was inspired by Claude Debussy's "The Engulfed Cathedral" (also called "The Sunken Cathedral").
First Snow (2:30): Composed in the heat of summer.
Pilgrimage (6:07): Another meander, with a sense of adventure.
What Might Have Been (4:56): Somber, wistful brass. I was thinking of a mood on the order of "Taps" when I put it together.
My tools included a Macintosh Powerbook 160, EZ Vision software, Yamaha YPP-50 electronic keyboard, and Emu Systems, Inc. Proteus/2 Orchestral sound sampler.
After finding blank, unlabeled cassettes I used a paper cutter and X-Acto knife to design my own Mac-printed labels that I glued to the tapes. In similar fashion I created liner notes, used a program called Sketcher to produce the cover, and used my dual-cassette recorder to make copies from the master tape.
My sound and production studio was my living room in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The cats helped. Red's literal leaps of inspiration provided some of the flute in "Dragon Love" and the closing cymbal in "Caravan". Daisy's main contribution was in keeping Red otherwise occupied.
The blog entry has links to several other compositions as well, including the piano sonata I composed in 1977, and improvistions on a Flemish lap harp.
Once Upon A Time
This image accompanies my blog entry "Once Upon A Time", about my 1993 foray into electronic music composition. Now that I have a digital recorder I've captured the selections in .wav files (with some distortion, unfortunately, since I had the mic beside the speaker on my tape player). The selections here include:
Dragon Love (5:22): I wanted to play around with a koto (a stringed instrument, whose name means "dragon"). At first I wondered what it would sound like with a guitar, but I think I decided against that combination. Used bells and gongs, though.
Aerial (4:36): The title comes from the street on which friends for whom I composed this live. One plays the cello, which features in the piece. The other had chosen the first two synthesized voices I laid down, called Tinker Bell and Resting Pad.
Once Upon A Time (8:58): A meander through various fairy tale moods.
Caravan (9:56): This has one of my favorite beginnings. Very dynamic. But then it gets a little squishy.
The Winding Path (6:54): My version of meditation music.
Oceans Away (4:43): My version of a sea shanty.
The Drowned Cathedral (3:58): My personal favorite of the bunch, though perhaps a bit macabre. It was inspired by M.C. Escher's 1929 woodcut "The Drowned Cathedral" -- which for all I know was inspired by Claude Debussy's "The Engulfed Cathedral" (also called "The Sunken Cathedral").
First Snow (2:30): Composed in the heat of summer.
Pilgrimage (6:07): Another meander, with a sense of adventure.
What Might Have Been (4:56): Somber, wistful brass. I was thinking of a mood on the order of "Taps" when I put it together.
My tools included a Macintosh Powerbook 160, EZ Vision software, Yamaha YPP-50 electronic keyboard, and Emu Systems, Inc. Proteus/2 Orchestral sound sampler.
After finding blank, unlabeled cassettes I used a paper cutter and X-Acto knife to design my own Mac-printed labels that I glued to the tapes. In similar fashion I created liner notes, used a program called Sketcher to produce the cover, and used my dual-cassette recorder to make copies from the master tape.
My sound and production studio was my living room in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The cats helped. Red's literal leaps of inspiration provided some of the flute in "Dragon Love" and the closing cymbal in "Caravan". Daisy's main contribution was in keeping Red otherwise occupied.
The blog entry has links to several other compositions as well, including the piano sonata I composed in 1977, and improvistions on a Flemish lap harp.