This piece was a lot of fun to write. It’s in 7/8, with the bar broken into 2/3/2 rather than the more traditional 3/2/2. There’s a severely tortured Irish flute in the mix, sounding somewhat foghorn-like (from around 0’55), as well as washing machines being bashed and kitchen sink strainers being bowed. All this adds up to a very cinematic sound.
This track is a fusion of orchestral and electronic sounds — a technique which seems to become more and more a part of my idiom. A slowish lead-up to a strong middle section, which then moves through to a floating solo viola line (I love the slightly “rougher”, less refined sound of violas as compared to violins), then back to the fuller electronic/orchestral sound — a straightforward ternary form, which so often works well.
My wonderful wife gave me a copy of Session Strings Pro for Christmas, and this is its first outing. I’m very impressed by the sound and precision of Session Strings — especially compared to the VSL strings that come bundled with Kontakt.
This is a programmatic (movie/game-type) orchestral piece in a rough sonata form.
It’s been a while since I last wrote a wholly-orchestral piece. As I was writing this one, I toyed with the idea of turning it into an industrial piece, à la Conflagration, but ultimately rejected that path.
Dark in parts, fanfare-like in others, and with a playful duet between flute and bassoon towards the end, Rising is quite certainly programmatic (that is, it constructs a narrative). The story that it tells — well, I’ll leave that open to your interpretation.
I’ve extracted the performance data from Rising, so that if you want to, you can build a TrackPerformer performance of the piece. Download rising.js to get started. Follow along with my TrackPerformer step-by-step — with the template in hand, you can safely skip large chunks of the step-by-step. You’ll mostly need to focus on steps 1, 5, 6, 7, and 8.
If you do build a performance, let me know about it! I’m tempted to start releasing the data for my other tracks as well, so if you’d like to build a performance for any of my pieces, just let me know in the comments.
My wife and I have just finished our Christmas carols album, “Emmanuel: God with us”. On it, you’ll find brand new orchestral arrangements of ten great carols.
It’s available for digital download now at . You can listen to each of the tracks in full above, and decide whether or not you want to help support poor starving musicians like ourselves. 🙂
Each track is going for around $1 (or more, if you’re so inclined!), and you can pick up the whole album for $5 or more. You can also get your hands on a physical CD if you like — just let me know!
About a month ago, I was playing around on the piano, and I came up with a fragment of melody that I couldn’t get out of my head. I played with it, twisting it around, pushing it in different directions, seeing what I could do with it. Ultimately, I turned it into a full piece of music, and this is the result.
As you might have noticed, if you listen to much of my orchestral music, I really like writing epic, syncopated scores with great big horn melodies (and little flute ones) that float above rapid, percussive strings and brass. Well, here’s another example of that. 🙂
This piece is a rondo in D minor. Let me know what you think!
I’ve uploaded an archive of my music for easier download. This archive currently contains eighteen tracks, eight of which are no longer available anywhere else! The tracks included in this pack are:
I may well create other ‘songpacks’ for download, so keep checking back. There’ll always be a couple of exclusive tracks in each pack, so it’ll be worth your while. I hope. 🙂
A companion piece to “Drifting”. Also in 7/8, with many of the same stylistic elements. It’s much more brooding, however, and simpler in its execution.
Him the Almighty Power/Hurl’d headlong . . . /To bottomless perdition, there to dwell — John Milton
(Although it wasn’t inspired by that quotation, it fits well with the track, in my opinion.)
This is an orchestral piece in loose ternary form (you could argue for a loose rondo form, too). There are lots of time signatures all mixed together, and often layered on top of each other. It’s scored for a Romantic-sized string section, flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, french horn, trumpet, timpani, tam tam, cymbals, snare, bass drum, and harp.
