This is really my first track with actual singing. 😱 (Yes, that’s what I look like when I sing…)
I wrote this song to explore depression and anxiety. When you have a depressive episode, it feels like a pit you’ll never be able to climb out of — even though you know from past experience that it will pass. It helps to have someone who’s always on your side, no matter what.
This was a fun little piece to write! It started out as I was playing with building out a drum rhythm, and then grew from there into a semi-breakbeat type of hybrid piece. I mixed to mono and applied a pretty aggressive bandpass filter at the start so that when it opens up, it opens all the way up.
I haven’t updated my Bandcamp page in several years… But that’s just changed! I’ve uploaded music from the last year or so there. So now you can download it in super-high fidelity, store it on your hard drive, record it to tape for your Walkman sessions… The sky’s the limit!
I’ve written a few times about heading down to Western Australia’s “Great Southern” region. There’s a small bush-shack we stay at. It’s on a property surrounded by national parks, and is far from the highway. It has such a beautiful diversity of ecosystems — coastal scrub, rainforest, majestic karri forests, peppermint tree groves… It’s an incredibly calming place.
The pieces in this album all capture something about that place. Most were written there, in fact! There’s something about being in nature that just gives me a chance to pause, and to actually process things. There’s more space, and there’s less pressure to run from doing this to doing that to doing something else.
I’d describe this album as “ambient”, but there are really multiple styles together. Several of the pieces combine sounds taken from the forests with acoustic and digital sounds. My hope is that these pieces will give you the chance to feel the chaos of life slow down, if only for a moment.
As always, you can listen wherever you stream your music.
Another piece written while I was in WA’s Great Southern region! As I was writing this piece, the evening chorus of kookaburras started up, blending in with the music. And they fitted so well that I felt compelled to keep them in — after all, their staccato laughing fits in well with a rhythmical, glitchy drop.
This song is intentionally harmonically simple — it really does just stick to the most basic primary chords. I wanted to write something which was optimistic, and joyful, and fun — so nice primary colours, and big open power chords and bouncy lines. And, of course, a whole lot of playing with that mod wheel for vibrato on the lead! I also had fun with the intro — applying a really tight EQ to the intro so that the whole thing sounds fuller and bigger when the song really kicks off.
Oh, and this piece also introduces a new little “barryvan” logo which I think I like… It’s kinda like a backwards quaver (eighth note) and has some nice forward momentum. Plus it feels a little bit retro futuristic. At least in my opinion. 😝
Back in 2011, I wrote a track called “Conflagration” — a moody EDM track with lots of classical orchestration, built around an ascending baseline figure. Then in 2012, I reworked it into “Contraflagration”, which slowed things down a bit but cranked up the distortion — and, although built around the same basic baseline, reworked the harmony.
Now in 2021, I’ve reworked it again into a funkier, semi-disco piece that increases the harmonic complexity whilst making the track a little bit more silly and fun.
And now they’re here together for your listening pleasure wherever you get your stream on. 😉
My family and I have been heading down to the south-west of Western Australia for holidays quite frequently; we have a cabin out in the bush near Walpole. I’ve found that heading down there has really helped me to increase the amount of music that I’m writing — something about the place helps me to slow down enough.
This is one of the first pieces that I wrote down there. I actively wanted to write a more video-game style electronic piece which incorporated a decent amount of swing. I also leaned a bit on my fondness for bitcrushing, which gives sounds a lovely crispy, crunchy texture.
I wrote this piece in active contrast with a lot of the other pieces I’ve written over the past while. It’s a small chamber piece that meanders through what is effectively a theme and variations. The arpeggiated piano line is contrasted with the broader viola and cello lines, which weave in and out of each other.
I wanted to try something a bit different (for me, at least!) by switching the melodic aspects of the piano from the right hand to the left; this results in a repeated ostinato phrase in the right hand while the left hand outlines the richer harmonic and melodic figures.
In writing this piece, I really just wanted to write something which would give me a sense of space and openness.
Probably one of the most down-the-line dance tracks I’ve written in a while! There are still a few unusual elements in there, though. This is the first track that I’ve really used MassiveX on — and I like the results!
Available now on SoundCloud, and arriving soon on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, and everywhere else.
The YouTube video includes a capture of my DAW (Reaper) for this track.
Hopefully the mix is better on this one; I’m still struggling to get the whole thing to sound coherent across the board. Not sure what I’m missing — if you have any thoughts or suggestions, I’d love to hear them! 😉
My style combines lo-fi video game sounds with dance, big sweeping orchestral lines, and piano performances.
I
first started writing music electronically using a tracker —
originally ModEdit, but I found my way to ModPlug Tracker (now OpenMPT).
I’ve since moved onto Reaper, but many of my pieces retain elements of
the demoscene and video game music sound. Combined with my classical
music and jazz piano background, many of my tracks don’t fit neatly into
any one genre.
