Although originally conceived as a lyrical piano piece, this track is at its best in the central section, where bass and synth lead dominate (at least in my opinion). It’s somewhat experimental (there are some interesting sounds in the mix), but not, hopefully, too much so.
Next to you by Barry van Oudtshoorn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
At the end of a long week, I sat down to write this piece. Writing music has always been cathartic for me; this piece expresses pretty much exactly how I felt when I wrote it.
Flat by Barry van Oudtshoorn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
For some reason, 7/8 has always appealed to me. This laid-back track layers 7/8 lines at normal- and half-speed to establish a “flow” — which is then disrupted at the end by offsetting some lines by a quaver or a crotchet.
Daylight by Barry van Oudtshoorn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
This track was a lot of fun to write. Absynth and Massive take centre stage (piped through Guitar Rig) to create a large, full sound with overtones of glitch trance and synthpop.
Antigen by Barry van Oudtshoorn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
I love glitch kits. Perhaps its the strong transients or the unique timbre — whatever it is, though, they lend a unique sound to a piece. In this track a glitch kit is combined with a few synths, some tuned gongs, recorders, accordions, and other eclectic instruments to produce something that doesn’t fall neatly into any specific genre, but that’s hopefully nonetheless enjoyable.
If only for you by Barry van Oudtshoorn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
This is a more laid-back track that mixes ambient synths with viola, violin, and flute. It’s in a similar vein to “Terminal” from a year or two ago, but somewhat simpler and lighter in its execution.
Tasman by Barry van Oudtshoorn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
This is an almost-chiptune track. I’ve always enjoyed chip music, but I’ve not written much of it myself. This isn’t strictly chip (modern synths and samplers), but it’s certainly reminiscent.
Teflon Smile by Barry van Oudtshoorn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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.
Rising by Barry van Oudtshoorn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
This is a more down-beat, semi-acoustic, easy-listening pop track — just waiting for lyrics and vocals. For those interested, the primary chord progression is A, F#m7, Fmaj7, Esus7 – E. It’s a somewhat melancholy progression, suited to subtly-changing ostinati, and lightly-improvised piano and bass lines.
There are lots of Guitar Rig effects at play in this one, mutilating sounds from FM8, Massive, Battery, Kontakt, and Absynth. Guitar Rig has become my go-to VST effect — even though I don’t actually use guitars all that much in my music!
[audio:http://www.barryvan.com.au/music/Tabula rasa.mp3]
(Download)
Tabula Rasa by Barry van Oudtshoorn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Ah, synthpop! Ah, 7/8! I have a fondness for both, and so it seemed only natural to bring them together.
[audio:http://www.barryvan.com.au/music/Skyclad.mp3]
(Download)
Skyclad by Barry van Oudtshoorn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
I’ve added in some really exciting new features to my TrackPerformer project, as well as three new performances: We Three Kings, Carol of the Bells, and Joy to the World.
It’s now possible to add filters, or effects, into the processing chain. These filters can be applied before any performers (pre-filters) or after all performers (post-filters). At the moment, the included filters are:
I’ve got some ideas for more filters down the track… The only difficulty is keeping performance acceptable: manipulation of the canvas pixel by pixel is quite slow in current browsers.
There are a couple of new performers, and some minor updates to some of the existing ones. The Oscillator performer, in particular, is rapidly becoming the most flexible and useful of the performers.
There are a couple of other changes here and there, but these are the main ones.
The three new example tracks are all taken from We Three Kings, my new Christmas remix album. Why not go and have a listen?
TrackPerformer provides a visual stage for your music, using HTML5 canvas and audio. On that stage, performers “play” the instruments in the music visually. In other words, it’s a visualisation system for music, but based on the notation (the abstract) rather than the audio (the manifestation).
Essentially, you take a piece of music, convert it into a format that TrackPerformer understands (JSON), describe how you want it to be performed, and then watch! You can, of course, write your own performers.
Note: You won’t be able to view the performance linked above in Internet Explorer, due to its over-aggressive script-blocking: the scripts served from GitHub have the wrong mime-type, so IE won’t let them run.
Take a look at the project on GitHub to see how it all fits together. TrackPerformer itself resides in the “Source” directory; in “Examples”, you’ll find the performance of Colony; in “Utilities”, there’s a JavaScript macro for Komodo IDE/Edit that will help you to translate copied-and-pasted OpenMPT pattern data into TrackPerformer’s JSON format.
You can find more information on the TrackPerformer wiki, including an outline of the format, and some basic instructions for getting started. I’ll be adding more information to the wiki over the next few days, and I’ll post updates here too.
Let me know what you think!