Piano, Strings, Rhodes, Beats & Tribbles
I am actively focusing on developing new beats with reason and using them as the base track to freestyle on – it’s great fun.
The original beat track is in 7 time with a tempo of 42 beats per minute (thank you @DarinRMcClure) – makes for an interesting groove. I ended up playing with several different beats and putting them through various oscillators and frequency filters – the Tribble sound started off as a chemical beat – go figure!
While browsing Last.fm recently, I came across the music of Brett Juilly. His music is also instrumental and piano driven. I listened to all 18 tracks on his album Piano and can say that I enjoyed them all. There were a couple of tracks that I particularly like, The Dance, being one.
The Dance is an interesting song in that it almost sounds like two different pieces. It starts of with a light, lilting melody with quite a fast tempo and then about a minute in, the entire sound and feel of the piece changes. It slows down and becomes much fuller with a mellower tone. The piece ends with a few of the higher pitched, lilting notes like the beginning, tying the two parts together, it sticks with you and leaves you wanting to hear more.
Brett states that his music is visual; when listening to this song, the image evoked for me by the first part is that of a ballet dancer; there is a happy feeling. When the song changes, so does the image and feeling. I get a feeling of disappointment; perhaps the ballet dancer is no longer able to dance. The mood is not one of sadness but of acceptance and hope.
One of the things about last.fm is that you can only listen to a track three times - before the paywall comes down - and I so wanted to get into this track - that I ended up buying it - I guess that's the new music economy!
Last.fm lists Juilly as an artist similar to music2work2. The beautiful instrumental melodies with their soothing, relaxing quality are an asset found in some of the music of both.
Piano, Strings and an 808 heart beat
I hope everybody had a great holiday – I certainly did. I suspect I’m like many of you in that I use Christmas and New Year as a release valve after the pressure of the year. Two weeks of relaxing, hanging out with family and friends and drinking and eating far too much – I love it!
2009 was a particularly challenging year and yet looking back – music2work2 made giant strides forward. We completely re-designed the website, changed the logo, moved to a new recording platform and a new keyboard, distributed to iTunes and Amazon MP3 stores, wrote the score to a unique animated movie and sent out our first newsletter. Not bad on reflection.
I cannot tell you how excited I am about this New Year – I’m going back to school next week to learn how to use the Topspin marketing platform – this will make it much easier for people to listen to and easily share music2work2. I haven’t taken a class in 20 years – should be fun
This track was inspired by a chance encounter with a Techno gear head masquerading as a University professor – it was a great evening which resulted in us working up a piece built around a Roland 808 and an old Juno 60 – you can listen to the audioboo clip here. Craig’s working on it for now and when he’s done I’ll add a piano track – I think it might be kinda cool.
