I have so much going on at the moment! What with my day job, my hair salons and trying to write, there is much to do 🙂 I’m currently working on a string quartet, two songs for soprano as well as a couple of pop songs and some recordings. Mustn’t complain. I live a very …
So finally got round to re-recording the song – there is an early recording elsewhere on this website. I knew I wanted to add more orchestration and am happy with the outcome! I had an idea of adding a string quartet,like in Yesterday, but pivoted from that and included synth and piano All of this …
This has been a while in the making. I started it several years ago and had a two year gap where I could not finish it. Suddenly, though, inspiration hit me and I was able to complete it!. It’s sound world is taken from one of Messiaen’s Modes of Limited Transposition, and its influences include Beethoven, Bernstein and Reich. It is structured in three movements: Fanfare and Introduction; Adagio; Finale and …
Very many years ago, a pianist friend of mine was about to sit her FTCL exam and at the last minute asked whether I would page turn for her recital. I of course agreed and one of the three pieces the was playing was The 12th Prelude and Fugue from Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 87 set. I …
(Click on the play arrow above to hear the song) So, this is a soppy love song. I wrote it for Cathy after she said “yes” and it is about our first meeting and first date. Okay. Enough of the soppy stuff! It’s a bit of a hybrid, as it has elements of funk, Everly …
I remember the day very clearly, which for me is amazing, as I have a terrible memory. To the tune of “Brown Girl in the Ring” by Boney M, the life-guard in charge of the lockers at the Civic Centre Swimming Pool in Aylesbury was singing “There’s a brown turd in the pool la-la-la-la-la”. That …
So I have taken a break over the last 6 months and done very little musically. Over New Year I decided to try to orchestrate and record a song that I wrote some three years ago. It was one of those songs that comes very easily. An idea comes to you, a guitar riff, …
For such a short piece of music I am astounded at how long this has taken me! I think I finished the fifth one about four months ago. This one though is more complex than the other six. I took my 12 x 12 matrix of sequences derived from the original tone row (the same …
I wrote this as part of a series which I was going to try to market as children’s play time music. It is obviously inspired by Harry Potter books, which were a major influence on my children’s (and my!) life. I like this. There is nothing special about it from a compositional point of view. …
It’s been difficult to sit down and write anything over Christmas, but I have finished drafting the 5th serial miniature for piano. One to go now to complete the set! This one came from studying the introduction to Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra (Op 31). In this he uses two versions of the tone row, PO …