When I was 19-20 (i.e. more or less the same age as my current students) I started composing music and the result was my first ever album released in 1995 pompously entitled “My Contribution to Art” featuring the following tracks:
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Interestingly (for me at least…), “My Contribution to Art”  is a concept album which tells the story of a boy (let’s call him A. before you ask) who meets a girl (call her A.), falls in love, gets dumped and only finds happiness again when he meets another girl (call her C.)
I have to be frank, some of the songs are crap but, what the heck, they are mine and I spent hours working on them. I composed the tracks using my old Amiga 500 running Bars & Pipes Pro and my trusty Kawai Kawai K4 synthesizer from 1993 to 1995. I was lucky to have saved them in MIDI file format and I managed to easily import them in Logic Express on my MacBook this week-end. I was delighted to be able to record them in pristine 24-bit audio quality directly from my still-living Kawai K4 and apply some mastering polish.
I am now a proud artist with two albums, My Contribution to Art and So Logical (released in 2004), both available as free downloads as well as free streaming on last.fm.
You’ll notice that neither album has a cover yet. Maybe someone can come up with interesting (and appropriate) covers for the two albums? I don’t mind people using my photos on Flickr. I’ll invite the “winner” for lunch in a nice restaurant…
what restaurant :D and how much food :D (beware of the “batteur bus”ers :D)
Our net sucks >__<….free food smells nice ;))
Ahem. Let’s say a “normal” lunch at Dragon Vert in Quatre-Bornes :-)
Ohh dragon vert, nice resto hehe… (and much cheaper than king dragon :D)
what restaurant :D and how much food :D (beware of the “batteur bus”ers :D)
Our net $ucks.streaming is definetly not my option :P..will download some and see how it feels to the ears, though the preview is tempting.
Abt the story, sad reality but hey, there is no device yet to measure if it will “work out” and it for sure re-strengthen your inner character. Glad A met C ;)…Maybe it was meant to happen this way, and in the end, the finish overshadowed the start. (personal opinion: “its never easy to be in the situation of A when being A (the female XD) and its something we would never wish for others bt it happens… sometimes, not only once… bt life is beautiful no matter what they say and like A found C (or the opposite ^^), they will be someone out there for you….just need to spot it :)”
Will see if can make a nice cover (im no artist :) ….free food smells nice ;))
tried some of the songs some time back.. kinda nice
btw whats zygma? :S
hehe free lunch.. :D (batteur bis lor baZ)
hey good….me i have abt 50 songs i worte since was still in college….got to find some music for them lol….great similar story….mine is a story about a guy A (me) who love a gurl A….then she betrayed…and i met an angel…. Y…who i love so much now . :-)
Ahh…the teenage years!! Boy meets girl, burst of hormones resulting in happy romatic songs…You must feel like Martin Gore listening to The Meaning of Love in 2008? ;)
Seriously, that’s a very courageous move to make them public…
Personally, I find it really hard to listen to my first tracks (1991): they sound so naive, tacky, romantic and totally rubbish! Not mentioning those terrible track names I gave them in my pubertal days! ;) Looking back, it’s not something I’m particularly proud of…I’ll spare you the details…Hehehe…
Gosh! Those K4’s drums, choir, strings and piano samples sound so dated and cheesy by today’s standards…makes you wonder how we managed to love and cherish those 16-bit samples back in the 90’s when digital and sample-based synths like the Korg M1 and Roland D50, were all the rage! The K4’s digital low pass filter was quite nice though; not the smoothest, but it definitely has a very peculiar behaviour and tends self-oscillates quite abruptly…As far as I remember, I’ve used it on a few tracks between 1994 and 1997, and sold it later to a friend who collects vintage gear. However, all the 1994 tracks were stored on PC formated 3.5″ floppies which inevitably caught humidity. Only those from 1991 and 1997 survived, though poorly recorded with too way much reverb and bass…
Bar & Pipes was a very popular sequencer back then…I still remember those low resolution sequencers that gave had a robotic/quantized/tracker feel. Back then, I fantasized a lot on the Atari ST and Pro-24 (which later became Cubase) and Notator (later known as Logic), but never had the chance to use any one of them. My first sequencer was the one built-in my first synth: a Yamaha V50: limited to only eight midi tracks and one pattern-based drum track. Programming and recording on that tiny 40×2 character LCD was a real pain, but in those days I hardly knew better! I moved to computer-based sequencing only in the mid 90’s with Cakewalk 3.0…then much later to Reason and Logic.
In retrospect, the tools available fifteen years ago had severe limitations and digital audio recording, editing and multi-tracking was a luxury! What is achievable nowadays with a single computer running a DAW and only soft-synths + plug-ins is just amazing…On the other hand, it’s way too easy to spend endless hours tweaking and experimenting with those powerful toys, and not finish any new tracks!! Paradoxically, to be productive…sometimes less is more! ;)
Hi David,
When I did those tracks in 1993, I recorded them on a cassette which I still have somewhere. Naturally, the sound is terrible (hiss, compression, lack of high frequencies, etc.) but, for fun, I liked listening to that tape from time to time.
The re-recorded and re-mastered tracks found on last.fm sound OK compared to that tape :-)
Concerning the tools, I have fond souvenirs of Bars & Pipes Pro on the Amiga 500.
My Amiga had a whopping 1Mb (that’s one megabyte kids — less than what you have on a floppy now…) and Bars & Pipes Pro was a big application. I remember (with some trepidation) that the computer would frequently Guru Meditate when copy/pasting notes… But I like that environment a lot and managed to compose 2-3 relatively good songs.
When I moved to the PC some years later, I started using Cubase (still MIDI only) and then Cubase VST (MIDI + Audio.) For some reason, I was not too satisfied. I then discovered Emagic Logic and found it great! I asked my father to buy it for me in England. I composed So Logical (get it?) with Logic 5.0.
When I bought my MacBook two years ago, I only used Garageband but managed to do 1-2 nice things (unreleased…) About two months ago, I finally decided to acquire Logic Express 8 (Pro is too expensive for me…) and I need to start composing music again.
Now that I think of it, I do have some free time :-)
Hi avinash, how do you call the genre of your music composed?
I like that term “Guru Meditate” to describe something as awful as a computer crash! At least, the Amiga programmers had some sense of humor… ;)
OK, here’s a few inspiring videos for you to watch during your spare time. Have fun!
Programming software/hardware analog synths:
This 20 minute video tutorial for newbies, covers the fundamentals of subtractive synthesis including basic oscillator waveshapes, ADSR envelopes, types of filters, and LFOs. Waveforms are shown on an oscilloscope for a better understanding of how each parameter alters the sound.
http://www.vimeo.com/1309545
Check this out:
Beat Maker for iPhone
Intua is the first to get a full-fledged music creation app on the iTunes App Store, with an MPC-style sampler and step sequencer, plus effects, for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
More info and video demo:
http://www.ismashphone.com/2008/07/beat-maker—de.html