What Music Needs: Recent Episodes
Jon Jermey
In this blog I want to explore the creation of music of all kinds, from a personal perspective as a composer and piano student. Unlike most of the tutors and experts posting material, I am not coming from a position of knowledge and skill, but struggling to put together what I have learnt and what I know into meaningful music. I don’t embrace any particular genre or style of music; I just want to achieve a broad understanding of how it works.
You can find other tracks I have written by searching the music platform of your choice for ’Jon Jermey’ (early works and easy listening), ’One-Five-One East’ (Neoclassical) and ’Thirty-Four South’ (Ambient and experimental tracks).
I am removing some very early material from these platforms and will add it here as time permits.
An experimental piece playing with the Project Modulators in the new version of Bitwig.
A straight chord sequence, embellished in the classical manner with passing notes, auxiliary notes and suspensions, and some repeated motifs.
A long ambient drone, built on sounds from the collection of generators created by Boris Kovalev.
Four guitars because one of them is doubled. The others are Sapphire guitars from a new plugin. About as simple as it gets, really.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
Based around an ambient track from Bandcamp, with a drone or two and some dreamy abstract piano over the top.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
Based around a drum track, plus a couple of generative drones from Polarity. Most of the rest is from the versatile Vacuum Pro synthesiser, plus the wonderful free DSK Brass saxophones.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
Lots of heavy layering. Izotope Iris is on here, along with Captain Beat, voices from the Radio plugin, and many other doubled instruments.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
Constructed entirely from Loopcloud clips. Saxophones make everything better.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
An ambient electronic track. Lines of vibrating sound from Podolski are backed up by some orchestral instruments and layered over sampled sounds from the Radio plugin.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
Mr Evans was a pleasant unassuming young man who had the misfortune to teach Physics at my high school. This tribute uses Melotank, the Musical Thing from Decent Sampler, a couple of orchestral instruments from Garritan and -- obviously -- a drum track.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
'Fragility' because the damn DAW kept hanging and dropping out tracks while I tried to record it. But I got there in the end. An excursion for Classical.gtr, the AAS player, and a Polarity drone.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
An interesting mix of keys here. Orb did the heavy lifting and the Dreamer synth and DB-33 organ do their bit. I'm not sure who Mr Malcolm is, but he sounds like a man in a hurry.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
Built around a guitar riff and a driving drum track. Orb supplied the chords and the Garritan Orchestra thickened the mix up with various string patches and some brass. The ending was a happy accident.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
Named with reference to a well-known German electronic music ensemble, and the new (to me) and intriguing Apricot synth. Lots of reverb, and some sounds from Loopcloud. Orb provided the chords and the bass.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
The Bhairav scale again -- with the ScandiClavier organ and bass over an Arabic drum kit from Loopcloud. The Podolski synth is in there a couple of times too.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
A cloud drum, a kalimba and a funky bass supplement the tabla from Indian Dreams. Vocal tracks from Loopcloud float above.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
Loopcloud Drum gets a run here with lots of reverb, and a glockenspiel backing. The melody starts rather late on a slightly edgy guitar. Classic.gtr comes in a little later, and a couple of choirs give it depth.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
Breaktweaker and Drumsynth 500 provide the percussion, and two instances of Vital hold the tune, with assistance from Club Voltage and a French violin. The tune shifts to C# minor in the central portion, and then back again. Filtering, rather than volume, is used on the intro and outro sections.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
Built around a percussion track with a hyperactive piano, this also brings in some nice brass. The same motif appears repeatedly in four pentatonic scales -- hence the name.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
A big growly bass against a background of ticking clocks. Basically an experiment with layering the Bitwig Polysynth.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
Moody little jazz piece, based on Orb Chords, with a vibraphone melody and some saxophone and other brass in there.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'. I am also posting material on Bandcamp -- jonjermey.bandcamp.com.
A bit of a Mick Karn feel here, with some of the melody in the deep percussive base. All the synth sounds come from the Full Bucket synth, and the bass is the FunkBass. Loopcloud Drums helps it along with the Hollywood Beats preset. There is a slow rise in tempo throughout. The ending was a happy accident.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey' or 'Thirty-Four South'.
The 5/4 rhythm gives the little track an exotic feel. There are a couple of instances of Vital, Strum Session for the guitar line, cloud drums and a table from the wonderful Indian Dreams set as well as conventional percussion from Captain Beat.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey' or 'Thirty-Four South'.
A pleasant little piece with just five layers, built around a guitar line that I played in. The percussion is surprisingly restrained. A Karyorfer cello comes in towards the end to give it a bit of class.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey' or 'Thirty-Four South'.
Lares and Penates were the Latin names for the two types of Roman household gods. Here they are invoked by two pianos, three synths, and a restrained drum track. Loom is doing the heavy lifting on this one.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey' or 'Thirty-Four South'.
Clearly an experimental track, and as with the previous day's effort, I seem to have lost my access to the original Bitwig file. It's obviously built around a drum line, with a lot of detuning on what seem to be synths. Kind of weird, but I like it.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey' or 'Thirty-Four South'.
I believe there is an earlier 'Guitar Thing' somewhere in my albums, so you can think of this as a sequel. I've transferred my stuff to a new PC, and lost a few plugins in the process, so it's no longer possible to reconstruct exactly how this was made, but it's obviously got Classical Guitar on it and a choir or two.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A simple percussion-driven track for a small ensemble plus a choir. Lots of delay and reverb in this one.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Not a holiday track, but an exercise in Phrygian mode, with a touch of inspiration from 10CC's 'I'm Mandy, Fly Me'. A couple of generative drones and a plane recording from Bandcamp make up the layers.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other platforms by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
The last (I think) of the holiday tracks. Corinth is a busy but rather drab city an hour or so outside Athens with a large archaeological site, and what is probably the oldest working canal in the world. It also has a medieval fortress on a high mountain behind the town, with absolutely terrifying views out over empty space.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Made with the Radio plugin after it was mentioned by Robert from Polarity on his YouTube videos. This allows the user to tune into internet radio stations around the world and steal snippets from them. I chose stations in Africa, although some of these were broadcasting English speech. Some of you may recognise the main voice.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Instacomposer provided the chords and the melody, and Loopcloud delivered the samples. I merely pieced them together in the most attractive arrangement I could find. There's a lot of Bitwig Sampler stuff in here too, and the wonderful Virgin Choir.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Montenegro is famous in detective literature as the birthplace of the American detective Nero Wolfe. We saw relatively little of it, being confined to our apartment by illness and rainy weather, but the views that we had were spectacular, and the people very friendly and pleasant.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
...was, according to Johnson, a tavern chair. He spent much of his life in taverns with friends and admirers, holding forth while his better pronouncements were carefully noted by Boswell.
This is a track in the modern classical style.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Polysynth plays the main melody, backed up by Grand Piano XXL on chords. The Polysynth settings are Big Notch Bro and Copernicus. No, I don't know what they mean either. There's a French violin in there too, and some orchestral instruments.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
We never made it to Meteora, though we heard and read a great deal about it. This is where the monasteries are perched on high, craggy rocks, and -- until recently -- the near approach of women was forbidden. There are still a few monks who choose to live there, but not very many.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Johnson was a puritan at heart, though a forgiving one. When he characterised music as 'the only sensual pleasure without vice' he was presumably thinking of gluttony and sloth as well as lust among the vices. The harpsichord appears in a dual role in this longer piece.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A longer track, built up from the Orb Chords suite over an ambient seascape, and making heavy use of the Cosmic synthesiser, which I had just acquired. Spacy stuff!
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Another holiday track. Kotor is a regional capital in Montenegro, with an extensive Old Town, and a steep path behind it winding up through the mountains to a fort and a church. It gives its name to the Bay of Kotor, a vast harbour now frequented by cruise ships.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Johnson was not musically inclined. He did not seek out concerts, and did not number musicians among his many friends. When quizzed by Boswell, he owned that 'Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.' But I am not sure what he would have made of this.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Heavily percussive track alternating between four drum kits, layered under a synth and piano.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A holiday track named after the township in which we stayed in Montenegro, just outside Kotor, the regional capital.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A long track, using spoken vocals from the Google Text-to-Speech site to read some of the definitions in Johnson's famous Dictionary.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
An experimental sort of holiday track...
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Zagreb is a smallish, busy but pleasant city bounded by a river on the south and mountains on the north. This track uses an interrupted choir over a percussion track to convey a sense of space and activity.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Johnson was prone to fits of depression -- which he referred to as 'the black dog'. This track attempts to encapsulate the sense of despair and hopelessness that many depressives feel infesting their lives; but also provides a glimmer of hope from the cheerful violins.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
The horns are blowing, the drums are beating -- Doctor Johnson is off to London! Not for the first time, when he travelled on foot to save his funds, but on a later, more celebrated occasion, when he could afford public transport, and possibly feminine company. This is the man who said 'If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman'.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Synthesisers swirl over a steady beat, while a fife band marches in the background. Then things get a little weird...
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Another holiday track -- built mainly around percussion, with some high-pitched plucking in there, and a nice string section to calm things down a bit.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A couple of instances of Xpand! (the exclamation mark is in the title) playing broken chords over a doubled cello and piano combination. There's a Basque radio station and a magic drum playing in the background.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Drums from Izotope Breaktweaker -- hence the name -- and some nice backing strings from the French Violin and the Noizz Player.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Steady percussion and a tinkly plucking sound to make up the bottom layer, and then my favourite wind instrument -- the English horn -- on top. A classical guitar comes in to push the track along, and then the bass...
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Perast is a town in Montenegro on the shores of the Bay of Kotor. Like other shoreline towns, it is stretched out between the water and the sea, but there is a solitary church perched above it on the hill. Perast is also a starting point for the multi-day walking trail to the Black Mountain which gives Montenegro its name.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
For all his pompous demeanour and deliberate verbosity, Johnson was not above childish pleasures. Once, on a walk in Lincolnshire with his friend Bennett Langton, he found a long slope of smooth grass, and declaring that 'he had not had a roll in a long time', took off his coat and -- and as he himself might have said -- precipitated himself down it, rotating longitudinally.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A lovely city on the Adriatic, if your nerves can stand the bus ride to get there. If not, it's also a regular stop for cruise liners. This is a drum and bass style track, with a high glassy synth over the top.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
"The man who is tired of London is tired of life" is probably Johnson's best-known quote, and it reflects on his early success as a new arrival from rural Worcestershire in the hugely exciting, cosmopolitan city of eighteenth-century London. I've tried to capture here some of the tension as well as the glamour. The poem he wrote on London soon after his arrival was the first indication of his coming success.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Monolithos is a small settlement on the isle of Santorini which is distinguished by a great big rock -- i.e. the monolith -- standing in an otherwise flat area beside the sea. We only saw it briefly from the airport, but it made an impression. Three layers of piano on this one, including a very growly one.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Johnson was born in Lichfield, at roughly the same time as the distinguished actor David Garrick, and the two of them travelled together to London to seek their fortunes. Garrick's rise was meteoric, but Johnson's fame will probably last longer.
A solemn ambient track, with granular contributions from Nettle and a couple of instances of the lovely Podolski sharing the limelight. Some BreakDance Drums, a 1960's Piano and LoopCloud clips are layered on top to spread the joy.
LoopCloud subscription plans are very generous -- I would have to use at least half-a-dozen clips a day to make a dent in my subscription.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Santorini is an island 45 minutes from Athens by air. It's a lovely place to be, if you can hit that sweet spot between the height of the tourist season and the winter months where all the facilities shut down and the buses only run three times a day.
This is a long and very self-indulgent track, pivoting between a drone plug-in supplied by Polarity and a buzzy track with choir voices from David Hilowitz and others.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Three drummers on different kits playing similar phrases, with the volume shifting back and forth between them. On top of that a few Sampler tracks: one with a clip from a choir called The Voice of the Whale -- hence the title of the track -- and one with a little flute clip, flanged and reverbed into some semblance of life. A guitar and flute come in at the middle to calm things down a bit.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A blackbird sings us in and out, while Icelandic gannets circle above during the midsection of the track. A sombre piano is accompanied by a kalimba for a while until things lighten up a bit. Blue Arp does its extraordinary thing in the middle of the track, because I thought it was time for a break from the Bitwig Arpeggiator.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A hand-made track this time, copied over to three instances of the Darksichord Light plugin, and modified a little more each time. A flute and an English horn join in the second time through, and the third time we hear a conga with heavy delay and reverb. The whole thing has a medieval sound, which is probably appropriate for the Russian nation at this point.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Another holiday track, assembled from the bits in Instacomposer. All we saw of Belgrade was a smoggy, misty airport, but Serbia is certainly on the minds of the inhabitants in the other nations of the former Yugoslavia -- especially now, as a traditional friend and ally of the Russians.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Written on holiday, either in Athens or shortly afterwards. Some background ambience leads into a percussion track with an arpeggiated piano and what sounds like a sitar but is probably Classic Guitar.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
The underlying ambience was produced by the Transfuser plugin, a self-contained sampler and mixing unit which can be (sort of) controlled by MIDI notes within the DAW. On top of this I layered the Orb Chords and associated bass, arpeggio and melody units, doubled with other instruments to beef them up a bit. Other than that there's only a bit of reverb on the master and the usual Ozone balancing.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A little excursion using the wonderful free Decent Sampler by David Hilowitz, in conjunction with the samples provided by David himself, Cameron at Venus Theory and a couple of others. The bowed string instrument is an Ektara and the tinkly one is a glockenspiel. Instacomposer provided the chords and melodies.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
An outing for flutes and trumpets, with a jazz piano tying it all together.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Akrotiri is a little town on the Greek Island of Santorini, near to a huge working archeological site which has been roofed over and turned into a tourist attraction.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
The quote is from All's Well That Ends Well, and the track uses a harpsichord and a simple drum line to push it along.
I have seen a medicineThat’s able to breathe life into a stone,Quicken a rock, and make you dance canaryWith sprightly fire and motion, whose simple touchIs powerful to araise King Pippen, nay,To give great Charlemagne a pen in ’s handAnd write to her a love line.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A bit of fun with a harp and a vibraphone.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Irene was Johnson's one attempt at a stage play, and it was a commercial success, but the author regarded it with disfavour, and posterity has generally agreed with him.
A little tune using Vital. Written in Berlin after a frustrating couple of days working on tracks that the laptop just doesn't have the grunt to render.
Hodge was Johnson's beloved cat, and some fiend was running around London shooting cats at the time; this was the great man's meditative response.
Another piece from Berlin -- MIDI drum loops, some Podolski synth lines, and LoopCloud vocals.
Johnson had a stroke late in life and found himself incapable of verbal expression for a few days. He described his sensations to Boswell who recorded them faithfully, giving us probably the first accurate description of stroke-related aphasia.
Four Five Six Seven -- basically a training exercise using Scaler 2, supplemented by some percussion, to ring the changes on a seven-part chord sequence.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
From the Sam Johnson album, referring to a trip to Scotland made by Johnson and Boswell. An excellent opportunity for the great Sam to get off some zingers about the Scots.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Composed in a hotel room in Dubai. Four alternating layers of Izotope BreakTweaker provide the percussion, and a piano and the Scandiclavia organ provide varying sets of chords, backed up by a bass synth and Classic.gtr.
Just three main instruments on this one, hence the title. The Yangqin gets another outing, along with a more conventional guitar.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
The clue is in the title. Playing with some new toys here -- the 60s Piano, Scaler 2, Gorilla Bass -- and some old ones like the Bitwig Organ, Izotope Iris and Helm.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A quote from Iago this time; the inexplicably motivated villain in Othello. A little bit of film dialogue and some plucky synthesiser, with a nice bell-like overtone. And what seems to be an accordion. I quite like this one...
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Really just a pretty Instacomposer frame to set off Polarity's new funky drone, which handles the percussion and various other beeps and boops while Xpand, Vacuum Pro, and Funky Bass do various randomly modulated things in the background. And there's an e-tom in there too, somewhere.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A long slow ambient track, of the kind that I have got out of the habit of more recently, with a slightly plodding bass, but a nice synth on top.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
It's been a while since I took Nettle for an outing; but it shows its versatility here with two arpeggiated tracks that both modulate in a variety of ways. Two slightly staggered drum tracks from Sydrums and Breakdance, plus a selection of ambient loops from Bandcamp, complete the process. Ludicrously simple, but I like it.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Heavily percussive track attempts to evoke bloody battles in a Scots woodland. Not sure where the odd synth came from, but Autogun is a possibility.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Scaler 2 is very good at composing and elaborating on chord sequences. Instacomposer is very good at taking chord sequences and producing riffs, ostenatos and bass lines from them. What if you were to combine the two? Well, this is what happens. Instruments provided by Phase-4, Free Piano, DSK Brass, French violin, and cellos.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Another title taken from Bottom, in A Midsummer Night's Dream: "I have a reasonable good ear in music: let us have the tongs and the bones." Some old-fashioned woodwinds and drums, with a decidedly modern xylophone and vibes.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Lots of contributions from Orb on this one, including a melody and an arpeggio. Vital plays a few parts, and I dusted off The Riser for the transitions. Even Polysynth is in there somewhere. The constantly shifting drum track is from swapping instances of Izotope BreakTweaker in and out while they play randomly selected sequences.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Another reference to the Tempest. A longer synthesiser track that builds suspense. I have a feeling that Riser is doing the transitions.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Putting Scaler 2 through its paces again, feeding into the Classic Guitar, vibraphone, violin and flute, plus the Decent Sampler Autumn Piano.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
My first use, I think, of computer-generated voices. These became a lot more sophisticated later on when I discovered the amazing Google text-to-speech algorithms. Ophelia, like Caliban, is another overlooked character from Shakespeare; she has a whole story of her own which is written off in a few lines.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
The new 60s piano from Sample Science underneath some drum tracks from DrumSynth 500, and overlaid with the Quilcom Bell-y plugin and Strum Session for the guitar. Oh, and the Bitwig E-Snare tapping away in the background. There's a bit of tweaking, and some double-speed bits, but I did play this myself.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Guitars and piano in counterpoint. The nice synth sound is probably Autogun. So is the nasty one.
Chords from Orb and Captain Chords, instruments from Decent Sampler and Izotope Iris, a French violin doubled with an oboe d'amore, a cloud drum, and some voices from LoopCloud. Shake them all together in a bag, and this is the result.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
I was still learning about percussion at this stage -- don't judge me. But I think the hesitant choir works well, and it certainly moves along.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
I finally grasped the nettle and bought Scaler 2, after playing around with the trial version, and this is the immediate result. Everything is a native Scaler instrument playing the same set of chords with different performance modes, instruments and voicings, except for Captain Beat providing subdued drums and an electric cowbell in the back.
An animated video of this episode is up on YouTube.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A longer track, making use of brass and some fuzzy synthesised strings. There's a nice synth in there -- probably FLEX -- too, and a guitarish thing.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Matthias Holmgren suggested the piano treatment on his YouTube Channel, and provided the Valhalla presets, so the track is named anagramatically in his honour. There are two different reverb treatments, one with lots of shimmer, and three layers of Garritan orchestral piano in each, heavily treated. That's about it apart from a vaguely Latin percussion track and some more or less random noises. But it seems to work. And I played all the piano parts.
An animated video for this track can be found on YouTube.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A nice little orchestral track, again trying to get the feel of older instruments -- except the piano, of course. 'Hautboys' (from the Old French for 'high wood') is the original name for what we call 'oboes'.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
I use a trick from Andrew Huang on this one, and split some of the processing on the tracks into parallel streams. I'm not entirely sure that it's always appropriate, but it does give some interesting texture. The chords are from Scaler 2, and there is a smorgasbord of synths -- Union, Vacuum Pro, Scaler itself -- and some choirs from LoopCloud.
An animated video of this track is up on YouTube
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Two Drum Machine kits, the new Decent Sampler Zither pack layered on top, an ARIA cello and growly saxophone, the Sonatina flutes doubled with oboes, the Sonatina plucked double bass -- and that's about it. Guy Michelmore's latest YouTube video prompted the use of the zither, which is quite deep and dark.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
This track forms the basis for an animated video on YouTube.
A very obtrusive percussion track, with piano backing and some brass.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
The character of Caliban in the Tempest has always intrigued me. Sufficiently self-aware to recognise the tragedy of his position, dispossessed as ruler of his island by a man who has himself been dispossessed, he has legitimate grievances that are never acknowledged in the play. This is a longish semi-orchestral piece making use of the gentler instruments to bring out his human side.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Thanks to Oscar at Underdog on YouTube for suggesting the rhythmic modulation in the underlying Vital tracks. Scaler provided the chords, and these were imported into Orb for the bass, melody and arpeggio decorations -- also in Vital -- on top.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
An animated version of this track can be found on YouTube.
"I shall call it Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom", concludes the enterprising anti-hero of A Midsummer Night's Dream. This is a rather dreamy piece built around a simple rhythmic idea. You can associate the flutes with fairies if you like.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
The long-lasting Australian Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, was an Anglophile to his bootstraps, and once uttered a quote from William Pryor at the end of a particularly fawning speech during one of her visits: "I did but see her passing by / And yet I love her till I die."
This is my rather more restrained tribute to Her Majesty, who stuck it out with bloody-minded perseverance to an age where lesser women would have been spending their time with their great-grandchildren. It involves a Polarity drone, various synths, Noiiz magic bells, the Bitwig E-Clap, and lots and lots of digital manipulation. Oh, and an old radio show and some nice opera samples from LoopCloud.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
An animated video version of this track is on YouTube .
"The Thane of Cawdor lives, a prosperous gentleman!" says Macbeth before he is elevated to the title after learning that the previous incumbent has been indicted for treason. Macbeth himself, of course, acts far more treasonably before the play's end.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A little track trying out the Scaler 2 chord selection program, with sounds from Scaler itself but also featuring Izotope Breaktweaker, XPand, Club Voltave and Ultra Analog -- all big hitters, supplemented by an ambient track featuring a Hanoi market.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
From my Shakespeare album, an attempt to reproduce medieval percussion and plucked instruments.
I thought I would make a nice, romantic, piano-based Enya-style track, but this didn't turn out to be it. The Babylon synth is here doing triple duty, topped with Captain Beat and DrumSynth 500 for the rhythmic element, with everything granulated and reverberated to give it depth.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Another orchestral track, starting with the snare drum and building with strings and marimba into a rather sinister flute section.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Getting back into the amazing variety of instruments and voicings available in the Garritan Orchestral collection. This is a simple chord sequence elaborated on by InstaComposer and cycled through a range of different instruments, including a few oddities like the celeste, English horn and xylophone.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A reference to COVID, of course, via some dialogue from an old Vincent Price horror movie.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Back home again, with access to various instruments including DrumSynth 500 and samples from David Hilowitz's new discovery, a Japanese musical toy which bashes a rotating crankshaft against various bells.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
"Everything's Everything / Under The Sky" sang Pete Sinfield on his only solo album. Pete was primarily a lyricist, with connections to King Crimson and related bands, but I thought he might like this short brassy fusion track. He himself borrowed from Vivaldi for at least one of his pieces.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
The clue is in the title. Written on a laptop computer in the basement apartment of a house in Kiama during September 2022, with a limited set of plugins and some very inadequate earbuds, but a dauntless sense of enthusiasm.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
I picked the title for this one from a vague memory of what's called a 'Star-Gazy Pie', where small fish like sardines are arranged radially with their tails in the centre of a pie, their heads intact, and their left (or right) eyes all gazing upwards. I'm not sure what this had to do with the content of the track, though.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Celebrating the Ukraine's spectacular push back against their Russian invaders. But also a chance for me to go back over some less-used instruments.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
An animated version of this track is on YouTube.
More experimentation with sounds. And the drum kit lacks subtlety, to put it mildly. But there is a lightheartedness to it which I don't always manage to attain.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Constructed with Queen Elizabeth vaguely in mind, but mainly an excuse for some orchestral grandstanding and three different layered pianos.
An animated version of this track can be found on YouTube.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Obviously I had just discovered panning. The synth is probably FLEX and there may be Autogun in there somewhere as well. There is quite a good drum kit plugin supplied with FL Studio, and I was starting to make use of it. And the piccolo probably comes from either Sonivox or the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
For the uninitiated, 'blancmange' is a wobbly English pudding made with cornflour, sugar, and flavouring. It was favoured as a food for invalids.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
I'm not sure who or what this is a tribute to, but I thought it would be nice to layer some piano rhythms. The sax and tabla combination was a happy afterthought.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Another orchestral track, making great use of spooky violins.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Starts with a drum track and maintains a steady rhythm throughout. There's a Sixties spy movie feel to the central parts, with what amounts to a high organ reed on the melody. And of course the marimba. There's always a marimba.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
This was among the last of my thematic albums, and I thought I would name all the tracks after food. Possibly I was inspired by The Orb. This is a nice orchestral track, despite the silly name.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Another quiet one. Who is Ruth? Just a girl I knew once...
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Two layers of guitar, with drums and a synthesiser underneath.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Written on holiday -- a rather subdued track but with some insistent flutes underneath.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
As the title suggests, this is a heavily synthesised track, playing around with the various sounds I found that I could get out of FLEX and the other synthesisers I had available to me at the time. But the Yangqin is in there too, along with a synthesised choir.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A Loopcloud-based track, stringing together some nice Middle Eastern vocals with a plucked instrument called a Chumbush and some Loopcloud drums from the Middle Eastern and Indian sets, with patterns provided by Captain Beat. There is a bit of reverb and panning, and a gated bell loop underneath more or less completes the track.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A quiet percussive track, again using Autogun and some other nice noisemakers.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A simple track using InstaComposer on the woodwind ensemble instruments from the Garritan Orchestra. Five-four time makes it a little more interesting.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A longish, slowish atmospheric track using FLEX as a type of foghorn, and exploring various effects. I had forgotten all about this one, but on rehearing I rather like it.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Combines Scaler 2 with some of the instruments from the Aria player, specifically those in the Garritan Orchestra pack. Basically just a couple of chord sequences put through the hoops and backed by Izotope BeatTweaker.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
'Purity Cube' is a synth setting on FLEX, which can be heard droning away here, along with the ever-reliable tabla from the Indian Dreams collection.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Made with the trial version of the Scaler 2 plugin, yet another autocomposer based around chord selection. With one set of seven chords, and variations on these, I was able to construct a track with a cinematic piano, Captain Beat on the drums, and a couple of synthesisers. Loopcloud provided some vocals to give it depth.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Nice little bass line decorated with a glockenspiel and some piano chords. The synth in there is definitely Autogun doing its thing.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'Thirty-Four South' or 'One-Five-One East'.
David Hilowitz has kindly provided some samples from the Hologram Microcosm on his Patreon site, so these play the chords with assistance from a cowbell. Drums are supplied by Breakdance Drums, alternating between presets, there's a solo violin from the Sonatina Orchestra, and a sax and French horn from DSK Brass. A couple of Vital sequences on top add that magical ring. It's a bit of a mashup, but it sounds OK.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey' or 'One-Five-One East'.
An attempt at a faster track with a wobbly bassline. A bit of an experiment, but so what? Some of the sounds are nice.
Thanks to Oscar at Underdog on YouTube for inspiring the Moroder bass that this is built on top of. There are a couple of drum lines from Captain Beat and DrumSynth 500, chords supplied by Marimbaphonic (arpeggiated) and a Garritan Trumpet (straight), and bell-like sounds played in over the top on Loom doubled with Podolski.
An attempt at a longer ambient track with a steady beat. I got better at these as time went by, but I don't think there's anything terribly wrong with this one. I can hear Sonivox strings in here and -- once again -- the glorious FLEX synth.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey' or 'One-Five-One East'.
I finally spent some money on new kit -- an orchestral package to replace the flaky BBC Symphony Orchestra and the various other bits and pieces. It's the Garritan Personal Orchestra 5, and so far it seems to be excellent value and quite fun to play with. It uses the Aria player, hence the name of this track that I put together with it, using Instacomposer.
Mini-skirts were in fashion when I was at high school, and some of the female teachers knew exactly what effect they would have on their more impressionable students. Miss Flynn was a little pale-skinned Irish redhead who was normally quite demure, but she occasionally opted for a miniskirt with black nylons and shiny strappy shoes, showing off her freckled knees in a way that had decided effects on my youthful anatomy.
South Marulan is one of the many places named on Australian maps that doesn't actually exist; there is no there there. As we discovered on a recent detour in that direction looking for coffee. This is a track using some new bass patches for the FM-4 synthesiser provided by Polarity, jazzed up with some chords from a grand piano, vibes, the Aeolian dream synth, and a harp. Samples from LoopCloud and general chaos provided by Deelay and BlueArp.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Nice drums -- and a bell tree, which I will have to resurrect some day. The synthesiser may or may not be FLEX, although at the time this was written I had some other options like Izotope Iris. But the impressive brass, strings and woodwinds are almost certainly from Sonivox.
It takes quite a lot to make a moody depressing track like this one. There is Captain Chords, doubled with two layers of Vital, an FB-7999 and TAL Elek7ro on the bass, and a piano, French violin and electric sparkles on Decent Sampler for the melody. There are drums from DrumSynth 500, and some growly bass samples. And I futzed around with the tempo on the chords a bit to make it sound eerie.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A simple rhythm track behind a plucked synthesiser -- probably FLEX -- and another brassier synth filling in the chords.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Three layers of the Triple Cheese synth on top of the lovely Amber strumming guitar, randomly playing chord patterns in the background while Izotope BeatTweaker provides a subdued percussion.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Short but punchy. Bassoons and saxophones are there to push it along, along with what I think is probably a steel drum. And the percussion sounds like Izotope BreakTweaker.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Dave and the virgins are back, singing along in this tribute to Tolkien's noble elf. Also featured are Captain Chords, layered with a tabla and the Arminator synth, Captain Deep with assistance from Double Sixx, Drumsynth 500, and Strum Session. The melody itself is a basic 16-bar blues, which takes a stroll through four keys before ending up where it started.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey' or 'One-Five-One East'.
I had a few handy organ plugins on FL Studio, though they didn't have the range of the built-in Bitwig Organ. I suspect this one has FLEX doing the synth parts, and perhaps also the rather peculiar AutoTune. It's a little predictable, but not a bad track.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey' or 'One-Five-One East'.
A jazzy track based around a simple piano loop, fleshed out with a drum track, some bongos and an echoey marimba. Valhalla Space Modulator gives the whole thing a shimmer, and Instacomposer helped with some of the fills. The Sonivox Eighty-Eight piano is the one component I have kept from that set, because of its big sound; here it adds a pad overtone to one of the piano parts.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey' or 'One-Five-One East'.
Haggis is a starchy pudding made with offal, so haggis and chips is essentially starch and starch. But this is what we were served in a cafe in Scotland during our first trip there in 1985. The piano in this one is not quite right, but generally I am happy with the quality of the playing.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'One-Five-One East', and 'Thirty-Four South'.
The first record I ever bought with my own money was a Monkees EP featuring their theme song, plus three more of their early hits. The monkeys on this little track come from Costa Rica, though the chainsaw apparently cutting down their forest at the end is from half a world away in Japan. Then we have drums, and behind those just three layers of brief repeated loops of different lengths, one for piano, one for harp and one for synthesiser -- Loom, in this case. These are taken up and down an octave and repeated at half and quarter speed. A bit of echo and delay, some blur on the master, and that's about it.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'One-Five-One East', and 'Thirty-Four South'.
A gallimaufry is defined as 'a confused jumble or medley of things', which is not a bad description for some of these earlier tracks. But some of them -- including this one -- have a sense of foreboding and disturbance in them, which I find increasingly difficult to achieve as the technical aspect of things becomes easier.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'One-Five-One East', and 'Thirty-Four South'.
A jazzy track built around a couple of drum loops, with Orb Composer providing the chords and melody. Orb is very good at what it does, but its built-in instruments are often a little thin, so now I supplement them by using instrument layers. In this case Orb Chords is paired with a vibraphone and the Classic Guitar, the bass is supplemented by an Essential Keyboards organ, and the melody is boosted by the DSK saxophone.
You can find more of my work on YouTube Music or Spotify -- search for 'Jon Jermey', 'One-Five-One East' and 'Thirty-Four South'
SE10 is a district of south-east London, not far from SE7 where I was born and spent the first nine years of my life. This track is a little ragged, but it has a strong underlying beat, and it uses that superb yangqin. I'm not displeased with this one at all.
You can find more of my work on YouTube Music or Spotify -- search for 'Jon Jermey', 'One-Five-One East' and 'Thirty-Four South'
Quite a long one, built around an alternating combination of drum loops from Izotope BeatTweaker, supported by the wonderful four-channel Xpand! synth doing chords and three other disparate synths underneath it; Loom, doing weird stuff, Ultra Analog keeping it real with its own arpeggiator, and FM-4 doing some nice bells. On top of it all some random synthesiser samples from LoopCloud.
You can find more of my work on YouTube Music or Spotify -- search for 'Jon Jermey', 'One-Five-One East' and 'Thirty-Four South'
An experiment in 3/4 time, which I have always found difficult to play, with lots of strings from the late Sonivox Orchestra. That was always great fun but too memory-hungry and temperamental. And the marimba soldiers on...
You can find more of my work on YouTube Music or Spotify -- search for 'Jon Jermey', 'One-Five-One East' and 'Thirty-Four South'
An outing for the Polysynth instrument in various guises, plus a solitary cowbell and a Sforzando saxophone. Oh, and a Polarity drone in the background. Not much to say about this -- it's a bit choppy, but I think it works.
You can find more of my work on YouTube Music or Spotify -- search for 'Jon Jermey', 'One-Five-One East' and 'Thirty-Four South'
Experimenting with delay, and bringing in old film quotes, along with the wonderful FLEX synth. Still couldn't settle on an instrument and stick with it. See if you can spot Robert Morley and Humphrey Bogart.
You can find more of my work on YouTube Music or Spotify -- search for 'Jon Jermey', 'One-Five-One East' and 'Thirty-Four South'
A jazzy track, for which I returned to my roots with the Captain Plugins; Captain Chords is here along with Captain Deep providing the bass and Captain Beat on the drums. The keyboard track was played in on piano, tweaked a little bit, and then doubled on the ScandiClavia organ. There's a kalimba in there somewhere too.
You can find more of my work on YouTube Music or Spotify -- search for 'Jon Jermey', 'One-Five-One East' and 'Thirty-Four South'
A longer track making use of reverb and the wonderful FLEX synthesiser from FL Studio -- one of the few things I miss in moving over to Bitwig. FL Studio did seem absolutely right for a while, and I would still recommend it to a beginner, but going back to it now is like opening up the attic you've been storing stuff in for years and actually trying to find something there.
You can find more of my work on YouTube Music or Spotify -- search for 'Jon Jermey', 'One-Five-One East' and 'Thirty-Four South'
Some Indian vocals from LoopCloud, backed up with some other samples, and three layers of the Izotope Iris synthesiser; plus drums, also from LoopCloud. Relatively little tweaking on this one.
You can find more of my work on YouTube Music or Spotify -- search for 'Jon Jermey', 'One-Five-One East' and 'Thirty-Four South'
The unmistakeable tones of Leslie Nielsen introduce a bouncy track in which choirs and synths both make a contribution.
You can find more of my work on YouTube Music or Spotify -- search for 'Jon Jermey', 'One-Five-One East' and 'Thirty-Four South'
Another track made with the combined resources of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. InstaComposer provided the instrumentation.
Incidentally, I had a massive spike in hits on the 17th which seems to have been due to an earlier track called Lucy being featured on the Samsung podcast platform in some way. But things rapidly settled down.
You can find more of my work on YouTube Music or Spotify -- search for 'Jon Jermey', 'One-Five-One East' and 'Thirty-Four South'
Mainly of interest for the use of the sitar. I got quite keen on Indian instruments at one time and used a lot of tabla in particular.
I did the drum loops, with Drumsynth 500 and a new free plug in called RF-Pads. Orb supplied the rest of the music, and I chose the instruments -- mostly synths, with a bit of bass. The vocal underlay, which supplies the title, is taken from an artificial voice recorded in a German public toilet, issuing a user with a heartfelt welcome, but reminding them that if they want toilet paper they will need to pay 2 Euros. This is then reversed, repitched, reverbed and gated beyond all recognition.
You can find more of my work on YouTube Music or Spotify -- search for 'Jon Jermey', 'One-Five-One East' and 'Thirty-Four South'
Playing with different instruments again, including a very nice steel drum which -- I think -- dates from the time I had a subscription to Noiiz that included a different instrument download every month. And the free Marimbaphonic plugin which I have had since the beginning, and never found a better one. A bit of an abrupt ending -- I would be more aware of that now.
Thanks to Robert at Polarity on YouTube for inspiring this track, which is built around voice modulation on the Polysynth playing a string patch, with another Polysynth on top doing demisemiquaver arpeggios. Trumpets and trombones add some depth, and then the Odo Purple Synth and a piano do some arpeggiated bursts on top with the BlueArp plugin. A couple of ambient vocal tracks run underneath to thicken up the mix. The name is from the Internet Anagram Server and refers to Izotope Ozone Elements, a plugin I use all the time for mixing, but have been having problems with. So the creative process was interrupted by a complete reinstall and update of my Izotope products. Which are very nice, incidentally, when they work properly.
You can find more of my music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and other sites by searching for 'Jon Jermey', 'One-Five-One East', and 'Thirty-Four South'.
Another old track that experiments with instruments. I think I had the organ pretty well right at this stage, and the steel drum effects. The guitar still needs some work, though.
You can find more of my work on YouTube Music or Spotify -- search for 'Jon Jermey', 'One-Five-One East' and 'Thirty-Four South'
If Google Translate can be trusted, this is Arabic for 'Monday Morning', when I wrote it. My main job was trying to keep out of the way of the beautiful vocals from LoopCloud. There is a jangly drum track underneath from Drum8, two layers of vocals, one with heavy reverb from Convolution, a Vital synth using yet another Venus Theory preset, and the Box Harp by David Hillowitz on Decent Sampler, which took an inordinately long time to download, but I think was worth it. I played everything, including the pseudo-Middle-Eastern strings underneath.
A little jangly track, exploring the capabilities of the Yangqin instrument. This required the Kontact player, which I eventually gave up on as being just too fiddly and temperamental. But I do miss my Yangquin.
Inspired by Guy Michelmore's latest YouTube video on Ostenati -- repeating loops. This has three of them, layered and superimposed, with some chords and a simple guitar tune over the top. Instruments include a harp, an alternating trio of English horn, two saxes, vibes and flutes, and a tabla.
A boppy piece composed around Christmas time 2020. It's a bit scrappy, but the electric guitar ties it together, and it has a strong 'wall of sound' effect. I always expect these earlier pieces to be awful, and it's a pleasant surprise when they turn out OK. The vocals at the end which provide the title are from LoopCloud, and are there because I couldn't think of another way to end it. But they are nice.
A backing drone from Vital alternating between two Venus Theory presets, overlaid with a slow arpeggiated electric guitar, a French violin, and a very quiet piano. The timpani is from the BBC Symphony Orchestra, as is the glockenspiel. Various effects are used. The voices -- some of which you may recognise -- are generated by Uberduck, using quotes about steel from various sources.
The title is taken from a short story about a researcher who shrinks himself down, Impossible-Voyage-style, to enter a subject's body and treat a medical condition -- and gets stuck. Obviously I was very keen on drum loops at the time, but had learnt enough to know that they needed to be broken up now and again. A little bit too much going on here, but on the whole it charges ahead quite well.
BlueArp works its magic on the solemn Eighty-Eight piano from Sonivox. There are vibes doing a simple ostenato, and the Drum8 Banker kit in the background. The ScandiClavia and Classic.Gtr double on the chords and the ever-reliable Funkbass does some random thumping underneath.
Another older track, heavy on the synthesisers and reverb. If I were doing it again I would put in a little percussion to push it along. As it is, it gives a lot of keyboard instruments a chance to show what they can do.
The thud comes from the Noizefield 4-Tune on the bass, while the blunder -- well, there are a few of them, since I played all this in myself, but hopefully they're not too obvious. The Arminator synth plays the top line and the lovely swirly bits underneath, the tinkly bells come from the Quilcomb-2 Belly plugin, and the Drum Machine plays the Irrupt and Irrupt Modular kits.
An early track from 2020, when I was just starting to experiment with weird sounds and how they go together. I am quite pleased with this one, although it doesn't really go anywhere. Obviously I had discovered the vibraphone by then...
Built around an 808 drum rhythm, sped up and slowed down at various spots. The insistent bass comes from Club Voltage, and Captain Chords, aided by a tabla, plays a very simple I-IV-V-ii-I sequence. Vibes are arpeggiated underneath and assisted by a xylophone from the BBC Symphony Orchestra. A plucked nu guzheng sneaks in there towards the end too.
Update: this seems to have been featured on the Samsung podcast platform on the 17th of August, as a result of which I had a huge spike in listeners and downloads. Some of this bled over to other tracks and continued on the 18th, but by the 19th things appeared to be settling down again. It's not a bad track, but don't be misled into thinking it's ten times better than any of the others. At least, if it is I can't tell why.
Based around a rhythm from the AAP Player, topped with piano and guitar, some African drums from Sforzando, the Fly drum kit from FL Studio and a little bit of weird smeary stuff from one of the Odo synths.
Another PaulStretch attempt, this time using a piano piece as input and then replaying it over the top, with a Helm synthesiser playing broken chords underneath. The stretched audio is also reversed.
The PaulStretch is a nice algorithm that stretches out sounds to a ridiculous length, but I have always had trouble getting it to work. This track celebrates my final (I hope) victory over the latest version, PaulXStretch -- hence the name -- which works as a VST. Here it is used to stretch out two sets of chords, from a violin and a harp, which run under a boppy track written with the Captain Plugins suite.
This began as an orchestral track, but I swapped out some of the instruments for synths to make it a bit more interesting. It's built in the Bitwig Clip view, which allows clips to be repeated and scheduled for playing after certain intervals, but afterwards I went through and thinned it out a bit. There are still some violins and oboes in there from the BBC Symphony Orchestra. It changes tempo in the middle for a little while, but that's surprisingly hard to spot.
Basically a showcase for the versatile U-He Triple Cheese synth, with several layers doing different things. Drum loops in the background and an iZotope Breaktweaker underneath it all.
Take a growly contrabass from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and add some wobble and distortion. Put some bass on top, the Bitwig e-Cowbell for percussion and a vibraphone for sparkle. Add two 'choirs' -- one a sampled Dave Hilowitz and the other the Virgin Choir plugin -- and a little bit of what Pink Floyd called a 'late night saxophone solo'. And it all comes out quite nicely.
Lots of drum tracks, layered and flanged. Synthesisers from Xpand and Defiant, and some timpani from the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
A slow, layered ambient track, using the lovely DVS Saxophone as its basis, and built up largely with Vital presets, including Feather Reese and Fake Random Box. I brought in Polymer for a simple melody because it allowed me to sweep up and down between notes. It also adds an in-and-out chime through the background. A few samples from LoopCloud top it all off.
Made using the intriguing TAL Noisemaker synth, in multiple layers, with a little cowbell over the top and some nice vocals from LoopCloud.
The Xpand synth essentially allows you to program four instruments in one, and I have layered several of them here. Apart from that there is a bass, a drum kit, and the wonderful Classical.gtr in several guises, playing a complex arpeggiated round on top. One little LoopCloud sample finishes it all off.
The title is inspired by a Golden Age detective novel I recently read, where the investigator calmly brushes of a series of assaults that would have incapacitated three or four lesser men.
Several layers of metallic percussion -- marimbas and steel drums -- arpeggiated and punctuated with saxophone phrases. A steady percussive beat underneath and a drone hold it all together.
Another construction using the BBBC Symphony Orchestra template with contributions from Instacomposer. The temptation to avoid with orchestral works is going too grand too soon. I'm not sure if I managed it.
Sometimes you do things just to see if you can. This track takes ambient noises from a Singapore pub and overlays them with some bats flying out of a cave in Bali. Crude instrumental noises of various types are provided by the Full Bucket FB-7999 synth, and a drum track from Captain Beat ties everything together in a big messy bundle. Lots of tweaking and flanging and chorusing too.
In the early 2000's a group working under the name Odo produced a long series of elegant, quirky synthesiser plugins. These are no longer in development, but they are still available for free download, and this track uses three of them. DoubleSix plays an ongoing ostenato in the background, Dreamer adds a shuffling rhythm on top, and Purple Two adds some growly plucks and screams. Iota Mini supplies some sophisticated bass.
The title is what the Internet Anagram Server made of 'Odo Synthesisers'.
Just for fun -- a backing drum track made with the retro-styled Sydrum package, then lots and lots of Loopcloud samples layered on top, reversed and tweaked in various other ways. Put through a pulsing Bleass Shimmer to finish off.
Late night stoner music...
Six layers, all taken from presets on the TAL-Noisemaker synth, playing in 9/4 time along with a varied rhythm, doubled in speed at the end and then slowed down again. It all seemed to work, don't ask me how.
Thanks to Keyzone Express. the piano morphs between a Yamaha and a Steinway Grand, and then the piano part morphs into a part for the Podolski synth, and vice versa. There's a funky bass in there too.
I played all the parts on this one, of which I am very proud, but -- as Eric Morecambe might have said -- not necessarily at the right speed.
This one cycles through the keys, playing more or less the same theme with variations. Overdose supplies the bassline, there is a vibraphone, and Iota Mini fills in the remaining tracks.
Birdfish is the drum kit. The other sounds come largely from various instances of the Vital synth, with a few LoopCloud samples in there to make it more interesting.
Four drone sequences from Robert of the Polarity YouTube channel, layered, interspersed and tweaked in various ways before being fed through a constantly varying Valhalla reverb. Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery while listening to this track.
The dance band is taking a break and playing some cool jazz. Three alternating layers of the amazing DrumSynth 500, a French violin on the top, and a bass, marimba and piano, along with some Melotank for echoey depth.
A pedal piano note on F layered with another piano and a doubled vibraphone and glockenspiel. Orchestral fills at the bottom with woodwinds, horns and a harp. Very slight reverb and delay but otherwise almost untouched.
China is the drum kit, and granulation is what was done to it before being stripped off into another drum kit to provide the backing for this track. All the other sounds are from various Polysynth presets, with note repeats, slowing down, and a big reverb over it all.
Based on a YouTube video by David Bruce about metric modulation. Mine didn't quite work, but I learnt something and I managed to salvage it by adding some bass, RetroVibes and the Helm synthesiser, topped off -- or bottomed out -- with a preset Polysynth drone called The Wigmill from Matjö -- hence the name.
Phrygian is two steps removed from a major key, and this track alternates between G and A. Drums from LoopCloud Drum have been run through a granuliser and fed back into a new drum machine -- twice -- and various synths including Loom and Surge get to play their parts. There's also a real string bass in there for authenticity. I thought of making it longer, but I decided there was enough in there already.
An exercise in orchestral writing with the BBC Symphony Orchestra package. One simple set of chords ornamented in various ways by the woodwinds, brass and percussion. Components courtesy of Instacomposer.
Thanks to Cameron at Venus Theory on YouTube for inspiring this one. The percussion is double-tracked and put through a granuliser, and Decent Sampler is used with David Hilowitz's bright Santa Monica Waves, and Cameron's own Chimera presets to give a deep and menacing growl in the bass. It's actually a lot simpler than it sounds.
...that my back is killing me.
Four layers of Drumsynth 500, three to drive the track along and one for decoration. Izotope Iris for the chords and a multiply layered set of piano, guitar, tabla and vibes playing the melody. Decorative vocals from LoopCloud. Flanged and chorused and arpeggiated with BlueArp within an inch of its life.
Somehow it works.
Short and to the point. A happy little 12-bar blues track fleshed out with piano, with xylophone, cellos and flutes from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and drums courtesy of Captain Beat.
Thanks again to Oskar at Underdog on YouTube for providing the inspiration. I started with a drum track which I tried to make interesting, then layered some chords, a bass and melody from various Vital presets on top, plus a recurring chime. It was meant to be fairly minimal, but I think it works.
Three-four time is relatively new for me, so it was a challenge for me to get it working. Unfortunately most of the prefab composing packages produce segments in 4/4, so they need stretching or shrinking to fit, and if you forget to do that it can be an awful cacophony. Two drum kits from Drumsynth 500, two bass lines, and three synths. Originally I used Polysynth for all three, but Polysynth and I just don't get on for some reason, so I switched to Retrovibes 2 and got some nice clean sounds.
C Major is the default key, and 110 BPM is my default tempo, so if you see those listed you know that the track worked out fairly quickly, without any need for me to fiddle with these. Three layers of Vital covering a cello track that I played in, with a funky chorus taken from Instacomposer. Two layers of Breaktweaker providing a rhythmical background, and some drums and LoopCloud loops to thicken the sound and keep it interesting.
A bit of easy listening, with some interesting instruments, including the subtractive synthesiser Loom and two copies of the Izotope Iris synth. I also used the DSK Overture plugin for the first time ever, I think, to give an orchestral texture. Lots of effect tweaking and reverb. Orb supplied the components, but I played a bit of French Violin (on the keyboard) over the top.
'Aspirator' is Spanish for 'Vacuum Cleaner', and this track is heavily laden with chords, melodies, arpeggios and bass line from the quirky but versatile synth Vacuum Pro. Three lines of drums are done with LoopCloud drums , and that's about it. The raw material was supplied by the Orb Composer suite.
Several guitars, including a new Polysynth-based one from Polarity. Amber is in there doing the strummed chords and the immensely versatile Classic.Gtr has a role. I started to run out of memory towards the end, and had to bounce some of it out to audio -- something I rarely do.
I started with a drum track -- three layers of the Bitwig Drum Machine -- and really didn't know what to do with it until I played a piano chord vamp over the top. That then got tidied up, broken into three layers and assigned to three different instances of the Union synth. A Polarity drone was layered over the top, and faded in at the beginning and end, and there it was.
Another old one. Sweeping synth notes combined with samples cut from an old Lauren and Hardy film. I quite like the drum work and the strings. Perhaps it's a little long...
A very simple track with some Classic.Gtr and a Keyzone piano, some drums from Captain Beat and the nifty and sadly neglected DSK Brass plugin, where you can dial up a duet between any two brass instruments, as well as ensembles and orchestras. In this case it is the tenor sax and a trombone with a wah mute, fed at times through the new Bitwig Note Echo effect. Reverb from Oril River, one of those nice plugins that sits in the background and just does what it is supposed to. The title comes from 1 Corinthians 13, RSV.
Three instances of the AAS Player, backed up with a couple of choirs and two layers of bass. Dedicated, of course, to the brave Ukranian defenders of their nation.
Thanks to Ed Talenti on YouTube for the idea of making a house track, even if it didn't turn out quite that way. Percussion from Bitwig samples loaded into the Drum Machine, various house-related LoopCloud vocals, Vital and Classic.Gtr to add melody and a deiberately tentative bass line played in from Elek7ro. No, honestly, I meant to do that.
And the title comes courtesy of the Internet Anagram Server...
A synthesiser collection is like a kindergarten class. Some of them are reliable, predictable, dependable and just a little bit boring. Then there are the others. Surge is one of these. When I found this sound on Surge I knew I could build something interesting, provided I didn't let it take over. So there are heavy drums from Drumsynth 500 (three times), and voices pulled from Loopcloud, along with a second version of Surge playing bells arpeggiated with Bluecat.
Noodling around on the piano again, using Keyzone Classic with the new Bitwig 2.4 Convolution plugin to give it some depth. Add a basic drum track and a triangle, and a couple of instances of Classic Guitar for the arpeggiated chords, and it all sounds rather nice, I think.
Oh, and a drone from Polarity just to thicken it up a little.
Raga Bhairav is an optional setting on Captain Chords. It has the same scale notes as the western Double Harmonic major scale, if that makes you any the wiser. This started as a basic drum track which I jazzed up with arpeggiated chords, but what makes is the Virgin Choir track doubled with the Dave Choir from Decent Sampler. Dave also gets to do some scat singing along with the drums at times, and occasionally the virgins follow his lead.
This one brings Jurong Bird Park in Singapore to mind. It's a bit sparse, but there are some nice instruments -- including tabla, which happily span the gulf between melodic instruments and percussion.
A lo-fi easy listening piece that basically just fell together when I had the drum track down -- thanks to Matthias Holmgren on YouTube, and the Bitwig Drum Machine. No chord track on this one at all, just pads, bass and a melody taken from Instacomposer. Vital did the synth parts, and the bass track is Funkbass, which only has a few presets; but all of them are spot on.
Playing around with orchestral sounds, particularly the piccolo. It's interesting to find out how much you are constrained by the instruments you pick. There are some things that classical instruments just can't do; or rather, that they sound terrible doing. And using any other drums but timpani doesn't generally feel right, although many composers have written pieces for all kinds of percussion.
Very fast time, but you don't notice it until the drums come in. Built around 16-bar loops with assistance from Orb Composer, but mainly just tweaked and arpeggiated to make it sound nice. Trying to build a little excitement towards the end.
Times cryptic crosswords are among my greatest pleasures. Trying to unravel the twisted logic used by the setters is a challenge and a joy -- when I succeed. Like the cryptic crossword, this track is constructed from unrelated bits and pieces -- Loopcloud samples -- which were intended for something quite different, but have been manipulated into holding up and leading into each other in order to form a complex whole.
A fun way to make a track is to start with a core of standard orchestral instruments and then throw in something unusual. The fly in the ointment in this case is Twister, a special-purpose synthesiser that -- well -- twists things. Apart from that we have several instances of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Bitwig's Drum Machine.
Some tracks are carefully constructed and others come out of nowhere. This was somewhere in between. I started by layering four instruments -- Purple 2, Scandiclavia 2, Helm and Hunter's Ampex Ecosystems on the Decent Sampler -- all playing arpeggiated chords, then pulled them out one by one to play melodies over the top. Then I jazzed it up with the Finga preset on the Bitwig Drum Machine, and glued it all together with a nice drone from Polarity. Once I got the right instruments, it more or less fell into place.
Layered phrases from Orb Composer, played on various exotic instruments -- mostly synthesisers -- with a sprinkle of ad lib keyboard on top.
Sort of what? I don't know...
Lots and lots of layered synthesisers, built on a basic structure from Orb Composer. Probably a little bit over the top, but I wanted to see what I could do. DrumSynth 500 provides the percussion, and Loom and Helm are in there somewhere.
An older track, perhaps a little monotonous, but I was experimenting with the guitar and percussion. Possibly my first major use of saxophone on a track.
A techno track built around a few drones, starting with the beautiful but bizarre Loom synthesiser, with percussion from the equally bizarre Izotope Breaktweaker on top. Various effects, and Lots of Bitwig samples thrown in to make it interesting. 'Flocculence' is the tendency of a substance to form loosely aggregated particles or soft flakes.
Me, doing a live piano performance over a drum and guitar loop. Doubled, edited slightly and sped up a little, but basically intact. The drums, from Captain Beat, are flanged to keep them interesting, and the guitar has a 'stylish' Bleass delay.
This is what the music in my head sounds like.
Four instances of the weird and wonderful Izotope Iris synthesiser, layered in with various samples from Loopcloud.
Inspired by a Guy Michelmore video on YouTube. This track sets a vibraphone four-bar sequence against a marimba five-bar sequence -- until they swap sides. Violins, a harp, clarinets and flutes from the BBC Orchestra are on hand to push the tune along, and the Classic.GTR guitar Drakiee preset gets a look in towards the end.
Inspired by a YouTube video from Cameron at Venus Theory about Euclidean sequences, although that's not what I ended up doing. Four single-note sequences from Vital put through various random patterns with the Blue Arp arpeggiator, topped with chord sequences for violin and marimba. Phone and train sounds at the bottom tie it all together.
A positive track, despite the title, expressing hope, from an idea by Oskar on Underdog. Piano, Vital synth playing guitar and flutes are all doubly arpeggiated but playing the same notes. The drums are Loopcloud drums using the Polychromatic House pack from Rodriguez Jr, playing MIDI clips and jazzed up with Deelay.
Grungy ambient experimental stuff, built on Bitwig samples, including a set of really nice long ones called 'Grudge' 1, 2 and 3. Every effect plus the kitchen sink thrown at it, and more samples layered on top. Just a little exercise in prefabrication, really, but maybe it will help you relax.
A pleasant track that came out of nowhere. I don't know what instruments I was using at the time, but I've always liked bells and vibraphones, and the big bass sets them off nicely. The drums are just a little bit over the top, and if I was doing it again I would riff on them slightly with delay and maybe a chorus. But on the whole it works, I think.
Gareth Green is a charming and erudite man who hosts the Music Matters channel on YouTube, covering everything from the most basic principles up to complex analyses of composers like Scarlatti and Grieg. This is a tribute to a recent episode describing how to extend a musical sequence into a complete work.
Only five instruments, but there's a chorus on the piano melody, and the piano chords are arpeggiated later in the track. The saxophone and clarinet are run through the versatile free Deelay plug-in, and the bass sound comes from Orb. Keen-eared listeners may be able to hear the Atlantic Ocean murmuring in the background.
Apart from the drums and vocals, everything in here is done with the inexpensive and versatile Melotank plugin, plus various effects including reverb, echo and shimmer. The vocals come from a Loopcloud set called 'Electro Heartbreak', and although they were a late addition, I think they work extremely well.
The ongoing 'party' theme is purely coincidental.
I am reasonably happy with this track, but I have no idea why it should have been -- for a long time -- my most popular download on Spotify, by far. All I can imagine is that the title must have struck a chord with some people. If you find it strangely compelling, please let me know.
The Minories is a street in Central London. We are in Locrian, a notorious mode with lots of sharps, repeating the same chord sequence, but flickering in and out between major and minor chords. The BBC Orchestra is providing the instruments, and there is a arpeggiation on the viola pizzicato and the brass. Otherwise it's all very straight.
Short and shimmery, with a strong beat -- I think it stands up alongside some of the later tracks. Dana was a very lovely fellow-student of mine at university, who vanished into the void after graduation and was never heard from again -- by me at any rate. Her astonishing beauty should be celebrated.
The last of the holiday compositions. Based around a drum track, with loops taken from Instacomposer.
Another old one, just playing with a particular sound. At this stage I have forgotten which, but it sounds like it might be from the FLEX synthesiser. It doesn't really go anywhere, but it was fun to do.
A simple little piece that more or less fell together. Done in 7/4 time to make it more interesting, with Instacomposer providing the chords and Polymer and Polysynth playing the melodies. Drum Machine comes in a bit towards the end, and there's a filter on the whole thing to give it some variety.
A low drone from the Bitwig samples collection is fading in and out underneath, with Indian percussion over the top and a Kansas drum kit, both from the Drum Machine. The Polysynth Atmospheric Lead and Deep Ocean are playing the same things in different octaves with a bit of echo, and various percussion samples crop up every bar or so to maintain interest. It's the kind of thing that shouldn't really work, but I think it does.
Another early piece from Women of History. Short and to the point: a display case for various instruments that I enjoyed the sound of at the time. I think it holds up well.
Debbie Featherstone was the first girl who ever kissed me, when I was nine years old.
She did it on a dare.
Experimental but quite boppy. Instacomposer output fed into five instances of Polymer doing its thing.
Shanghai is on the mouth of the Yangtze River, and free ferries ply back and forth at several locations. These are generally crowded and noisy and great fun.
An early drone piece. The gating is done with A1 Trance Gater. Lorna was a delightful young lady I worked in the same department with at university, long ago.
Written on a cruise liner with basic Bitwig bits and pieces. I can't find the original for this at the moment, so I can't supply the details of key and BPM. I'll try to chase them up later. But it has a nice shimmery feel to it.
A nice little piece with guitar, drums and synthesiser, from the now-delisted Women of History album. Listening back I was surprised to find how well it all went together. If I were doing it again I might add a few little surprises, but I am generally happy with this one. I think it suits the name.
Who is Grace? At this point I have no idea.
The clue is in the title. Assembled from bits and pieces including Finga Chants and Electron on the drum machine, some piano note samples, and Polysynth playing a Magic Trill. FM-4 is in there too, with the Dreamy preset.
Another old track, and one of the few that has stayed with me. Obviously I was experimenting with pluck sounds, but I think the combination works. If I were doing it today I might add a drum track -- or not. But I would probably alter the tune a little more.
Made on board ship with the native Bitwig resources, which turned out to be surprisingly tuneful once I got the hang of them. Instacomposer provided the basic chords and tune elements, and I had fun tweaking Polymer and Polysynth to do the rest. Some Bitwig drum loops under the general heading NeverEngine did the rest.
From the New Found Lands album, now withdrawn, which contained my most commercially successful piece so far -- The Party Next Door. I have no idea why it was such a relatively big hit, other than the title, but you can judge for yourselves when I put it up in a few days.
An early attempt at combining a plucked and a drum track. A little monotonous, but I think the basic structure is sound. If I were doing it today I would jazz it up some more.
Jane Seymour was the third wife of Henry VIII. She died eighteen months after their marriage, shortly after giving birth to the future Edward VI. This old track has lots of synth swooping and plucking, but there's a drum track in there somewhere too.
Composed at sea between Broome and Darwin, with the limited resources of a laptop running Bitwig and Instacomposer. Still far more than any composer would have had access to forty years ago, of course. For six weeks or so these pieces will be experiments in using the built-in Bitwig instruments and effects. So far the sounds are interesting, if not particularly pleasant. There are a couple of interesting drum kits involved.
Another older piece. A plucky track based on memories of driving around New Zealand. If I was doing it again I would smooth it down a bit and introduce another theme, but I think it works for what it is.
Starts with a slightly off-kilter drum loop, then calls on multiple instances of Polymer to fill in with chords and a lead. Being on holiday with only a laptop, I don't have my usual panoply of effects, so this is a bit rough around the edges -- but none the worse for that. Just an upbeat way to greet the dawn, with a couple of Bitwig loops to provide interest.
Holiday posting -- an old track.
A very early attempt at an ambient track using loops, and one I'm still reasonably happy with. I think the sinister overtones work quite well without losing the underlying beat. From the sound of it this is probably the DB-33 organ doing its thing, although at one time I had four or five organ plugins to choose from, all very similar.
Greetings and thanks to all the new listeners who are pushing this podcast up the popularity charts.
While I'm away posting will be largely limited to older pieces now withdrawn from distribution. This is from the old, now taken down, 'Women of History' album. It's a little monotonous, but I think it makes good use of vocal loops and some pitch shifting.
As well as being a Trojan priestess and princess, Cassandra was a young woman I occasionally met while teaching computing, who was insistent that her name was 'Cassandra' and not 'Cassie' or 'Cass'.
Not one Iota, but four -- four tracks supplied by the workhorse plugin Iota Mini, a sampler-based synth with minimal controls but a wide range of haunting sounds. The lead is a kind of Yanqin pluck, reminiscent of the Kontakt-based Yanqin I used a few times before I decided Kontakt was just too bloody complicated. I played it in, shifted it to E minor, and then topped it up with chords, arpeggios and melodies based on the lead track and provided by Orb Composer.
Does it work? I think so.
A slow ambient track based around a very simple generative drone designed by Polarity in the Bitwig Poly Grid. I set this to play random notes in C pentatonic, made a copy playing one octave lower, and modulated the volune so that each of them takes over in turn. Polysynth plays some random Bell Bird tones, while a stretched ambient recording from an underground station plays underneath. Samples provide random clicks and twangs.
A bubbly track in a major key, with an arpeggiated DB-33 organ playing off against Izotope Iris' Pulsing Chime, Classic Guitar's Azathoth setting, and a Club Voltage bass. The drum parts were written in Captain Beat and then transferred to Drumsynth 500, where the Lost Drum Kit setting seemed to suit the sound best. Ample Guitar is no there somewhere too, and the string solos are supplied by LoopCloud.
I will be on holiday from next week, so posting will be light till late June.
A few years ago I took a flight in a contemporary German airship. Despite its modern construction, takeoff still required the manual removal of many heavy sandbags from storage lockers along the hull, and a safe touchdown involved putting them all back.
Pentatonic scales give this a certain lightness, I think. Captain Plugins supplied the chords, drums and bass, there's an arpeggiated Podolski synth, and I wrote the vibraphone melodies.
Isotope Iris is in there too, doing its thing.
Put together from loops with a bit of reverb and delay. The whole thing is sent through the interesting Cloudseed Algorithmic Reverb, which has a number of inscrutably-named presets.
There are two options for marketing a plugin: a) give it lots of buttons and levers and dials, and sell the idea of total user control; and b) make it mysterious, hide everything, and sell the idea that the designers know how to do it better than you.
Oddly enough, both of them work.
Built around LoopCloud samples from the Black Corporation Kajimi synthesiser, with a backbone of drums from Captain Beat and some sparkly melodies and bass by Helm by Matt Tytel. Helm is a predecessor to Matt's Vital, a powerful free synthesiser plug-in with lots of presets, but without the pay-for-extras subscription model Vital uses.
I had trouble with ending this one. It didn't want to just fade out, so I added a pulse almost by accident, and that worked.
In other words, seven to four, which is the time signature. Mainly a drum track, using the peculiar Birdfish drum set in Bitwig Drum Machine, but supplemented with several instances of the free Surge synthesiser. Surge is a little brassy for me at the moment, but I will look into ways to try and tame it. In theory, any synth should be able to play any waveform, but in practice they all seem to have their favourite timbre.
David Hilowitz supplied some singing ghosts via Decent Sampler.
A tribute to Guy Michelmore -- hence the name. BBC Symphony Orchestra violins, oboes and ultimately trombones layered over a Yamaha grand piano from Keyzone Classic. Unlike Guy, I can't (yet) play in the notes and chords I want, so these are written by other means, including the Bitwig arpeggiator.
There were a couple of boring bits where I simply reversed the MIDI sequence, and that seemed to work too. Lots of octave shifts and some speed doubling at the end.
Layered ambience here, assisted by a sparkly drone from Robert's Polarity YouTube channel. Three occurrences of the Vital Synth with different patches, one being a tweaked version of the original preset, and an airport ambience backing track from Freesounds.
No actual chords this time; just note sequences based on them, gradually speeding up and overlaid for each synth patch. Hi-hat and bumpy thumpy samples from my own collection.
Lots of layers in this one, but mainly a chance to play with Isotope Stutter Edit, both on the drums and on the underlying chords. Orb's Harmonise feature came in handy to provide a bass line, an arpeggio and a melody on top, and from then on it was just a matter of shuffling things around a bit. The percussion is from the free but surprisingly handy Drum8 by Audiolatry. It speeds up a little bit at the end, just for fun.
Read the apostrophe as a possessive or a contraction, as you prefer.
Sometimes you just throw stuff together and see what sticks. This was assembled out of various bits with Drumsynth 500, several instances of Vital, and a riser that I happened to have in my sample folder. I added a few breaks and some modulation to try and keep it interesting. It's a little mechanical, but I think there's some fun in it.
The original plan was to use the wonderful, underrated XPand! 2, but memory problems got in the way.
Roger Eno's new album is out, so I thought it would be nice to try a Roger-esque track. So there is a piano and some strings, and because I couldn't leave well enough alone I threw in a growly bass, an oboe and some drums. Instacomposer did the honours once again.
This is my first full track in Bitwig put together entirely in the Clip Launcher mode. I got out of that habit when I switched from Ableton to FL Studio, but I might get back into it.
I have a huge set of downloaded chord progressions which I plan to copy over time into Instacomposer presets, but it's a tedious job. This is based on the second one, transposed into F# Major. If you're interested, the chords are I - iii - vi - Isus4.
Instacomposer came up with a really pretty melody for me, and you can hear it towards the end, doubled on box harp.
All the instruments come from Decent Sampler, and LoopCloud adds some bongs and booms and pretty Latin American vocals.
"A is for 'orses" and so on. A bubbly track that grew out of an attempt to create a trappy drum beat. There's a couple of big key jumps in it to keep the listener awake. Percussion by Drumsynth 500, flanged a bit. Weird noises by SONIVOX Twist, which is a bit temperamental but worth the trouble, and something called a Disturbing Arp from Podolski again, which I really couldn't bring myself to leave out. Overdose bass and an echoey crash cymbal loop to tie it together.
'The fogs start at Bullaburra' is a well-known phrase associated with real estate agents in the Blue Mountains who are trying to sell properties downhill from that town. But fogs and frogs can be pleasant, and this track seemed to evoke both.
Made largely in Instacomposer, with the interesting Podolski synth by U-HE, FunkBass from Audiolatry, a Sonatina cello, and a doubled DVS Saxophone playing slow random arpeggios in different octaves. Lots of shimmer and reverb.
Empty vessels, of course, make the most sound. Piano, organ and a drum kit, all tortured into making weird noises by the Convology XT plugin, which changes the reverb shape. The arpeggiator for the organ is set to different speeds, and towards the end they all try to play the drum loop, with varying success. Inspired by Cameron on the Venus Theory channel, demonstrating his own use of convolution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvMKOkkCwBU
Take one guitar loop from LoopCloud, speed it up slightly and repeat it in different octaves. Then chop it up and feed it to a drum machine using loops from Captain Beat. Use the same loops for a drum track at half speed. Throw in a chord sequence for the Sampler using an acoustic bass, and repeat for the Polysynth Action Arp with some cross-panning.
The result is far better than it has any right to be, but sometimes things work out like that.
When in doubt, dial up a grand piano and give it some chords to play, then take it from there.
A boppy little track based on a 12-bar blues riff, modulating from D Major to B minor and back.
Classic.Gtr is in there, bouncing from one setting to another every four bars, thanks to the Bitwig Step modulator, and occasionally crashing the audio engine. Instacomposer supplies the melody and bass lines.
How nice it would be to be able to import MIDI files into Instacomposer directly!
The great Bill Oddie wrote many comic songs for his radio and TV appearances, including a pseudo-Indian psychedelic anthem called 'Everybody Bounce!', where the chorus ended with the startling injunction "...on a bed of nails!'. This is a tribute in which the bounce is provided by an electric tom in Full Bucket 64, and the bass, percussion and chords are supplied by the Captain Plugins suite. Some things have been tweaked a little, but it's fairly standard stuff.
BlueArp once again, working randomly on a noisy lead from the Union Synth. Underneath it a drum track from Captain Beats and a kalimba and bass from Decent Sampler. Izotope Iris is in there somewhere too, doing its thing to make it all sound interesting with something called a Mad Face Organ Launcher. And on top of everything, tying it all together, a nice melodic drone from Polarity Music - https://www.youtube.com/c/PolarityMusic.
Written on Good Friday. Another short one, built around an acoustic drum track, and using the amazing--and amazingly complicated--Blue Arp plugin, which I managed to tame by linking its pattern choices to step modulators in Bitwig. Filled out by some bass and a vibraphone melody from Orb Composer, with the arpeggio line tripled on kalimba and a couple of soft pads by the very underrated Xpand!2 synth. Lots of reverb and flanging to try and make it interesting.
Did it work?
A very early attempt at an ambient track. I would do it very differently today, but I think it holds together reasonably well. I see that it was originally called 'Cornish Holiday' and that it used the Biotek plugin which came with FL studio -- very strange and temperamental, but occasionally capable of hitting exactly the right feel. It came from the same quasi-environmentalist motivation which makes people advertise bottled water as 'gluten free'.
Done in FL Studio but never released, as my distribution service (Ditto) is apparently wary about using vocal material from other sources, in this case the LibriVox collection. I was told that their performances of poems are in the public domain, but that wasn't good enough. Here it is for the first time, masterfully read by Clarica.
Robert--whose last name I don't know--on the Polarity YouTube channel is a Bitwig guru who generously spends his time teaching noobs like me how to use the DAW efficiently. My results never sound quite like his, but I have fun trying. This is a little piece based on his video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Iaqv6VNATg&t=985s
Or rather, about half of it, which is all I could absorb in one session.
Take three overlapping drum tracks from the fabulous Drumsynth 500, add a beautiful piano riff, and then decorate as required with Loopcloud samples. Reverberate and shimmer with restraint, and sometimes something nice will result. This is very simple, but the piano glues it together.
BTW, this podcast is getting a lot more attention than my tracks on Spotify and Google Play. I don't know whether that will continue, but right now I can recommend it as a way of making your work known.
Does music need 30,000 samples in a library? I have samples on my hard disk that I will die before I even hear, much less use. But they can give some interest to a slow ambient track like this one; built around a set of chords in Orb and slowed right down -- to 1/8 of the original speed. And for once some of the built-in unobtrusive Orb sounds were right for the mood. The Lisbon cobblestone traffic ambience is from Bandcamp.
A happy little piece using iZotope Stutter Edit to introduce some glitches into the drum track. The drum kit is Jumentous, ported over from the FPC (Percussion Collection?) samples on FL Studio. One set of chords, arpeggiated in various ways and doubled by Helm and Loom. I have brought all the FPC kits over from FL Studio to Bitwig; along with FLEX and Autogun, they're the only things I really miss. Audio editing in FLS is probably a little easier too, though perhaps not as powerful.
From the No Piano in My Sepulchre album, now withdrawn. Much of my early stuff sounds very sparse to me now, but a few tracks -- like this one -- have good bones. Reworking them would take a lot of time and effort, but at some point I might try and compile an album of -- from my perspective -- Greatest Hits. This track also uses my very first synthesiser download, the venerable, but still effective, V-Station.
Does music need a key? This is based on four random chords, fed into the Bitwig Polymer and Polysynth instruments. The sequence was then saved as a MIDI file and used by the Orb Composer plugin to generate a bassline, arpeggios and a melody. With a few exceptions, the inbuilt instruments in Orb are generally uninspiring, so the last step was to kind a better instrument (Babylon) to play the lines. And A1 TriggerGate gives a rhythmic pulse to a Polymer Honey Fizzy Bass. Title from a Bowie lyric.
From the early 'No Piano in my Sepulchre' album, now withdrawn, which cryptic crossword nerds will recognise as a reference to Hercules -- and in fact nearly all the tracks refer to his twelve labours. This was done in FL Studio, which looks quite alien to me now after a year using Bitwig. I believe I played in the piano, added a drone and then gussied it up with the DSK ChoirZ plugin, plus some delay. Not perhaps musically very interesting, but I think it has an appropriate air of the grotesque.
Focused around some very lovely Indian vocals, with a tabla backing and a musical swirl with a touch of sitar, all overlaying a long ambient track of underwater sound effects from the Bandcamp 'freetousesounds' collection. If the Beatles had stayed in India, this might be what George Harrison did in the 1980s. Madripoor is a South Asian island in the Marvel Comic Universe, probably derived from Majipoor, a fictional place used as the setting for many fantasy stories and books by Robert Silverberg.
Starting in a major key for a change, then switching to a minor for a slower central passage. Three layered instances of Grand Piano XXL, supplemented in turn by DSK Brass (tenor sax and hard mute trumpet) , then cellos and a flute from the BBC Symphony Orchestra. InstaComposer was used to generate the basic tracks, which were then tweaked a little bit and moved up and down by octaves or fifths to supply a counterpoint feel. InstaC got a bit niffy about the memory use, but nothing crashed.
Designed around the percussion sequence, as you can probably tell. The Bitwig E-Kick, E-Snare and E-Hat are all in there, along with a couple of Loopcloud World Percussion drum kits. SONIVOX supplies the orchestral brass, the BBC Symphony Orchestra steps up with a glockenspiel, and Sonatina supplies a flute, so it's a party to which everyone's invited. I think this was the first time I have tried staggering doubled percussion. Very few effects on this one, except for a chorus on the vocals.
Assembled from tracks generated by the InstaComposer plugin, with some vocals supplied by Loopcloud. Background percussion by Izotope Breaktweaker, which is a memory hog but produces wonderful stuff when it's working properly. Each preset has twelve two-bar patterns which are triggered by keyswitches, so the same MIDI sequence can be used over and over again with different presets to get different sounds.
Izotope produces some great stuff, but they don't always make it easy to use.
A solo violin in three dynamic modes -- sustain, tremelo and spiccato -- backed by a string section and bolstered by a Sforzando sax patch and English horn. I really like the English horn; it has a sort of blurry vulnerability that you don't get from oboes or clarinets.
But the secret sauce that ties them all together is a quiet arpeggiated backing in dotted notes by something called a Harmonum, from LostIn70s.com. You may not even hear it, but it makes a big difference.
Two interesting instruments in this one; Tumbitronic, which emulates the very high banjo-like Indian instrument called the Tumbi, and Soundpaint, a complex layered synthesising sampler, which you can buy individual instruments for. Get the razor free, pay for the blades. But Decent Sampler does a similar job, and I find it easier to use. Does composing music need multi-layered instruments when you can layer your own? That's a discussion we'll come back to.
Another Loopcloud-heavy track, this time using three keyboards from Loopcloud Play--Guitar Atmospherics, Percussive Plucks put through an arpeggiator, and Sign String, as well as sample vocals and the Plastic Bucket preset on the Bitwig E-snare. Topped with the e-cowbell fed through Bleass Delay. The lead vocals are put through A1 Trigger Gate (probably a little too much) just to help drive the track along.
Mainly just trying to find a way to give the female lead vocals a suitable setting.
The core is a Loopcloud drum track put together by tweaking their four-bar loops and stringing them into an 12 bar session. This is interspersed with MIDI drum loops to give the quieter sections, and then doubled for Drumsynth 500 coming in slightly later. Add lots and lots of Loopcloud loops, filtered using the 'Tone' settings section, and it ends up nicely layered. I wasn't sure about the female vocals in the middle, but without them it might all be a little bit too robotic.
Nothing but loops from Loopcloud, strung together to give an Indian feel. Nine tracks in all, each given a different set of effects -- reverbs, flangers and Blue Cat's Free Amp on some of the percussion. The triangle is put through Excalibur to muddy it up a bit, and the main vocal line goes through the amazing Valhalla Supermassive reverb. A slight delay on the sitar, and that's it -- apart from TAL reverb on the master. And like all my tracks, the master goes through Ozone or Neutron Elements.
An ethnic drum selection from Loopcloud Drum, doubled on Bitwig Drum Machine using drum clips ported across from the FPC selection in FL Studio -- specifically Bata and Bongo. It's relatively easy to collect clips in Bitwig and assemble them into a new drum kit. Also from Loopcloud, some Bollywood strings and other clips to give it an ethnic feel.
Unfortunately, though the singers are great. there are relatively few English vocal clips on Loopcloud that aren't geared to hiphop-style tracks.
Written using the wonderful InstaComposer plugin and sent out to a xylophone on the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Koto plugin on the Full Bucket FB-7999 synth, the Helm synthesiser, the BA Full Attack bass patch on Overdose and Ample Guitar.
Last but not least, some twangy bits from the Purple 2.1 synth, one of the many lovely instruments available from the website of the sadly defunct Odo synths. A synthesiser smorgasbord that somehow came together very nicely.
The wonderful Classic.GTR plugin, on the Apocrypha preset, the VG-AMBER strumming plugin on Shuffled Strumming, with strum patterns controlled by MIDI keys in the lower octaves, and the no-nonsense, always reliable Strum Session 2 on Acoustic Dreadnought. Four bars noodling around followed by two bars playing chords to bring them back together again. Around the one minute mark the time signature moves from 4/4 to 3/4, and the key from Ab Major to C minor. Back to Ab from 2 minutes to the finish.
This uses the SONIVOX Orchestral companion plugins. These sound lovely, but they chew up memory like crazy. When I tried to install them for Bitwig the website said they weren't available because they were being 'upgraded', but that message was over a year old, so I concluded that they were obsolete.
I persuaded the supplier to provide them anyway, but the memory problems made it just too annoying to continue. Piano, Contrabass, Timpani, Violin and English Horn plus Captain Chords.
A relatively simple track featuring native Bitwig plugins. The Drum Machine uses the 'Cristians Cocktail Hits' preset, but the kick is supplemented by a layer of cowbell turned down in pitch and volume. There are two FM-4 layers, Andromeda Bells and Alice in Big Ben ARP, both more or less straight, and a Polysynth layer using the Antonio preset. The track begins in F# minor and shifts to A Major at the 1:09 mark.