"Romantic Suite"

In 2001 I wrote this three-part suite for orchestra. It has the movements "Mirage", "Cheeky", and "Never Ending". "Mirage" is for full orchestra and piano, "Cheeky" is for piano with strings and a few woodwinds, and "Never Ending" is for string orchestra, harp, and two solo violas.

The first rendition was created in 2001, using a Yamaha MU-80 synthesizer and a few soundfonts. This new recording from November 2013 is based on the Garritan Personal Orchestra sounds. The music is available at BandCamp.

Visualisation Video of Debussy's Nuages - by Stephen Malinowski

Stephen Malinowski has visualised my recording of Claude Debussy's "Nuages":



This is in principle a piano roll plot, but with much more sophisticated iconography, giving a deep insight into the musical structure over time, showing instrumentation, harmonies, and tonality.

On his website "The Music Animation Machine" he explains the process of creating these visualisations. He has many more music recordings visualised in similar ways, and his videos are on several YouTube channels:

smalin
musanim
musanim3D
stephenmalinowski
Stephen Malinowski

Website Maintenance - all music tracks now streamed for free

After a longer period of inactivity I had a look at my main website www.virtualphilharmonic.co.uk, only to notice that many of my music streams did not work anymore. Some settings on the Indaba website where I am currently hosting most of my music, had changed, and as a consequence, several of my music recordings were not playing anymore.

I fixed this now: each of the tracks which are listed here have now a full length streaming widget from the Indaba site. I got rid of the "partial play" which only played a random 30 sec clip, even though many of these tracks can also be purchased on iTunes / Amazon.

I think that it is more valuable that people have the opportunity to listen to what I am creating (or trying to create), than "enforcing" the purchase of my music on commercial sites. Therefore, all my music is from now on available for free on my site.

These Indaba streaming widgets appear to use Flash. Unfortunately they do not seem to run on any mobile phone... There is the "additional MP3 player" which uses HTML5, but that appears to work somewhat unreliable, as the files are on my very slow server.

In the future I may not use Indaba anymore and instead use my site on BandCamp. They offer widgets which work greatly on any mobile platform, and I like their model of voluntary payment. On this site I already have placed the complete "Ma Mere L'Oye" by Ravel, and my very latest rendition: From Mahler's Symphony #6 the "Andante Moderato". I have just posted that one also on my main site, as the first one that only links to the player on BandCamp.

Tchaikovsky: February - Carnival

A few days ago I completed the orchestra transcription of the second piece from Tchaikovsky's Suite "The Seasons", "February - Carnival". My method for transcribing is as follows: First I record the piano version with sequencer software. Then in the piano roll view I select notes to be copied into appropriate instrument tracks. I did use all the notes in the piano score and let it be played by at least one instrument group. Also, I did not add any notes, except some octave-doubling in the bass and a triangle in the middle part.

Tchaikovsky: January - At the Fireside

Tchaikovsky wrote the 12 pieces "The Seasons" for piano solo. However, they lend themselves very well for orchestration, and several composers and musicians transcribed these pieces for orchestra (read more on Wikipedia).

In 2001 I began my own transcription of these pieces, but I only managed to complete "January". Now, in 2013, I again have resumed working on transcribing these nice little music pieces, and I have revised my transcription of the first one, "January", with the use of Garritan Personal Orchestra samples.

The result is here:


For non-flash systems this link may work: www.indabamusic.com/asset/show/1995252