Tuesday 18 February 2014

Music!

A few days ago on Twitter, author John Scalzi (@scalzi) posted a link to an "entire album of electronic music".  Apparently, most people did not know this. I didn't.

I was happy to find another fellow writer who was also a composer. (Oh yeah.  Did I mention I was a composer?  I am.)  Many creative people often 'crosstrain' in other fields. dancer/painter, writer/musician, etc. Keeps the creative muscles fresh.  Frex, an actor who can also sing and dance is called a "triple threat", aka Hugh Jackman.

In 2008 I was commissioned to write some theme music for the World Horror Convention that year. Thought I'd share a working copy of the main theme with you:



The lyrics are:
No safe place
left to hide
under the Desert Sun.

I've got a couple of albums' worth of music lying about, plus the soundtracks to a few roadshows, an opera I wrote in University, some movies soundtracks to some student film projects, etc.  I haven't done much composing the past year or so, having focused more on my writing projects and a few Really Big Family Projects involving schooling.

I might get back into it, casually, just to stretch my legs when my brain freezes up from novellisation.

Hope you enjoy.

Okay, aside from the coincidental link from Scalzi to his album, a few weeks ago my husband rigged up a tape player so he could rescue the music from some mix tapes some friends gave him in the early 90's.

I, too, had some tapes with music I wished to rescue from magnetic obscurity.  Especially, I had one beautiful song called "Looking Through Time" that I had created during an Electronic Acoustic Composition class.  I consider it one of my best works to date.  Alas, I haven't uploaded it to the Internet yet, so it'll be some time before you'll get to hear it.

Right now, I'm just glad I managed to save it.  I did have one tape that suffered degradation. The One And Only Copy of that music was on that tape, and now it's pretty much gone. Alas.

Go back up your work.  Doesn't matter if you're a composer, a writer, or a doodler.  Go scan, copy, photograph, archive anything of value that you've created. Trust me, you'll be ever so sorry when it's gone.

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Her Grace composed her first song at the age of three.  It was pretty much little more than a patterned banging on the piano, but it was still music to her.  If you've ever written music, share it with the world.

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