Pervert's Music Archive
The music links take you to the page of a file server where the mp3s are located. They can be downloaded and saved or streamed directly from there. Apologies for the inconvenience.
LIVE
Fugue.mp3
Let's Dance.mp3
Tarkus-Take 5 Medley.mp3
Fugue is a piano/bass duo and Tarkus is jazz piano trio. These two pieces originally were performed together (the mp3 split into two smaller files). The recording is from 1992, transferred from video tape so, the quality is a bit dodgy. But, the performances are kick-ass, even if I do say so myself. The bass player is a guy I haven't seen (almost) since these recordings were made. Oddly enough, I bumped into him at my local shops about a week ago. He's no longer playing much -- decided there was more money in being a lawyer than music.
Let's Dance was recorded (to video, as above) in 1995 when I used to have a Santana 'tribute' band. Tribute bands were all the rage in the 20th Century (in case you didn't know) and various artists continue to be aped by 'tribute' acts. That said, this band (an 8 piece group) included some great players and was about the most fun band I've ever had.
ORCHESTRAL
Abaddon's Bolero.mp3
Creole Dance (Orchestral).mp3
Happenstance.mp3
Op.1 No.1 The Rat Patrol.mp3
Op.1 No.2 Dance of the Farmer's Crazy Wife.mp3
Op.1 No.3 Mice in Wolves' Clothing.mp3
Abaddon's Bolero is a transcription I did of an Emerson Lake & Palmer piece, originally released on their Trilogy album. It's a personal fave, not the least because I used to have a dog named Abaddon.
Creole Dance is also a transcription of a Keith Emerson solo piano piece. I've orchestrated it in the style of Lalo Schifrin -- film composer of notable themes like Mission Impossible and Mannix. You'll hear discreet references to these and other tunes that have some connection to Latin America.
Happenstance isn't strictly speaking an orchestral piece, but I thought it belonged in this folder. It's a piece I composed last year as an exercise for the post-grad music course I was doing. If you're interested in the details of how it was composed, email me. Otherwise, just enjoy it for its '20th Century Art Music' sound.
Opus 1 - Variations on Three Blind Mice
I've always felt a bit wanky about titling my work with opus numbers, but I decided last year that I might start doing that. The problem I have in not labeling things that way is I often change my mind about titles and ultimately end up losing things or having duplicates under a dozen different titles.
The first variation - The Rat Patrol - was composed in the style of contemporary American composer, John Adams. I really like a piece of his titled Short Ride on a Fast Machine and I had it in mind when I composed this. There's also a few discrete references to an ELP piece called Pirates -- kinda a personal joke that would take too long to explain here.
The second variation - Dance of the Farmer's Crazy Wife is as its title suggests. It's a fairly wild variation that extends ideas introduced in the first variation. Incidentally, whenever people ask if I dance I usually say no. It's not that I don't dance - I do. It's just I dance to music like this and, frankly, I'm yet to visit any nightclub that plays music remotely resembling this. So yeah, if you want to dance with me, you'll need to get your dancing shoes around music like this. Oh, and I like to spank to these types of rhythms as well. Just so you know.
The third and final variation - Mice in Wolves' Clothing is a solo piano piece in a minimalist style. There are some subtle metric modulations throughout to alleviate the monotony of the minimalism. The title is something of a musical in-joke that won't be evident in this recording. Originally, the piece was conceived using the Pythagorean tuning system. This system was such that all intervals of a third are 'consonant' while the octave, fourths and fifths (usually the most consonant) are dissonant. The 'thirds' relates semantically to the Three Blind Mice and by making consonant (most harmonious) here ends the cycle of dissonance established in the preceding two movements -- but not entirely, as the Pythagorean tuning sounds 'out of tune' to modern ears. Even in equal temperment, the repetition of certain notes and intervals is such that it alludes to the Pythagorean tuning.
SOLO PIANO
A Blade Of Grass.mp3
Ballade.mp3
Barrelhouse Shakedown.mp3
Hornpipe.mp3
Piano Improvisations-WBMF.mp3
Solitudinous.mp3
The Dreamer.mp3
All the files in this folder are transcriptions I've done of Keith Emerson pieces. I have dozens more that I'll be uploading over the coming weeks.
A Blade Of Grass is a tranquil minature piece.
Ballade is a neo-romantic piece in the style of Chopin - the godfather of cocktail bar piano music. Don't let that description turn you off.
Barrelhouse Shakedown is typical of Emerson's piano style and general aesthetic. This particular transcription is of his solo performance of this tune released on his album Emerson Plays Emerson (it originally was recorded with the London Jazz Ensemble and released on ELP's Works Volume 2 album). It's a straight-ahead boogie piece, but it is interesting in the way Emerson plays it over more sophisticated bebop chord changes and blends in trad jazz form, such as the stomp chorus and Tatum-esque stride. It's a party piece I've played since I was a kid.
The Dreamer is a minature piece with some interesting melodic leaps and modal shifts in the chord progression. All of this takes place in just over two minutes.
Hornpipe is a fun little variation on Sailor's Hornpipe arranged in the Baroque style of J.S. Bach. It was originally recorded on Harpsichord by its composer, George Malcolm but this arrangement is a transcription of Emerson's version, played on piano. It's something that wouldn't sound out of place at a pirate party! (I have a pirate fetish, umkay?)
Piano Improvisations is the piece of music I heard that made me want to be a musician. I'd played piano for about ten or eleven years before I heard it, and never had any difficulty playing anything I heard by ear. This piece, however, stopped me dead in my tracks. The transcription of this has been an on-again, off-again project all my life and was only recently completed properly. It is, in short, my pièce de résistance.
Solitudinous in another minature piece that explores some interesting harmonic terrain.
SOUNDSCAPES
Infanticide.mp3
Q042-Jonestown.mp3
A small change of pace here...
Infanticide is an attempt to paint a sonic picture of mental illness. The vocal samples come from a recording I made of a local poet, but I've taken her completely out of the original context she wrote in.
Q042 - The Jonestown Massacre is a macabre piece I composed using fragments of a tape recording of Jim Jones' final hour in Guyana, right before his suicide and the infamous massacre of his followers. I've juxtaposed samples of the craziness against a happy little 'dance' piece as a metaphor for les moutons des Panurge as Rabelais might have called people who actually think they like dance music. The other samples used are The Russian Counting Man -- symbolic of the conspiracy theories that continue to abound about Jonestown (a CIA Mind control experiment gone awry, for example). The original public domain tapes of Jonestown and The Conet Project (for the Russian) can be found at Archive.org.
OTHER
Sweet Dreams of Funking.mp3
Light My Fire.mp3
Sweet Dreams of Funking is my arrangement of the Eurythmics song, Sweet Dreams are Made of This. There's a long story about how this was arranged and recorded but basically, I recorded the singer as she sang the words to a MIDI backing of the original version. Then, I composed a new backing and cut and pasted her vocal track into it. This technique is quite common these days, but it was relatively new at the time I did it.
Light My Fire is another of my arrangements. It's an instrumental that drastically alters the tune to give it more of a blues/jazz feel. One of these days I will record the vocal part to this arrangement.
LIVE
Fugue.mp3
Let's Dance.mp3
Tarkus-Take 5 Medley.mp3
Fugue is a piano/bass duo and Tarkus is jazz piano trio. These two pieces originally were performed together (the mp3 split into two smaller files). The recording is from 1992, transferred from video tape so, the quality is a bit dodgy. But, the performances are kick-ass, even if I do say so myself. The bass player is a guy I haven't seen (almost) since these recordings were made. Oddly enough, I bumped into him at my local shops about a week ago. He's no longer playing much -- decided there was more money in being a lawyer than music.
Let's Dance was recorded (to video, as above) in 1995 when I used to have a Santana 'tribute' band. Tribute bands were all the rage in the 20th Century (in case you didn't know) and various artists continue to be aped by 'tribute' acts. That said, this band (an 8 piece group) included some great players and was about the most fun band I've ever had.
ORCHESTRAL
Abaddon's Bolero.mp3
Creole Dance (Orchestral).mp3
Happenstance.mp3
Op.1 No.1 The Rat Patrol.mp3
Op.1 No.2 Dance of the Farmer's Crazy Wife.mp3
Op.1 No.3 Mice in Wolves' Clothing.mp3
Abaddon's Bolero is a transcription I did of an Emerson Lake & Palmer piece, originally released on their Trilogy album. It's a personal fave, not the least because I used to have a dog named Abaddon.
Creole Dance is also a transcription of a Keith Emerson solo piano piece. I've orchestrated it in the style of Lalo Schifrin -- film composer of notable themes like Mission Impossible and Mannix. You'll hear discreet references to these and other tunes that have some connection to Latin America.
Happenstance isn't strictly speaking an orchestral piece, but I thought it belonged in this folder. It's a piece I composed last year as an exercise for the post-grad music course I was doing. If you're interested in the details of how it was composed, email me. Otherwise, just enjoy it for its '20th Century Art Music' sound.
Opus 1 - Variations on Three Blind Mice
I've always felt a bit wanky about titling my work with opus numbers, but I decided last year that I might start doing that. The problem I have in not labeling things that way is I often change my mind about titles and ultimately end up losing things or having duplicates under a dozen different titles.
The first variation - The Rat Patrol - was composed in the style of contemporary American composer, John Adams. I really like a piece of his titled Short Ride on a Fast Machine and I had it in mind when I composed this. There's also a few discrete references to an ELP piece called Pirates -- kinda a personal joke that would take too long to explain here.
The second variation - Dance of the Farmer's Crazy Wife is as its title suggests. It's a fairly wild variation that extends ideas introduced in the first variation. Incidentally, whenever people ask if I dance I usually say no. It's not that I don't dance - I do. It's just I dance to music like this and, frankly, I'm yet to visit any nightclub that plays music remotely resembling this. So yeah, if you want to dance with me, you'll need to get your dancing shoes around music like this. Oh, and I like to spank to these types of rhythms as well. Just so you know.
The third and final variation - Mice in Wolves' Clothing is a solo piano piece in a minimalist style. There are some subtle metric modulations throughout to alleviate the monotony of the minimalism. The title is something of a musical in-joke that won't be evident in this recording. Originally, the piece was conceived using the Pythagorean tuning system. This system was such that all intervals of a third are 'consonant' while the octave, fourths and fifths (usually the most consonant) are dissonant. The 'thirds' relates semantically to the Three Blind Mice and by making consonant (most harmonious) here ends the cycle of dissonance established in the preceding two movements -- but not entirely, as the Pythagorean tuning sounds 'out of tune' to modern ears. Even in equal temperment, the repetition of certain notes and intervals is such that it alludes to the Pythagorean tuning.
SOLO PIANO
A Blade Of Grass.mp3
Ballade.mp3
Barrelhouse Shakedown.mp3
Hornpipe.mp3
Piano Improvisations-WBMF.mp3
Solitudinous.mp3
The Dreamer.mp3
All the files in this folder are transcriptions I've done of Keith Emerson pieces. I have dozens more that I'll be uploading over the coming weeks.
A Blade Of Grass is a tranquil minature piece.
Ballade is a neo-romantic piece in the style of Chopin - the godfather of cocktail bar piano music. Don't let that description turn you off.
Barrelhouse Shakedown is typical of Emerson's piano style and general aesthetic. This particular transcription is of his solo performance of this tune released on his album Emerson Plays Emerson (it originally was recorded with the London Jazz Ensemble and released on ELP's Works Volume 2 album). It's a straight-ahead boogie piece, but it is interesting in the way Emerson plays it over more sophisticated bebop chord changes and blends in trad jazz form, such as the stomp chorus and Tatum-esque stride. It's a party piece I've played since I was a kid.
The Dreamer is a minature piece with some interesting melodic leaps and modal shifts in the chord progression. All of this takes place in just over two minutes.
Hornpipe is a fun little variation on Sailor's Hornpipe arranged in the Baroque style of J.S. Bach. It was originally recorded on Harpsichord by its composer, George Malcolm but this arrangement is a transcription of Emerson's version, played on piano. It's something that wouldn't sound out of place at a pirate party! (I have a pirate fetish, umkay?)
Piano Improvisations is the piece of music I heard that made me want to be a musician. I'd played piano for about ten or eleven years before I heard it, and never had any difficulty playing anything I heard by ear. This piece, however, stopped me dead in my tracks. The transcription of this has been an on-again, off-again project all my life and was only recently completed properly. It is, in short, my pièce de résistance.
Solitudinous in another minature piece that explores some interesting harmonic terrain.
SOUNDSCAPES
Infanticide.mp3
Q042-Jonestown.mp3
A small change of pace here...
Infanticide is an attempt to paint a sonic picture of mental illness. The vocal samples come from a recording I made of a local poet, but I've taken her completely out of the original context she wrote in.
Q042 - The Jonestown Massacre is a macabre piece I composed using fragments of a tape recording of Jim Jones' final hour in Guyana, right before his suicide and the infamous massacre of his followers. I've juxtaposed samples of the craziness against a happy little 'dance' piece as a metaphor for les moutons des Panurge as Rabelais might have called people who actually think they like dance music. The other samples used are The Russian Counting Man -- symbolic of the conspiracy theories that continue to abound about Jonestown (a CIA Mind control experiment gone awry, for example). The original public domain tapes of Jonestown and The Conet Project (for the Russian) can be found at Archive.org.
OTHER
Sweet Dreams of Funking.mp3
Light My Fire.mp3
Sweet Dreams of Funking is my arrangement of the Eurythmics song, Sweet Dreams are Made of This. There's a long story about how this was arranged and recorded but basically, I recorded the singer as she sang the words to a MIDI backing of the original version. Then, I composed a new backing and cut and pasted her vocal track into it. This technique is quite common these days, but it was relatively new at the time I did it.
Light My Fire is another of my arrangements. It's an instrumental that drastically alters the tune to give it more of a blues/jazz feel. One of these days I will record the vocal part to this arrangement.
Labels: Music
posted by Mister Pervert at 11:24 AM
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