Escape, Cosmic Bos challenge & Drowned

I've done quite a lot of music making today. 

It started off when I saw the latest music weeklies challenge on Twitter. It's also been adopted by Cosmic Bos for their own monthly challenge

This week's brief is Escape. I've not been that prolific at song writing for some time, but I wrote this in around an hour this morning. I then spent a good majority of the day recording various guitar, bass and vocals. As well as this I scored some drums within StaffPad. It has the makings of a good song. I could probably submit it as it is. Maybe I will.

I decided to give the monthly challenge a try. I figure if I write and record a song a month I'll have a new album by the end of the year. Although in my mind I probably won't release it that quickly. I'm really determined to make my next album really crisp, so I'm going to take my time recording, mixing and mastering to whole thing.

I also recorded some vocals for a secret project for the classical label Monochrome Motif Records

that released my orchestral suite last month. It's nice to give something back to the label manager Andrew who has shown a great deal of faith in music. I'm not particularly happy with the results of the recording. It could be they are just too high in my mix. I certainly need to tweak it a little before sending it across.

In theory I should have time to work on music again tomorrow, although what I'll do I don't know as yet.

Orchestral Suite No. 1 - New Lanark

So, I've neglected my blog (again). I do intend to try and update it a bit more regularly from now, perhaps a weekly update with what I've been doing.

On January 6th my orchestral suite was released on Monochrome Motif Records here is a little information on how that came about.

Orchestral Suite No. 1 - New Lanark is my first foray into classical music. A sweeping evocative soundscape that I hope conveys the stunning world that I am fortunate enough to have surrounding me.

It was in March 2022 that I set about the task of teaching myself to read and write music for an orchestra. I had very little knowledge of music theory or notation, it was basically just an exercise to see if I could compose something. 

Initially I was just messing about. Creating small pieces. Learning as much as I could about composition, orchestration and the software that I was using. After a short while I decided that I wanted to write something for a symphony orchestra, so I took the pieces that I had and worked on expanding them so that they would fit this brief. 

I first visited New Lanark as a tourist visiting from southern England around 2006. It immediately struck me a fascinating place. A natural beauty, steeped in history and an incredible insight into Britain during a very challenging period. I now live and work in the area, and a lot of the main themes were written during my lunch breaks, so the idea of basing this orchestral suite on New Lanark happened quite naturally. 

From deciding to learn composition to the completion of this orchestral suite in under 10 months is quite a struggle to comprehend. Yes, I have been making guitar based music for many years, but this seems such a short space of time. It's very difficult to explain. A large credit needs to go to my partner Vicky, she is classically trained, and has patiently answered all of my queries (however basic) as simply as possible for me. I'm immensely happy with how it has turned out, and it has set me on a completely different musical trajectory for the future.