About the Performances

This section is designed to show-case my interpretations of classical music.

All of these performances are original "realisations" of period pieces. That said, they are heavily influenced by W Carlos, an early collaborator with Robert Moog, the father of the synthesizer. In the late sixties an album was released which revolutionised the way I perceived music. "Switched On Bach" contained works by Bach, Handel and Scarlatti performed on the Moog synthesizer and it was like nothing I had heard before. I was determined to find a way of emulating this type of work but had no means of doing so at that time.

The advent of computer based sequencing packages and readily available synths enabled me to achieve a long held dream of producing full scale classical works. These were fairly simple affairs at first, mostly in mono and with no more than eight parts. Over time, they grew in complexity and scope. In these examples you'll find simple works for keyboard through to some of the Brandenburg Concertos (an ongoing project!).

Each piece starts life as an annotated score which is then transferred, note for note, into its various parts in the sequencer. Each part is split into appropriate phrases to make managing the whole a little easier. Originally, all parts are based on a piano voice. The tempo of the whole work and pitch of each part is then set. 

Then the (sometimes very) long job of "orchestrating" the parts is undertaken. This requires not only constructing an appropriate voice for the part, but also ensuring that no part dominates others unnecessarily. Finally, the piece is "humanised", i.e. made to sound more like it's being played rather than sequenced on a computer.

Note

The extracts and full works which you can listen to in these pages are held as WMA files. Each page has a selection which you can access by clicking the “note ” icon. There is also a piece which plays as you load the page via a small media player (you may need to allow ActiveX components to run before this will work).

Enjoy !