Compositions, songs and other pieces of music

I have been writing music since I was 14. I have gone from writing in 7/8 (due to not having any knowledge of music theory) to regular timings and passed my grade 5 theory in early 2004.

I have since written many pieces, ranging from Caribbean and Gamelan for world music fusion, entitled "SMWorld" (my first, in 7/8 time), a later second version contained the piano to add a more European feeling to the piece.

The next piece was a bit of Rondo form, to be played at a modern art exhibition. It was entitled The Elements, written for the electric 12 string guitar. A second version was later written with more instruments and percussion for a more textured sound, although I am still not happy with the end result.

Then followed a minimalist piece, consisting of modern techniques, however I was not at all happy with the end result and am not sure what I have done with the recording.

The next piece was a song entitled "Welcome to the game" written about a street racer. Unfortunately, the recording is rather quiet and the levels are off because I was short of equipment, so the whole lot was done through the same microphone at the same time. My teacher, who was to examine and moderate the piece, Raymond Macfarlane, sang it to help with the recording because of the lack of resources, given time, I would alter the drums to complement the track.

All the pieces mentioned above written in the course of 2 years during my GCSEs. The following group were written from the end of the second of those two years, to the end of my A-Levels.

 The first of the second set of pieces was a theme and variations piece, based on the theme of "Greensleves", called "Variations on Greensleves". This piece didn't quite turn out the way I wanted it to, but I think it sounds acceptable just the same.

Then in the second half of that year, I wrote a Fusion of blues, jazz, rock, pop and classical music. I called this piece "12 Bar Fusion" it was based on 12 bar blues and enhanced with other styles. This piece I think turned out quite well. I handed it in for AS Level music and intend to re-create a recording of it at a later date.

During the period between the above two pieces and those that follow, I began learning the guitar. My friend Alastair Gilding and I wrote a short duet based on a very simple lick I wrote on my guitar (very simple). This piece was entitled "Leopard's Kiss Duo".

A friend from my band (The Revelations) and I produced something we called "Incessant mumbling". This is based on an idea of randomly surrounding someone with one hundred people, who proceed to mumble at them. The piece is a slight variation of the idea, experimenting with equipment and multi tracking used to make he and I sound like around twenty people, with a guitar playing in the background as the person they surround, which continues to play as the mumbling breaks of person by person and then ceases all together.

In the mean time, I have written a piece entitled "Paganini Dreams". I finished writing this piece on the 16th of Janurary after working solidly on it from the start of November and over the Christmas break. It is based on Paganini's 24 caprices, played in a rock style. I got the inspiration for this piece listening to some of Jason Becker's music and I heard him play Paganini's 5th caprice on his guitar. This made me think and soon afterwards I had started writing.

One of my compositions for my A2-Level music posed a particular challenge, as it was to be sung by the local church choir in four part harmony. This meant that I had to be careful the chords I used and make sure the words didn't sound strange against each other. Three weeks after I had started, the choir had their first attempt at singing it. The parts I was worried about were as difficult to sing as I'd thought they'd be, however with practice, the choir picked them up. When they sang it for the recording, they sung it extremely well. They had only 3 weeks to perfect it themselves, as the deadline was quite close, in the end, the recording was done the night before the deadline! This recording can be downloaded here.

I have now reached the end of my A2 Level education, my final piece of music written for A2 Level music is entitled "Hardcore classical blues fusion". It is a fusions piece based on features from classical, blues and heavy metal music. I think it is my best yet. Sadly I have only had time to record the backing track, so I had to use a midi and record it from the college's electric piano. I intend to produce a better recording later.

I am in the process of attempting to reproduce "12 bar fusion", a piece I wrote at college and have not had my recording given back.

More recently, I have been working on pieces to perform with a band. Two tracks I have been working on recently are "hard shred metal" (this is a working title) and "the Ballad of a Crazed Madman". I am working on others and shall upload them when I have recordings.

Thanks for your interest.

Steve

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