Danse de Cleves

Hand to Mouth

(improvisation for hand to mouth sounds, guitar and other instruments)

Story behind the piece:

Well, it's just an improvisation... what can I say? I sampled the sound of my hand tapping my open mouth and it went on from there....

Tree

Experimental composition, created initially as a midi file using a fractal music creation programme, using its "tree" parameters.

Once I had discovered certain DXi programmes, especially the Delay Lama, and soundfonts such as "skat", I reallocated some of the parts to those to create this soundscape which is half fractal and half improvisation, with a hint of a hornpipe. .

Dance of the Washerwomen

[based on the lute piece by Hans Neusidler]

arranged and complemented for various "ethnic" instruments.

Story behind the piece:

Hans Neusiedler [or Neusidler] wrote a lovely dance for lute [or vihuela] called Dance of the Washerwomen - I never quite worked out why he considered that such hard working ladies would dance in this way or, indeed, how they would have the strength to do so after a hard day's washing,

but I leave that to the judgment of those more knowledgeable about such things

. . .

The piece works nicely anyway! The form is a 4/4 theme followed by a 3/4 hupfauf [hop up] in faster tempo related to the first tune, then it returns to the original theme.

Palindromic cat processor

A soundscape starring Themba, the vocal one of the family

New: Video of the Palindromic cat processor

Experimental composition, using the old dance tune

Danse de Cleves with added digeridoo.

Originally written with trumpet solo in mind, this version using flute and jazz guitar works much better and is available as score and parts for live performance (with or without live octopus) - on MusicaNeo