Danse de Cleves

Experimental composition, using the old dance tune

Danse de Cleves with added digeridoo.

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....

Octoboogy

for trumpet, electric guitar and jazz band

Story behind the piece:

A boogie woogie in Octatonic mode, with very slight cheeky hints at Cliff Richard's "Living Doll". This was originally written as a midi file for a "La Musique Petite" challenge. Thanks to the increased qualities of Finale 2004 it is now a fairly "respectable" mp3 file. It is not intended for live performance, for reasons which will be obvious when you hear it. However, this electronic version is fun and well worth the download!

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. .

Palindromic cat processor

A soundscape starring Themba, the vocal one of the family

New: Video of the Palindromic cat processor

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.