Soundclick pages

At the end of last month, I thought that it was time that I created a new SoundClick page in order to separate different types of music which I create. If someone likes the 'folktronik' sound enough to check my music page, then that person won't be too happy to encounter all the singer/songwriter material stored there. I don't know whether the opposite is necessarily true.

After casting around for names, I decided on YMMV - an Internet acronym for 'Your Mileage May Vary', which is exactly the response that I have been receiving. SoundClick enables one to create several 'band' pages which can be administered via the same user, so creating the page was easy. I transferred over to the page 'all' the folktronik files which I had created: all of two! Unfortunately, the chart history didn't get transferred; as far as SoundClick was concerned, the instrumental called "Killarney Boys of Pleasure" by No'am Newman which had got to position 22 (or thereabouts) in the Irish traditional charts is a different recording to the instrumental called "Killarney Boys of Pleasure" by YMMV.

Once that administrative task had been done, I started looking around for new material. I had been toying around with the idea of arranging Steeleye Span's "When I was on horseback", but hadn't got very far past transcribing the tune. The 'trouble' with many of these instrumental tunes is that there is only a 'verse' tune with no contrasting section, and that there are many notes within a bar, whereas the spaced out electronic sound is better served by long notes.

The first piece which I successfully arranged was "Mist Covered Mountain"; my arrangement was based on the tune as played by Mark Knopfler in the film "Local Hero". I didn't reference the soundtrack but instead played the tune and chords as my mind remembered them. I know that in one place I slightly changed the notes in order to fit in with what I thought should be the harmony. This arrangement closes with what might be termed a 'petite reprise' in order to add some interest.

Next up was a piece which I had started sequencing years ago, called "Sheriff's ride", which I learnt from the Albion Country Band's "Battle of the field" record. As the tune is fairly limited, I could only repeat it a few times before getting bored, so I decided to follow it with "Princess Royal", the first and only Morris tune which I ever learnt to dance. SR is in a minor key and PR is a major, so the transition sounds pretty good. The original MIDI file had been titled "Heavy Morris" (in fact, I had to look up the Albion disc in order to discover what the tune was actually called), and in honour of this, I put a heavy drumbeat and throbbing bass into the arrangement. Instead of having the ending peter out, I used a fairly typical finale sequence F ->  G -> A.

After listening to these two tunes and my other dreamy stuff, I was aware that the folktronik arrangements were missing the mark: they tended to start with the tune, follow the tune throughout the piece and end with the tune. Apart from second, harmony voices, they were too closely based on the original tune.

So for my final (so far) published piece, "Flowers of the Forest", I thought that a change was in order. This one starts with my heavily altered chords of the verse played on a pad, before the tune enters (played on a synthesizer unconsciously imitating bagpipes). After going once round the tune, I then played improvisations on the chord sequence, ignoring the tune and its structure, before playing a closing verse or two.

One extra complication is that many of these traditional tunes are in 9/8 time, making them slip jigs. One probably hears the waltz time, but also each beat is broken down into triplets (although only two notes are actually played per beat, the first is twice as long as the second, specifically a crotchet followed by a quaver, as opposed to two notes each the same length in 'normal' rhythm). There aren't many drum patterns that I'm aware of which have this time signature, so I frequently omit the drums.

I'm working now on Steeleye's "Lark in the morning" (Please to see the king), as opposed to Fairport's "Lark in the morning" (Liege and Lief medley). This too is in 9/8 and has a very short melody. After playing it a few times along with different harmonies, the tune moves into 4/4 time and the tune is played again, although of course now its internal structure and accents have been changed. As things stand at the moment, the tune gets played maybe eight times over the course of only two minutes; the track is too short as it stands but I can't keep on repeating the tune, even though I have changed the rhythm.

So I'm at a dead end at the moment and don't know how to lengthen the track. I may tack on another tune to make a medley (I have been considering Fairport's tune of the same name, but they don't seem to fit together, even though the track is now in 4/4 and Fairport's version is 12/8) or do some weird restructuring to any combination of tune/harmony/rhythm.

Response in terms of page hits, listens and downloads has been very encouraging but there's been no written feedback. Someone did write (via private mail, the comment isn't on SoundClick) that my music was fantastic, electronic with soul, which goes to show that the music is finally reaching its audience.