MP3 Downloads
- Beginning of Something
- As the Windmill Turns
- Coastal Breeze
- Flight
- Each Day (view lyrics (not recorded in music))
- What If I Told You
- March of Martians
- Nathan's Space Theme
- Down Again
- In the Silence
- The Brink
Music Notes
Beginning of Something is the first complete song I made with my XP-80 and was named appropriately.
As the Windmill Turns is a song I actually composed before I got my XP-80 using a General MIDI tone generator, but I felt it sounded better on the XP-80 and thus recorded it using the XP. The song reminds me, for some reason, of Dutch folk music. Perhaps it's the note intervals or the rhythm, but I named it accordingly.
Coastal Breeze made me think of the Pacific Ocean and the calm coastal breeze you might encounter anywhere near the coast.
Flight was composed soon after Coastal Breeze and it made me imagine a Sea Gull navigating those coastal breezes high in the air above the coastal foothills.
Each Day was my attempt at a lyrical "missing you" love song. Of course, I can't sing, so I wrote the lyrics but did not sing them and only played the melody.
What If I Told You was also intended to be sort of a lyrical love song, but I never got around to writing any lyrics for it since there was no one to actually sing it. So I came up with a melody without any words.
March of Martians was inspired by Gustav Holst's The Planets, more specifically, the Mars suite. I named the piece appropriately.
Nathan's Space Theme was inspired by numerous science fiction movie sound tracks, but most notably Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Jerry Goldsmith. Listen for the wire-like sound which pays homage to a similar sound in the "Vejur" themes of that movie. The note progression was actually derived from a song I composed on my old Yamaha PSR-500 years before I got the XP-80, though I did refine and expand on it in this version.
Down Again is an emotionally reflective tune. The title likely reflects the mood I was in when I began composing it.
In the Silence is also a contemplative piece reflecting my mood while I was composing the song.
The Brink is yet another emotionally reflective piece. The title is symbolic of the mood of the music more than a reflection of my thoughts when composing it, but appropriate given the thunder and rain sound effects in the song (which are synthesized with a patch I made on the XP-80, by the way) |
About This Album
(Buy the CD or buy in iTunes)
The songs in this collection were composed and created between 1997 and 2000. I used only a Roland XP-80 (with no expansion boards) to create all of these songs. The XP-80 was my first professional synthesizer, but I had used other consumer electronic keyboards (all Yamaha PSR models) before purchasing the XP-80 in 1997. The recordings are all digital and were recorded using my old PowerMac 8500 and Opcode's Studio Vision Pro.
The musical pieces were inspired from a number of different emotions from boredom and curiosity to self-pity and confusion. The titles reflect those emotions for the most part. Some pieces were named simply because of what the song reminded me of. |