Instrumental: This Time For Real (piano/guitar, smooth jazz) - also streaming

Hi Folks,

I realise there are still people waiting on me for stuff, but I wanted to publish this track anyway, so here it is.

The piece is called This Time For Real, and you can get the crystal clear 192 kbps version from the usual place:
http://www.hawksley.net/mp3

or I uploaded a streamable version to Soundclick (if they're running today - is there an R in the month?):
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/7/ johnhawksleymusic.htm

I tried to keep the size of the arrangement down. I was pretty successful, I did add some strings but they're really light and only occur I think twice in the piece. There's an oboe phrase over a couple of sections because the fast-moving piano phrasing was sounding a little disjointed and the oboe gives you some melodic continuity.

Something I noticed about the smooth jazz stuff is that it's really all tightly tied together. By that I mean the arrangement is really tight, all the parts are really well coordinated. Maybe I can't articulate what I mean. It's like, nobody's busking, it's all written out so everyone moves together. Hmm. I think I need more tea. The ending (which I usually rush) to me sounds pretty well placed. I returned to the A section (again with the oboe) and worked in a neat ending. I think it works. Style-wise, obviously it's an instrumental, could definitely be a theme, very sunshiney (which is odd considering it's gray and horrible here).

I put a new fast hard disk in the PC to allow Giga to stream samples faster and it has helped, but there are some timing glitches caused by me running the A90 out of polyphony* (jeez, if it's not one thing it's another) and the fact that during the recording, the PC is running three audio applications and it can't really keep up with all the audio. The piece had all the usual post production work (lineup, normalize, noise reduction, compression, trim, fade) so it sounds pretty clean. BTW, if anyone needs a recommendation for sound cards, I can recommend the Mia Echo. Been using it for a couple of months now, and it does everything it says on the box, reliable and capable and I don't have to EQ stuff defensively, like I did for the SW1000 (suffered from saturation).

(* - my fault, I doubled some of the parts to make them thicker)

Anyway, comments here or to mail are very much appreciated. First piece of 2003 (start as you mean to go on?

Happy new year everyone, John

PS, for the Brits, while listening, imagine a white clock on a blue background with the following phrase underneath: 'PROGRAMMES FOR SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES FOLLOW SHORTLY'

wrote on 02/01/03 2:16 AM:

(snip)

This wasn't as coherent a whole for me as some of your other pieces. It seemed more a pastiche of nice little bits that had a somewhat tenuous relation to each other. (That's after just one listen, but an attentive listen, which is an 'authentic' listen, I reckon.) The nice little bits are, of course, extremely nice little bits, but taken as a whole I didn't find this one emotionally engaging at all. The illusion of the music just emerging magically wasn't there. Of course, you will remember my raving over some of your other stuff, so you know this crit is coming from a fan. BTW, have you listened to Gertrude, a collaboration between tc and me? Try the nowhereradio.com address below. We'd both appreciate your knowledgeable

Hi Sean,

Firstly thanks for taking a listen. I'll check out Gertrude this weekend and post here.

Okay, I'm having a listen through TTFR now, I can see what you mean, it's not engaging, it's just 'nice'. I think there are two points that maybe make it incoherent:

1) the 2-bar fillers between some sections (nice though they are) - maybe this wait is causing the energy generated by the previous section to be dissippated over the double bar line. This was just supposed to be a 'cute' phrase trick to punctuate the sections, but maybe I overdid it. I always go for cute, as you all know 2) the lack of thematic transfer between sections - i.e. each section is different.

Strangely enough, this want didn't seem forced, but it also didn't come out in a rush, it was much more of a controlled, considered piece. Maybe that's why it doesn't seem to appear as if by magic - it's a much more considered, less spontaneous composition.

I actually went back in a couple of points and changed some of the progression (something I hardly ever do). I took breaks and thought long and hard about instrumentation - I threw out a lot of orchestral stuff because I wanted to keep the instrumentation fairly tight whilst still getting a 'big' sound. I auditioned a couple of phrases on classic synth patches, and ultimately threw them out too. The sequence uses a mid-hall reverb model with not too much wet; the only exception is the oboe, which uses a large hall because that helps it to 'fly' above the mix. Somehow. I might be talking rubbish, I never studied recording or production so this might all be crap

Thanks for listening, again, Sean; I'll crit Gertrude this weekend!

Best, John

CC: rmms

John, please disregard this intrusive solicitation by my partner, who rudely neglected to mention the two other links for 'Gertrude.' (or to even post the full binary)

wrote on 03/01/03 1:29 PM: (snip)

Hah! My old Dad blessed me with the following words of wisdom: Dad: Bullshit baffles brains, boy. Me: Huh? Dad: Nobody really knows what they're doing. They're just pretending. Me: Huh? You mean, when you skippered that merchant ship back and forth across the North Atlantic through U-Boat and Stuka attacks, you didn't know what you were doing? Dad: Precisely.