nick best
Group: Members
Posts: 1
Joined: Sep. 2005 |
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Posted: Sep. 08 2005, 18:23 |
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hi everybody :
according to the amarok website more information from Light + Shade :
'LIGHT'
1. Angelique:
"That's the name of one pre-set on one of my synths. As usual, I start off by just building the music up, and this piece turned out to sound angelic. I can't explain how it happens, as I say I just hit the buttons. I emerge from my studio every three days with a track and I'm exhausted! It feels like giving birth."
2. Blackbird
"I wanted a track with just piano, using one of the last surviving acoustic instruments, my 1928 Steinway. The title comes from one of my motorcycles; I have a garage of 180-mile an hour machines, including a Honda Blackbird. It's a slower track, but the title goes with it the way that Stanley Kubrick used 'Blue Danube' in 2001: A Space Odyssey. When I'm riding, even when I'm going fast, time goes into slow motion. I love working with machines, but then I'm off on my super bikes. I tried flying, and got my license, but it's too stressful. Motorcycles are so relaxing."
3. The Gate
"I wanted to use the virtual vocal software called Vocaloid. If you take the raw sound, it's not that good, but through various plug-ins, you can make it sound beautiful. The title comes from my grandfather, Michael Liston, who was from Cork. I knew he'd disappeared one night and returned three years later, but then I discovered that he'd been drafted into the Munster Fusiliers during WW1, and fought in Ypres in France, where the Menin Gate memorial was built after the war. Visit the museum in Ypres and see what remains of the trenches... for me, this track got exactly that mood."
4. First Steps
"This is compiled of pieces from my Virtual Reality game Tres Lunas. When you begin the game, you're alone in a desert in front of a cactus, and when you move off, this piece of music plays. Robyn Smith, a musical direstor and keyboard player I know, helped me arrange this."
5. Closer
"I heard a hymn at a funeral during my trip to Ypres, and discovered it was called Pres de Toi I liked it so much that I made a Celtic version too. But the strong bagpipes didn't really fit the record I was making, so I turned it into a blues."
6. Our Father
"This is originally a tune from Tres Lunas. I worked on it around the time the pope died, and what a fascinating and wonderful life he had; when he died, it didn't feel like he was gone, and it all just seeped into my consciousness, and ended up with this title. For me, it encapsulates the whole man's lifetime, and his death."
7. Rocky
"That's the name of our horse. He's a beautiful Arabian colt, who always comes to see me and gives me a hug. If we leave him without gelding him, he'll become this really impressive black stallion."
8. Sunset:
"In Maestro, my second Virtual Reality game, there's a specific tune you can only listen to when you reach the winning level. Here, I made a variation on it, but this time around, I was thinking about a chill out album, so I thought it would be nice to call it Sunset."
'SHADE'
1. Quicksilver
"To me, this is not dance music, it's music with a dance beat. In this particular case, I wanted to recreate movement underwater, with dolphins and bubbles. When I lived in Ibiza, I saw dolphins on the bow wave of a ship, which was special."
2. Resolution
"Where I live, in Chalfont St. Giles, there's a memorial to Captain Cook. I'm a real Trekkie and Captain Kirk was based on Captain Cook, whose ship was called Resolution, which travelled to the Antarctic. I made the music sound like ice. But when I was recording, it was the same time as the Iraq war, and somehow all the bits and pieces merged together and that track came out."
3. Slipstream
"I contacted FL Studio and asked if they minded me working on one of the demo songs for their FruityLoops software, because I really liked the riff. They said, absolutely, yes please, and that turned into Slipstream."
4. Surfing
"I overlaid tracks of my vocals mixed with virtual vocals from a software package called Vocaloid , which has a very robotic sound, and this track popped out."
5. Tears Of An Angel
"This track is about the feeling you get when someone is really down, sad, or unwell and you are unable to do anything to help. I was making an operatic kind of track and this was my first use of Vocaloid. I've mixed in my voice too, which makes a nice, thick choral effect."
6. Romance
"The first tune most people learn when they start to play Spanish guitar has these two sides, a minor key and a major ckey. Because I was trying to make a dance version, the major key didn't work, so I ended up with the dark side of romance. When a love affair goes wrong, and couples are hiring lawyers to attack each other."
7. Ringscape
"Another track from Tres Lunas. It comes from a scene when an owl takes you on this journey, across a desert, down a tunnel and into an icicle world. Robyn Smith helped me arrange this one as well."
8. Nightshade
"Christopher von Deylen and I decided we'd work on a track of each other's, so I play guitar on his album of his band Schiller, and he played bass and drums on this track. Besides Robin Smith's involvement, Christopher's the only guest. The rest is all me."
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