I wanted to share my orchestral sheet music here for the Ukrainian National Anthem in pdf form. Here it is along with my recording with the London Philharmonic Orchestra
Please feel free to download and share and perform under Creative Commons free licence. Philip x
Here’s how Marvin Minsky found his way into the PlayStation game Detroit: Become Human via Abbey Road Studios.
https://youtu.be/P3pUYCHzSLM
Marvin Minsky was the godfather of Artificial Intelligence. One of the modern world’s great thinkers, Marvin had a profound effect on the future of science, as well as the popular consciousness. He designed the concept of HAL for Kubrick in 2001 A Space Odyssey, and taught Arthur C Clarke and Richard Feynman.
Marvin was a friend of mine – a great raconteur, dinner party companion and fellow musician. I had met him through his friend and student, my friend Michael Hawley – the polymath and amazing impresario behind the EG conference.
After Minsky passed away, his daughter, Margaret Minsky, shared Marvin’s musical archives with me. It’s maybe not a widely known fact that Marvin was a fantastic composer and pianist. (I honestly think there was nothing he couldn’t do).
He had composed many short piano pieces directly onto reel-to-reel tape, hand splicing them with a razor blades and tape, recording them at different speeds to create pitch effects. It was a real treasure trove.
One of Marvin’s pieces sounded so beautiful, I decided to write a musical frame for it – a sort of concerto accompaniment around his recording.
I took Marvin’s tape into Abbey Road Studio 1, and recorded orchestral musicians around it using the Beatles’ microphones – I mean – why not?!
Over the last year, I had been working on a soundtrack for the game Detroit: Become Human – a PlayStation title developed by Quantic Dream, itself a deep mediation on Artificial Intelligence and the sentience of Machines – entirely Marvin Minsky’s realm of expertise.
Here’s the director of Detroit, David Cage to explain the coda to this story in his own words;
You never know where ideas come from. Sometimes it is something you heard or read years ago. It is there, somewhere in your brain, but you don’t know it… until it comes to the surface. When I was looking for a name for the inventor of the androids, the name “Kamski” came very naturally. It sounded like a very good name for a genius working on AI and creating a technological revolution. It is only years later during the development of Detroit, when composer Philip Sheppard evoked Marvin Minsky, that I made the connection.
Who other than Marvin Minsky could be the inspiration for a precursor and absolute genius of AI? He worked on the first prototype of virtual reality (in 1963!), worked on artificial neural networks, theorized the concept of self-replicating AI, and was even the consultant on one of my favorite movies (Kubrick’s 2001).
What I absolutely didn’t know about Minsky is that he was also a fantastic composer and piano player. When Philip mentioned this to me, we felt it would be a great opportunity to pay a tribute to Minsky by adding his music to the game. So we recorded one of his beautiful soundtracks, orchestrated by Philip and recorded at Abbey Road studios, and we used it in one of the most dramatic scenes in the game.
Minsky would have probably enjoyed having his music in an interactive experience talking about androids and AI, and how machines could become a new form of intelligent life. It was also a way for us to pay homage to one of the most brilliant minds of our time. I would like to thank Philip and Minsky’s family for this amazing opportunity.
Footnote… I’m lucky not only to have been friends with Marvin Minsky, but also with many of Silicon Valley’s most exploratory thinkers. My friend Tom Gruber was one of the inventors of Siri, and he’s a great believer in the power of AI to augment rather than replace human work and play. Here’s a rather lovely, optimistic talk on the augmentation of Human intelligence:
Chosen Road from Fall From Earth – by Philip Sheppard – Clio Gould Violinist
For Clio Gould
This track was written in a single afternoon just before our Abbey Road Sessions for my album Fall From Earth.
I had just had confirmation that Clio Gould would be leading the orchestra for my recordings. I knew I had to write something special for her.
I’ve known Clio’s playing for most of my life – in fact, we first played together when we were 15 years old.
Even then, her sound was utterly and totally breathtaking and I’ve been in love with her playing ever since. Her sound is effortless, silken, chocolatey and quite unlike anybody else.
Chosen Road is about the paths that you take and the routes that you choose through life. Sometimes the going is hard, but the views can take your breath away.
Clio is the greatest violinist in the world. This is my way of saying thank you to her.
Order from Bandcamp
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Featuring Clio Gould (solo violin), conducted by Philip Sheppard
I recently invented a game concerned with creative music play called Compose Yourself, and I’m really excited to share it with you.
I’m pretty sure that given the right tools, anybody can become a composer. It’s an easy thing to say, but actually I’m sure It’s true!
Some of the greatest musicians I’ve worked with, from the classical world, the film music world & the rock music world haven’t been able to read a note of music. It hasn’t stopped them from having full, successful and exciting musical lives.
When I was very young I really wanted to make music.
Actually, to be very honest with you, I just wanted to make lots of noise, and music seemed the best way to do this without getting into too much trouble.
At the age of three, I decided I was going to play the cello. It sounds like a cliche, but I heard a cello on the radio and fell in love with it. I actually remember the moment very clearly. It was the Elgar cello concerto played by Jacqueline Du Pré.
When I saw pictures of a cello and realised that it was much much bigger than a violin I was in love. That was it. I was going to play the cello…
That photo above is me on the day I had my first lesson. Looking back on it now I realise I was so lucky that my teacher also happened to be a kindergarten headteacher. She really knew how to make learning fun, and more importantly she knew how to play with music. Believe me, in the UK in the 70s, classical music was very very serious.
Not for fun. Nope…
The photo shows me playing a piece of music that she wrote and taught me in my first lesson. The piece was called Charlie and Fred and it was a simple thing that she’d written about her two pet Cavies. Most importantly, it was a piece of music about something I cared about, and it was written by someone I knew. Looking back on it now I realise that this was a really unusual way to teach music at the time, and it totally worked for me.
I loved playing her piece. It sounded amazing to me. I would play it for as many hours as I could. At no point didn’t occur to me that I was practising…
(Actually the way I played it at the time, it probably sounded horrible, but it’s still one of the most exciting moments of my life!).
I remember being so excited that I could make abstract noises that painted pictures in my mind, and to be honest, I still get very excited about this.
I’m now a film composer with more than 30 movie scores to my name, and I now get to paint pictures with music all day. I can’t begin to explain how much fun this is, but I can share the feeling a little bit.
This is the reason I invented Compose Yourself, so kids can make their own music – music that paints wonderful, colourful pictures in their minds.
Music can take kids on wild and exciting musical journeys, and they can make music about absolutely anything. One of the children I was teaching in Harlem number of years ago wrote to me after the composition project we were running.
I’ll never forget what he said,
‘… I like writing music. Music makes me feel important…’
Remember:
Kids have no idea that writing music is difficult (until adults point it out), so let’s keep it easy for them! This game is a powerful set of musical building blocks. The moment children make up their very first tune, they become Composers.
Here’s a little film about the game:
.Being a composer is like having a special power. A power that can make people dance, sing and cry (in a good way).
Now, that’s a real superpower….
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/53995543″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]Here’s a preview of my score for Human Universe featuring Professor Brian Cox, which debuts tonight on BBC2.
We’re going to release the soundtrack on iTunes, Spotify and many other digital music platforms shortly.
If you’d like to receive a one-off email when this is released, just leave us a short message below naming your favourite track.
You’ll get a free download of one of my other film scores by way of thanks.
And, you’ll really be helping us, as the most popular track will become the first track on the album.
Today is the last day of mixing all 205 of the Olympic Anthems for the London 2012 Games.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra are incredible, and having spent 50 hours locked away with them in Studio 2 at Abbey Road, we all know one another that bit better, and I’m totally in love with their sound. If you want proof of how good they are, just listen to some of their live recordings on their own label.
We’ve gone from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe via the Faroes and Tajikistan, and it’s been something I’m not going to forget in a hurry. Jake Jackson, my rather extraordinary producer, had the bright idea of keeping a record of what we’d done on a wallchart… Dr Strangelove would approve…
The press attention’s been odd and an interesting element to deal with, some of the papers were looking for an angle – eg, ‘what’s the worst anthem?’, ‘What could go horribly wrong?’, and ‘Why do you look like Nick Clegg?’. For the record, I DO NOT LOOK LIKE NICK CLEGG. At all. Really.
On our last day we asked Jonathan Edwards – the world’s favourite triple jumper – to come and join us for the recording of God save the Queen. You’ll have to watch this space to see if he made it onto the final cut of the recording… all I’ll say is that it was the loudest note we recorded across all 974 takes!
Just to show what a good setup we have here at Air Studios.. here’s a snapshot for you:
Note; a very busy Jake Jackson (two keyboards at the same time a la Rick Wakeman), our spreadsheet of anthems projected, too many apple computers, live streamed football match (ahem)…
Here’s an Easter present… for a couple of days only, these tracks are free downloads. All I ask is you click the stumble button below, or retweet and recommend them to others if you like them!
[tweetmeme source= ‘@PhilipSheppard’ only_single=false]
[soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/radiomovies/sets/easter-radiomovies”]
Stumble It!
Happy and peaceful Easter to you.
Here’s a piece for nine-piece string orchestra (ie double quartet plus bass) I wrote whilst staying in Suffolk one scorching Summer.
It’s called Primary Colours [Audio http://radiomovies.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/01-primary-colours.mp3]
If you’d like a copy click here for simple instructions!
Hope you like it!