Philip Sheppard

Tag: Piano

  • The Minsky Tapes

    The Minsky Tapes

    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?!

    Gloria Minsky and Philip Sheppard at EG 2018
    Gloria Minsky and Philip Sheppard at EG 2018

    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:

    Marvin Minsky at the piano
    Marvin Minsky at the piano

     

  • So let’s begin

    DSC01265
    Morning in Monterey – the view from breakfast…

    [soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/89153591″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

    I’ve just returned from a blast of pure inspiration & friendships courtesy of the e.g., hosted in Monterey.

    It’s very hard to articulate how much this annual get together means to me. Suffice to say, I’ve tried to put it into the music. Hope you like it.

  • So let's begin

    DSC01265
    Morning in Monterey – the view from breakfast…

    [soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/89153591″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

    I’ve just returned from a blast of pure inspiration & friendships courtesy of the e.g., hosted in Monterey.

    It’s very hard to articulate how much this annual get together means to me. Suffice to say, I’ve tried to put it into the music. Hope you like it.

  • The joy of making it up

    improp
    Impropera – photo by Julian Macedo

    There’s nothing like walking out on stage not knowing what you’re going to play. For many of us classically trained musos this a nightmare we’ve all had in troubled nights’ sleeps… and yet, when you get used to doing it, it’s the greatest drug in the world.

    I’m lucky to work with the best improvisers I know, whether in Not So Silent Movies… or the extraordinary Impropera.

    Impropera improvise operas on suggestions from the audience. It’s surreal and hilarious. We just had a performance last week which I wanted to share with you here. The pianist Anthony Ingle is a genius. I use the word literally & with no hyperbole. He is a genius. I’ve said it again.

    ingle
    Anthony Ingle – photo by Julian Macedo

    On the night, we were asked to make a set of variations on a theme from the audience – La Vie en Rose, in the style of three different composers, Dufay, Mozart and Gershwin. Anthony is able to pull melody, harmony, phrasing and structure from thin air – I get to noodle around on top (that’s the easy bit!). The rush of goosebumps when it clicks is crazy. When it goes wrong, it goes properly wrong.

    Being strong & wrong and being quite happy about it is (I’m convinced) the key to being totally comfortable on stage.

    Well, here’s the improv. This is all on the fly with no preparation… so be kind! This is recorded from the end of the Dufay bit on an iPhone in the audience, so it’s not great quality, but you’ll get the idea..!

    [soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/79791777″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

  • Ice Drive

    Ice Drive

    Image by Angus Clyne

    Here’s another track from The new album I wrote with Evelyn Glennie – it’s called ice drive and features some insanely good toy piano playing!!

    [soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/27735194″]

  • Bobby Fischer against the World Soundtrack

    Bobby Fischer Against the World, a film by Liz Garbus, has just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Here are a few tracks from my soundtrack composed for the film, plus… the title track as a free download. (Click to download & please leave a comment below).

    [soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/9489734″ params=”auto_play=false&player_type=artwork&color=5c3bc1″ width=”300″ height=”300″ ]

    Bobby Fischer against the World, title cue – piano soloist Belinda Mikhail

    I first heard about Bobby Fischer when I was a kid, heavily into performing classical music. Many of the great Russian virtuoso musicians and composers had a reputation for being chess fanatics, and I remember my mother’s violin professor Beatrix Marr, describing the friendly rivalry between Boris Spassky and David Oistrakh (one of the world’s greatest violinists). Beatrix regularly thrashed me in chess matches in her cottage, making no allowance for my age…

    Music begins with an opening gesture, a phrase or a hook and runs along a temporal plane before reaching a cadence, resolution and ending. Great music lives on as an impression of an experience intertwined with emotion and context. You don’t need to be able to interpret what the blobs and squiggles on a musical staff mean in order to be enveloped in a mindblowing musical experience. You don’t need to learn the ‘rules’ of harmony to be profoundly moved by a performance. The great chess grandmasters inhabit a world we can literally never comprehend. A great chess match is a performance, a spontaneous composition of pure elegant counterpoint.

    The supreme master of counterpoint in the entire history of music is J.S.Bach. Even as an experienced musician, I cannot begin to grasp how he processed vast amounts of mathematical musical data, rendering it into perfectly structured miniature cathedrals of sound. The inside of his brain must have had parallels with that of Bobby Fischer, but despite this vast intellect he (unlike Fischer) was able to live a life as a complete human being. (I mean, he had fourteen children for a start…).

    Bach’s famous first prelude in C was my starting point for scoring Bobby Fischer against the World. I took the theme and turned it inside out – it begins as fragmented and hesitant gestures as if unsure before playing out to an inevitable endgame. (That’s the piano and string orchestra track above by the way).

    The whole of the rest of the score is composed from Bach’s themes – from the Goldberg Variations to the keyboard concertos. This piece below is based on the D minor keyboard concerto, though it’s totally unrecognizable as it’s more like a romantic American/Russian prelude that descends into a shameless waltz. This piece runs underneath the famous match between Spassky and Fischer known as the Game of Placid Beauty. This track was written in New York, against the clock when we were rushing to finish the film, and was a piece that went through so many versions and changes before settling on what became ironically known as The Brooklyn Symphony (there’s always one cue in a film which is a major problem and this was it..!)

    [soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/9489775″]

    On a final note, one deeply sad aspect of the making of this film was the loss of the brilliant editor Karen Schmeer. I had already worked with Karen for two years on Greg Barker’s extraordinary film Sergio, and Karen was a joy to work with. We knew each other purely through emails, Skype chats and the odd phone call. We never met, and it’s a strange kind of mourning when the person you knew and liked existed purely at the end of another laptop. Karen had plotted to get me involved in this film by surreptitiously working my older pieces into the rough cut of the movie, without Liz Garbus (the director) fully catching on to what was happening. The day before Karen left us, she had confided to me that her cunning plan was working very nicely.

    The film is naturally dedicated to Karen, and the music is wholeheartedly for her (well, the good bits at least…).

    Here below is the score for the Brooklyn Symphony with her dedication at the top. Thanks for reading this – Philip Sheppard

    The score for the Brooklyn Symphony from Bobby Fischer Against the World.

    Quick update – Here’s an ad from the NY times!

  • Scene from

    Scene from

    Midnight Digital

    Here’s a new track called Kinderszenen. Hope you like it.
    [soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/radiomovies/kinderszenen” params=”show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=846d11″ width=”100%” height=”81″ ]

  • Happy Easter Gift

    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.

  • Lucky

    I’ve been working again with a great animator called EB Hu.
    This a film by him called Lucky.
    [vimeo = http://vimeo.com/8104231]

    My piano piece is called Memory of Water.

    It’s featured on the forthcoming Venetian Underground album.

    More here – including an interview with EB

  • Promoting your music online

    This is a section of a talk I gave at the Royal Academy of Music for music students

    One of the sections was centered around some specific information concerning how simple it is to produce and circulate a debut recording. These days, a record deal maybe the last thing you need as a musician!!

    One student asked if they should send a huge dossier of references, biographies, programmes and recordings to prospective venues/employers. Err.. nope! A CD with a handwritten note, nicely designed, personally directed is much better, especially if solicited via an initial email. The former package would in all likelihood end up in a recycling bin.

    Harsh maybe.. but true!

    Here are some simple steps to releasing tracks online and (even) getting income through sales (though this may not be the primary aim at this stage). You want people to hear you, join you, and get excited about what you produce next (and hopefully turn up in droves to your next recital).

    Getting it out there…

    Let’s assume you’ve already recorded a really well thought-through programme.

    The obvious place to start a web presence is myspace, but it seems (at best) an inelegant way to present yourself as an artist, especially when there are so many other free hosted sites with beautiful templates out there. I have a myspace page, but its primary purpose is to redirect traffic to my own sites!
    WordPress

    wI love WordPress (where you’re reading this). It’s free – I can place a track like this
    by entering a piece of simple code, and it looks professional. It’s designed as a piece of blogging software, but rather than using it purely as an online diary, I find it is a great place to host your biography and showreel. Also, it’s a great place to engage in regular chats with people who might like what you do.

    The more people comment and link to you, the higher you page goes in Google’s rankings, so make sure it’s appealing!!

    You can get a WordPress blog here – highly recommended.

    SoundClouds
    A different way of grouping/ hosting your music for free is presented by SoundCloud. What is neat about this is the way people can place comments along the timeline, and even better, anyone (if you like) can stream it to their own blog/site. Here’s a recent piece of mine which is being streamed from the SoundCloud website.

    [soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/radiomovies/close-your-eyes-6″]

    Listeners can add comments at specific points in the track – you can see them by hovering over the pictures. I use SoundCloud to determine whether a track has ‘legs’ or not. It’s very meritocratic – if something’s good – it’ll get lots of plays!

    Now, if you’re feeling generous, you can make the tracks downloadable (although I would tag them in iTunes first so the mp3 has your web address in its code).
    This track is a download track – again, being streamed via a simple bit of code from SoundCloud:
    [soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/radiomovies/in-i-the-apotheosis-akram-khan-juliette-binoche”]

    The downwards arrow on the right is a download link. Here’s a site where someone’s placed a block of my tracks leading to free downloads.

    Here’s my site hosted by SoundCloud.

    lLastfm

    A well-established streaming music service is lastfm.com. This is a curious amalgam of fansite and radio station. Personally I find it a bit disjointed, and also it concerns me that unreleased tracks often appear there from dubious sources. There are tracks of mine on there that I’ve never released!

    601The Sixty one

    A completely different approach to new music streaming and downloads can be found at thesixtyone.com.

    This is a really hard site to describe as it is as much about gameplay as it is about streaming music. There are two types of (free) account. Artists or Listeners. The Listeners get a higher ranking depending upon how they scout for new songs that the Artists place on there. They give ‘hearts’ to tracks they like, a little like buying shares in a stock that looks like it’s going to perform well.

    Frankly, no-one really knows how it works but it’s a superb place to find new music in a quirky and vibrant community.
    Also, as with SoundCloud, you can tell pretty quickly if a track has merit as it will get voted onto the front page!
    Players also give ‘tips’ which I hadn’t realized translate into Paypal dollars.

    From my page here, I have enough for two cappuccinos already… hurrah!

    Setting up a label and generating paid downloads

    Setting up a label appears at first to be an onerous and difficult task. This certainly used to be the case, when there was a baffling array of requirements,; barcodes, encoding, registration and so forth. This is no longer the case thanks to intermediary companies that have sprung up to help us confused and frustrated independent players and composers.

    CDbabycd

    CDBaby was established by the very brilliant Derek Sivers (whose blog is essential reading). They distribute to a huge number of digital outlets, and have excellent accounting procedures for small labels. They started as a physical distributor of CDs but seem to have made a smooth transition to digital marketing. You can read about joining here.

    Ditto Musicdit
    One of the most impressive of these new services is Ditto Music.

    They have created a brilliant service where the tasks of creating a label for your releases is streamlined and organized for a one-off fee. They also take 0% of your royalties when tracks are sold online, and they can distribute to 700 digital outlets. The real icing on the cake is that they have created a means by which independent musicians can get their tracks loaded onto Spotify, and iTunes.

    Spotifysp

    There’s a widely held belief that as an independent artist, getting your tracks onto Spotify and iTunes is nigh on impossible unless you’re with a major label. This is happily untrue as discussed above. Spotify is an exciting way of streaming (and now temporarily downloading) tracks which has begun a seamless integration with phones and mp3 players.

    Spotify are themselves trying to approach smaller, independent labels, and you can register interest as a future partner here.

    What’s next..?

    I’m going to write about physical CD production, as well as other merchandise… But I need a big mug of coffee first! Let me know if this is useful…

    In the meantime, here’s an article I wrote about being a composer whilst keeping your head!

  • Piano and string orchestra

    Another amazing image by Trey
    Another amazing image by Trey

    Here’s a piece I recently recorded for Piano and string orchestra called Remember me this way [Audio http://radiomovies.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/14-the-tomb-of-glenn-gould.mp3]

    If you’d like a copy click here for simple instructions!

    I wanted to write something optimistic and melancholy at the same time – playful, but with an undercurrent of an elegy. Not sure if I got there!

    I heard a lovely eulogy the other day, where someone I’d been very fortunate to know was described as ‘a man with no corners’. What a great way to be remembered!

  • Radiomovies Piano News!

    Well.. after lots and lots of talking and negotiating.. it looks like we can get the piano pieces released!! Initially on itunes, emusic and spotify.. as well as a nice coffee table version.

    Please let me know with your comments which ones definitely make the cut!

    Here

  • Close your eyes

    Here’s an extract of a new track for solo cello, prepared piano and strings called close your eyes. If you like it you might like these tracks too[soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/radiomovies/close-your-eyes-6″]Drop me a comment below if you want to buy the single!
    [digg=http://digg.com/music/Close_your_eyes_r_a_d_i_o_m_o_v_i_e_s]

    image by Reciprocity
    Blue Attraction by Reciprocity

    Stumble It!
    I play music for the sense of solace, and sometimes the texture of a sound is enough to make you feel everything could be ok.

    Layers of sound can define an architectural place in your head through suggestion and perception. The bass note in this piece is more of a feeling than a real note – try and listen with headphones if you get the chance.

    If you like this kind of thing then try The Glass Cathedral, or The Diver in the Crypt… they’re coming from a similar place!

    Would love to know what you think. If you like this try these:

    [soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/radiomovies/adieu-madame” params=”auto_play=false&player_type=artwork&color=c48c1e” width=”300″ height=”300″ ]

    [soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/radiomovies/sets/venetian-underground”]
    [soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/radiomovies/sets/henry-mind-of-a-tyrant”]

  • radiomovies roundup

    Image by Loralei
    Image by Loralei

    Sorry for the recent radio silence! I’ve been very busy with a film and a stage show… plus there’s a really big film project in the pipeline that I wish I could tell you more about…

    To all who’ve asked for Crystallised Beauty… it’s just been sent – and I’ve had a brainwave about how to release tracks more easily. Watch this space!

    Also coming soon – a schedule of all forthcoming performances and film broadcasts/premieres plus dance shows too.

    Here’s a new piano track that goes with the above image – a memory for water [Audio http://radiomovies.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/a-memory-of-water.mp3]

  • Crystallised Beauty Piano Music


    Follow him on Instagram here.Then…
    Download the sheet music here!

    Breaking news… New piano page with tracks here
    Funnily enough, I can’t play the piano as I’m a cellist by trade, so one hand carrying a melody is more than enough for me. In fact my piano reports from junior school were so bad that I still have them.

    They are paper reports as, back then, the only computer in school ran floppy disks the size of a pancake (same consistency too) and could achieve the incredible task of generating a row of ten prime numbers whilst making a noise like your granny clearing her throat.

    Sorry, not your granny, one’s own granny.

    So they were lovingly crafted from postcard sized sheets of paper stapled together with a whole page per subject, including instrumental lessons. Most of the sheets were marked with crabbed, bitter scratchings of frustrated first world war veterans sent to the darkest parts of Essex to teach us, which goes some way to explaining why they were illustrated with fag ash burns and beer stains.

    Not so my piano report pages .. oh no. Elegant beautiful writing like (the then) to be Lady Di’s.

    They read:

    • Year one: Trying
    • Year two: Still trying
    • Year three: Very trying

    Obviously a treasured possession now…

    Anyway – A little while back I wrote a piece for solo piano called Crystallised Beauty (Crystallized if you’re American) which was recorded on an album for Chappell. For some reason, some people like it – for which I’m very grateful, as I’m an imposter in the world of the keyboard…

    Here’s the not often heard full-length version of the track:

    [soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/radiomovies/crystallised-beauty”]

    Here’s a Jane Austen trailer using it. The sheet music is finally coming soon and will be a free download from this page…
    [digg=http://digg.com/music/Crystallised_Beauty_Piano_Piece]
    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrQGlP4g3QQ&hl=en&fs=1]

    Other Keyboard pieces

    The are a number of other keyboard pieces in this set.

    Here’s one of them, which was recorded in Finchcocks, a stately home and piano museum. The instrument used is a Viennese double strung piano – very rare and extremely fragile instrument. [Audio http://radiomovies.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/04-moon-over-meadow.mp3]The piece is (as yet) unnamed, but is based on the idea of an empty drawing room at night – except, that is, for the piano. It holds within its wood and strings snatches of music, harmonics and melodies that others have played on it… Any ideas for names gratefully accepted – the more literary the better!

    Here’s a second piece recorded on a Steinway – a slow ballade waltz [Audio http://radiomovies.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/jb3-ballade.mp3]

    Here’s a third piece called The Long Letter[Audio http://radiomovies.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/07-10-long-letter.mp3]

  • Philip Sheppard Composer

    PHILIP SHEPPARDPhilip Sheppard is a composer specializing in film and television soundtracks. He is also a solo cellist and a Professor at the Royal Academy of Music.

    Follow him on Instagram here.

    Recent films include In the Shadow of the Moon (which won numerous awards including the World Documentary Prize at Sundance), Henry Mind of a Tyrant for David Starkey

  • Track for the day

    Image by Paul Hollingworth – stunning artist – more of his work here.

    Not coming back click here to listen:[Audio http://radiomovies.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/not-coming-back.mp3]

    Download track here

  • New Piano Download

    handJust because it’s a Wednesday, and sunny… here’s a track called Watermark for solo piano[Audio http://radiomovies.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/watermark.mp3]

    Click this..

    Then:

    Limited edition download here!

    Follow me on Instagram!

  • Summer’s here!

    Summer’s landed – So soon after Easter?

    Anyway, sitting in the garden, writing music. Today’s one of those days I’m grateful to be a self-employed person… shouldn’t go on about it as it’ll start raining, and for all I know you may be sitting at a PC somewhere cold..?

    I wanted to let you know that there’s a new tag in the top right hand corner called Free Bits. It’s where I’ll post anything that appears on my other posts such as free mp3 downloads and sheet music, plus the odd preview invite and so forth.

    Also, I’m on Instagram:

    https://www.instagram.com/philipsheppard/

    (is this wrong?)

    Join me and you’ll be the first to know about future freebies, Henry VIII soundtrack release and download (Mind of a Tyrant), Jane Austen piano tracks and release dates for some films I’ve worked on in the US.

  • radiomovies roundup

    Moon Machines is on the Science Channel this week – the companion series to In the Shadow of the Moon. I wrote the music for the series last year which aired on the Discovery Channel.

    Henry Mind of a Tyrant continues its run on Channel 4 this evening at 9pm with the second episode – Warrior. Channel 4 have put a series of short films, images and even (oh no…) an interview with yours truly at this site. Don’t forget the soundtrack is a free listen on this site.

    Sergio is going to be shown at HotDocs in Ontario – click here for more details.

    Lots of people (hundreds in fact!) have downloaded the sheet music for Crystallised Beauty this week, and I’m asking for suggestions for the next piece to be made available. Let me know at this page!

    On this site, I’ve put up a couple more archive album tracks; Aqua Voce now online, together with Penitential Psalm.

    Thanks for all the messages and comments – it’s great to hear from you…

    fiddlewiddle.com

  • Crystallised Beauty Sheet Music

    Crystallised Beauty Sheet Music – it’s here…cb2

    After rather a lot of emails, I’ve finally got around to writing up the piano score of Crystallised Beauty. As everyone who’s asked for it seems very friendly and sociable, I decided to make it for two pianists…

    You can still play it on your own if you prefer, but… to fit all the different parts in, four hands are better than two!

    It’s free, but please don’t copy it anywhere else – if anyone wants a copy they can download it from here for nothing. If you want to give anything, a comment is always welcome!

    Get the sheet music by clicking here!

    listen to it here:[soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/radiomovies/crystallised-beauty”]

    Other things I’ve written

    How to get the mp3…

    If you’d like the mp3, it’s not commercially available yet – but – I can send it to you.

    How?

    Well, leave a comment below, mention the mp3 and (because I can then see your email details) I will forward you a link for the mp3 download. Easy!

    Condron.us

  • Recent pieces for piano

    I can’t play it well, but I love it all the same… Which other pieces would you like free sheet music for? Please let me know!

    I’ve written quite a few pieces for piano recently, for various films and as concert works. (NB free download at the end)

    Join me on Instagram for mp3 and sheet music updates

    Sheet music for Crystallised Beauty

    Here’s a track called Watermark for solo piano[Audio http://radiomovies.wordpress.com/files/2009/04/watermark.mp3]

    Limited edition download here

    Glenn Gould [Audio http://radiomovies.wordpress.com/files/2009/03/15-glenn-gould.mp3]

    After the Moonlight (Piano Trio)[Audio http://radiomovies.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/13-fast-gathering-tears.mp3]And… This is new too The Daguerreotype [Audio http://radiomovies.wordpress.com/files/2009/03/jb2-old-photos.mp3]Here’s another recorded in Finchcocks, a stately home and piano museum. The instrument used is a Viennese double strung piano – a very rare and extremely fragile instrument. [Audio http://radiomovies.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/04-moon-over-meadow.mp3]

    The piece is (as yet) unnamed, but is based on the idea of an empty drawing room at night – except, that is, for the piano. It holds within its wood and strings snatches of music, harmonics and melodies that others have played on it… Any ideas for names gratefully accepted – the more literary the better!

    Here’s a second piece recorded on a Steinway – a slow ballade waltz [Audio http://radiomovies.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/jb3-ballade.mp3]

    Here’s a third piece called The Long Letter[Audio http://radiomovies.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/07-10-long-letter.mp3]

    Here’s the obvious one (of Jane Austen fame)… Crystallised Beauty – the (not often heard) full-length version of the track:[Audio http://radiomovies.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/01-crystallised-beauty.mp3]Added today – Sheet music for Crystallised Beauty!

    And here’s one called for Elena[Audio http://radiomovies.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/22-9-for-elena.mp3]

    This is a piece (with strings) called keep walking[Audio http://radiomovies.wordpress.com/files/2009/03/pssst.mp3]

    Here’s the mp3 if you’d rather download it and hear it on your personal gramophone (!): keep walking by Philip Sheppard

    If you like any of these pieces, check out Aqua Voce too, and remember to Join me on Instagram for mp3 and sheet music updates too!

    alphainventions.com

    Condron.us

  • radiomovies latest roundup…

    obj17geo17pg1p10I’ve just been finishing the soundtrack for the new David Starkey series for Channel 4, entitled Henry VIII: The Mind of a Tyrant . The music features the viol consort Fretwork and vocal consort