Thursday 6th December 2012 – Sleepy Dreams – Instrumental Bedtime Nursery Rhymes

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Jay

London Composer of bedtime nursery rhymes, Jay Harris

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Some of you may remember an album of childrens music I released a couple of years back called Bedtime Nursery Rhymes. I sold the album as download on various sites via Tunecore and physical CDs through Kunaki. Wonderful reviews and some steady sales followed and overall, I was very pleased with the project. Press play above to listen to two tracks.

This year, I have been updating the album. A few of the reviews mentioned that Bedtime Nursery Rhymes could have been a bit longer, so I extended it by another 5 tracks. I included Little Bo Peep, Hey Diddle Diddle, There Was a Crooked Man, Hickory Dickory Dock and Wee Willie Winkie to the existing tracks: Curly Locks, It’s Raining It’s Pouring, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Rock-a-bye-baby, Kum Ba Yah, Brahms’ Lullaby. The artwork has also been updated by the talented Marie-Pier Tremblay and the album has received a new title: Sleepy Dreams – Instrumental Nursery Rhymes. The title was changed due to the possible misconception of the album containing lyrics.

Bedtime Nursery Rhymes was the first project that I created where I wanted to give a practical use to sound. Music and sound have always been very powerful forces for me but the fact that most of it is aesthetic or perceived as aesthetic bothered me. Therefore, I came up with the idea of using music and sound to lull young children to sleep by using bedtime nursery rhymes. To achieve this, the music had to be relaxing and relevant to children so it could have a use of parents playing it as they put their children to bed. The music also had to be magical for children so that bedtime would be an enjoyable experience. Overall, the creative focus was on the sounds rather than the tunes, and using established nursery rhymes helped this. On a technical note, the nursery rhymes used also had to be free of copyright.

Bedtime Nursery Rhymes was also my first look into sonic branding and the techniques that could be employed in this. I looked at each element of my chosen nursery rhymes and created a sound or series of sounds to convey these elements. The idea was therefore to create pieces of music that were focused on their subject matter as well as the use I had in mind for them. This would make sure that the messages I wanted to convey would be focussed. Creating sounds using some of the more abstract concepts as starting points made sure that there would be a level of intrigue to the music as well originality. These two factors were very important if I were to create something magical.

To create the sounds, I had a look at each nursery rhyme. I then came up with various related adjectives from which I could create some sounds. For example, Little Bo Peep is all about Bo losing her sheep so I created a ‘fluffy’ sound. I also pictured her with some sprightly lambs so I made sure to put in some delicate sprightly noises that feel like little lambs frolicking!

Sleepy Dreams will be available in Just Williams Toys very soon. The shops are located in south London at Herne Hill, East Dulwich and Clapham and will retail at £9.99.

CDs are also available via the internet from Kunaki. Kunaki are based in New York so please leave 2-3 weeks for delivery. The total price has been adjusted to take the cost of basic airmail into account.

Thursday 10th November 2011 – Flying

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Jay

A couple of weeks ago I posted an experiment of mine that involved making some music based on a graphical score that I made for myself. That part of the experiment just explained how I arrived at the graphical score and then showed what it looks like. Among the other bits and pieces Im doing, I finished this experiment (called ‘Flying’) this week and present it here for you to have a listen to, critique and offer suggestions (or anything else for that matter!). I designed a sound for each element and then constructed the piece using these sounds and the score. I deliberately made the music using only the score and what initiated it as reference and did not introduce any further ideas that I may have had (discounting the subconscious of course!). This was done in an effort to make the transference from idea to score to music as pure as possible as the communication between these stages was the focus of this little experiment. This piece will go into my Dreams project among such tracks as Watching the Stars. Click play below and have a look at the score….

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Thursday 27th October – Graphical Music Scores

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Jay

This week, I wanted to plan a piece of music I’m writing for my Dreams project. Now, I’m inexperienced (although not ignorant of) traditional music notation as I have always found it a little irrelevant to my needs and ideas. Of course, there’s no denying that it orders things nicely and brings about ideas just by it’s use but when you have an audio scratch-pad like Logic Pro, it’s not the best way to create. So basically, I create and organise using the sounds themselves and the computer visuals (as well as my mind of course). This week, I had various jobs to do so I thought I’d see if my efficiency in making music could be improved by making a more detailed plan than usual.

As I have written about before, my current interests include drawing sound from abstract ideas and creating atmosphere. I have been using a main theme and using descriptive words to describe that theme in the context I want to write about. I then translate these descriptive ideas and words into sound (through the filter of my own perception of course). Notes aren’t important so much as I rely on my playing instincts to provide those, although theory is used when layering and directing the textures.

So, what is a graphical score? Basically, traditional notation is a visual cue and organiser of music. Somewhere along the line, someone thought ‘why don’t we use any picture or symbol to elicit a feeling, note, series of notes, sound etc.’ As a graphical score also deals with atmosphere in an abstract way it seemed very relevant and natural to put my plan down on paper in this way. I had seen a couple graphic scores before although they weren’t accompanied by explanation, but in any case the great thing about them is they are pretty self-explanatory, meaning I felt comfortable trying my own. Just giving it a go also follows part of my ‘ethos’ where you should never be afraid to try something if it is doing it’s intended job.

The piece I worked on this week is called ‘Flying’ and is in the context of a dream (thought I’d start with something pretty obvious to make it easier on myself!). I started by making a list of ideas surrounding the theme. Usually I would go straight to designing the sounds for each theme and sort out the structure once I have those but this time I chose a symbol for each sound and created a structure and map of them interacting over time. This produced the graphical score below:

The next step will be to create sounds for each symbol/symbol section and start weaving them together!

A great thing about a graphical score is that some one else could also use it in their music, or anything else for that matter, allowing for individual creativity within the guideline of the score; making the work so much more than it could be otherwise. This is because, theoretically, it’s full realisation may never happen until every person on the planet has added their perception of it i.e. when there are still options open it remains unfinished. It therefore follows that one idea or score could (potentially) be absolutely huge with an incredible amount of depth after many many influences have contributed to it. You could say this about any score of course, but here the guidelines are far looser than the traditional score and it follows the results would be more varied and richer as a result.

I haven’t yet worked on the music for this score but am very much looking forward to it. It feels very natural and comfortable so I have a feeling the results will be better than usual…. Hopefully I wont be eating my words…

Search the internet for graphical scores. Some of them are normal-looking photographs while others use parts of traditional notation, but they are all designed to the same end: the production of sound derived from abstract thought; or music, if you like…

Thursday 13th October 2011 – Watching the Stars

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Jay

Download:

This week, I have started work on some original bedtime music for children. Those of you that have been reading my blog for a while may know about the EP I released called Bedtime Nursery Rhymes, and this is a follow-on from that. This time, rather than use well-established children’s tunes, I wanted to create something with the same concept of sleep-promotion but with original music and with no association to anything lyrical (to keep the focus on the sounds).

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about the concept I have been using to create sounds and I thought I would talk about my first go at creating this new bedtime music using these ideas. This track was started with just the name ‘Watching the Stars’ which, as you can see, provided me with two concepts: the idea of watching (stars), and the stars themselves.

I started off by creating the stars, as this would be most obvious and could lead to other ideas. I needed a sparkly, shiny sound; which I translated as high-pitched, pure with some kind of quick, defined attack (note onset). The initial sound would also fade quickly but echo as well as move across the soundscape randomly with varying strengths (some stars are brighter than others!). My synth of choice seems to be Logic’s Sculpture at the moment so I created this sound (along with the others used) using that.

Next, I looked at ‘watching’ and ‘watching stars’ in particular. From this I gathered a sense of space, in terms of being outside (better than watching under glass I think!) as well as the enormity of outer-space; a sense of wonder and amazement; and a sense of calm. As another issue, I realised that the piece would need some kind of melody to make it listenable, although this shouldn’t be too catchy or strong as these factors could impede relaxing and sleep. Having some kind of melody would also serve the second concept of ‘watching’. This is because a melody moves and gives a sense of movement and this is exactly what happens when you scan any particular scene; your eyes move as well as the thoughts accompanying them.

The initial melody I used, although calming, didn’t go anywhere and the monotony it created was far from creating the sense of wonder that I wanted, although the intended meditative affect was there. Thankfully, Sculpture has a great envelope function that allows you to change the character of the sound over time which adds some variation as well as a sense of ‘something bigger’. I also thought that things would need to be randomised a little to enhance the feeling of the enormity and again, ‘something bigger’. To do this I accompanied the main, varying melody with other notes created using a slight variation of the same synth sound and made them bolster the main melody but also to confuse it a little.

The final part of the puzzle was to ground the whole piece in a physical space. This was done using reverberation as usual, but also by using a backdrop of sound that I had recorded whilst in Italy over the summer. This is the sound of crickets that I had recorded near Rocco on the Italian Riviera which I trimmed to give a clean file that would seamlessly loop. The recording wasn’t perfect though as there was a bit of wind and rumble from cars, so I just cut out all of the low frequencies. As the noises that crickets make aren’t in the same range as low rumbles, this didn’t compromise the audio too much and it is generally the high frequencies in sound that give you the sense of space that I required. You will notice that the cricket noises aren’t very loud at all and that’s because I didn’t really want the cricket noises as such, but a sense of the atmosphere that the sounds were created in. To achieve this as subtly as possible, I made sure that the noises of the crickets were loud enough to be just heard, but when taken out left the whole piece feeling emptier. Of course, the actual character of the cricket noises do add a lot to the feel of the piece but I feel the setting deserved more attention than this subject matter.

Well, here it is below. Press play to have a listen and let me know what you think! I aim to create other pieces like this for the same concept but using other themes over the next few weeks.

Download:

Thursday 16th June 2011 – My Redundancy Plan – Start of an Epic Year.

Posted on June 16, 2011 by transientmusic

Well, here we are. No more news on the redundancy yet but our reps and union are apparently working hard to stop us from getting screwed over… We’ll see!

Anyway, I’m not about to rely on any of this so I’ve started work on my plan to hit the ground running by the end of the year. It will make sure that any plans I am working on or have even been just a basic thought will see the light of day; as I have said before, these plans will at least contribute towards my portfolio and hopefully give me a bit of leverage when bugging/begging companies to let me hang around their offices to learn about their processes/job vacancies. As I mentioned before, sound design is the direction that appeals to me the most right now because of the huge creative scope that can be possible, and for some reason I just like finding/recording sounds….no, I can’t explain it either! There are various types of company that use sound designers but my starting point is going to focus on the computer games industry because the creative possibility there is just huge. Research here is in it’s early days but I’ll let you know how it goes!

OK, the projects that I have given myself to do… As I have said before, they will all focus on sound design to reinforce my main focus. Some are weird, abstract ideas whilst others are more main-stream with varying degrees in-between. Of course, the whole reason I am embarking on this project is because each element of it interests me and excites me to a degree not unlike the build-up to Christmas as a child; well, without all the jumping and shouting anyway… I’m a little more demure these days. But anyway, the general idea is to use sound to influence emotion and image and to gain a portfolio.

The main project of creating this portfolio includes a follow-up to Bedtime Nursery Rhymes, taking into account feedback I’ve received to improve on the original idea; a second follow-up consisting of original ambient music to promote sleep in children; a spin-off of ambient music for children to encourage creative play; short orchestral pieces aimed at conveying emotions/themes common in film; my audio/visual ‘sound art’ project with Lesley Flower; the new look and sound Lunar Rising; an ambient music project using found sound and synth, based around a theme; a continuance of Henry Spencer Project for something a bit more song-oriented and another project based on Bedtime Nursery Rhymes that I wont disclose information on just yet… Quite a lot of work, especially when considering that making the music is actually only a part of what needs to be done!

So, I guess this blog will turn into one of those ‘rise and fall stories’, but hopefully I wont have to fake my death twice like Reginald Perrin (you’ll probably have to be British and over 30… or even 40… to understand that reference!). But actually, if all goes to plan and I don’t become prone to intense idiocy and/or bad luck I’m hoping this will be a ‘rise and rise story’….. Or at least a ‘rise and level out’ story…. Come back next week to see how it starts…. I’m quite interested to see how it begins myself actually!

Thursday 5th May 2011 – State of Play

Posted on May 5, 2011 by transientmusic

As some of you may know I have decided to slightly change how I write my blog. I have decided to make every other post more about what I’m doing with my life regarding music and keep the other half for my general ideas that I have been blurting out for a while now. It seems like this time has come now as I think I have recorded my key ideas and also I have started to get a few questions from readers about what I am up to beyond all the ‘theory’ stuff.

So, this week’s update will set out where I am with various projects at the moment…

My main musical endeavour has to be Lunar Rising and we are currently auditioning violin players. However, this does not mean that the band are static at the moment as there are various things that need to be sorted. In a few weeks we will be going back into the studio to record another four songs. These will be Embrace, Late Nights, Into Bloom and Just Living. At the moment, the plan is to still offer the current songs for free to anybody that wants them but once we have a full set of songs we will create an album that can be sold whilst we still give away the half-length version. This should also include some special acoustic recordings of the band to add even more value. The band is also currently still gigging once a month (with Alex acting as our temporary violin player) and we are preparing demos to be sent out to blogs and magazines for review. If you are associated with a blog or fanzine, etc and are interested in reviewing our music/gigs please do get in touch! On top of the usual venue gigs we would also like to play acoustic gigs so we are currently working on this idea too. This year will also see the band applying for next year’s music festivals as well as developing some more experimental ideas regarding gigs and playing live….

Henry Spencer Project have been taking a little break while I remix our demo songs ready to be mastered after a bit of disastrous file-losing! It turns out that they are sounding much better than before though so all is good and lessons have been learnt… Pia is using the opportunity to work on her other projects but we will be ready to churn some more stuff out shortly… The demos are pretty much done so they will be ready for mastering soon. We’ll then be sending them off to various magazines and blogs to be reviewed and we’ll offer these improved songs up for sale alongside special extras whilst still giving away the original versions. We’ll also be keeping up getting a new song online every 6 weeks or so enabling our on-line audience to see us develop.

Bedtime Nursery Rhymes is now ready and available to buy as a download or physical CD. I am currently ordering CDs to send off to various reviewers throughout the world so hopefully some reviews should start to trickle through in around a month. Once I get my sales data through around that time I’ll be in a position to make better plans for marketing etc. If things go well here I would like to make a follow-up album which could even include original music devised to have the same relaxing effects.

Finally, this week I have purchased the Roland GR-55 guitar synth which I hope to use as a midi controller in conjunction with the synths I already own as well as the EWQL Symphonic Orchestra and QL Ra software instruments I have bought. These place stunningly realistic orchestral and ethnic instruments at my disposal and I will be able to play them all with the instrument I play (guitar!) rather than struggling with playing the keyboard! With the more experimental ideas for Lunar Rising being formed in my head, some guitar synth may even be accompanying me on stage too at some point…. All of this equipment will also be vital to my audio/visual work with photographer with Lesley Flower; as I said, I’ll no longer have to rely on synth being played using an instrument I am not trained on meaning I can translate my ideas far more accurately. On top of all this, I will want to have a venture into the world of making music for the moving image too….

Until next time….

Thursday 31st March 2011 – Bedtime Nursery Rhymes

Posted on March 31, 2011 by transientmusic

‘Bedtime Nursery Rhymes’ is a little project that I have been working at on-and-off for a few months now amongst all the other stuff that I’m involved in. It grew from a combined wish to work on something that had a more obvious market and also for me to have an excuse to experiment with conceptual sound; playing with sound synthesis is something I have wanted to do more of for a while now.

The idea of the compilation was to choose well-known nursery rhymes that I could use and tailor to work together as a whole to promote calm feelings and aid sleep in children. Also, I have fond memories of certain story books that I read as a young child due to the magical atmospheres they created. If I could create something that would invoke these kinds of magical feelings whilst having a valid use and it also allow me to experiment, I would be very happy.

To create these atmospheres I would need a palette of songs that would invoke visual imagery as well as work towards that calming feeling; the songs chosen were almost of little importance as it was the effect that I wanted to create, however, choosing well-known tunes would have an obvious advantage. So, I ended up choosing: ‘Curly Locks’; ‘It’s Raining It’s Pouring’; ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’; ‘Rock-a-Bye Baby’; ‘Kum Ba Yah’ and ‘Brahms’ Lullaby’ (originally known as ‘Good Evening, Good Night’).

For the sounds I used some synthesizers from the Logic Pro audio recording and production software, the Sculpture synthesizer in particular. Sculpture works on a basis that other synths don’t usually take into account. Synthesizers usually allow you to make various types of sound wave and then merge them together in different ways to produce different sounds. They usually also allow you to manipulate these sounds further using various effects but Sculpture was designed to work a bit more like a traditional instrument. Within the software you effectively manipulate a string like you would do on any traditional, analogue instrument; you get to choose what this string is made from (glass, wood, metal), how the string is being vibrated (plucked, hit, etc) and even how the medium around it is behaving (is it thick like water or thin like air?). Amongst these parameters you also find more traditional synth settings (which I wont go into in fear of alienating the non-musical reader!), some effects and even a control over the imaginary pick-up that converts the string’s vibration into electrical energy (like the pick-up on an electric guitar which enables it to be an electrical instrument). One function of Sculpture in particular that I have not yet talked about is the most interesting for me as well as being important considering the thematic nature of the music: As described, Sculpture allows you to use different types of string manipulation (plucking etc) but you can layer three types on top of eachother and one of these can even be an input from an audio clip. Any audio clip at all can be used to morph your sound and, as will be seen, it is this that formed the basis of some of the tracks.

Now for the actual pieces of music…..

The tune for ‘Curly Locks’ is actually used in various nursery rhymes but I used this one as I wanted to create some visual imagery and I thought a great way would be to make some sounds feel curly… The sounds used here are therefore wavy, slightly pulsating and also move around from one speaker to the other. I also chose to have a bouncing ball effect sounding Sculpture’s imaginary string. Being the most lively of all the tunes I decided that this one should be first.

To enable calm passage into sleep I decided that each track should merge into the next and next up would be ‘It’s Raining, It’s Pouring’. This used the Sculpture synth in a more obvious manner and predictably enough I chose an audio clip of rain to sound it’s imaginary string. I also used a similar idea with ‘Kum Ba Yah’ where I used an audio clip of a fire burning. For both of these tracks I wanted the main melody to be far away from the background noise. With ‘…Pouring’ I wanted to invoke the feeling of being inside , safe and dry behind a window on a quiet evening whilst watching the rain. The rain and uncomfortable wetness that goes with it would be very distant and in real-life it is the rhythmic pitter-patter of the rain on a window that I personally find very comforting. This idea was very similar in the creation of ‘Kum Ba Yah’. For this one I wanted the effect of somebody telling a magical story around the camp-fire before bedtime in a forest that Tolkien may have written about; distant, other-worldly melodies convey the story whilst other background noises emulate the fire and the non-threatening wild-life within the forest. Not somewhere to be scared, but somewhere to excite the imagination.

‘Twinkle, Twinkle…’ was designed to feel like staring up at a clear, silent and soothing night’s sky. I always get a childish wonder and amazement at how vast the night sky is when I look at it and it is this I wanted to capture. Towards the end of the track, the stars even begin to sparkle at various points across the sky. The music then gradually merges into ‘…Baby’ and it is here where I really wanted to step down a gear towards sleep. The rhyme conjures up images of wind in the tree-tops as well as sleep (although I didn’t want to have any mention of any falling cradles!). So, for this I chose noises synthesized to sound like calm breezes and after a while of playing around with the sounds and rhythm, I noticed that I could create a soft, regular breathing noise of somebody sleeping.

Finally, Brahms’ Lullaby makes a soothing entrance to finally lull the listener to sleep with all of the imagery of the previous tracks to fuel wondrous dreams . There was no real obvious connection of sound here for me but I fondly remembered a music box my mum once owned that played this tune so therefore I tried to create a music box tinkle to carry the melody. There are a couple of pre-made music box sounds amongst all the synth on Logic Pro but as they didn’t really hit the spot I ended up creating my own that I felt was delicate enough. The background noise in this track was actually one of the first things that I thought of when I came up with the idea for ‘Bedtime Nursery Rhymes; arguably the most comforting noise we are ever exposed to could be said to be the noise a baby may hear in the womb and I have actually heard a couple of sleep aids that try to replicate this. Of course, I have no scientific basis around choosing the sounds that I did but I could not deny that these sounds really had a pleasing, meditative effect on me. Therefore I decided to create my own version but, as with all of the sounds I created for the collection, I wanted to hint and influence imagination rather than force-feed. The imagination is a powerful thing and above all I wanted to get this working to create fond memories that could even stay with some one into adulthood. I thought that if I could create a special state of mind that would excite and intrigue then I would have achieved what any musician hopes to do. Why should edgy music for adults be needed to achieve this…?