There are many clips of dancers on the internet that you can buy or get for free. Often the issue is not the price - it's the dancers, and their performance. If you spend hours and hours, as I do, in iMovie, Final Cut Pro, or Da Vinci, for instance, editing those clips down to … Continue reading A fun trio or a perfect couple – Choices for your dance clips
On Perfect Wings is the English lyrics version of the songs that I wrote about Psalm 139 for my album Divan. The version with Latin lyrics is Invenies Me Mane Caelo, which is a like a Gregorian chant, at least in terms of the scale used, and the instruments. The English lyric version, produced during … Continue reading English lyrics from Psalm 139 – “On Perfect Wings”
https://vimeo.com/870132148 HD Lyric Video "Invenies Me Mane Caelo" is the latest track from my album "Divan" to be released on SoundCloud. It is unusual in that the lyrics are in Latin. Latin Lyrics and English Translation Verse 1Domine cognovisti me.Tu scis omnia dico quae.Intellexisti cogitationes.Domine, probasti me. Verse 2Quia non est in lingua meaverbum quod … Continue reading Invenies Me Mane Caelo (On the Wings of Morning) – A hymn in Latin
The lyrics of all the songs on my album "Divan" were inspired by ancient historical documents. This one, "The King's Ballad", is my modern take on the Tudor Era ballad, “Pastime with Good Company” (a.k.a. “The Kynges Balade”), which was written by King Henry VIII of England in about 1513. His lyrics express his royal … Continue reading Updating King Henry VIII’s directive on having a good time – “The King’s Ballad”
In the Artgrid clips that I got, Michael Vestergaard Jensen, a.k.a. "Michael Jacket", dances in a suit, wearing a hat pulled low and rakishly, so all you can see of his face is a snaggle-toothed grin. His handle on Instagram is "Michael Jacket" because his speciality is dancing in the styles made famous by Michael … Continue reading Feet so fast you think the clip’s been speeded up
Cōdae · Lady Murasaki (Biwa to Kyoto) Released today: "Lady Murasaki (Biwa to Kyoto)" Who were the world's first novelists? In Japan, the first person to write a work of fiction in the form of a novel was Lady Murasaki Shikibu, who lived in the 11th century AD/CE and wrote the famous work of Japanese … Continue reading Loneliness and sadness in Ancient Japan – “Lady Murasaki”
The lyrics of all the songs on my album "Divan" were inspired by ancient historical documents. The lyrics for "Havn" date back to 1100 AD/CE. The first line, in Medieval Dutch, is: "Hebban olla vogala nestas?", which means "Do all birds have nests?". The name of the song, "Havn", means "haven" or "harbour" - like … Continue reading A little Medieval love song – “Havn”
"King Unas Lives" is the second track on my album, "Divan", which has songs created from ancient historical documents - in this case, hieroglyphics. King Unas is also known as Ounas, Wenis, and Wenas. He was the ninth and last ruler of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt during the Old Kingdom, and reigned for 15 … Continue reading King Unas lives – Only in inscriptions
This weekend, I released the first track from my new album, "Divan". The word "divan" means "a collection of poems". I called it this because the ten tracks on the album were inspired by very old - ancient - texts, many of them in the forms of verses or poems, that date from about the … Continue reading A song from the “Poetic Edda” – “The Last Poem of Guthrun”
Donnie Jr. Duncan is one of those dancers whose performance you can analyze by microseconds and still not find one thing wrong. He is smooth, incredibly so. He has muscles in places where most people don't even have places. He leaps and twirls and slides as if gravity does not affect him. And then there … Continue reading He’s not a machine, he’s merely perfect
This post is long overdue, but it took some Sherlock-Holmes-level Internet searching to ascertain the facts about what I want to say. So now, belatedly, I can tell you, factually, what I've found about about the dancers in the video clips that I have bought from Artgrid or got for free from Pexels. If, like … Continue reading Dancing lightly on the edge of time
Timbuktu was added to the album Thermós, after the album was complete. After I thought it was done, I asked myself, what would be the result if I combined something like simple Gregorian chanting in Dorian or Lydian scale, with modern beats? I had pictured in my mind, the driest, hottest, dustiest, sandiest, most monochrome … Continue reading A bit of an experiment – “Timbuktu”
Having just finished the major job of publishing my album "Time Shift", I realized that I had spent a lot of time on trying to get the songs right - what ever "right" means. After a while, the thought occurred to me that it's one problem to get the production and post-production right. It's quite … Continue reading What is worth saying in music?
As a child, my Dad tried his best to teach me to play the piano, and since I was stubborn and lazy, I cheated and taught myself to play by ear. I never did get the hang of reading notation and using proper technique when playing. I can barely pick out a tune on a … Continue reading “Yellow bird, up high in the banana tree…”
Enter the Lion (track 6 on my album Time Shift) started as a snatch of notes I played on the piano. When it was done, I wondered what to call it. Only when the name popped into my head, I realized that what I had been thinking about all along, was a pride of lions … Continue reading When you add the meaning afterwards – “Enter the Lion”
Hypnotic, the 7th track on my album, Time Shift, is a song about skiing. When I lived in South Africa, we went skiing in Austria once a year, since that’s what the Dutch do during their Winter holidays. There’s very little snowfall in South Africa - there used to be a single ski resort run … Continue reading Was that me being a dork in a bar? Yes. But I was freezing…
I've been reading Seth Godin's Marketing micro-posts for years. Every so often he writes something in very few words that is absolutely true. I've reposted a particularly good one below. I need not say any more. This man knows what he's talking about. When I read it, I thought to myself, well, that's the way … Continue reading Seth Godin explains “The Reality of Chasing Pop”
The word "shag" in the name of this song refers to the dance called the Carolina Shag, which is a relaxed partner dance, often done to "beach music" - whatever that is... I named this song for it, because that's the feeling of the song - it's got a steady beat for dancing to, and … Continue reading A little light music -“Soft Shoe Shag”
No. 4 on Time Shift - Africa-style Trip-Hop "The Veld" is a song that expresses my nostalgia for the veld (or veldt) of South Africa - the wide open, wild landscapes of the interior of the country. There are many types of veld: the bushveld, the highveld, the lowveld, and so on, and my favourite, … Continue reading My version of ‘The Rain in Africa’
Track 3 on "Time Shift" The lyrics of this track are self-explanatory, even for someone who has never been on a mine site. When I wrote it, the lyrics were the easy parts. Expressing the ideas in music was a different challenge altogether. This is how I did it: I expressed the feeling of going … Continue reading “The Trembling Ground” – The Sound of seismicity
To celebrate SpaceX’s breath-taking firing test yesterday, Feb. 9, 2023, of the gigantic Starship Super Heavy booster rocket (230 feet, 69 meters tall), with 31of 33 first-stage booster engines lighting up in a volcano of flame and smoke, here is my track and music video called “Space Crackle”. A Space Crackle to celebrate the Super … Continue reading To celebrate SpaceX’s massive engine firing test – here’s “Space Crackle”
Track 2 on Time Shift Sound Engineer Luke Garfield, who mixed and mastered The Ocean in E, called it "sonically luxurious". I think that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said about a song I've produced. I want to frame it and put it on my wall. He had to avoid the piece sounding chintzy … Continue reading Track 2 on “Time Shift”: “The Ocean in E” – Sonically luxurious
I've just published the first track on my new album, "Time Shift". The album is the result of a little walk down memory lane in 2022, particularly just before Christmas, remembering the standout things in my former life in South Africa: the local music scene, the wildlife, the wide-open spaces, the sounds that you only … Continue reading First track on “Time Shift” album: “Groove was in the House”
My ears are tired of writing music. They are ringing, buzzing, echoing, twanging and refusing to process any more auditory signals. I often think that Sound Engineers have the most amazing hearing - and the most amazing auditory signal processing cortexes in their brains. It's something you're born with, but still, to be able to … Continue reading My ears are tired
"Busted Piano" gets tweaked One of the features in iMovie that I hadn't known about until recently, is that you can set the speed of a clip by percentages, faster or slower. This means that you can much more precisely match the movements of the people in the clips, to the beat and tempo of … Continue reading HD version of music video for “Busted Piano”
The closing track on Painting Music is Outro. So Outro is the outro. Sorry for that pun. Couldn't resist. I was stuck for a name, much like Deadmau5 said he sometimes is, and then he resorts to calling his tracks things like Some Chords and Lack of a Better Name. Outro is the track in … Continue reading Away and back Again – “Outro” on “Painting Music”
After a long debate with myself about where and how to place the lyrical videos I've made of my music, I finally settled on Vimeo. It's not free - but I did not feel comfortable with the sometimes questionable advertising, and being lumped together with all sorts of weird stuff on YouTube. Vimeo is a … Continue reading I chose Vimeo for my videos
This lyrical video was enjoyable to make, because it was not as hard to synchronize as others had been (since it is an easy 4/4 beat at 110 bpm), and because there were a lot of options for depicting the themes of the song. When you get down to it, how do you express two … Continue reading What exactly is “Exquisite”? – Lyrical video of “Exquisite Machine”
Track 8 of 9 on the album "Painting Music" took major effort. It was the most difficult track on this album and the one of which I'm proudest. I started it on Sept 9, 2022 and finished it on Oct. 6, 2022 - 4 weeks of working on it every day, all day. Doing this … Continue reading The most difficult and the best result – “Exquisite Machine”
If, like me, you are self-taught, the theory and structure of music are sometimes quite difficult to understand. I know what I want something to sound like, and I know what sort of melodies and which keys, tempos and rhythms give which feelings. But often I don't know how I got there, or what to … Continue reading I’ve Discovered E chords! (And they make me happy!)
