Today, I took delivery of a top hat. Why? Well, I’ve recorded a steampunk album, so I should have some steampunk pictures.
These aren’t them, these are just a couple of snaps to see how the top hat looks.
Look, it’s a top hat!
Author Archives: TomSlatter
‘Twyn Du’ by Andy Long
The last piece of music I downloaded was ‘Twyn Du’ by Andy Long. For some unknown reason it slipped my mind that this lovely piece of music is also part of the twitter chord challenge. Here it is:
More on the Chord Progression Twitter Made
So as well as my own attempt to record a song using Matt Steven’s ‘Chord Progression Twitter Made’ there several other, very different pieces using the same ideas.
There’s Alun Vaughun’s Untaxed Hat:
(Which, as well as being a great piece of music, makes me want to explore soundcloud a bit more)
And Canary on a Wheel by Vonaxenburg
My own small attempt: Last Sunlight.
A Steampunk Rap about Tea
A Cup of Brown Joy is by Elemental. It is very silly.
DeadPuppyRecycling – A New Song
DeadPuppyRecycling is a brand new song that I recorded last year and mixed this morning.
Members of my mailing list will be recieving a link to the mp3 of the song in an email tomorrow. Anyone else, if you’d like a free copy just click the download button.
Something Kinda Midnight Or
Something Kinda Midnight Or is a piece for Bassoon and Piano that I wrote for my bassoon playing younger sister’s final University recital.
It’s the only instrumental piece I’ver composed that has actually been played by other people, and it’s one of my musical accomplishments I’m most proud of.
I’m possibly maybe thinking of arranging a full band version of this: bassoon, piano, guitar, bass, drums, electronic noises. Possibly. Maybe.
Here are the silly things I wrote for the programme:
“Something Kinda Midnight Or was inspired partly by a melody I wrote for a compositional exercise at university, and partly by my lazy decision to steal ideas from all the music I had been listening to.
This included, in no particular order, a piece by Hindemith, the heavy metal band Megadeth, and several progressive rock pieces.
The piece has a vaguely rondoish form that intersperses an accessible, regular melody with episodes of angular silliness. In keeping with the progressive rock songs I ‘borrowed’ from, the episodes include frequent time signature changes, and chromatic ‘power chord’ like basslines, the aim being to create accessible music from unusual rhythmic ingredients.
The title doesn’t mean much, except that it made me laugh.
Tom Slatter, 2007, Madagascar.”
Last Sunlight
Last Sunlight (a song that Twitter helped to write)
Maybe we’ll surface soon,
Under a winter moon,
Thaw must have left weakness.
Maybe we’ll freeze again
Awaiting the summer rain,
Ice in our veins.
A ship sails on a solid sea
A perfect place for you and me
A moondial turns until we move again
Last sunlight for six months
Last movement this year.
Last Sunlight Fading
Ice in our veins
Things To Covet – Thin Gipsy Thief’s Steampunk Guitar
Via @TotusMel on twitter, I came across this steampunk’d guitar.
Isn’t it fantastic? Oh the money I would spend on Steampunk things, if I had it…
Thin Gipsy Thief is, in his own words, “a luthier, furniture designer, and steampunk builder from Vancouver Island, British Columbia. I work full time as a cook in the little town where I Iive and am slowly making the transition to full time Etsy seller and artisan.”
He has an Etsy shop here.
Audio Sketch – Sunday Soundscape
I’ve been playing with my guitar, cubase and my Sonuus G2M midi converter.
Here are the results:
Inspiration from Polar Architecture
The Inspiration for the lyrics to the sketch I just posted came from an article on BLDGBLOG:
“Back in January 2008, a ship called Tara unlocked from the polar ice near Greenland; it had been frozen in the Arctic floes for a year and four months, repeating the journey of the Fram, a Norwegian ship that once drifted across the polar seas, frozen solid in the ice fields, back in 1896…“