Music

I used to record other musicians for a living, or play their bass lines for the same reason. Dragondreams came about when I stopped doing it for other people and started doing it for myself.

The lost files

These are a dozen tracks that I've turned up on some unlabelled CDs while trawling though my library. Apart from "Piper at the Gates of Dream", these are from a pretty bleak period of my life. In rapid succession, I lost a lot of members of my family, as well as some very dear friends. To cap it, the PC with all the work that represents these tracks was stolen. What I've uploaded here are the test burns that I must have done while working on the tracks. I won't be working on these any further, so what you hear on these is what you get.

"Track 2" is not one of mine. I added the bass line to it for one of the friends that is no longer in my life. I haven't uploaded it yet as I want to check with his family that I can have their permission to present it here.

"Track 8"... if it ever had a title, then I simply don't recall it. Which may become its title after all these years. ;-)

2002 to 2007

Most of the collection during this period was recorded on an ancient Hewlett Packard file server that I rescued from a skip. The soundcard was a dirt-basic Creative Soundblaster and the software used was the same copy of Cakewalk PA9 that I'm still using today, running under Windows 95. The only "real" instrument used in the entire collection was my bass guitar. All the rest of the instruments are Yamaha XG voices.

Some of the bass guitar effects are unusual. I generally used to double and even triple-track my bass in order to get some punch into the sound in those early days. I also used a couple of triggered filters (kind of like an autowah) in conjunction with my slapping technique to get some of the stranger tones.

2007 to now

This covers the period from when I started to learn to play the six-string guitar. There's not so much of it, but that's set to change this year. I've moved and rebuilt the studio, and started laying down quite a few ideas that I hope will grow into finished tracks. Watch this space ;-)

Of my more recent tracks, I have a couple of personal favourites. I know that might sound an odd thing to say about one's own material. But these two grew and took on a life of their own. They simply went the way THEY wanted to go. And for once, I sat back and let the music take over. It was quite an eerie experience at times, sitting back and letting the music dictate the direction it was going to take. For me, a track is normally born almost complete in my head and I go ahead, just recording the parts as I'm "hearing" them in my "mind's ear". Not these two. They utterly refused to take the shape that I had all neatly planned out for them. And THAT'S why they're my favourites. I ended up just being the guy who put his fingers in the places that they demanded. What's that? Oh, the tunes... Naked Ear and Moretta's Ride :-)

"Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going..."