stefkeB

Improvisation with multiple tracks and a slow drumloop. Slightly inspired by Porcupine Tree's "Radioactive Toy".

Instrumental improvisation, bluesy and smooth

Instrumental multi-guitar piece, with a simple melody and arpeggiated accompagnement
Was used in a stageplay.

Sound quality is not that good, since it was recorded in 22kHz instead of 44.1kHz, due to the old Pentium 166 being too slow to properly handle multitrack-recording. nTrack was originally used for the recording, although the song has been arranged later on using Cubasis VST, where the samples have been converted to 'proper' 16bit/44.1kHz CD quality. The VST-effects were added in Cubasis. Here, the guitar is simply plugged into the line-in, which is not helping the sound either.

Delicate song about loneliness. This was recorded in 2000 and sounds OK to me. Maybe I've overused the reverb, but that's what all beginners do and that is what makes your own voice often sound better than it actually is. 

A silent and subtle song about praying, memories, silence, research, devotion...

A dutch song about having a first child and what it can do to you as a person and to your relation. It is meant to be positive and giving hope."Kleine Man" = little man = a child/boy 

A jazzy piece, but with electric drum, some synth texture (with a touch of old Duran Duran, if you ask me) and some strange voice improvisation, which I am not quite sure about yet.

Acoustic dutch song about sadness, lack of power, frustration and a trauma from the past.

A dutch song about a young girl, who doesn't fit into our current world. She is not stupid, but fails to behave properly in our school system. She is sensitive, follows her dreams and, sadly, gets rejected.

My Escape is a song about dreaming, reality, virtuality and escapism. Or about liking what you can not have. Or about leaving from where you are and trying to grasp something that isn't there.

Just some fancy base line and some drums and synth sounds. It's instrumental. The overblown flute in the end is a little too harsh, but the JV80 it was created on is at my parents place at the moment...I actually created many of this kind of tracks, using just the MIDI from an old Cubase and then a MIDI cable to the JV80. This ran fine on an old Pentium PC, without any noticeable latency. Long before audio and virtual effects or instruments came widely available. 

No Name was an attempt to create a song that combined different time types. It has three parts, one in 7/8, one in regular 4/4 and the end in 5/8. It is stylistically like the old Marillion songs, but without the Rothery solo and the Fish poetry. It might work out fine with guitars and real drums as a progrock tune, I believe. But for now (and for the time being), this is keyboard only.

Jazzy popsong, about, well, Religion. It was musically originally inspired by "Here In My Head" by Tori Amos, but the arrangement is totally unrelated to Tori Amos music. The lyrics are thematic but also somehow vague, to indicate general directions but with some freedom to give your own meaning to the song. It combines two themes. One about religion and one about loss and death. The two paths are combined and related. This is the first listenable demo from 2000.

First draft of a re-recording of "Weg" (Away), which was originally recorded in 2000. With better microphone and guitar, now using Ableton Live. But I'm not fully pleased with the drums and the guitar solo right now. A friend once told me that it had something of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song.

I still love this song, but I lost its original Cubase file. The lead voice is actually a bass sound, but pitched two or three octaves higher. I was lucky to have it recorded and burned to CD, as that is the only thing that is left. Oh well, plenty of other songs to go. The Cubase problem was the fact that I created songs which held different arrangements and in some cleanup session I forgot to save the arrangement for Spacy into a new song. To me, it actually improves the song. Oh and the wide pads too. I love synthetic strings and pad sounds. They can add a layer of richness to many songs.

Yet another instrumental guitar piece with some synthesizer thrown in for texture and background.

Inspired by painting the windows of my house during the recent holidays, I wrote a new song. It is mostly in 7/4, but there is a middle section in 4/4. I use Ableton 6, which does not support changing time signatures, so I had to make sure that the third sections started correctly. I think it worked out fine.I'm currently inventing all kinds of songs in my head, using non-standard time signatures. I have to practice, though, to ensure I play them correct.

Electronic atmosphere piece. Improvised and if I can remember correctly, played on the computer keyboard. Did I mention I like large pad sounds? And filtered drums?

Light poppy electronic piece. Some drums and blings and beeps, with delay effect. And a soft pad melody.

Electric guitar with a rock feel, as an arrangement for a stageplay piece. Not happy with the sound, but that's what you get when plugging your guitar into a SoundBlaster line-in card.

Original cassette version of entropie, which could become part of a soundtrack or so.  It was later re-recorded with violin and synth

Old cassette recording of an instrumental, recording a long time ago, using a Roland JV80 and an old MIDI file. Quite long, but I'm still thinking about modernising the arrangment. The initial layering of melodies is still good, IMHO.Had an improvised 5/4 second part, with some over-the-top sax.

Riff based rock instrumental. Only guitars and a drum loop. It is a good start of a song, without any words.

I often improvise on metal riffs, but seldomly record them. When I borrowed a Korg AX3000G from my brother Peter, I noticed it had some emulations of Mesa Boogie amplifiers, which are often used in current metal recordings. This is an improvised example. Rather slow and with little variation. It uses drum loops.

First Hospital Beats. If I remember correctly, it was created while I was accompagnying my son when he was in hospital for a week. I brought my laptop and a headphone. There is a sweet flute-like melody and syncopated rhythmic patterns. It is quite poppy, but not fully elaborated into a song.

Second hospital beats. Now with a filtered simple drum pattern and a "oh" melody, straight from the eighties and the Art of Noise hits. This one is also quite poppy and has a happy sound.

Three layered guitars, straight from the Korg AX3000G into Ableton Live. This instrumental is nothing but three riffs with three guitars. It is in 7/4 and is probably one of a series of pieces where I explore 7/4, 5/4 etc... Unfortunately, Live 6 does not support changing this throughout the song, as it was only introduced in Live 7. This could be beginning of a song. I often only create an A and B theme and gradually build them up. This time, there is also a C or "bridge" theme involved.

Filtered drums and wide soft pads. It also includes some noisy creepy pads. This could be used in a soundtrack or so.

Electric guitar duet. This instrumental piece is created while I was finishing my PhD. I was experimenting with guitar-amp plug-ins (Devil BVC), to get a more realistic guitar sound. This combined both a regular recording and the emulated amp. The coda includes a small echo experiment.

Playing with the Operator synth in Live. Very simple song, with a voice-like melody and a drumloop. Pils = beer.

Dutch song about love and marriage. The kind of song my wife asked me to write. I'm not that good in happy and positive songs, but this one is OK. It probably needs a less mellow arrangement, though, to improve.

Somewhere between rock and pop. It starts quite (= "stil") and grows during the song. It becomes rougher when the drums kick in. The lyrics suggest but don't explain what really happens/happened.

When playing with the new Ableton 8, I tried to boost the sound of a previous recording of "lasuur". Now it includes an EQ setting for Acoustic guitar, a multi-band compression and a limiter to boost the level closer to the maximum.

Some dynamics got lost, but overall it sounds much fuller and louder. This might be suitable for MP3s, which are often listened to with headphones and background noise.

An electronic playfull theme. Added some basic beats and beefed up the whole of the sound a bit.

This is a recording of Silver Droplets to reflect how the song was when played live, as discussed here. Although the sound is different. This is a Marshall amp emulation from the POD X3 Live recorded in Ableton Live. The actual performance was my real Marshall and the Digitech Jamman Looper pedal (which can not do direct sound-on-sound after the first recording starts looping).

But this version reflects the mood and feel of the way it was performed.