The Ryno Pen

Title from the words of Buddha (or from George Harrison if you’re younger). Here’s some more music, this time about the beauty of a life which is no more.

My original notes on the piece from 1995:

Moment Of Gravity 8:07
I wrote this just after reading of the death of an acquaintance, a gifted young musician in Canberra. I wanted to portray “breaking free and rising above the world”… Not mourning, just waving goodbye.

There’s a bit of the fluidity I heard in D’s playing there. Some homage to Zappa, too. Altogether, it’s a bit more “influenced by others” than my usual stuff.

The original lives here for your downloading pleasure and RIAA nose-thumbing¹. It’s 10.7 Mb in size, for the quota-conscious.

Of course, the sage, grey-headed producer that I am today would know different things and have a different perspective to the brash, young sage, grey-headed musician I was back then.

I sat myself right down and told me that it needed more cowbell percussion and some spatial depth.

“You’re thinking that ambience means all-pervasive reverb, and every instrument nailed to the floor, young Ryno,” I said to my younger self. “It’s a light, floaty piece: you said so yourself. So let’s loosen it up a bit.”

Young-Me sat morosely fidgetting with a piece of wire I/he had found on the desktop. Knowing what was to come from his/my senior persona, this wasn’t going to be easy.

“The master tapes, lad! We’ll have this split up and panned all over the place in no ti…… Oh bugger. Did I record this whole album direct to stereo?”

A nod from the junior version was sufficient. With memory and tape so relatively expensive back then, it made more sense to do as much of the donkey work directly with MIDI commands while composing and reworking a piece.

“Damn. The old Sooper Sekrit Process² is going to get a workout then. Well, Younger-Me, before you go, could you just remind me what it’s like not to have a permanent backache?”

“Not telling. If you were a real friend you’d have warned me about taking that job with the Hypocritical Oafs³. See ya!”

There was no point running after him. Time to do a bit of bit-tweaking…

And eventually, I arrived at Moment Of Gravity (CLICKY REMIX) Size: 10.72 Mb.

D, if you’re hearing, I hope you’re happy.

(Music licensed under Creative Commons.

Images from somewhere: if they’re yours, tell me and I’ll acknowledge.)

TFF^™0

⁰ Those Fornicating Footnotes^™.

¹ If they kick down your door, send the buggers here. I want you to have this, and I don’t care if you make copies for your nabes, your dog-walker, and leave enigmatically-stencilled MP3 players full of this stuff lying around conspicuously in public places. The only demands I have are:
* Mine Mine Mine. No plagiarism, remixing, sampling or saying I authorised anything but the onward distribution of my work. Anyhow, I still own it.
* For Free, just like you got it. No fair making others pay for it.

² If I told you, I’d have to get Younger-Me to rough you up. You wouldn’t like that: he’s a pacifist and the whining really grates on you.

³ Not their actual name. Remember, this blog is a maze of twisty little lies, all alike.