Music

High Altitude Drums 07/08 — Blue Knights and Troopers Drum & Bugle Corps

A drum and bugle corps recorded so far below normal level that it needs the volume control at 11:30 — and then becomes the most startling demonstration disc I have heard.

Blue Dream — Fiona Joy Hawkins

The first SACD released by an Australian independent artist: new age piano produced by Will Ackerman and mastered by Bob Ludwig, in a mix I wanted to be bolder.

Dreams and False Alarms — Andy Milne

Solo piano readings of Mitchell, Sting, Marley, Young and Dylan that take their time letting you work out which song you are hearing. Audition before buying.

Places You Go — Brad Shepik Trio

A trio with a Hammond B-3 where the acoustic bass should be, playing original mid-tempo numbers and ballads. Almost an hour long, and I wanted more.

Think Like the Waves — Gordon Grdina

ECM-ish contemporary jazz coloured by oud and Middle Eastern lines, with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian completing the trio, in an enveloping 5.0 mix.

Dahl, Martinů and Husa — Sonolumina Ensemble

A whole disc of works for clarinets and strings, vibrantly played and miked closely enough that the breathing and the bowing come with it.

Haydn: String Quartets Op. 9 No. 4 and Op. 77 No. 2 — Fry Street Quartet

The sequel to Voices of Modernism, with the same fiery playing: an early quartet that sounds Beethovenish and a late one that sounds Mozartean.

Purity — T Minus 5

An a cappella collection of hymns recorded with no limiting, compression or artificial reverb — unusually clear about the voice, and unforgiving about any note that strays.

Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians — GVSU New Music Ensemble

My favourite piece of music in its first multichannel release, where for the first time I could hear the three pianos apart instead of one wall of sound.

Voices of Modernism and the String Quartet — Fry Street Quartet

Beethoven, Stravinsky, Rorem and Scearce across two IsoMike discs, in gripping performances and one of the best string quartet recordings I have heard.

Wagner: Götterdämmerung — Asher Fisch and the Adelaide Ring

The final instalment, middle of the road in both performance and sonics, and a closing verdict ranking all four Adelaide Ring titles against one another.

Ten at 86 — Joe McQueen and friends

An IsoMike four-channel jazz recording made with baffled microphones, at the lowest level I had met on a commercial disc, where the ambience channels matter more than I expected.

Bach: Goldberg Variations — the Zenph re-performance of Gould’s 1955 recording

Gould’s 1955 mono recording reverse-engineered into note data and replayed on a Disklavier direct to DSD: a stunning piano recording, and a performance that is his and yet subtly not.

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 10 — Australian Youth Orchestra, Anissimov

A well played Tenth from an orchestra not to be dismissed as amateurs, and a faithful capture of the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall's difficult acoustics, warts included.

Believe in Love — Elizabeth Whitehouse and Richard Bonynge

Soprano arias billed as rare and mostly not, sung with style and flair, with the voice imaged left of centre exactly where a soloist stands in a real hall.

Wagner: Siegfried — Asher Fisch and the Adelaide Ring

The opera in the cycle I had always liked least, in a performance and recording that changed my mind — the best balanced of the four, and the one to sample multichannel SACD on.

Wagner: Das Rheingold — Asher Fisch and the Adelaide Ring

The second Adelaide instalment, and the weakest: a faultless recording of a staging whose energy was largely visual, with stage water reading on the microphones as crackle.

Dark Clouds — Stu Goldberg and Cassius Khan

Piano and tabla, and the rare SACD where I preferred the stereo mix — with an explanation from the producer of why the surround ambience was built the way it was.

Wagner: Die Walküre — Asher Fisch and the Adelaide Ring

The first instalment of the Adelaide Ring on SACD, reviewed by someone who sat in the hall: an emotional rather than physical Walküre, on a recording that may beat being there.

A Charlie Brown Christmas — Vince Guaraldi Trio

The follow-up, not as well recorded as its predecessor, and with so little between the SACD and CD layers that I wondered whether they share a master.

Bach: Italian Concerto and Partitas — Glenn Gould

Gould at his most accessible, playing the piano rather like a harpsichord — the best introduction to him on SACD, stray clicks and omnipresent hiss notwithstanding.

Chet — Chet Baker

Ballads from 1958 with Bill Evans and Kenny Burrell, where the SACD layer reveals tape dropouts and saturation that the CD layer turns into something like clipping.

A Boy Named Charlie Brown — Vince Guaraldi Trio

A 1965 television soundtrack that still sounds startlingly alive, hard-panned in the manner of early stereo, and emphatically not the kiddies’ music the cover suggests.

Bach: Keyboard Concertos 1 — Angela Hewitt and the Australian Chamber Orchestra

Hewitt plays the piano as a piano, prettily; the unconventional surround mix is the interesting part, with the double bass sitting almost wholly in the 0.1 channel.

Vivaldi: Concertos for the Emperor — English Concert, Manze

Six reconstructed concertos from the set presented to Charles VI, recorded, edited and mastered in DSD, in a reading I found a shade too languid.

Jazz in an R&B Groove — a HighNote compilation

The companion HighNote compilation, and the better sounding of the two — clean, airy and room-filling, with the CD layer clearly behind the DSD stereo.

Kinda Jazzy Kinda Funky — a HighNote compilation

A mid-priced HighNote compilation whose cheesy title and blurb undersell it: consistent instrumental tracks, mixed a little low, with the DSD layer tightening the bass.

The Dark Side of the Moon — Pink Floyd

The 30th Anniversary SACD ranked against a Quad LP, two earlier CD masterings and a bootleg DTS disc — seven versions of one album, each with its own sonic character.

Forget About It — Alison Krauss

Soft ballads with only hints of bluegrass, on a stereo hybrid where the SACD layer is mastered at least 3dB below the CD and the two make for genuinely different listening.

Steppin' — Christy Baron

Chesky's jazz and R&B arrangements of pop tunes, with the rolled-off top end and barely used surround channels typical of the label's multichannel discs.

Getz/Gilberto — Stan Getz and João Gilberto

The Verve single-layer SACD against a battered LP and the Master Edition CD: more presence on the saxophone and voices, and enough resolution to expose tape faults the CD had hidden.

Michael Ball: Live at the Royal Albert Hall

The Region 4 DVD of Michael Ball: Live at the Royal Albert Hall (1999), reviewed for MichaelDVD — 3 out of 5 overall.

Andrew Lloyd Webber: Royal Albert Hall Celebration

The Region 4 DVD of Andrew Lloyd Webber: Royal Albert Hall Celebration (1998), reviewed for MichaelDVD — 3.5 out of 5 overall.

Oasis-Familiar To Millions

The Region 4 DVD of Oasis-Familiar To Millions (2000), reviewed for MichaelDVD — 4 out of 5 overall.

Deep Purple-In Concert With The London Symphony Orchestra

The Region 4 DVD of Deep Purple-In Concert With The London Symphony Orchestra (1999), reviewed for MichaelDVD — 4 out of 5 overall.

Earl Klugh: The Jazz Channel Presents

The Region 4 DVD of Earl Klugh: The Jazz Channel Presents (2000), reviewed for MichaelDVD — 3.5 out of 5 overall.

Oasis ... There and Then

The Region 4 DVD of Oasis ... There and Then (1996), reviewed for MichaelDVD — 3 out of 5 overall.

The Soul Conversation-Jazz Channel Presents

The Region 4 DVD of The Soul Conversation-Jazz Channel Presents (2000), reviewed for MichaelDVD — 3 out of 5 overall.

Bobby Womack: The Jazz Channel Presents

The Region 4 DVD of Bobby Womack: The Jazz Channel Presents (2000), reviewed for MichaelDVD — 3 out of 5 overall.

James Galway - At The Waterfront

The Region 4 DVD of James Galway - At The Waterfront (1999), reviewed for MichaelDVD — 3.5 out of 5 overall.

Carole King: In Concert

The Region 4 DVD of Carole King: In Concert (1994), reviewed for MichaelDVD — 3.5 out of 5 overall.

The Martin, Ricky-Ricky Martin Video Collection

The Region 4 DVD of The Martin, Ricky-Ricky Martin Video Collection (1999), reviewed for MichaelDVD — 2.5 out of 5 overall.

Franz Schubert — Winterreise (Bostridge/Drake)

The Region 4 DVD of Franz Schubert — Winterreise (Bostridge/Drake), reviewed for MichaelDVD — 3.5 out of 5 overall.

Jeffrey Osborne: The Jazz Channel Presents

The Region 4 DVD of Jeffrey Osborne: The Jazz Channel Presents, reviewed for MichaelDVD — 4.5 out of 5 overall.

Sting - The Brand New Day Tour

The Region 4 DVD of Sting - The Brand New Day Tour, reviewed for MichaelDVD — 3.5 out of 5 overall.

Paul Weller: Live at The Royal Albert Hall

The Region 4 DVD of Paul Weller: Live at The Royal Albert Hall, reviewed for MichaelDVD — 4 out of 5 overall.

Lou Rawls: The Jazz Channel Presents

The Region 4 DVD of Lou Rawls: The Jazz Channel Presents, reviewed for MichaelDVD — 3.5 out of 5 overall.

The Best of Wham!

The Region 4 DVD of The Best of Wham! (1997), reviewed for MichaelDVD — 2.5 out of 5 overall.

Peter Frampton: Live In Detroit

The Region 4 DVD of Peter Frampton: Live In Detroit, reviewed for MichaelDVD — 4.5 out of 5 overall.

Rubato: A Music Input and Performance System

My 1987 honours thesis at the University of Sydney. A language for writing music down that reads like music rather than like code, and a system that performs it.

A 6809 board that recorded MIDI and spoke SDLC

Five of us built one microprocessor board in 1987 and submitted it for two courses at once. It bridged a synthesiser and a VAX, and it was meant to be where Rubato came out.

My Record Collection

Explore my LP collection. Will eventually be integrated into the personal site.

500 Miles High

Vimeo

This is my arrangement of Chick Corea's beautiful song for string quartet. I took the lead sheet and expanded it to four parts for string quartet, with each instrument (apart from cello) taking turns to play the melody, with the other instruments either providing counterpoint or harmony.

Adagio (2nd movement) from Oboe Concerto in D minor Alessandro Marcello

Soundcloud

My first arrangement for 2018! This is a synth arrangement of the slow movement from Alessandro Marcello's beautiful Oboe Concerto in D minor, op. 1 using Logic Pro native instruments. It is a beautiful and tranquil piece that is perhaps not well known (even though JS Bach transcribed it for harpsichord).

Ave Maria (Vavilov)

Soundcloud

Incorrectly ascribed to Giulio Caccini, this work was actually composed by Vladimir Fyodorovich Vavilov (Влади́мир Фёдорович Вави́лов) in 1970 and featured in his album "Lute music of the XVI-XVII cent." (Лютневая музыка 16-17 веков) released on the Melodiya label. I listened to the original recording, transcribed it to Notion, then rearranged it for woodwinds, strings and harp, voiced using the EWQL Symphonic Orchestra.

Ave Maria (Vavilov) - Finale/GPO4

Vimeo

Incorrectly ascribed to Giulio Caccini, this work was actually composed by Vladimir Fyodorovich Vavilov (Влади́мир Фёдорович Вави́лов) in 1970 and featured in his album "Lute music of the XVI-XVII cent." (Лютневая музыка 16-17 веков) released on the Melodiya label.

Babylon 5 opening theme

Soundcloud

Original MIDI file downloaded from Chris Franke web site, reorchestrated using EWQL Gold and Logic Pro X.

Cinema Paradiso (string orchestra)

Soundcloud

In memory of Ennio Morricone, a string orchestra arrangement of Cinema Paradiso, transcribed by me into Finale.

Memories of Tomorrow

Vimeo

This is my attempt at jazz arrangement and improvisation, inspired by an assignment from Gary Burton's Jazz Improvisation course at Coursera. I took the original lead sheet provided in the assignment, then expanded to four parts that are polyrhythmic as well as polyphonic (based on Latin rhythms). I also added separate improvisations for piano and flute. Finally, I added open-voiced string harmonisation in the final section to indicate the guide tones and basis for future improvisation.

Olhos De Gato (orchestral arrangement)

Soundcloud

To celebrate the completion of the Jazz Improvisation class I am taking, I have arranged Olhos de Gato, by Carla Bley (one of the pieces studied in class) for orchestra. I have created a string backing for the melody, then added the melody from "Memories of Tomorrow" (another piece studied in class) as a counterpoint, and also my own melody as a further counterpoint. Finally, I created a new ending, based on a descending harmonic progression. The arrangement is scored in Notion, orchestrated using EWQL Symphony Orchestra Gold and mastered using Ozone 5.

Winter Music (electronic 115bpm)

Soundcloud

My first project in Maschine 3 - a dance arrangement of Roger Eno's track from Between Tides album, with the speed doubled to 115bpm and the Focus kit from Prismatic Bliss.

久石譲：いのちの名前 (Joe Hisaishi: The Name of Life) - Instrumental version - (revoiced)

Soundcloud

From the movie: Spirited Away. Recorded on Kawai MP-10. Revoiced on a Steinway D (Galaxy II) using Sonar X1 Producer Expanded