While cleaning up the harddrive I bumped into a couple of old RAM files. Most of them were snippets of old recordings, once used for a webpage from the olden times. Some of them were of pretty good quality, actually capturing the mood of that specific time. Later more on that: first, my eye fell on a couple of files with names suggesting that they were RealAudio recordings of my MIDI compositions for my Roland SCC-1 ready PC.
I have no idea why I bothered recording the midi compositions, but hearing them again convinces me that we were damn happy (and lucky) owners of that precious Roland card. Introducing: ‘Birth, Life, Death I’ (1993) [MP3 from RealAudio]
Update: I encountered problems with the original RA files, so converted them to MP3 for my own convience.
BLD 1 reminds me of my silly times of sequencing: I was a happy user of GS Musicator, a program that (at that time) was far too expensive if you looked at the crappy interface. However, it was so Roland centric that I never bothered checking out other sequencers. Printing out notes, professional quality was a plus too, but I don’t recall printing many of the scores.
I also have no clue how I came up with that (short) composition: I remember sequencing all the instruments seperately, like I always did. I started with the piano chords and the guitar (strumming). Then the multiple strings tracks were set in place. Lastly I added the flute track. And then mixing: The best part. That is: flipping tracks to the left or right, anticipating the theme by slowly playing with the volumes of all the seperate tracks and by using the GS sound effects (clearly reverb in this case).
If I’m not wrong, this particular RealAudio was mixed by Alfons since I notice that particular reverb he always seemed to like.
A remarkable relic of time, for sure.