Kara-Moon Forum

Sometime in 1993 I visited the Silent Pool in Surrey (famed for its stunningly clear water and tranquil setting). Inspired, I later had an all night composing session that resulted in a gentle background with three improvisations on top of it. Returning to it several days later I liked the composition, but was horrified by the timing errors. I like to stretch timing on slow lazy tunes but this was way to much. The problem was that I had six tracks that actually meshed with each other very well. It was the overall timing that was really dragging.

The first thing I tried was quantisation, but that was a nightmare to implement and completely destroyed the character of the tune. Then I tried increasing the tempo, but that only helped a little. Defeated, the project went in 'storage'. It wasn't until 2007 that I made another attempt. This time I painstakingly worked on just the last part of the tune, phrase by phrase, careful to retain the relationship between all parts. I also changed all the instrument sounds to their ZynAddSubFX counterparts. This sounded very much better, but I was totally exhausted, so back it went on the ToDo list.

Recently I discovered a new, non-destructive way of adjusting timing of MIDI tracks in Rosegarden so decided to have another go at this. Without giving away too many secrets I can now even adjust the length of individual notes, but across ALL tracks at the same time. No more changing one track, then bringing the others in one at a time to synchronise. It's not perfect, but then I don't think I want 'perfect'. However after 20 years in limbo I'm happy with it. The final change, that gave a surprising good result was to shift the key down from C to Bb.

So, finally, from Yoshimi and Rosegarden here is 'Sleepy Hollow'.

And for the oggicly challenged...

Tranquil...sleepy..slightly eerie & love that harpsichord-esque sound. 8)

1993 was the year my wife and I "emigrated" to Vancouver Island. It was the year I stopped eating flesh - and the year I cut off all my hair.

Perhaps a year of inspiration for both of us, Mr G.? ;)
Very nice bit of work, by the way... O0

(the hair is back, but the other lifestyle changes remain)

Got it right on the button, Thom. Perfectly matches the place :)

Thanks also Oren.

Well, today was a beautiful sunny day, so I decided it was high time I visited the Silent Pool again. It looks pretty much as it did all those years ago, and here's the photo :)

...tranquility...  :-*

Sounds great to me Will!

Very good work here.

I liked the way this carried me away to your Silent Pool, I could picture it when listening.

 ;D :-