LinuxMusicians

Hi all,

I've been quiet for a while, but there's a reason: I have many pieces in my pipeline, and due to a generic lack of time none of them are close to being done I recently recovered all the data from an old hard disk I thought lost forever, though, which included a lot of music I wrote and recorded about 20 years ago (which was the peak of my "creativity", and about the time I stopped before getting back to it last year). Recovering the data did cost me quite some money, but I'm really glad I did, since I managed to listen again to many ideas I wrote down at the time: there were even some short parts, at the time written in Sibelius, of the very first version of what would eventually become The Wind and The Lake!

Just for nostalgia reasons, I thought I'd share a couple of those old recorded tracks. They were not recorded on Linux or with free software (at the time I used Cakewalk on Windows, it was a long a time ago), so strictly speaking they don't belong here, but I thought you'd be interested in checking them out anyway, especially considering some of the themes will be "familiar", and so they might be seen as the "roots" of what I'm writing today:

https://soundcloud.com/lminiero/the-lost-child
https://soundcloud.com/lminiero/fjords-daughter

The Lost Child was recorded somewhere around 2002, and if you've listened to what I've shared here, you may recognize the intro as the music box theme from Ballerina. That's because I remembered the theme, and thought it deserved to be re-recorded. The rest of the track is probably quite predictable: the piano part always felt to me also a bit of a rip-off of things I heard Rhapsody (of Fire) play, and so I was never in love with it. I doubt I'll reuse those themes again for something new, but since it was one of the few recordings I actually completed at the time (with ugly sound effects too ) I thought I'd share it anyway.

Fjord's Daughter, instead, dates back to 2003: it a bit more advanced, and probably one of the most complex (or should I say confused?) tracks I wrote at the time. It's a bit of a pastiche of different genres, and isn't very homogeneous, but I liked it at the time. Again, I reused parts of this track I remembered for other things, recently: the intro is almost the same as the one from Eurydice, while the waltz is a barebone version that I completely rewrote and re-arranged as a full orchestral piece in Daydreaming Waltz. The track then becomes a rock song in Nightwish style (I used to listen to them a lot, back then), while the ending turns into a weird (but somehow cool to me!) neoclassical/baroque part, before the outro that mirrors the intro. As with the other track, I'm probably done "mutilating" this track for parts, so I thought I'd share this other bit from my past as well purely for nostalgia.

Now, work and life permitting, it's time to roll up my sleeves and get back to current efforts, so that next time I write it will hopefully be to share something a bit more recent

Nice to hear a glimpse from the past. Your work has improved, definitely, but you were already exploring interesting things back then.

Some of my recordings from the same time period are hard to listen to.

The Lost Child reminded me a bit of @psyocean. I agree you improved much, there were nice ideas, for example the italo disco progression in Fjord's Daughter (I guess this was not what you were going for but it sounds nice!)

milo wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2020 9:49 pm Nice to hear a glimpse from the past. Your work has improved, definitely, but you were already exploring interesting things back then.

Thanks for taking the time to listen! It was definitely fun for me to get back to those old attempts, especially considering I thought I'd never have the chance to hear them again.

milo wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2020 9:49 pm Some of my recordings from the same time period are hard to listen to.

Oh, these were the only ones I felt I could share: there are others that I kept to myself... there's a neoclassical metal arrangement/cover of Mozart's "Rondo alla Turca" for instance that I doubt I'll publish anytime

Basslint wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2020 7:30 am The Lost Child reminded me a bit of @psyocean. I agree you improved much, there were nice ideas, for example the italo disco progression in Fjord's Daughter (I guess this was not what you were going for but it sounds nice!)

Thanks for listening! The aim was most definitely not a disco progression, but I see what you mean The idea at the time was to write something that would sound like a Nightwish song (the "big" strings riff), but the lame rhythm guitar invalidates that, and when the harmonized guitars come in later they sound more like a Frank Stallone song instead

Nice to see some history behind your music! Great that you recovered these tracks, even if it cost some money. I considered deleting all my old tracks a while ago (as I cringe super hard when I listen to them), but I'm really glad I didn't. Like you said, there's a lot of nostalgia, and you can also re-use parts of it later.

Also, I think the first one and a half minutes of "The Lost Child" would make for a great album opener. Since you mentioned Nightwish, I'm kind of thinking of like Taikatalvi.

Very impressed with this. Don't diss your own work

crownbird wrote: ↑Tue Oct 27, 2020 12:48 am Nice to see some history behind your music! Great that you recovered these tracks, even if it cost some money. I considered deleting all my old tracks a while ago (as I cringe super hard when I listen to them), but I'm really glad I didn't. Like you said, there's a lot of nostalgia, and you can also re-use parts of it later.

Yeah, if it were for me, I'd never throw away anything I've even recovered music written on my old Amiga passing the content from floppies to PC using a serial cable, recently, and it was amazing to listen again to things I had written at 16/17.

crownbird wrote: ↑Tue Oct 27, 2020 12:48 am Also, I think the first one and a half minutes of "The Lost Child" would make for a great album opener. Since you mentioned Nightwish, I'm kind of thinking of like Taikatalvi.

Oh I've actually done that already: the music box intro became Ballerina, the short intro to the "Her" album/playlist. I'd still like to expand on it sooner or later, though, maybe as a "reprise" that can close an album instead. I didn't know that song from Nightwish, it looks like it's from a much later album than the ones I used to listen to: it has the same cool music box vibe to it!

folderol wrote: ↑Tue Oct 27, 2020 11:26 am Very impressed with this. Don't diss your own work

Thanks for listening and for the kind words! I guess our own self is always the harshest critic