MUSIC COMPOSITION

I like composing my own music to run as backing tracks for some of the educational videos I do. As such, they are not meant to be hugely melodic, but serve to establish an up-beat rhythm to kick the visuals along. It also means they have to be a bit formulaic (8-10sec quiet intro for titles, distinct separators for topics changes, etc). However, they are great fun to do, particularly when experimenting with different repeating patterns that then come together to form a reasonably coherent flow. Some more successfully than others, but you will have to be the judge of that.

Experiments in Techno 2023

If you can't see a list of music tracks, try SoundCloud directly. The set is called 'Experiments in Techno' and is by drajmarsh.

Experiments in Syncopation II 2022

If you can't see a list of music tracks, try SoundCloud directly. The set is called 'Experiments in Syncopation II' and is by drajmarsh.

Experiments in Syncopation2012

If you can't see a list of music tracks, try SoundCloud directly. The set is called 'Experiments in Syncopation' and is by drajmarsh.

Some Background

I do find it pretty amazing how music software has now pretty well entirely replaced all the gear you used to need in a home recording studio. As you can see in the images below, I had a fair bit of stuff to lug around way back when I was a student just getting into electronic music. Now, of course, you can have all that capability on a small laptop. Moreover, you can line up any number of virtual modules and effects units on a track without being limited by the single rack-mounted reverb you once had to route everything through.

**1992**: This was my MIDI synthesiser and sampler setup circa 1992 when I was a Uni student.

**2011**: My Reason 4 workstation in 2011. The microphone is there solely for training video voice-overs, I harbour absolutely no singing ambitions.

**2022**: This was my Reason 12 setup in 2022. The latest keyboard controllers do pretty well everything now, so I just need one of those and some decent monitors and headphones.

**2023**: Added a Samsung M7 monitor that was recently on sale, but the rest of the setup seems to suits my needs pretty well.

Reason is the perfect tool for someone like me who started off by physically plugging stuff together. Its interface is a near perfect simulacrum of that rack-mounted workflow. I've barely scratched the surface of what it can do, but the fact that I can do just as much on my laptop when I'm travelling as I can when home on the iMac is just great.