Abnormally for someone who’s made as much music as I have, I never actually
learned how to play a musical instrument. So improvisation is especially beguiling. It
always seemed like magic to me - I could never quite get my head around how
musicians could just make stuff up on the spot, and yet somehow make it sound like it
was always meant to be that way. So it was a huge surprise when I started doing it
myself.
I learned how to do everything backwards, with Cubase and game controllers. I didn’t
start working with a MIDI keyboard till 2010, by which time I’d already released three
albums and written several TV theme tunes. It didn’t immediately replace the bad
habits I’d already learned, but it did make it easier to cycle through synth presets. I
started improvising mainly so I could hear the new sounds I’d just paid for on my
shiny new software. Maybe record some of the ones I liked so I’d remember them for
later. And it had to be improvised, because - and I can’t stress this hard enough - I
genuinely couldn’t play. I couldn’t repeat the same sequence of notes to save my life,
so it had to be freeform. It had to be brand new every time.
Obviously, most of this was total and utter garbage of the highest magnitude. But
every now and then, I’d stumble across something interesting. And that’s what this
page is full of.
I still haven’t used that much of it in my professional work. The main exceptions being
The Ghoul and Intruder, which absolutely rely on it. But most of the stuff on this page
hasn’t been heard before by anyone but me. It’s therefore the most intimate and most
personal page on the whole site, and probably the riskiest. I don’t know if it’s a career
killer, exactly, but I genuinely have no idea whether anyone wants to listen to the
sound of a non-musician playing music on an instrument he can’t actually play. And
maybe even the suggestion that you might do so could be enough to break the trust
between us. I hope not. But enter at your own risk.
2010 - 2022
improvisations
LIGHT & BEAUTY
MYSTERY & DARKNESS
SAZTASTIC
April 21, 2010
YETIS IN MOURNING
April 26, 2013
MEN ON THE MOON
March 2, 2011
LITTLE BOY LOST
February 18, 2011
THE EDGE
February 21, 2011
ANCIENT SPACE BATTLES
March 31, 2020
WALKING OFF THE CROSS
April 21 & May 19, 2010
SHARPIC
February 26, 2011
FIVE
April 21, 2010
FOREVER
May 9, 2014
THE END IN SIGHT
March 29, 2011
BACON SKY
June 1, 2021
AD ASTRA ET ULTRA
March 31, 2020
BEFORE THE RAIN STOPS
May 22, 2022
BRIGHTSCAPE
October 17, 2020
RHYTHMIC RANDOMNESS
THE WIND HAS CHANGED
January 22, 2014
STEAMING BLUE MURDER
April 20, 2013
APOLLO
May 23, 2012
BARON EXPERIMENT 02b
January 14, 2014
HARMONIALITY
February 21, 2011
DRONOS
February 24, 2011
THE GHOUL
CANADIAN DUNGEON
October 27, 2020
AMAZONIA
March 19, 2010
INTRUDER: ARKHIS SESSIONS
October 19, 2020
INSISTENT MANDOLINS
HOLLYWOOD GLITTER
EYES IN THE FOREST
GENTLE DEATH
SOLEMN DUTY
MURDERING THE STAG
ROLLING MALLETS
ORCHESTRAL FIDGETS
October 20, 2020
BEHIND THE VEIL
ACCELERATING PARTICLES
COLOURISED SNOWFLAKES
DROPS OF MELANCHOLY
DISTURBING VOICES
FINDING THE BALANCE
FLOATING HARMONICS
FREEZING WINDS
MAGICAL CAVE
UNSETTLING RANDOMNESS
THE PAIN
February 18, 2011
IN BLUE CONTEMPLATION
June 18, 2021
HIGH IN THE ATRIUM
June 1, 2021
PRIVATE SETTLEMENT
June 4, 2021
JADE FIGMENT
October 31, 2022
FINALLY SOLO
May 23, 2022
THIRD VENTRICLE
June 18, 2021
ALLEY OF THE DOLLS
December 28, 2022
HADESIANS
April 21, 2010
CAUTIOUS VALVES
June 17, 2021
MIRROR GALAXY
June 16, 2021
GRADUALLY GREEN
June 16, 2021
FLIGHT OVER CYBER CITY
November 2, 2022
BACKYARDO
May 22, 2022
NIGHT LOAF
June 18, 2021
CAVERNS OF THE ROBOGOD
May 14, 2022
ANTI-GULL MACHINE
June 17, 2021
VILA’S REST
June 15, 2021
EMERGENT HORROR
December 28, 2022
INDUSTRIAL WRAITHS
November 2, 2022
METRO DELIVERY
June 3 & 16, 2021
WHO TURNED OUT THE LIGHTS?
January 16, 2019
TIMELESS
May 2, 2010
VOLCHEMY
December 23, 2012
THE SHAPE OF NIGHT
February 22, 2011
DIGITAL ECHO TUBE
November 2, 2022
STRING RUNNER
October 31, 2022
ONE TWO THREE (Four)
March 29, 2021
Sorting thirteen years’ worth of improvised music into distinct neat categories was
never going to be easy, but I thought it best to separate by mood. There are nice
tunes, there are darker ones, and a few that have rhythm. Then a few even darker
tunes from Intruder and The Ghoul. Most of the stuff here was made with
Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere, but some of the more recent tracks arrived courtesy of
Arturia’s V Collection, and a few were composed on Native Instruments’ Ashlight.
LITTLE BOY LOST: most of the tunes here have never been heard by anyone but me,
but I liked this one so much I expanded it for Bob Pipe’s short film ‘How Not To Make a
Short Film’ - you can hear the second version here (and watch the film here).
THIRD VENTRICLE has digital glitches all the way through, but it sounds worse without
them, so I left them in.
CANADIAN DUNGEON: an edited and augmented version of this ended up in the
subterranean scenes of Intruder Episode 4. SLIDE 3 was also slated for Intruder but
ended up on the cutting room floor.
ANTI-GULL MACHINE is a joke. EMERGENT HORROR is pretty much the opposite.
Despite all these happy results, I still don’t play very often. Which probably explains
why I haven’t improved much in the 12-plus years I’ve been doing it. But I still find it
hard to believe that’s actually me playing on FINALLY SOLO. Just don’t ask me to play it
again.
LIGHT & DARKNESS
I really want to stress that I didn’t create the synth patches that led to these
performances. The sounds and rhythms were all created by someone else - the
particular way they’re arranged here is the only thing I brought to the table.
With a couple of exceptions, each one is played totally live, without edits. FIVE,
VORTICES and TIMELESS are all multi-tracked synth patches from Omnisphere which I
was able to play in real time. METRO DELIVERY is a similar situation on an Arturia soft
synth, but edits together two separate improvs from two different dates, a fortnight
apart. DIGITAL ECHO TUBE was composed on Ashlight.
SHARPIC and THE SHAPE OF NIGHT are monophonic arpeggiated patches - single
sequenced sounds - which you’d normally use as background accompaniments, rather
than lead sounds to solo with. But both patches are from Omnisphere - showcasing its
power and versatility pretty well - and I’ve ended up here with two quite surprising
performances.
VOLCHEMY is different - less a musical improvisation, more a kind of sad, lonely DJ set,
with me throwing various vocal samples (courtesy of Wave Alchemy) over a simple
skipping rhythm, all played on Stylus RMX. It feels like cheating to pass it off as my
own composition. But it’s weirdly catchy so I thought I should share it.
STRING RUNNER is an upbeat jam on a rhythm guitar program from Native
Instruments’ Session Guitarist series. It takes a while to get going but I really like the
tune it finally settles on. There are fluffs a-plenty here so hopefully it’s obvious it was
played on the hoof.
WHO TURNED OUT THE LIGHTS? - This one might be painful if you’re not into
pointless, meandering bleeps and bloops. If anything on this site can be described as
aimless knob twiddling, this is it. But it’s a great showcase for what that synth can do.
Whichever synth it is. (I genuinely don’t know.)
WALKING OFF THE CROSS is absolute total cheating. The whole thing was played on a
multi-tracked Omnipshere patch like some of the others above, but I changed some of
the sounds in retrospect and - biggest cheat of all - edited it so it made more musical
sense. But it is still improvised - more or less…
There are more ‘more or less improvised’ tracks on my Orphans & Misfits page, if you
fancy it. But they were usually ‘more or less planned’ as well.
RHYTHMIC RANDOMNESS
I probably owe Gareth Tunley a special prize for being the one person on Earth who’s
had to sit through more of this tuneless waffle than anyone else. These improvs here
from 2010 to 2014 all featured on the sountrack to his film The Ghoul in some form,
and the ones below from 2020 were all recorded for his Channel 5 drama Intruder.
Most of the tracks from The Ghoul featured only in part - sometimes layered over
each other to form an almighty cacophony. At the end of the film, we hear three of
these pieces playing at once. Here they’re all presented separately. One of these, a
horrible racket called BARON EXPERIMENT 02b, was made from a tiny fraction of a
sample of Tom Meeten saying ‘I am the Baron!’ from Gareth’s short film The Baron.
Not that you’d be able to tell.
DRONOS is the only one I extended for the film, adding another two minutes to make
the track ‘Hi Mum’.
HADESIANS wasn’t in the final version of The Ghoul, but did feature prominently in the
penultimate edit and I still see Tom’s face when I hear it.
The Intruder improvs were all made with an incredible program called Arkhis, which
blends orchestral samples to form cinematic soundscapes. The tracks from the first
session were the first things I made with it, all played live with me hearing the patches
for the first time, feeling my way through them. These weren’t all used in the show -
and if they were, it was in changed form - but they were all contenders at some point.
I don’t know what these pieces say about my development as a musician - probably
nothing - but they’re a fairly honest display of my skills, or lack of them. I still describe
myself as an ‘electronic non-musician’ if anyone asks. But I’ve realised over time that I
don’t have to be a decent musician when I’m using sounds as great as these.
THE GHOUL & INTRUDER
SLIDE 3
October 27, 2020
VORTICES
April 24, 2010
improvisations
2010 - 2022
Abnormally for someone who’s made as much
music as I have, I never actually learned how to play
a musical instrument. So improvisation is especially
beguiling. It always seemed like magic to me - I
could never quite get my head around how
musicians could just make stuff up on the spot, and
yet somehow make it sound like it was always
meant to be that way. So it was a huge surprise
when I started doing it myself.
I learned how to do everything backwards, with
Cubase and game controllers. I didn’t start working
with a MIDI keyboard till 2010, by which time I’d
already released three albums and written several
TV theme tunes. It didn’t immediately replace the
bad habits I’d already learned, but it did make it
easier to cycle through synth presets. I started
improvising mainly so I could hear the new sounds
I’d just paid for on my shiny new software. Maybe
record some of the ones I liked so I’d remember
them for later. And it had to be improvised, because
- and I can’t stress this hard enough - I genuinely
couldn’t play. I couldn’t repeat the same sequence of
notes to save my life, so it had to be freeform. It had
to be brand new every time.
Obviously, most of this was total and utter garbage
of the highest magnitude. But every now and then,
I’d stumble across something interesting. And that’s
what this page is full of.
I still haven’t used that much of it in my professional
work. The main exceptions being The Ghoul and
Intruder, which absolutely rely on it. But most of the
stuff on this page hasn’t been heard before by
anyone but me. It’s therefore the most intimate and
most personal page on the whole site, and probably
the riskiest. I don’t know if it’s a career killer, exactly,
but I genuinely have no idea whether anyone wants
to listen to the sound of a non-musician playing
music on an instrument he can’t actually play. And
maybe even the suggestion that you might do so
could be enough to break the trust between us. I
hope not. But enter at your own risk.
LIGHT & BEAUTY
MEN ON THE MOON
March 2, 2011
LITTLE BOY LOST
February 18, 2011
THE EDGE
February 21, 2011
FOREVER
May 9, 2014
THE END IN SIGHT
March 29, 2011
BACON SKY
June 1, 2021
AD ASTRA ET ULTRA
March 31, 2020
BEFORE THE RAIN STOPS
May 22, 2022
BRIGHTSCAPE
October 17, 2020
IN BLUE CONTEMPLATION
June 18, 2021
HIGH IN THE ATRIUM
June 1, 2021
PRIVATE SETTLEMENT
June 4, 2021
JADE FIGMENT
October 31, 2022
FINALLY SOLO
May 23, 2022
THIRD VENTRICLE
June 18, 2021
ALLEY OF THE DOLLS
December 28, 2022
LITTLE BOY LOST: most of the tunes here have never
been heard by anyone but me, but I liked this one so
much I expanded it for Bob Pipe’s short film ‘How
Not To Make a Short Film’ - you can hear the second
version here (and watch the film here).
CANADIAN DUNGEON: an edited and augmented
version of this ended up in the subterranean scenes
of Intruder Episode 4. SLIDE 3 was also slated for
Intruder but ended up on the cutting room floor.
THIRD VENTRICLE has digital glitches all the way
through, but it sounds worse without them, so I left
them in.
Sorting thirteen years’ worth of improvised music
into distinct neat categories was never going to be
easy, but I thought it best to separate by mood.
There are nice tunes, there are darker ones, and a
few that have rhythm. Then a few even darker tunes
from Intruder and The Ghoul. Most of the stuff here
was made with Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere, but
some of the more recent tracks arrived courtesy of
Arturia’s V Collection, and a few were composed on
Native Instruments’ Ashlight.
MYSTERY & DARKNESS
SAZTASTIC
April 21, 2010
YETIS IN MOURNING
April 26, 2013
ANCIENT SPACE BATTLES
March 31, 2020
CANADIAN DUNGEON
October 27, 2020
CAUTIOUS VALVES
June 17, 2021
MIRROR GALAXY
June 16, 2021
GRADUALLY GREEN
June 16, 2021
FLIGHT OVER CYBER CITY
November 2, 2022
BACKYARDO
May 22, 2022
NIGHT LOAF
June 18, 2021
CAVERNS OF THE ROBOGOD
May 14, 2022
ANTI-GULL MACHINE
June 17, 2021
VILA’S REST
June 15, 2021
EMERGENT HORROR
December 28, 2022
INDUSTRIAL WRAITHS
November 2, 2022
SLIDE 3
October 27, 2020
WALKING OFF THE CROSS
April 21 & May 19, 2010
SHARPIC
February 26, 2011
FIVE
April 21, 2010
RHYTHMIC RANDOMNESS
METRO DELIVERY
June 3 & 16, 2021
WHO TURNED OUT THE LIGHTS?
January 16, 2019
TIMELESS
May 2, 2010
VOLCHEMY
December 23, 2012
THE SHAPE OF NIGHT
February 22, 2011
DIGITAL ECHO TUBE
November 2, 2022
STRING RUNNER
October 31, 2022
ONE TWO THREE (Four)
March 29, 2021
VORTICES
April 24, 2010
There are more ‘more or less improvised’ tracks on
my Orphans & Misfits page, if you fancy it. But they
were usually ‘more or less planned’ as well.
I really should stress that I didn’t create the synth
patches that led to these performances. The sounds
and rhythms were created by someone else - the
particular way they’re arranged here is the only thing
I brought to the table.
With a couple of exceptions, each one is played
totally live, without edits. FIVE, VORTICES and
TIMELESS are all multi-tracked synth patches from
Omnisphere which I was able to play in real time.
METRO DELIVERY is a similar situation on an Arturia
synth, but edits together two separate improvs from
two different dates, a fortnight apart. DIGITAL ECHO
TUBE was composed on Ashlight.
SHARPIC and THE SHAPE OF NIGHT are monophonic
arpeggiated patches - single sequenced sounds -
which you’d normally use as background
accompaniments, rather than lead sounds to solo
with. But both patches are from Omnisphere -
showcasing its power and versatility pretty well - and
I’ve ended up here with two quite surprising
performances.
WHO TURNED OUT THE LIGHTS? - This one might be
painful if you’re not into pointless, meandering
bleeps and bloops. If anything on this site can be
described as aimless knob twiddling, this is it. But
it’s a great showcase for what that synth can do.
Whichever synth it is. (I genuinely don’t know.)
WALKING OFF THE CROSS is absolute total cheating.
The whole thing was played on a multi-tracked
Omnipshere patch like some of the others above,
but I changed some of the sounds in retrospect and -
biggest cheat of all - edited it so it made more
musical sense. But it is still improvised - more or
less…
VOLCHEMY is different - less a musical improvisation,
more a kind of sad, lonely DJ set - with me throwing
various vocal samples (courtesy of Wave Alchemy)
over a simple skipping rhythm, all played on Stylus
RMX. It feels like cheating to pass it off as my own
composition. But it’s weirdly catchy so I thought I
should share it.
STRING RUNNER is an upbeat jam on a rhythm guitar
program from Native Instruments’ Session Guitarist
series. It takes a while to get going but I really like the
tune it finally settles on. There are fluffs a-plenty here
so hopefully it’s obvious it was played on the hoof.
THE GHOUL
I don’t know what these pieces say about my
development as a musician - probably nothing - but
they’re a fairly honest display of my skills, or lack of
them. I still describe myself as an ‘electronic non-
musician’ if anyone asks. But I’ve realised over time
that I don’t have to be a decent musician when I’m
using sounds as great as these.
THE WIND HAS CHANGED
January 22, 2014
STEAMING BLUE MURDER
April 20, 2013
APOLLO
May 23, 2012
BARON EXPERIMENT 02b
January 14, 2014
HARMONIALITY
February 21, 2011
DRONOS
February 24, 2011
AMAZONIA
March 19, 2010
THE PAIN
February 18, 2011
HADESIANS
April 21, 2010
I probably owe Gareth Tunley a special prize for
being the one person on Earth who’s had to sit
through more of this tuneless waffle than anyone
else. These improvs here from 2010 to 2014 all
featured on the sountrack to his film The Ghoul in
some form, and the ones below from 2020 were all
recorded for his Channel 5 drama Intruder.
DRONOS is the only one I extended for the film,
adding another two minutes to make the track ‘Hi
Mum’.
Most of these tracks featured only in part - collected
into suites or sometimes layered over each other to
form an almighty cacophony.
HADESIANS wasn’t in the final version of The Ghoul,
but did feature prominently in the penultimate edit
and I still see Tom Meeten’s face when I hear it.
At the end of the film, we hear three of these pieces
playing at once. Here they’re all presented separately.
One of these, a horrible racket called BARON
EXPERIMENT 02b, was made from a tiny fraction of a
sample of Tom saying ‘I am the Baron!’ from Gareth’s
short film The Baron. Not that you’d be able to tell.
INTRUDER: ARKHIS SESSIONS
October 19, 2020
INSISTENT MANDOLINS
HOLLYWOOD GLITTER
EYES IN THE FOREST
GENTLE DEATH
SOLEMN DUTY
MURDERING THE STAG
ROLLING MALLETS
ORCHESTRAL FIDGETS
October 20, 2020
BEHIND THE VEIL
ACCELERATING PARTICLES
COLOURISED SNOWFLAKES
DROPS OF MELANCHOLY
DISTURBING VOICES
FINDING THE BALANCE
FLOATING HARMONICS
FREEZING WINDS
MAGICAL CAVE
UNSETTLING RANDOMNESS
The Intruder improvs were all made with an
incredible program called Arkhis, which blends
orchestral samples to form cinematic soundscapes.
The tracks from the first session were the first things
I made with it, all played live with me hearing the
patches for the first time, feeling my way through
them. These weren’t all used in the show - and if they
were, it was in changed form - but they were all
contenders at some point.
THE GHOUL
(ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK)
Available for streaming and download
exclusively on Bandcamp
