This track is a work-in-progress for guitar and voice which has been layered in real time using a 10 second delay with an infinite feedback. The prominent guitar melody that meanders through part of the piece was recorded with a second take. Yes, that ridiculously high vocal is me.

Thanks: to Pan American for the beautiful music which inspired me.

On the morning of a very good friend’s birthday, I decided to write, record and email her a song. Fortunately, her residence in the States afforded me an extra 5 hours. Recorded in my front room, this is probably more of a demonstration of my creativity and editing skills rather than my instrumental ability: I recorded the guitar and vocal lines two or four bars at a time and then pieced them together in Cubase SX (but doesn’t everyone these days). The drums are real, though, and are played from start to finish.

Techie bit: the track was completed very quickly and the only microphones I used were a Sony ECM-MS907 over the drums and an SM57 on everything else.

Thanks: to Kim for her beautiful self.

Crossroads Collision are an incredible new Birmingham-based band who mix African (and sometimes Asian) percussion, drum kit, kora / bass / guitar, saxophone and poetry. This track and four others were recorded live in a tiny rehearsal room at Robanna’s Studios in Birmingham.

Techie bit: 2 SM57s on the djembe and conga, 2 C1000s over the kit and a D112 on the kick drum, a DI from the kora, and an SM57 on the saxophone. The band were very happy with the results and, for me, that’s a job well done.

Thanks: to the band for being good at their instruments and creating great music.

The Void are a group of secondary school pupils who emerged in 2005 during the school-based music projects Ways Into Improvisation and Elements, led by the charity Sound It Out Community Music. This track was recorded using Cubase SX as part of an hour-and-a-half long show of music performed by an ever-changing line-up of young primary and secondary school musicians and professionals. There were as many as 15 musicians on stage at any one time playing instruments varying from saxophone, bass, guitar and drum kit to beatbox, tabla and sitar.

Techie bit: 2 Audio Technica ATM33as above the audience and a Sony ECM-MS907 stereo microphone in the audience capturing the overall stereo sound and then direct feeds from the desk for saxophones / vocals, kick drum, kit overhead, tabla and sitar.

Thanks: The Void, the charity Sound It Out Community Music, Birmingham Jazz, Hamstead Hall School’s Head of Music Richard Rogers and composer Sid Peacock without whom these and other amazing programmes would not be benefiting many people in the West Midlands.

Contacts: www.sounditout.co.uk, www.birminghamjazz.co.uk, www.hamsteadhall.com

I was commissioned by Big Brum TIE to deliver the music element of their Creative Partnerships Integration Project: to work with year 8 pupils with and without special needs and compose the music for “Rattenfänger”, a play based on the Pied Piper. After a visit to the Birmingham Central Music Library in preparation for both the participatory work and the compositions, I used scales and instrumentation close to those used in 11th and 12th centuries by French and German Troubadours. The rat sounds used in this piece are a processed recording of the young people’s own expression of desperate rats at the very bottom of a hierarchical society using voice, percussion and anything else to hand.

Techie Bit: brought together using Cubase SX rewired with Reason 3.02.

Thanks: to Big Brum TIE Company for their meaningful delivery and extremely inspiring drama, the pupils and staff of Mayfield and Holte Schools for their imagination and direct contributions to the drama and, of course, Creative Partnerships, Birmingham.

Please see the description of the Big Brum Creative Partnerships Integration Project under “The Rats and The Piper” above. This track is a solo piece performed on the Soundbeam switches by Sasha (the name has been changed for child protection reasons), a 17 year-old pupil at Mayfield School who has special education needs. Performed before the rest of the project participants and staff, this is an amazing demonstration of Sasha’s rhythmic ability and listening skills as well as the instant accessibility of Soundbeam music technology.

Techie Bit: using the desktop PC version of Soundbeam, the set-up was programmed to sound loosely like the instruments and scales used in 12th century music. Sasha’s performance on the switches is triggering NNXT virtual instruments in Reason 2.5.

Thanks: to Sasha for her focus and getting up there so early in the session.