Last Chance to See (Tentacle 8)

Last Chance to See (Tentacle 8)

I started this blog in June 2012 by uploading “tentacle 1” and mentioning that I may do an “octology”.  A year later and I have reached the final tentacle – Tentacle 8.  As it turns out, the octology didn’t work out as eight beautifully moulded and crafted soundscapes, but more a random kludgeon of pieces that happened to end up with a similar name.  Whilst I’ve been uploading plenty of other stuff in the last 12 months, I’ve reserved the “tentacles” for the slightly more warped side of my taste…… so, here is Tentacle 8 – completely inspired by the Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine book – Last Chance to See.  I would have loved to accompany this with a photo i’d taken of any of the animals in the book, but that rapidly becoming almost impossible  …….

All self-programmed drums this time, using the Drumkit from Hell samples from EZdrummer.  The rest is all from the Korg Microstation and my guttural growls.  I strong-armed Victoria into a couple of vocals at the end too 🙂 Thanks VT.  The last year has been a massive learning curve on so many things, piano, keyboard, melody, composition, mixing, music software, MIDI, even photography and picture editing, and a slight bit of drawing ….. so much more to learn 🙂

He is sadly melting…

…. a couple more piano lesson pieces here…. I think they’re both grade 1 jazz piano pieces which have been good to learn especially as both have a couple of improvisation sections.

Blue Autumn (Eddie Harvey)

Blue Autumn – Organ (Eddie Harvey)

He is Sadly Melting (Phil Peskett)

Tech Specs: A couple of changes with my recording set-up ……. I purchased Cubase Elements so have used this to record both pieces, along with experimenting with the free (lite) version of EZ Drummer.

Its my first time with using MIDI drum samples and I’m quite impressed – its really easy to import some great drum loops BUT for my own original pieces it would feel too much like stealing so i’ll either programme from scratch or at least mess up the loops beyond recognition 🙂

The final part of the octology is in development with bits being added whenever I can.  I’ve been using the “drumkit from hell” samples and I’m just warming up the death metal vocals ……

The photo is a flame from todays BBQ…. mmmmmmm…..