Period VI continued. More awards rolled in. I started getting fan mail, and a reputation as one of the most prolific original composers on the net (it's astonishing how quickly the music adds up when you work on them every day). "Iron Fist In A Velvet Glove" (Previous page) was used as a case study for a Melbourne University multimedia class. This page: 11-Feb-01 to 28-Feb-01. # Name (Length) Size Download Links Comments       79 And If The Tide Washes Over Me (7:21) 111K There are times when the modern era seems to force us to emulate Don Quixote; we spend our lives tilting at windmills. As persuits go, this is one of the more tiring, even exhausting. Red Tape can be a more impenetrable barrier than any barbed wire. This is the story of an elderly man who has spent his life trying to make his way through a system that seems designed to frustrate him; until one day, while walking on a beach, he looks back and finds that for all his years of effort, there is not a single thing that he's actually accomplished. Bone-weary, he lies down, and claims, "This is as far as I can go, I will go no further. And if the tide washes over me, remember that I was once a man of hopes and dreams - just like you." The opening is as close as I could come to the breaking of waves on the shore. It didn't work that well on the Awe-32 and does even less on the SB-Live. All this tune needs beyond that is some minor remixing of the drums in the verses - there's a bell note that's far too prominant on the SB-Live relative to the Awe-32, and perhaps the high-pitched sustained notes near the end are a little too prominant.. 80 Order Into Chaos (5:20) 15K Zipped (165K Unzipped) This piece works the same conceptual vein as "Virtual Melodies" (2000, page 3). The "Order" part comprises multiple instruments all playing the same chord or notes thereof; with a melody emerging from the different natural pitch and timbre of the instruments. The "Chaos" part has no two instrument groups playing the same note at the same time. Amusingly, the "Order" sections sound far more anarchic and chaotic than the "Chaos" sections, leading the two to be frequently misidentified. The implication is that perception plays a far greater part in distinguishing between the two than we like to pretend; that message is the purpose of this work. Perhaps we could derive a couple of natural "laws" this way: "Any sufficiently complex ordered system will appear chaotic", and "Sufficiently complex chaotic systems reduce to aparrant order, leaving them susceptable to statistical analysis". There are alanogies in chemistry & physics. Boltzmann's law about the average velocity of atoms at a given temperature is an example of the latter, while the zoo of subatomic particle families reduced fairly neatly into an organised system with the introduction of the quark - at least for a while, I understand that things are now beginning to get out of hand in quark properties. So there are some fairly deep waters lurking in the background of this piece. It needs a substantial remix to work on the SB-Live. 81 Dreaming Of A Better Tomorrow (11:30) 24K Zipped (258K Unzipped) It took longer to get right than expected, but this is my almost-annual optimistic, uptempo tune reflecting the promise of a better year ahead. This one is a little more bittersweet, and is composed from the perspective of someone whose last year wasn't as good as he or she would have hoped. Some of the instrument choices don't work as well on the SB-Live and will need to be changed in any remix, but overall the ingredients are still there, if wildly unbalanced in the miz. 82 The Tenth Cup Of Coffee (5:59) 16K Zipped (104K Unzipped) As most coffee drinkers know, the more you have, the jumpier and edgier you get. By the time you've reached ten cups in a day, you're wired. It is in that state of mind that this piece exists. This needs a slight remix to drop the synth bass in prominance and fix (if possible) the piano bass before it will sound good on the SB-Live. 83 Whispered Nothings (1:58) 23K This started life as sonic experiment - one instrument plays a note, then a second instrument plays a second note, and so on. In other words, take a melody and assign each note to a different instrument. A little remix and this tune resulted. It sounds full of meaning when you hear it - the content hints at great significance - but ultimately, there are nothing but whispers, idle thoughts drifting through your mind. It took longer to write these liner notes than tit took to play the piece. Some of the instruments need to be rebalanced for the SB-Live. 84 Catch Me If You Can (5:31) 9K Zipped (108K Unzipped) This is as down to earth as the previous piece was ethereal and insubstantial. While it can apply to just about any chase, and was inspired by "The Fugutive", starring Harrison Ford, for some reason I can't hear the piece without picturing a rather snide white rabbit ducking down a hole into the world beyond the looking glass - a sort of cross between Alice In Wonderland and a Warner Brothers Coyote/Road Runner cartoon. Not even the poor bass-note performance of the piano in the SB-Live can ruin this, it takes the pathetic tubular bells & glockenspiel patches to do that. 85 Roll Up! Roll Up! (the fun never stops) (8:07) 13K Zipped (229K Unzipped) If that title doesn't bring to mind a circus, I don't know what will. But what if the circus is the Colliseum in the declining years of the Roman Empire, where gladiators lived, and battled, and dies, for the entertainment of the citizens? It was that free association that inspired this piece, when brought forward into modern-day equivalents. A house of horrors where the mutilations are real, a hall of mirrors that distorts the bodies of those who look at their reflections, all run by a maniac clown cum barker. A Horror film, in other words, set in a circus, and dressed up to look like fun.... this just doesn't work right on the SB-Live. 86 En Memoria Bradman (3:07) 20K This was composed in two sittings. I began it when I heard of the death of the legendary Australian cricketer, Don Bradman; and finished it the next day. There's one crack of the willow for each century by "The Don" and a mood of sadness mingled with pride in his accomplishments and respect for his spirit. In my opinion, many of the seeds of the ideals of modern Australian culture were planted by the example of Bradman. A good man and a great ambassador for our country, gone but not forgottten. The SB_Live has lost the thunderous drum beats that were such a feature of this tune but it's otherwise still quite listenable. 87 The Industry Of Paragons (10:16) 21 K Zipped (258K Unzipped) The cynic in me inspired this tune. Modern politics, with its double-standards, refuses to permit our political leaders to be people. They can never make a mistake, never have feet of clay; and hence the industry of spin-doctoring has arisen to ensure that they are always paragons of virtue - at least publicly. Who knows the man inside? Is he another Ghandi, or another Hitler? A fool, a knave, or an Einstein? To get elected, they have to make promises, and they frequently have to break them - but can never admit it. "Look! The Emperor has no clothes!" Once again, it's the bass piano notes that first mar this tune beyond reason on the SB-Live. The lack of prominance of the guitars only adds to the problem. This might possibly be salvaged with some instrument redefinitiions.