Period VIII started with the horror of the World Trade Centre attack. I watched the whole thing on live TV, stunned beyond belief, like oh-so-many others. After more than 13 hours of continuous news coverage, much of it ad-free - unheard-of on free-to-air commercial TV - I began composing "In Rememberance Of The Fallen". It took 5 days of almost non-stop effort to complete. Afterwards, I found it hard to get back into gear; much of the time previously spent composing was used in dissecting, analysing, and disseminating the news. From what friends in the US told me at the time, Australia got much better coverage of the background, context, and side issues than they did. When I did get going again, I lacked the same sense of rapid progress that I had previously experienced, though the record shows that the floodgates again opened. Most of the tunes from this era have a complexity and depth that can take several hearings to reveal. There are a number of exceedingly successful tunes that emerged from these efforts, and a couple that I would rather forget. (However, every time I say I don't like a tune, someone else tells me they love it. So my tastes aren't universal.... (thank goodness, or it would be an exceedingly dull world!) This page: 11 September 01 to 11 November 01. # Name (Length) Size Download Links Comments       113 In Rememberance Of The Fallen (7:38) 85K This is certainly my most widely-circulated piece, but that is more a reflection of the subject matter than it is its musical merits. September 11 was a terrible day - late night, here in Australiia. In this piece I tried to capture everything I felt in a turbulent rollercoaster of emotion - the shock, the unfolding awareness, the outrage, the sadness, the pride and respect for the heroism of not just the emergency workers but the ordinary citizens of New York in the face of tragedy, and lastly the optimism that this would not change the way of life of the western world. Al-Quida and their leader made the fundamental mistake of believing their own propaganda - that the west did not have the resiliance of spirit to survive a direct blow at their way of life. Well, that was two years ago, and while we've adapted, we're still here, so the enthusiasm was clearly not misplaced, though the War On Terror appears to have faltered a bit, disrupted by the Iraq conflict and the politics surrounding it. But, back to the music: I have received more accolades and more fan mail for this work than on all the rest combined, as of this date (October 5, 2003). While some of those simply recognise and celebrate the "patriotic spirit" of the piece, there are others that I would not trade for a 6-figure sum. I placed the words "Patriotic Spirit" in inverted commas deliberately; it must be remembered that I am an Australian, and proud of it; I feel no particular patriotism (or animosity) toward the USA or its citizens. It's not "My country, right or wrong" because it's not my country! But, as one reviewer of the piece phrased it, when you look from the outside you can sometimes develop a perspective that those too close to the subject can find difficult to achieve. I hope that I have achieved that with this music, and many American people have written to me to tell me that I have done so. With so many emotions tied into the piece, an honest and unbiased evaluation of its musical merits - and flaws - is almost impossible. What can be said is that it falls prey to some of the same ills that plague other tracks when played on the SB_Live; the piano bass is too thin, some of the patches aren't quite right, and so on. A remix should not be a huge task, however. 114 Echoes Of A Lonely Heart (4:44) 36K Most people have been lonely at times, but only the love-lost know it in it's most acute form. This is perhaps the piece where I most genuinely wear my heart on my sleeve, baring my emotional state to public scrutiny. Much of the time, I'm happy-go-lucky, but there are times when the real world, or an obsessive passion for creativity in multiple forms, is not enough to distract you, and that's when you start to brood. It was in that frame of mind that this piece was conceived and completed. The latter half of the tune is better than the first, there is considerable complexity in the lead menoldy. This piece comes close to working as intended on the SB-Live, but the piano needs a lot of work to bridge the final gap. 115 In Jennifer's Eyes (6:47) 103K For a while, I was dating a girl named Jennifer. At one point, some of the things we talked about reminded me that what I saw in myself was not necessarily what she was seeing. This up-tempo piece of pop addresses this whole issue of differing perceptions from inside and outside, not just from the personal perpective but in more general terms. It tries to both ask, and answer the question - what do I see when I look at the reflection in Jennifer's eyes? The original title, in fact, was "The Reflection In...." etc, but I decided at the last minute to abbreviate it. This piece is thunderously loud on the SB-Live but with a quicky remix of the relative volume levels of the instruments, it will sound great on the SB-Live. Different - more synth-based - but still magic. 116 Dynamic Rythm Smiley (3:07) 111K This is another straightforward pop/rock song, but one with a little more dynamic variations than most. A feel-good song, and something of an anodyne to the more serious music that has preceeded it on this page. The electric guitars on the SB-Live still sound like bagpipes, unfortunately, and there's not much that can be done about fixing that in a remix. Has some nice "scratch" rythms that you don't hear in the Awe-32 mix, though, so maybe something can be done with it - but it won't be quite the same tune. 117 A Drop Of Rain (1:17) 11K How long should a song be? How long is a piece of string? Like a passing shower, this was always intended to be a short-short-short tune. Heck, some of the bigger numbers have intro sections longer than this! It's a piece that's very hard to categorise, sort of a funky pop. The SB-Live requires a slight remix - the secondary melody is too submerged and the tertiary (overdub) melody is way too prominant. 118 A Slice Of Lemon (2:57) 54K This really doesn't belong amongst my favorites on sheer merit. When you take the piece apart and rate each section of it, the work becomes rather pedestrian - good, but not great; and with so many works that rate so highly, this - on paper - just doesn't quite cut it. But there are times when the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts. For months after composing it, this was the first tune I would double-click on, together with A Drop Of Rain. It's just got something extra to it that you don't take into account when you dissect the music. What is it? I don't know - if I did, I'd do it every time! This doesn't work right on the SB-Live, it needs a major remix and might not be salavagable at all - the sounds just aren't there to use. 119 Storm Of Emotion (5:19) 64K Why isn't this a favorite? I'll have to reexamine that.... Emotions can be sequential, and if they are contrasting, you get a rollercoaster, like the one at the top of this page. But, more often, what you feel is a blending, a compound of different things experienced concurrently, and if the feelings are strong ones, they threaten to overwhelm you. With "Facets of a Deeper Feeling" (2000, page 4) I looked at this phenomenon from a standpoint of trying to examine the individual constituants; with this piece, I wanted to look at the totality and how you react to it. Only a slight remix needed to get this right for the SB-Live, nd it still sounds pretty good in the meantime. 120 Zen Rocks (2:51) 62K This is a reasonably plain rock piece, without the sweetness of melody and production that characterise (in my mind) a pop tune. It was an experiment in tone and mood, trying to translate the philosophic concept of a Japanese rock garden, where the interplay of objects and the ripples that surround them are a meditative aid, into musical terms. A single note in isolation, and it's consequent ripples. Ultmately, when I listen to it now, this piece is simultaniously both ordinary and pretentious, though at the time I was happy with it. The tubular bells just don't work on the SB-Live, and this will need a major remix to come out as something acceptable. And everything else except drums is pretty much buried, so there's even more work involved. 121 Chorus Of Opinion (6:51) 59K Again, in many ways, this is a sequel to other pieces of music, at least in concept. "The Exercise Of Judgement" (2001, page 4) celebrated the positive aspects of the democratic process; while "The Industry Of Paragons" (2001, page 2) deplored the corruption of the process into a spin-doctored popularity contents. "Chorus Of Opinion" both celebrates the sense of community when there is near-total unanimity of opinion, and warns of the dangers of the mob mentality. There is also a second downbeat element, a nagging voice which asks the question of what happens when the chorus of opinion is not based on fact, but on this week's convenient political truth? At the time, Australia was facing or had just faced a national election, and I had very ambivalent feelings toward the hysteria that led to the reelection of the existing leadership. Prime Minister John Howard had done his country proud during the course of the events of September 11th, but evened the score with a sequence of bald-faced .... misinformation..... (to give him the benefit of the doubt) regarding a boatload of refugees which had been intercepted struggling toward Australia. His government generated and then tapped into a well of immigration hysteria that was, at best, politically shabby. It was in the context of that perceived sequence of events that this music was written. This soiunds almost as good on the SB-Live as on the original, only some minor tweaks needed. 122 PASSION (6:20) 93K This piece is all about enthusiasm, about passion - about caring for whatever it is that you care about. It doesn't matter what that is, the issue that the music wants to "discuss" is whether or not you feel the same way about your passion as I do about mine? Or are they two entirely different, but similar, feelings, which we overgeneralise into the one emotion? This piece was a surprise entry into the favorites list; I thought the tune was pretty plain, and certainly not as deserving of a favorites berth as was, "A Slice Of Lemon". But, when taken apart and listened to closely, there is more to it than a casual hearing gave credit to. I remember spending ages varying the velocity of individual notes in this. Needs a major remix to work on the SB-Live - so much so that it might not be possible to get it even close to right. Just remixing the drums will be as much work as some other whole songs - and I'm not talking about the easy ones!