2020 !! Where does the time go? Oh, and a little Reverie

Some time has past since my first post to this blog, mostly because I live a boring life and don’t generally have great massive events to talk about. So now it is 2020! Since I have long counted things beginning with zero, being a programmer at heart, I am considering this the start of the new decade – the Twenties are back! I don’t intend to argue about it – if you think the decade starts on January 1, 2021, that is your prerogative. I’ll just point out that when we are born and are 0 years old, heck, even 0 days old yet, that we have started our first decade of life. That the guy that invented the calendar didn’t include a year zero doesn’t impress me much. Just saying.

So I have a minor Major event to discuss. I have a musical project that made it onto the RadioSpiral Internet Radio Station. They are a non-profit Ambient Music station. My project was an electronic music version of Debussy’s Reverie which Gypsy Witch played on her Around the Campfire 2020 January 8 show. It was a big “Listener’s Music” episode and is totally amazing. I have a hard time choosing a favorite from the set. She puts replays up on her website for a few weeks after each show if people want to catch a replay. Probably by the time you’re reading this the show with my project in it will have expired. But have a listen to one of her shows anyway. It is fun stuff.

For reference, here is the MP3 of my file. I’m working on getting the “full quality” version uploaded to something like bandcamp. If there is any beauty in the song, I give full credit to Claude Debussy.

Debussy’s Reverie – seq by JBS on Yamaha MX49

Here is the blurb I sent with the submission:

(AKA SwitchTech) This is an updated version of Debussy’s Reverie I sequenced (entered the notes one at a time, using a mouse and a MIDI Sequencer) back in 1992. This version was updated to take advantage of the voices in my Yamaha MX49 keyboard and the Cakewalk by Bandlab DAW. I used the voices which on an MX are also from a Yamaha Motif synth: Stereo Harp, Octave Strings, DX Celesta, Mystic Trance, and Concert Piano. I haven’t yet composed any of my own music, so this is the best I have at the moment. You have my permission to use it on your Wednesday show – and if for some odd reason you want to add it to the RadioSpiral Library, I can fill out the appropriate documents. It isn’t all that original, other than this is my arrangement but very closely following the Public Domain work that Debussy created in 1890.

In 1992 I had recently purchased a Yamaha PSR-500 portable keyboard (61 Velocity Sensitive keys and MIDI IN/OUT ports). It did not use the “General MIDI” voice set, so when I uploaded the MIDI file I’d created to the Delphi Online service I had to manually remap the four tracks to the GM voicings, and couldn’t test it! I liked my version on the PSR-500 and hoped the GM version was nice too. Cycle forward a few years (27 or so!!), I updated the MIDI file to use the Motif/MX Voices. I then recorded the audio to six tracks using those voices listed above (I used Concert Piano on two tracks) from the MX49 that I have – and then bounced the audio to stereo for the MP3.

Yamaha PSR-500 probably sometime in 2002 or 2003, perhaps? Fancy footwork on display.

Perhaps my next project will be my own composition.

So now I have a BandCamp Artist page! The song is here: https://switchtech.bandcamp.com/track/debussys-reverie

My full page is here: https://switchtech.bandcamp.com/releases

So how was your day?