Chris Sandys

Gone Trad

Chris — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 10:39:14 +0000

It was proposed that some original music be composed for my sister-in-law’s wedding, so I present two tunes written and performed by The Treacy Family Band:

Air in D:

Sham Waltz:

The interesting point for me in recording was the best way to capture violin and and mandolin. My microphone which hasn’t seen service in years was brought out of the box and it seems to have worked reasonably well.

Movie Banter

Chris — Mon, 03 May 2010 19:48:35 +0000

Course work has dragged me down recently but in a quick break from revision, I put this together:

My high tech and movie buff cousin has a podcast on movie reviews (which I recommend: www.moviebanter.co.uk) and I put this together for it. The interesting part from my side was trying to correctly sample the audio and work on something less than 10 seconds in length.

Incidentally this was an unsolicited submission and I take no offence if this is not used, or if it is used then ridiculed

Update: thanks to Jon who did play it on the last podcast; this was added in post production so I am not sure if the rest of the team heard it it in which case that may be the only outing.

New material

Chris — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 14:21:39 +0000

With a few web hosting and wordpress hiccups at least partially resolved, I have put together a new piece of music, Cop Show Exit Music (so named as that is what listeners to date have said it reminds them of:

I am quite pleased with this one as it doesn’t to my ears sound overproduced and has a slightly less robotic feel than older material (how do you make electronic based music sound like real people?).

Outdoors again

Chris — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:22:50 +0000

Some brief notes on study so far:
1. It’s intensive – I thought that coming from work it would be relatively easy but it’s tough
2. Writing notes by hand after so many years of barely scrawling my signature is a real change; being left handed means I hold a pen in an unconventional style and the callus on my middle finger, which had disappeared after my undergraduate days is coming back. Handwriting is illegible to anyone but myself so perhaps a career in espionage awaits
3. Nerdily I have an additional operating system on my pc now but I will refrain from commenting on that now…
4. Study is a great way to lose weight and get fit – down to my 35 minutes each way walk and also since my time is quite regimented the opportunities for “bun runs” and “sweetie table pit stops” have vanished.

Anyway the weather at the weekend supported a trip to the Highlands and a first time visit to the Monadhliath range in North East Scotland. The feel of the range is quite different to Glencoe, with the sense of wilderness very strong. We went up A’Chailleach and saw no other person in any direction, ascent or descent.

Study

Chris — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:42:19 +0000

The big reason why this blog has been delayed for some time is that after MANY years away from university, I have returned to study a maths based MSc. The decision was a hard one as I was leaving an excellent organisation, but I felt this was the correct thing to do in terms of my long term career. So as well as my musical efforts I will also blog about returning to the academic world.

Finally something new

Chris — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:41:11 +0000

Apologies to the two people who follow this blog for the delays (more in the next post) but I have finally put in a new item, Destroyer:

This is mostly a “triumph” in getting all the software updated and talking after a long period in storage; not that original but always amazing what noises you can get out of a guitar with a bit of post processing.

From the archive #5

Chris — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:36:32 +0000

The final entry in our occasional series, is Through The Continuum.

This is the piece that got the most positive feedback from the old site. It has no guitar (maybe the reason), and was recorded using Reaktor and the different tones are solely from key velocity. Looking at the recording logs, it was done in one take which may well support the One Take: Good Take Theory. My brother used it as the soundtrack to one of his experimental films and it does lend itself as an accompaniment to images.

From the archive #4

Chris — Fri, 29 May 2009 22:23:52 +0000

This is Fur Coat:

The oldest item here from 2005. I had just worked out how to program the midi drums on my sequencer, so put this together (straight from a well known Irish stadium rock band). It’s not something I am particularly happy with but it’s here as a contrast to better future efforts – hopefully.
The mix is poor and there are too many audio effects, which is an all too frequent occurrence when an amateur is presented with the audio sweet shop of a modern sequencer where backwards effects, auto panning and layered reverb and delay are clicks of buttons done in seconds.
Fur Coat? I have no idea why, it must have mean something at the time.

New material coming soon

Chris — Sat, 23 May 2009 09:21:15 +0000

The blog is starting to fulfill one of its main goals – to get me to record more new material. So after a mammoth driver and patch update and a Cubase refresher I think I am ready to go again. I think in spite of my promise to myself the first one will have to use this great 70s drum pattern that I found…

PLUS my momentary panic on finding my mp3 player on the site (the great word press audio player) apparently no longer working is over; just my configuration error.

From the archive #3

Chris — Sun, 17 May 2009 17:39:07 +0000

Shades of The Gallows.

On acoustic and “inspired” by Jimmy Page although he does it so much better.