This is a 'John the only member' page again. For the best part of my musical life I have nearly always done it on my own, while this may seem a bit masturbatory to say the least, I'm the only person that truly knows what I mean. I have had the privilege to have jammed with some very interesting people in the past, all of them with great ideas on how to make music, most of them far better musicians than I could ever hope to be. But the thing is that although they could play anything I gave them to play well, it wasn't the same thing that I was after. So in the early eighties I invested in the original TEAC 144 portastudio. It took me nearly a year to save up for that 4 track(£515), £10 a week, and I was only earning just over £20 a week then. Now you can get a digital version with twice if not more tracks for about the same price!
I still use the Portastudio so if you can hear hissing noise that'll be the tape. (On the 6th of April 2008, this particular piece of equipment passed away and has been replaced with one of those new digital doo dahs with 8 tracks, so any future music will be recorded on it, if I can get my head around the wretched thing!)
With this weapon under my belt I was able to record demo's and portray exactly what I wanted to other people, only it seemed that most of them were either uninterested (more likely) or confused by it all. I was only thinking not so long ago, how lucky Marillion, one of my favourite bands, have been to have seemingly like minded members in the band. While there are always musical differences, and there have to be to create interesting songs, they have a melting pot of ideas and they almost have a psychic link with each other, anyone fortunate enough to have seen them strike up a jam in between numbers for fun will know exactly what I mean. If I bleat on about Marillion too much, you must forgive me, it's just totally unfair that they don't get much in the way of national airplay. They are still making excellent music, the well hasn't run dry and they never seem to venture back into retread territory. When the BBC eventually concede it to be a good idea to have them on the radio, they broadcast them late at night when no blighters are listening except for Marillion fans. Still I suppose that if someone accidentally tunes into the broadcast they might just have got the message out to somebody.
I now step off of my soapbox.
Influences
There have always been instrumental bits in Genesis records, so Genesis definitely. I think my interest in instrumentals began with stuff from Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and the like. But what really kicked it off for me was Bowie during the Low and Heroes period. And then Bill Nelson started doing a tremendous amount of instrumental peices, and he was using cheap Casio keyboards at the time in conjunction with more proffesional keyboards, and I thought "I can afford that, I can do that!". Some of the keyboards heard in the instrumentals on this page are the very same Casio keyboards(not Bill's, mine!). Bill may have lost a few followers when he put a sock on the old guitar hero bit, but for people like me who can see past the guitar solo thing and into the skeleton of the tune, we remain. He still uses guitars to great effect so anybody who left the room while he was noodling about on keys has missed out. And Oh Yes!, Marillion, though anyone listening to my tunes probably wouldn't think so!
I also like a lot of film score writers like John Williams and ashamedly I must confess I don't know the names of a lot of these great tunesmiths, just their tunes, but I think that Onion Macaroni chap with his spaghetti western tunes is one of them.
www.hdfest.com/music/alternative/instrucarp
INSTRUCARP is a sister site to my CARPHEAD site, so it's a good chance that you have found me through dropping in on CARPHEAD. My name is John Saunders, I was born in 1961 in Goring, near a town called Worthing, West Sussex, a place of relaxation and inspiration for Oscar Wilde(The importance of being Earnest, Earnest Worthing, so named after being discovered as a baby in a HANDBAG on Worthing Central railway station. I must just say here that I prefer to spell his name as ERNEST because the previous looks like EAR-NEST which to me looks silly as no self respecting bird or creature would build a nest in an ear, like, whats the point in Earwigs, ears are supposed to be bald!) I attended Selden school (John Selden, the owner of a vast expanse of land called Worthing, well nearly all of it anyway, well, no it was a small farm really, but the way his name has been bandied about in Worthing you'd be forgiven for thinking he owned it!) from infant to junior and finally West Tarring school for boys. West Tarring was also the school that Keith Emerson of ELP attended, although I think he had left a good 7 years before I started there. Keith used to play the piano in morning assembly, and the very same piano was there for some years after until it was superceded by an electric organ. I used to imagine Keith pounding away at the piano and then storming off leaving a knife stabbed between the keys, although I think it wouldn't have had the same impact as the organ because the notes wouldn't have carried on playing on the piano. Anyway, enough of this daftery and on with the point of this page.
The peices of music on this page are from a greater body of work that started for me in the early 1980's up to present day. The ongoing working title for this work is"Filmless Soundtracks", the main reason for this of course is that they are not on the soundtracks of any film ever, but would like to be. Like a lot of people that make music, I get pictures in my mind when I am composing or recording, these are the films. It's a strange thing, and I'm not sure if everyone gets this, but for the best part of any of my compositions I cannot remember deliberately trying to compose my tunes. It is almost as though I am led along and these things seem to happen. It's not normally a mathematical,"This is a B flat Major 7 and needs to be followed by C minor, because that's how tunes are made!", and I'm not really a technical musician so I don't think I understand the theory side of things properly. To be honest, I'm not certain that I could be classed as a musician, I am a sort of guitarish kind of person that tiddles around keyboards or anything that I can make a noise out of. Whatever this whole thing is, I've had a lot of fun doing it.
If there is anyone out there that would like to use my music for film soundtracks I'd be most interested.
The tunes that appear on this page will nearly always be old compositions of mine, but in a re-recorded style. It will be slow going because I always take forever recording things, never believing that it's the best I can do, and finally with exasperation giving in and wishing that I'd stopped at the first attempt. Apologies to Carphead visitors who have found a couple of tunes here of mine already on Myspace, this is only to get the ball rolling and there will be more tunes shortly.
The first tune new to this site is Andromedary (originally titled 'Space Camel'), and originates from 1978 when I was trying to get to grips with my Woolworths reed organ (noisy wind generating blighter), fortunately you are not subjected to the wheezy tones of this instrument of torture. It did however have a great sound when I played the G minor and the B flat (which made a G minor 7) preset chords, very reminiscent of the grinding noise at the end of 'Willow Farm' from 'Suppers Ready' by Genesis.
Thanks for the add INSTRUCARP, I love your music btw! If you get a chance, please take a listen to our first New Age release "Instrumental Piano Music" by Solo Piano Relaxing Music. We'd love to know what you think of it! WE have free downloads at our labels site for you to download. http://www.sanfrescorecords.com/SR/New_Age_Music.html Click Free New Age Music to visit our New Age Music page Regards LR
Yep. Had a new reaction on you're painting! yesterday was the biggest surprise party of my life..i still can't believe. sorry abouth my english. A friend.
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