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MP3 Files: Music by Nicholas HenderFrom this page, users can freely download and listen to full length and high fidelity examples of Terasonic's work. All the music featured here has been composed, executed, recorded, and rendered by Nicholas Hender; to read a short biography, please visit the About page. Files downloaded from this site are not to be altered in any way, or used for any commercial purpose, without full permission from their creator (Nicholas Hender). To obtain permission, please visit the Contact page. Files downloaded from this site may be used for educational and artistic purposes where no commercial activity is involved, although full credit to Nicholas Hender must be explicated. More music by Nicholas Hender can be downloaded from terasonic.net, the Terasonic sister site. The below collection of MP3 files is complementary to the many more collections at terasonic.net, where numerous and diverse musical styles can be found. The below works, however, are the most recently completed. RT123 Funk was initially created in 2006 using a Zoom RT123 "Rhythm Track" drum machine. I hadn't uploaded it before because I wasn't happy with the mix and couldn't fix it (due to the RT123's limitations). I liked the groove a lot though, so ran it through some compression, EQ and stereo spread. I guess I could have gone "the whole hog" and filled some of the space with keyboard parts, but I also wanted to retain the value of the work having been produced almost completely with only a small and relatively cheap device. ESX Trombones demonstrates my mediocre ability as an instrumentalist (on the trombone). All the sounds, including the percussive ones, have originally come from my trombone. The work was constructed with a Korg ESX "Music Production Sampler", which is basically a drum machine with sampling and processing functions. These machines are designed to be used by techno producers, and allow the creation of music to be a very efficient, easy and fun experience. I made this piece to learn how to use the machine in order to teach others. It's rough around the edges, but serves its purpose. Obscenity Music is in no way intended to actually be obscene, and is unlikely to have an obscene effect. The title is merely a play on words of the original working title, which I considered to be unsuitable by the time this work was complete. It's really an old work (from 2001, compared to most other works available from this page), recently finished. Initially intended as a series of disconnected 2 bar loops to accompany pages from a website (now defunct). I came across the old files and felt they contained some neat, clean and tight grooves, so I sequenced them together and polished up the audio quality to create a final product. SCP stands for "Single Cycle Pop", which I thought was a silly title and henceforth abbreviated it. Another "Old" work (this one from 1998), recently finished with a lot of audio sweetening (it was originally recorded on hardware with poor high frequency response). Years ago, for the purpose of establishing complete copyright ownership of my efforts, when I was creating backing tracks for singer/songwriters I was very careful to reharmonise the songs and not include the songwriter's melodic material in my arrangements. This is one of those backing tracks; an absence of strong melodic material is probably quite noticeable, but I think this works alright on its own as an "instrumental" work. All of the synth sounds in this work are actually single cycle waveforms sampled from the vocalist, which were then looped, tuned and processed. Subjectively the composition of Sprong allowed the exploration of some downloaded VST plug-ins, the timbral capabilities of my keyboard synth, a symmetrical (symmetric?) scale and the idea of a rhythmic pattern that's as complex as possible within the limit of being accessible from the perspective of conventional/popular music. Nothing particularly special (but it's okay, I guess; too bassy perhaps, with little variation of rhythm, harmony or melody, but avoiding being boring by being short). Constructed quickly, mostly for the purpose of checking that my studio equipment still operates properly (as I don't get the chance to use it with much regularity anymore). Composed as an example demonstrating to my students the concept of dynamics. An attempt at musical creativity with extreme restrictions of melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and textural motion. Interest is hopefully achieved only through organised variation of dynamics.
This work was composed early in 2004 as an exercise for my students. Individual tracks were recorded, and then presented to students to be mixed-down (equalized, compressed if necessary, routed through effects according to taste, and relative levels adjusted). I recently (in July 2006) completed my own version of a mix, to be used as an example. Other mixes may, of course, eventuate to sound completely different. It's titled Buying versus Renting because at the time of composition I was considering buying a home.
Nail Gun Movement 1 and Nail Gun Movement 2 are very simple, and quickly composed, pieces of music, created within the confines of relatively cheap, "off-the-shelf" hardware (although the raw recordings were later subtly processed for "sweetening" purposes). Titled due to the use of what I naively thought was the thumb-piano program of a drum machine (thumb-pianos are made from nails), the program was later found in the manual to be called "Agogo-Gamelan", but I was already happy with the title by this stage. Both works are constructed from pitch material chosen intuitively, minimalist in nature, and involved some degree of "real-time" performance control. This is the soundtrack to the short film / media installation piece Body World, by Linda Tegg (previously known mainly for her photography). The location for the video is in the female change-rooms of two public swimming pools. The video contains scenes depicting the attitudes of variously shaped women to their own, and each other's, naked bodies. The narrative climaxes with a young girl being trapped and squeezed between the ample and sagging bodies of two older women. The video was originally intended to be silent, so there was no dialogue or sound effects around which the music was required to fit. This allowed me to construct the music from a collage of sounds that I recorded in my own bathroom, which enabled me to support the narrative and location with a reasonably specific and literal interpretation. Some sounds have been pitch shifted, enveloped, and slightly filtered to make them more musically useful. Sonically, this was a fun and interesting project to do, as it led me to use sounds that I otherwise never considered. I'm hoping for a sequel to be made, so I can use all the sounds that wouldn't fit into the final mix! Going is the second of my attempts to extend myself towards a new personal direction in musical composition. It was created using software that digitally emulates analogue modular synthesis, although the purpose, for me, was to achieve a denser polyphony, and to explore more diverse timbrel combinations and variation than in my recent previous works. As in Lost Part 1 and Lost Part 2 (below), Going is also an attempt to relinquish some of my compositional control to less calculated, and more chaotic (or perhaps intuitive) influences. Lost Part 1 and Lost Part 2 are my first "serious" attempts at creating music through the process of "granular" synthesis. These pieces were a challenge for me, as their construction required me to surrender (to a considerable extent for me) the idea of absolute predictability. These works are also an attempt to compose music of less duration, by only using the material that's most meaningful.
Harpsichordance Movement 1 and Harpsichordance Movement 2 complement each other as studies of tempo variation, harmonic development, and form, executed by sequencing MIDI data to control my own synthesis of a harpsichord. This synthesis was performed from absolute scratch; there are no recorded samples, so the sound of the harpsichord you hear has never been through a microphone or mixing desk, as it has never existed outside of the digital realm before reaching the digital to analogue conversion circuitry at the output of a computer’s soundcard. In each sub-section of Movement 1, the value of the tempo rises and falls. The difference between the maximum and minimum tempo in each subsection increases as the piece approaches the middle main section, to the extent that the durational difference between sequential notes may be perceived as different rhythmic sub-divisions. In Movement 1, at the beginning of each sub-section, the pitch structures are symmetrical. Of course, by being symmetrical, there’s a central pitch to each structure. Therefore the work should not be considered as Atonal, although there’s little resemblance to conventional harmonic construction. Throughout each sub-section, the pitch material moves part by part. When the listener’s sense of interpretation has adjusted to the symmetrical structures, this gives the effect of harmonic anticipation near the beginning of each sub-section (from where a symmetrical structure initiates), and of harmonic suspension near the end of each sub-section (where a new symmetrical structure is approached). In Movement 2, the tempo of each of the two parts varies inversely, and is calculated such that each phrase within each sub-section begins and ends at the same point in time. This provides for the effect being given that the tempo of each part is actually varying independently of the other. The effect of rubato and imitation is also achieved through this method of tempo variation. The pitch structures, harmonic motion, and the basic processes by which tempo is varied, are similar to Movement 1, except in that they’re practically reversed. Nearly two years separates the pieces Harpestry 1 (available from terasonic.net, MP3 collection 3) and Harpestry 2, and there are significant stylistic differences, so I don’t consider these pieces as a complementary pair, although the pitch material for each was developed at the same time. Considerable improvements were made to my troubadour harp synthesis for Harpestry 2; this synthesis is similar in nature to the one used in the Harpsichordance movements. It’s much more a study of gradual but constant textural change, than of melodic development. Composed just prior to Harpsichordance Movement 1, the effects of Harpestry 2 are somewhat similar, due to a common compositional approach, despite different processes and devices being used. What’s not really noticeable (which doesn’t matter, as it shouldn’t be), but interesting, are the tempo differences between the two parts, necessary for the equality of the phrase durations, and hence for the textural changes to occur at consistent points in time. More or Less was originally written as the instrumental accompaniment to the melody and lyric of someone else. The melody and lyric do not appear here (due to stylistic disagreement and copyright), which accounts for the somewhat sparse texture, odd phrasing, and chord progression. The purpose of the piece as a whole was to contribute to a communally written and performed musical production. Often, people seem to be competitive, and try to show-off or outdo everyone else when communal creative activities occur, which severely detracts from the “big picture” with regards to constructing a coherent artwork worthy of recognition. The melody and lyric with which I was provided were intended to be in the style of a Classical Aria. I chose to mock this, and the approaches of my colleagues, by composing a Hard Rock, “Stick it to the man”, accompaniment, consisting of little more than power-chords in unison with a bass line, and consistent and strongly accentuated rhythms. © 2008, Nicholas Hender / Terasonic, ABN 55 077 342 706. |
