Give a warm welcome and say hello to the <a href="http://soundcloud.com/soundcloudheroes">SoundCloud Heroes</a>. Find out more about them at http://blog.soundcloud.com/2013/01/17/heroes-2013/

Heroes are inspirational leaders in the community who cultivate and engage unique communities through sound. Heroes connect and help other SoundClouders connect with each other. Connect, create and discover together.

Interested in building connections with other SoundClouders, or becoming a Hero? Participate in their planned projects that will be announced shortly.

Introducing our SoundCloud Heroes

Introducing the SoundCloud Heroes...

gllenis

xbxcx

trip

Tea Leigh is a musician based in Boston, MA and originally from Texas. She's playing a show with a few other SoundClouders in Central Park on Saturday, April 14.

Read her full introduction here: http://blog.soundcloud.com/2012/04/12/boston-soundcloudhero-tea/

Boston SoundCloud Hero: Tea Leigh

<a href="http://soundcloud.com/zefora">Zefora</a> is the SoundCloud Hero for Portland. Get involved with her for SoundCloud meetups and activities in Portland!

Read her introduction on the blog here: http://bit.ly/HXaxnB

Portland SoundCloud Hero: Zefora Alderman

<a href="http://soundcloud.com/alliedee">Alison Doyle</a> is a composer who works in the tech industry in Seattle. She creates her own piano compositions but also uses the mobile app for found sounds. She will be organizing the <a href="http://www.meetup.com/Soundcloud/Seattle-WA/672912/">Global Meetup Day in Seattle</a> on May 17 so get in touch!

Read the rest of her introduction on the blog here: http://bit.ly/HDl84y

Seattle SoundCloud Hero: Alison Doyle

<a href="http://soundcloud.com/willcoley">Will Coley</a> is one of the SoundCloud Heroes in Los Angeles. He helps non-profits use audio and other social tools to promote social justice and has gotten numerous organizations started on SoundCloud to do so. 

Come out to the <a href="http://www.meetup.com/Soundcloud/Los-Angeles-CA/672482/">Global Meetup Day in Los Angeles</a> on May 17!


Los Angeles SoundCloud Hero: Will Coley

Matt Flynn is a musician who goes by the name <a href="http://soundcloud.com/shiftyteeth">Shifty Teeth</a>. In a city so vast, Matt is interested in establishing a creative hub where Los Angeles SoundClouders could look to for support, collaboration, inspiration, or networking.

Global Meetup Day is on May 17! http://www.meetup.com/Soundcloud/Los-Angeles-CA/672482/

Los Angeles SoundCloud Hero: Matthew Flynn

Here is a setting of Louis MacNeice's perfect poem of love and loss, The Sunlight on the Garden. This poem has meant a lot to me since I first read it 20 years ago and I've been looking to set it to music ever since. In the end I've settled for the simple approach with piano, melodica and strings.

The Sunlight on the Garden

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.

davemckeown.co.uk

The Sunlight on the Garden, Dave McKeown

Hi! I'm Oliver Sadie, and London is where I spend my days.

For a living, I do 2 jobs. I crunch numbers all day long in a Finance job but by night I compose, perform and produce music professionally for film and tv. My number 1 instrument is the piano, which I've played all my life and features heavily in my work of many genres.

I've been on SoundCloud for 3 years now and have had an incredible time of it. It's no co-incidence that my time on SoundCloud has been the formative part of my musical career - I started as a bedroom musician with an iPhone and a piano, but it is the community of passionate music makers which keeps drawing me back every night to make more and hear more music, and encourages me to learn more and improve my craft. I use the platform to the max, and those tracks you see on my profile are a tiny fraction of the tons of private tracks on there which I use for collaborations and for sharing work in progress with the film & tv directors I work with.

It's hard to pick a favourite collaboration or community activity on SoundCloud, I've been involved in so many great ones it's like trying to pick your favourite child. But some highlights include my SoundCloud Sinfonietta mass collaborations, the 2nd of which is nearing completion, and my YourTune project where I turned 20 second melodies into full pieces. 

My favourite sound in the whole world is the glug-glug of the pouring of the first dram of a fine single malt whisky with friends. Music to my ears. Mm. 

Anyway, back to SoundCloud. I'm thrilled to be part of the Hero programme, although I think that's an incredible title to live up to. Maybe I'll save some baby pandas from a crocodile before actually calling myself a Hero, in the meantime, I'm just Oliver Sadie and doing what I normally do anyway - having fun collaborating with the incredible talent right here, and that probably includes you. Well, I might not have heard you, maybe your singing sounds like a baby panda being eaten by a crocodile, but hey, that's what I'm here for.

I'd also like to take the opportunity to bring more light to professional composer communities like <a href=http://www.scorecastonline.com>SCOREcast:Online</a>.

Thanks, see you on the 'Cloud!

<I>(Background track: Edited version of "Feed It, Free It", from my original soundtrack to an Austrian sports series, hear more about it here: https://soundcloud.com/oliversadie/svendecker-ost ) </I>

FACEBOOK: http://facebook.com/oliversadie.music

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Oliver Sadie, Composer — A Personal Introduction

A Heroic Hello from Jay Stansfield

Hi. My name is Marc Weidenbaum and I was invited to participate in the SoundCloud Heroes project, which SoundCloud has described as a collection of individuals "who bring people together around sound by cultivating and engaging unique communities." It's an honor to be included. I write about music and I work with musicians on collaborative projects, such as the <a href="https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/instagr-am-bient"><i>Instagr/am/bient</i></a> compilation and the ongoing <a href="https://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/">Disquiet Junto community</a>.

I've created this little introduction at the request of the folks in the SoundCloud Community department. The audio provides a bit of autobiography — who I am, where I am, what I'm up to — and I've embedded related links. I recorded this at home in San Francisco, California, on Sunday, January 13, 2013. 

More of what I'm up to here:

My website: <a href="http://disquiet.com/">disquiet.com</a>

The SoundCloud group I moderate: <a href="http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/">Disquiet Junto</a>

My Twitter account: <a href="http://twitter.com/disquiet">twitter.com/disquiet</a>

The Disquiet.com Facebook page: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/disquiet.fb">facebook.com/disquiet.fb</a>

Marc Weidenbaum (What I'm Up To)

I've recently been asked to join the "Soundcloud Heroes" project which is an ongoing initiative to help widen and deepen the community on Soundcloud. This is just a short audio introduction so people can get a glimpse of my background and what I'm about. 

Dave McKeown, short audio bio for Soundcloud Blog

Hello everyone. . . . I'm Rónán Kearney :)  I've been asked to say a bit about myself and why i like Soundcloud. . . .they made me a 'Hero' . . . . . but I'm not. . . .I'm pretty happy all the same. Thanks so much to all the kind humans that give me warmth on here. I love ye's all. Onward and upward. :)

https://www.facebook.com/ronankearney01 - friend me
https://www.facebook.com/RonanKearneyMusic?ref=stream - fan page

Rónán

Rónán Kearney - A Personal Introduction

Here is a collaboration with two of the nicest guys on the cloud, Vlad and Diederik. They met up in Sydney Australia last year and decided to make a track together. Before Christmas, just before Rik moved to the UK, he sent me his lovely gamelan track. I saw it was in the right key for my Uillean Pipes so decided to give them their annual outing. I also liked the idea of playing a  counterpoint on my yew wood flute, and that got me thinking about Wordsworth's powerful and mysterious poem about the yew trees he knew where he lived in the Lake District. 

Yew trees are wonderful. Some are thought to be over 5000 years old. I know one near here that is at least 1600 years old. The very same ancient yews that Wordsworth describes can still be seen in Borrowdale today. Because of their longevity they were places of worship in pre-Christian times, and many found in church yards in the UK were there long before the churches were built. The wood is a glowing mixture of purple, gold, red and orange, dense and very slow-growing. 
All this seemed to fit with Diederik's marvellous bubbling gamelan track. Yew Trees and Gamelan may seem strange bed-fellows but both represent cultural traditions whose origins are lost in the mists of time. I visited Buddhist temples in Cambodia a couple of years ago where the buildings and the trees had intertwined to become almost as one, and that's what I had in mind when I was making this track. 

In the meantime, Vlad recorded his bass track, and I couldn't believe when I heard it, it fitted so exactly with what I had added to the track. Apparently we had both heard Diederik's music in precisely the same way. 

Anyway, here is Wordsworth's poem.

There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale, 
Which to this day stands single, in the midst 
Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore:

Of vast circumference and gloom profound 
This solitary Tree! -a living thing 
Produced too slowly ever to decay; 
Of form and aspect too magnificent 
To be destroyed. But worthier still of note 
Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
 Joined in one solemn and capacious grove; 
Huge trunks! -and each particular trunk a growth 
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine 
Up-coiling, and inveteratley convolved, -  
Nor uninformed with Fantasy, and looks 
That threaten the profane; -a pillared shade, 
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue, 
By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged 
Perennially -beneath whose sable roof 
Of boughs, as if for festal purpose decked 
With unrejoicing berries -ghostly Shapes 
May meet at noontide: Fear and trembling Hope, 
Silence and Foresight, Death the Skeleton 
And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate, 
As in a natural temple scattered o'er 
With altars undisturbed of mossy stone, 
United worship; or in mute repose 
To lie, and listen to the mountain flood 
Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves.


Yew Trees, Dave McKeown with Diederik de Jonge and Vlad Josephson

I've been wanting to make a track about guns for a while now. I've collected a lot of samples and made a few false starts, but it wasn't until Kine posted these wonderful vocal stems for 'Father' that I could see a way forward. There are a few recordings from gun supporters and newscasters, but the main voice you hear is that of Kaitlin Roig, the incredible teacher who hid her first grade class in a tiny bathroom and kept them calm, quiet, and safe until the horror had passed.

I've been a huge fan of Kine since she put her first scratchy demos up on soundcloud a couple of years ago. There is a fragile power to her voice and a darkness and depth that is hard to fathom. The prayer she offers in this song puts into words perfectly what we all felt in the aftermath of events at Sandy Hook, Utøya, and elsewhere, but no-one can express it like Kine: and that, in a nutshell, is what music is for.

Darkness wash away my fear
make me forget I was ever there
take away my eyes take away my mind
make me understand how it feels to be blind

Father, Father hold me in your arms
make me feel safe make me feel strong
all I wanted was your love

Hold me in your arms
make me feel strong
I'm calling for your love
to wash it all away

Father, Dave McKeown with Kine Hjeldnes

I am a working full-time musician, teaching, performing, composing, recording and arranging, and my gigs in the last few years have included jazz combo, big band jazz, folk, Irish traditional, rock, soul, latin, klezmer, funk, orchestral, chamber, minimal techno, musical theatre and more, so, safe to say, I’ll have a go at anything. 

I'm a firm believer in demolishing boundaries between genres, cultures, languages and ultimately people, and Soundcloud is a terrific place where all this can happen.