Last night at about 2am I recorded a quick and dirty (but with a little bit of multitracking!) cover of my favourite Magnetic Fields song on an Omnichord. Here's the audio.

I did it in Photobooth (the video is here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ0ipKFRMOI) so it's pretty lo-fi! 

Omnichord (OM-84) cover - 100000 Fireflies by the Magnetic Fields

I have no defence for this. None.

This is a minion from the film Despicable Me 2, being a siren. I was using it to annoy my partner and to tell him his post had arrived. Then I was on the bus and decided to make "art" with it. Best with headphones.

Paulstretch, Samplr, Borderlands, Beatmaker 2, and this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkWvmZQuyFI (this is the only sample used, for reference, which is testimony to the terrible things I did to it).

Profuse apologies.

reprehensible

Made in WebSID, interactive playback at: http://www.igorski.nl/experiment/websid?song=c472ed3b60037c4a8e1e6eaa8e393771

TIME FBCK FREQ

Otomata: http://www.earslap.com/page/otomata.html and webaudio drum machine: http://chromium.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/samples/audio/shiny-drum-machine.html

SAVE LOAD RESET

Sound journal, 30th January 2016, Daylight Music at the Union Chapel. The Leaf Library, the Wave Pictures, Samplr for iOS.

leaves/waves

Also available pay-what-you-want at https://deerful.bandcamp.com/album/demos. A cover of Joanna Newsom's Peach Plum Pear, rough-mixed and mastered in the OP-1, vocals added in Ableton. Posted because I played it live at my last show and a couple of people asked for it, but especially because @hieroglyphixs did and I <3 her. 


Peach Plum Pear - Joanna Newsom cover

My first piece in Supercollider as part of Stanford CCRMA's Introduction to Supercollider course, 2016. No synthdefs, very simple, just some numerically randomised ambient noodling. 

Code is: 

// lab session 1

(
t = TempoClock(60/60);
{
	 ~bells = Pbind(
		\scale, Scale.locrian,
		\degree, Pwhite(20, 30, 16),
		\octave, 3,
		\amp, Pseq([Pwhite(0.2, 0.4)]),
		\dur, Pwhite(1, 3.0),
		\legato, 20
	).play(t, quant: 1);

	16.wait;

	~bass = Pbind(
		\scale, Scale.locrian,
		\degree, Pwhite(20, 30, 8),
		\dur, Pwhite(1, 4),
		\legato, 10,
		\amp, 0.6,
		\octave, 0
	).play(t, quant: 1);

	16.wait;

	~ostinato = Pbind(
		\scale, Scale.locrian,
		\degree, Pseq([0, 5], 62),
		\dur, 0.2,
		\amp, 0.4
	).play(t, quant: 1);

	12.wait;

	~secondostinato = Pbind(
		\scale, Scale.locrian,
		\note, Pseq([[0,3],[5,8]], 64),
		\dur, 0.1,
		\amp, 0.3
	).play(t, quant: 0.5);

	2.wait;

	~bells.stop;
	~bass.stop;
}.fork(t);
)



beginners (supercollider)

UPDATE: This is now available as part of a charity release for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants here: https://deerful.bandcamp.com/album/without-borders

This is my contribution to Squarepusher's MIDI Sans Frontières collaborative project, detailed here: http://www.squarepusher.net/.

I want to explain a little about this piece here. I spent the 19th to the 23rd of June this year at Stanford CCRMA, learning to begin to program music in SuperCollider. That's not a very long time, and the sum total of what I've learnt is used here; I could perhaps have done something more ambitious using another method, but I didn't want to, and here's why. The night of the referendum vote was the last full day of my classes at Stanford, and unlike my friends at home, and my partner who had dutifully acted as my proxy voter earlier in the day, I wasn't able to sleep through the counts; as my lecturers spoke I kept the BBC website open behind SuperCollider on my laptop, refreshing and refreshing until all the counts were done and I knew 52% of the population had voted to leave the EU. 

I've never stayed up to the end of a count before and never want to again. There is a powerlessness to it I couldn't have anticipated. As the only UK-based student in my class it was hard to make my American classmates and lecturers understand my distraction and upset at the referendum result, but their kindness even in the face of something comparatively unknown to them will stick with me for a long time. I worry about my friends who are people of colour in the wake of the reported rise in racist attacks; I worry about being unable to visit Germany, where my entire maternal family live without dual citizenship; I worry about a return to the depths of austerity; I worry about friends who are unemployed and my own employment prospects when I graduate; I worry about the NHS. There's a lot to worry about. It piles up like the phrases of this piece.

It's hard not to feel, now, like the country is more in ruins as a result of this referendum than any other vote in the course of my lifetime so far. As I write this we are essentially in governmental stasis with little we can do to change the situation except to exercise our democratic right when we can by voting, joining parties and unions and demonstrating if we are able, but in a smaller sense, to look out for one another, extend hands and say, I will stand with you and work with you and support you regardless of borders or government or where we are from or how we identify. In a very small way this is one attempt at doing the latter. 

Code (and vague instructions for live performance) available at http://pastebin.com/rhHAexVh. 

Special thanks to @christa_lee for making me aware of this project and for her own inspiring contribution to it, and to @brunoruviaro for his wonderful teaching.

MIDI Sans Frontières

Staying Still was written in the summer of 2015, mostly from my bed, sometimes from a friend's sofa or under a tree in the park at the end of my road, when I was very ill with what turned out to be severe depression. It's a record about stasis and feeling stuck, failed attempts at escape and at being heard, intrusive thoughts and stuffing them down. 

It's also a record about recovery although I didn't know that at the time. 

I'm releasing it on cassette because I love cassettes, even though I know nobody has the means to play them. 

I hope you enjoy it.

All music, lyrics, and artwork by Emma Winston. 
Mixed by Darren Hayman. 
Mastered by Ian Button.

TAPE/DIGITAL DOWNLOAD

Some Nights

The Home EP is out! It features all-chiptune, 8-bit video game-style versions of my songs (two old ones and a new one), and a Mountain Goats cover. You can buy it either digitally or as a special USB drive edition at https://wiaiwya.bandcamp.com/album/home-ep.

The USB edition includes a papercraft model of me(!), some desktop and phone wallpapers, and a PICO-8 mini-game, which you can also play online at http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=27879.

Two Thousand One Hundred and Sixty (8-bit)

Moon Maps (8-bit)

Staying Still

The Waves

Two Thousand One Hundred and Sixty

Better

BUY THIS HERE 
https://forthesakeoftapes.bandcamp.com/album/hang-in-there-a-diy-covers-compilation
https://forthesakeoftapes.bandcamp.com/album/hang-in-there-a-diy-covers-compilation
https://forthesakeoftapes.bandcamp.com/album/hang-in-there-a-diy-covers-compilation
it's on a charity compilation for Mind with a bunch of other amazing artists.

Hang In There - A DIY Covers Compilation

BUY COMPILATION

Damn These Vampires (originally by The Mountain Goats)

Chronostasis

Peach

The Ice Fishers

Peach (Redux)

Take Care

FULL ALBUM

Subjects Of Our Love

Down

Before Us Comes The Flood

The Wider Sky, So Far From Land

Solar Phenomena

Peach Rose Tea

Reasons this needed to happen: 

1. It's got my name in the title
2. There are no other ukulele covers of it online
3. It's EMMA'S HOUSE by THE FIELD MICE. 

With apologies to the Field Mice.

Emma's House - The Field Mice (ukulele cover)

this is literally just the audio from this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-ipC5QszRA

If you would like a high-quality version and/or stems, consider joining my Patreon, if that's your sort of thing? https://www.patreon.com/deerful

Just Like We Never Said Goodbye (SOPHIE cover)

Five tracks in total, toy piano and voice. I struggled a bit with the vocals (it sits in a rocky part of my voice but I didn't realise until I'd already recorded most of the tracks...) but I'm not sure how obvious it is - pretty sure the accompaniment is one of my better efforts though!

Peach, Plum, Pear - Joanna Newsom (toy piano cover)

I'm still not very good at the ukulele, but for once I'm pleased with the vocals on this. The recording quality is pretty grim for some reason though. :/

Spearmint are one of my favourite bands *ever*, and I thought I'd try something a little more downbeat than the original on this song.

We're Going Out - Spearmint (ukulele cover)

Alpha Rats Nest - The Mountain Goats (ukulele cover)

Tell Me I Can Fix This On My Own

this has no right whatsoever to work as well as it does

camp jams

Owen Pallett - Lewis Gets Fucked Into Space (ukulele cover)

Deerful. I do sad pop music on tiny synthesisers.

In other people's bands I do or have done:
Keys/backing vocals in Owl & Mouse
Keys/backing vocals with Darren Hayman
Harmonium/accordion/vocals in Enderby's Room
Synth/electronics in free-improv duo Brute Love
Backing vocals/synth in Papernut Cambridge
Backing vocals with Citizen Helene

Popular tracks by Deerful