Fairly standard right-hand plucking here, with one string as a sort of drone with the left thumb

Block-and-strum with a 1mm Jim Dunlop plectrum. You use your left hand, which is holding the lyre at the back, to mute the unwanted strings from behind so they don't sound when you use the plec with the right hand. Then you switch them around to play little tunes or make the chords interesting.

These are all the notes and harmonics that are possible, given its scale length and bridge position.

beautiful, and beautiful looking thing. very jealous of your dad situation. would be totally up for giving you a few goats for a sample pack...

Vocals by Genesis the GreyKid: "A Verse For Lisa [Finale]"

For Her

Last month, I was telling my dad that I couldn't find an ancient lyre/harp sample library that I liked and that it would be cool to have a real instrument for recording that wasn't cheap eBay rubbish *or* wildly expensive historical reenactment stuff. So he made me one! We researched some designs - mostly the 6th Century Germanic lyre found at Trossingen and the 6th/7th Century Anglo Saxon lyre found at Sutton Hoo (similar designs which presumably characterise the state of the art at the time) - and, adding some of our own tweaks and experiments, merged a bunch of ideas. My dad did all of the beautiful woodwork and I figured out stuff like bridge position, string type and tension, and tunings.

The tuning hasn't quite settled yet: it's dropped from the F major diatonic I tuned it to last night to Eb major. So six notes on a major diatonic scale gives me an Eb major-ish scale and an F minor-ish scale, though other modes can be implied by accessing the perfect-fifth harmonics. Using the octave and the perfect-fifth harmonics your playing necessarily slows a bit (until you learn to find the harmonics instinctively!) but you have 10 notes on your major diatonic scale to play with - and octave plus two full tones! And the harmonics sound lovely (when I get them right).

Currently just using cheap D'Addario nylon strings, but I'll start experimenting with nyl-gut soon.

When I get time, I'll try to make a usable and interesting sample library from this...although it's so much fun to play, I'll probably end up recording it whenever I need these sounds in a production.

6th Century Anglo Saxon/Germanic Lyre - first test recording

My Tracked Music entry from the Sundown 2015 Demoparty. 
Grab the MED file here ---> https://www.dropbox.com/s/ms5ajo9mo842kkw/Jah%20Cats.med?dl=0

or alternatively download the MP3.


Big BIG shout to Skope. <--

Greetz to all the ^UP^ crew and H0ffman for making it happen on the big screen. Jah Bless

Jah Cats (Sundown 2015)

Got a touch of insomnia so thought I'd prat about a bit making some 1bit ZX Spectrum beeper music ditties... Here's the result of me messing around for an hour or so in Beepola (grab it here: http://freestuff.grok.co.uk/beepola/ ) 

More info: 
The original spectrum only had a single on/off beeper for sound (with a tiny speaker actually located inside the computer!) much like ancient PC's - clever folks managed to squeeze multichannel playback out of the 1bit beeper by taking advantage of pulse width modulation at high speed leading to the illusion of more than one sound occurring at a time :) anyway it's great fun for making silly noises \o_

- Andy

Ne7 - 1bit Fun Compilation (ZX Spectrum Beeper)

You used to call me from my bell phone
Late night when you need by assistance in delivering a package to another villager.

KK Bling

One dark, drunk night a long time ago, before futurephones were ubiquitous, I was up late writing some stompy music and Warren was up being... Warren.

I asked him to send me some words to add to the track I was putting together and god bless him, he obliged.

The result was this track, presented unedited in its original rough but beautiful form.

I find this all horrifyingly relevant in the current era of artifically fomented national xenophobia and the potential, suicidal exit from the EU by the previously (at least mildly sane) United Kingdom.

May the gods have mercy on our poor.

---

You what the scariest animal in the world is?
US.

Because there are six billion of us
We're capable of anything
And we do as we're told.

Following the biggest bastard in the pack
because he gives us the food

Following the biggest bastard in the pack
because he gives us the food

If someone turns up tonight 
wearing the right suit
and tells us to fuck each other to death
tomorrow morning, 
the streets will be piled so high with bodies
that they'll block out the SUN

Human beings are scary
because we're too stupid to live.



Revolution (featuring Warren Ellis)

This is a track that I've just re-recorded this time with the help of Karen Tweed and with the original guitar and bouzouki accompaniment. It was first used on Wooden Flute Obsessions III CD. It starts with a laid back hornpipe known as Garrett Barry's. I think the second tune was composed by MacMaster (uncle of Natalie I presume) but has been through the mincer of the Durham Colpitts session and doesn't sound like anything I can trace. The final tune was composed by, close friend of all three musicians on this recording; Paul Ruane, for his daughter Orla Ruane in 1999 (approximately). Paul was a great fiddle player, a founder member of the Tyneside band Cuig. He died on the 3rd August 2016 at all too young an age. He taught me Orla's Reel shortly after he'd composed it and I've played it ever since.

Garrett Barry's Holland's and Orla's Reel. N Holmes, Dave Wood guitar, Karen Tweed accordion

Tremblings

This was a project I started but never actually got around to finishing so I thought I would chuck it on here. made it downloadable.

Jah Bless.

Nu Ground (Cutting Room Floor Mix)

Prelude

Echolevel is Brendan Ratliff – freelance composer, multi-instrumentalist, software coder, hardware hacker and teacher. By night, with a swoosh of his cape, he is chiptune superhero Syphus. Look out!

6th Century Anglo Saxon/Germanic Lyre - first test recording

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