A devilish amount of shaping and editing included here.

Old Irish Drunks - Lyrics

Well he left home one Sligo day and he kept on going until he came to a halt
And they heard nothing of their lost son since London had swallowed him up
Each night he drank himself to sleep in a town where he lived but did not belong
These streets were built by men who came from the earth then covered it up

They built these streets of Cricklewood
They built these streets of Kilburn
They built these streets of Cricklewood
And they built them good
Built them good

Living on the far edge he broke his toes in the High Road cold
His last days he told me how much he loved all he said he hated most

They built these streets of Cricklewood
They built these streets of Kilburn
They built these streets of Cricklewood
And they built them good
Built them good

And all the roads remain
And all the roads remain
And all the roads remain
And all the roads remain

Built them good
Built them good
Built them good
Built them good

Strange Part of the Country

Old Irish Drunks

Bandcamp

Time Settles - Lyrics 

And the decision made a hole, a vacancy in a vital inner chamber in my bones
This is what finally separated me from all my friends for whom I became skeletal

Time settles over me
Time settles over me

And then the places I visit became the same inside world that I thought I was in
And like a fly scribbling the air I know neither the place nor what the hour is

Time settles over me
Time settles over me

And I, far off inside, was old

And now the years are closing in, each minute the last minute and following me

Time Settles

What would Friedrich Burgmüller have been up to during lock down? 
He would probably have written something like this.
Used the magnificent UVI Fortepiano, included in UVI Orchestral Suite. Notated in Finale, but reshaped the MIDI in Cubase, mixing mastering with Waves, Izotope and Fabfilter.

Burgmülleriana

An assignment I made for Berklee College of Music, scoring for 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones and a tuba

This piece is built on a simple yet practical theme by Ben Newhouse, using Spitfire BBC SO Brass and plugins by Waves, Fabfilter and Izotope.

In this piece I'm test driving Spitfire's BBC Symphony Orchestra and exploring lots of the possibilities offered. Techniques employed: legato, long, marcato, staccato, staccatissimo, cuivre, trills, sforzandi, a.o.. 

Rather impressed by the sounds and possibilities. Would have liked to have more options to adjust the envelope of a sample, the attack of it for instance. A great job by Spitfire nevertheless.

See the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05rvPDg9iYs&t=2s

Fanfare For The Common Brass

In this Berklee assignment I had to re-orchestrate a theme from Mahler's Third Symphony. It's short, but had a lot of fun in the process. 

It always struck me that the theme was so much like Brahms' main theme from the Finale of his Fourth, so I put some Brahms DNA in the beginning as well. He deserves it. 

Used BBC Symphony Orchestra by Spitfire, making a mockup after having composed and notated in Finale notation software.

Theme from The Third Reinvented | Rescoring Mahler using Brahms DNA

This was my entry for the Oticons Competition of 2020. My first attempt in applying traditional notation to filmscoring. In this video, only the original script is visible. I will upload a score-only version later on. 

Follow the full score on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU5W7_bW3P8

NB This is NOT a DAW mix down. All music is directly generated by Finale (notation software) using mainly Spitfire BBC, East West Symphony Orchestra and a bunch of synths.

BLUEBEARD | Scenes for (Hybrid) Orchestra | Score

Talking Music
	
 	The construction
 	This prelude draws from a technique similar to twelve-tone technique- but only to a certain degree. Whereas dodecaphony rises all chromatic tones to equality, I chose to leave distinct tonal markers in the genome of this piece, in order for it to remain communicating. The choice of material helped. The single 16-note progression upon which material is based, was derived from the already rather chromatic dux of a baroque (so utterly tonal) fugue I wrote around the year 2000. This tonal dux fitted the purpose of a rather strict use in bending, tossing around and transposing utterly smoothly, because of the chromatic aspects of it and almost complete use of a chromatic scale. Retrograde motion, transposition and inversion were used in the context of a traditional formal structure and a free tonal harmonic vocabulary, the balance between tonal and atonal shifting now and then. 
	The piece
	The structural model for Breakdown is the Baroque Prelude.  The principal sequence of notes (called 0) is stated repeatedly, be it at first in ‘cells’ of four sixteenth notes, in a fluid rain of notes. Then the theme appears more or less complete and is repeated in various ways, increasingly interrupted by fragments of itself. Towards the end all material is disintegrating to continuously shrinking fragments that are mixed unrecognizably, deteriorating to a musical void. The piece ends with a sudden and short moment of relived brightness.  
On (a)tonality
	Hopefully this modest addition to the still ever-growing symphonic repertory may contribute to the definitive defeat of the convulsive (and still rather powerful) modernistic view, in which all things should be new for the sake of being new. What wrong lies in the synthesis of something Old and something New? Why completely abandon principals that already proved their merits, purely for the sake of abandoning? And why trying to reach musical goals by solely using dissonances? Or complex systems that possess hardly any communitive properties? Just like light exists only exists because darkness does, consonance and dissonance are the Ying and Yang in music. They are in fact the Ferdinand and Isabella that make our musical realm complete.
	I refuse to understand why music without consonances should be more worthwhile to create, perform or listen to than music predominantly consonant. I think it is out of sheer intellectual elitism that we’ve presumed otherwise for so long. It is time we dare admit that the Emperor is, in fact, naked.
	So, in this aphoristic  musical statement, I have sought to combine tonal and atonal principals, and to bring together old and new forms. In harmony.   

Breakdown is the result of my final assignment for a Berklee Orchestration class in 2022.

Breakdown

Breakdown, a prelude for orchestra, by Sipke Hoekstra (=Fugitempus)

Tribute to the Cinesamples Viola da Gamba en Harpsichord libraries!

The melody I composed many years ago for my wife, Rachel, on our then newly bought spinet. It's a filmic mix of folk, renaissance and baroque music. Enjoy!

Acrylic landscape with woman in white dress is a painting by Inspirations by Raine

And Softly She Asked The Trees

Tribute to the Bolder Sounds Virginal library!

Modest baroque menuet I improvised some while ago on our (real) spinet. Recorded this one in Cubase, using this awesome Virginal lib. The plugin allows all kinds of adjustments, including microtuning, lute, octaves - just what you'd expect from them copying this faboulous instrument.

Blue Menuet

Many a day
When I’m feeling strong
I swim with the fishes
All day long
Many a night
When I’m feeling strong
I swim with the fishes
All night long.

Swimming with the fishes
I swim
Swimming with the fishes
All day long
Swimming with the fishes
I swim
Swimming with the fishes
All night long.

Many a night
When the moon is low
I dine with the fishes
Far below
Many a night
When I’m feeling slow
I dine with the fishes
Far below.

Dining with the fishes
I dine
Dining with the fishes
Far below
Dining with the fishes
I dine
Dining with the fishes
Far below.

Many a night
When I’m feeling strong
I swim with the fishes
All night long
Many a night
When I’m feeling low
I dine with the fishes
Far below.

Swimming with the fishes
I swim
Swimming with the fishes
All night long
Dining with the fishes
I dine
Dining with the fishes
Far below.

Dining with the fishes r4

I was married on Sunday
Buried on Monday
On Tuesday I rose
I rose from the sea.

I went down with the anchor
Off Salamanca
Down to the bottom
The anchor and me.

I went down with the anchor
Right to the bottom
And there I rested
Deep in the sea.

I was married on Sunday
Buried on Monday
On Tuesday I rose
The anchor and me.

I was married on Sunday
Buried on Monday
On Tuesday I rose
I rose from the sea.

And if I am lagging
It’s the anchor I’m dragging
The anchor that took me
Into the sea.

I went down with an anchor
Off Salamanca
It went to the bottom
And there I should be.

I was married on Sunday
Buried on Monday
On Tuesday I rose
The anchor and me.

I was married on Sunday
Buried on Monday
On Tuesday I rose
I rose from the sea.

And here I am standing
On soil that is sandy
Thinking about things
The anchor and me.

And if I am lagging
It’s the anchor I’m dragging
What would you expect
With a man from the sea?

I was married on Sunday
Buried on Monday
On Tuesday I rose
I rose from the sea.

I was married on Sunday
Buried on Monday
On Tuesday I rose
The anchor and me.

Married on Sunday r6

All Eckmanns are in fact pseudonyms of contemporary composer Sipke Hoekstra, aka FUGITEMPUS. He uses these fake names for sharing his (early) tonal works and stylecopies, both old and new.  





(This family is fictional. All pieces are by Sipke Hoekstra, @soundcloud.com/hoekstra

Burgmülleriana

Eckmann

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