For No Particular Reason

Product Website -- http://www.beladmedia.com/site2015/phantom-voice/

Score -- http://goo.gl/7cMTaK

A piece I was mucking about with for Bela D Media's "Phantom Voice" library.  Liked the music a lot, but I preferred "Queen Anne's Revenge" piece for the official demo.  

This one has some interesting (at least to me) minor-to-major (and vice versa) changes that aren't usually part of my repertoire, but it was fun doing something a little different...

Dark Monastery (feat. Bela D. Media's "Phantom Voice")

It's the microForj.Xmas.Freebie!

I needed something church-belly to accompany a monk-style chant, which unfortunately didn't work out (well, the monk thing did, but my piece didn't). However, I thought the carillon bells turned out pretty well by themselves. It features a fun "ghostverb carillon" that adds a nice chilly ambiance. For those who care about such things, I found the samples here: http://www.pem.org/aux/sound/Westerkerk-Carillon-Sample-Library.zip 

They run a bit sharp, so they're tuned them down a bit. You may have to readjust it to taste... 

The Kontakt version of it is available here: http://goo.gl/jhuvo2 

And the score for this demo is available here: http://goo.gl/Cu6oS7 

Here's hoping y'all have some wonderful holidays! 

And many thanks to the many, many developer folks who've contributed to VI Control this year (both professional and really-wish-we-were-professionals)! 

Kurt M. Landre' 
https://www.SoundCloud.com/kmlandre 

Winter Is Come (microForj.Westerkerk.Carillon Demo)

Short test track of some of the Aria LSS 1st Violins patches...

Aria 1st Vln Test (Very Quiet)

Divertimento # 1

Just some fun with various Bela D choirs...

Vesper

Divertimento #2

Divertimento#3

Something about the melody from the original demo has always haunted me, so I've mucked about with the latest version of Aria's 1st Violins library and extended the piece a bit.

First in a series, hopefully.  This is version 2, slightly more "epic-ishy" than the last.  Still not happy with the mix, but it's getting there.

What Was Lost Now Found (Part 1) - V2.0

Trying an experiment to breath some more life into the Kontakt Factory Orchestral Samples using Big Bob's WIPS scripts.

This is a short piece layering the Notion strings with the Kontakt strings.  One thing I really don't like is that Kontakt lacks a 2nd Violin section (or rather, has only a 14 piece 2nd Violin section and no 18 piece 1st Violin section).

I'm basically pleased with the results - the WIPS legato is particularly effective in the doublebass section, even with interval leaps as wide as a fourth and fifth.

The Silent Ones Hunt At Night

You Shall Dance Again, My Love

A piece I hope to re-orchestrate to fit into the Solarian Suite some day.  

It's for 8 clarinets and percussion, and borrows heavily from Alexander Courage's work on the original Star Trek TV series.

I'll leave it to y'all to figure out which bits I lifted and and which bits I stole.  And the other bits that I pinched.

The Orbit Of Chiron - Perihelion and Aphelion

Kind of a different one for me, and pretty fun to get away from worrying about bassoons and violas and early reflections and reverb and blah blah nerdification.  

Put this together on speculation for an indie game.

And for those crazy enough to wonder what the deep and mysterious lyrics are, here they are in all their Speak n' Spell glory:

Gossamer Transmission Se-e-e-e-quence
Gossamer Transmission Se-e-e-e-quence
Se-e-e-e-quence
Gossamer Transmission Sequence

Initializing...Handshake Protocol
Initializing...Datastream
Initializing...Begin Transmission
Initializing...Gossamer Transmission See-e-e-quence

Exception Detected: Unknown Protocol
Exception Detected: Routing Error
Exception Detected: Network Congestion
Exception Detected, Exception Detected
Network Collapsed.

Initializing...Handshake Protocol
Initializing...Datastream
Initializing...Begin Transmission
Initializing...Gossamer Transmission See-e-e-quence

Transfer Complete - Terminate Connection.

Please, hold all poet laureate awards.  It's enough to simply know what a wordsmithing genius I am (where's the self-ridiculing eyeroll emoticon when your really need it?!?!)... ;-)

Gossamer Transmission Sequence

Another spec piece that was way outside my usual domain, but was has a lot of fun bits with dialog from a couple of public domain movies.  

Not telling which ones - it'll be more fun for you to figure it out on your own... ;-)

Space Madness

Fun little piece my daughter named for me.  

All Notion instruments...

For you score nerds, here's a PDF (25 MB, so it's a bit of a big sucker):
http://goo.gl/Mf2Kcv

An Angry Circus Of Bees

Just a bit of fun with a couple of free libraries I found on the interwebs...

Spaghetti Town

A fun little diversion...

Score available here:
https://goo.gl/TepYBW

Divertimento#5

Diversion ^ 4.

Score available here:
https://goo.gl/SZssg7

Divertimento#4 (Death Of A Clock)

Just mucking around with Aria's London Symphonic Strings series to see how they fare with Notion's native string libraries...

Strictly By The Book (Aria + Notion Strings Test)

Tiny Dashes (Valhalla Only)

In the tradition of Brian Eno's "Thursday Afternoon" but a whole lot shorter...

Ambistra

Kurt M. Landré 

Born in the dimming haze of the latter half of the late 20th Century, Landré's musical fate was sealed even before his birth when his mother began pushing the family piano around the living room in an attempt to induce a fruitful end to her 10-month pregnancy. Landré apparently got the message and found his way into this world the very next day, with piano moving lessons following just a few years later. 

He was afterwards raised on a steady musical diet of Bach, Beatles, Beethoven, Chicago, Rossini, Three Dog Night, and the raw, pure horror of live, dueling accordion music (and yes, there were many fatalities). After his first musical forays into classical piano and cello, he discovered synthesizers in the mid 80's and his tastes began rapidly migrating from New Wave, to Punk, to modern classical composition.

Landré's formal education consisted of stints at Pacific Lutheran and the University of Oregon, where he annoyed all his professors with a continual and unyielding insistence on parallel fifths in every composition. Finally, in a desperate attempt to get himself barred from all things musical, he began playing Post Pop Punk and quickly devolved into a cruel Pacific Northwest caricature of an over-caffeinated, rim-spectacled, folk-strumming-three-chord monstrosity. He is most famous for having blackened the jubilant mood of a crowd of over 1000 people after striking only a single, well-timed chord on a poorly tuned mandolin.

Having fully alienated all popular music lovers worldwide, Landré returned to his roots and began composing music for entirely virtual orchestras, and quickly established himself as a demo composer, creating works for sound library companies such as Impact Soundworks, CL-Projects, Samplism, Lux Nox, Versilian Studios, and others. 

He is currently the House Composer for Bela D. Media, but can be still found attempting to strangle and torture the joy and happiness out of numerous acoustic instruments.

Influences:

Alexander Courage (Star Trek, Original Series)
John Williams
Samuel Barber
Gustav Holst
Steve Reich (steve Reich Steve reich steve riech STEVE REICH - does *anyone* other than me ever get that joke?)
Sean Beeson
Ennio Morricone
Peter Gabriel (Birdy, Last Temptation of Christ)
My grandfather and mother's accordion playing (play the accordion, go to jail - THAT'S THE LAW.)
Martin O'Donnell