Never Put A Foot Wrong

I played and recorded this today as a christmas present for my grandparents up country. Its my very most favourite Christmas music.... Merry Christmas everyone!

Coventry Carol

Hymn For A Free Palestine

My cover of the RH Factors 'Crazy Race'. A truly rad tune, I got it so stuck in my head that the only way out was to cover it!!!! x

This was produced in a day, start to finish and was essentially done as a way to start getting to grips with Logic X.

Crazy Race

This is the premier recording of my new contemporary extended work for brass band, 'HorrorShow', written as a reaction and tribute to those who lost their lives in the violence of the Bataclan Shootings in Paris,  November, 2015. Performed here by the Paris Brass Band, conducted by Florent Didier at the European Brass Band Championships, Elite Division in Oostende in April of 2017.

European Brass Band Championships 2017

HorrorShow

THE TURING TEST

"a test for intelligence in a computer, requiring that a human being should be unable to distinguish the machine from another human being by using the replies to questions put to both."

“Alan Turing is considered the father of modern computational science and much if not all of our modern computer technology and the connectivity that we now take for granted is born of the work of this one great, but troubled man.

Turings’ early life was spent pioneering and developing the exciting new theories and advancements that now power our world, but one of the most interesting parts of his work came after the war when he developed his theories on artificial intelligence and ultimately created the modern rules which govern how we discern the legitimacy of an AI.
Alan Turing devised theoretical machines that could provide mathematical answers to theoretical problems and there is no doubt that his incredible mind ultimately saved many millions of lives during the end of WWII when he famously began his tenure at Bletchley Park working as a code breaker and ultimately cracking the greatest encoding machine of all time, the Enigma Machine.

My work, ‘The Turing Test’ is essentially non-programmatic (and runs as one long movement) but does seek to show something of the emotion and colour of Turings life. The first section (A-F) of the work attempts to portray both the eventual imagined beginnings of bio-digital life forms (AI) and Turings entry into the academic and scientific community. At a young age his mind was on fire and a great deal of the compositional material used here is created using the algorithmic outputs from some of his own theoretical ‘machines’, the binary forms of his name and even his own handwritten signature to provide rhythms.

The second section (F-P) seeks to show Turings race against time create ever more complex solutions to ever more deadly problems. Turing was the largely unsung hero of WWII but the pressure on him must have been immense. Turing lived in a time in which homosexuality was still seen as a crime. After the war he was arrested for ‘indecency’ and given the choice between jail time or the unbearably cruel punishment of chemical castration. So that he may continue his work he opted for the later. A choice that would ultimately end his life with his apparent suicide. This is the subject of the third section of the work (P-T). The last section of the work deals more holistically with the subject of Turings post-humous royal Pardon and the tragedies that are born from ignorance. It is impossible to calculate the worth of Turings work to our modern world, but one things if for sure, without the ignorance and intolerance that ultimately led to his death he could have done immeasurably more. This sense of sadness is why the work ends in chaos rather than triumphantly.

The work is composed using apposing sets of material, often based on Turings own mathematical ‘machines’. It is my hope that the continual battles between the hard, robotic, digital sounding alien landscapes and the more rare displays of warm, organic sounding textures are representative of the complexities at play in an actual Turing Test. I have attempted through the use of bi-tonality and complex rhythms to show apposing worlds colliding. 

At the end of each test we have to decide; has true AI been born?”

Simon Dobson 2016

The Turing Test

I wrote this little piece for four pianos on Thursday last week as a birthday present for my lovely friend Patrick James Pearson. It became the first track on the Birthday album we made him. It is based on a piano riff written by Pat from his song 'Prey', by the PJP band.

Ole Happy Birthday!

For anyone whose nerves are a little frayed by the state of things right now.

this_machine_kills_fascists_

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