In 2021 I started going through digitised tracks I'd captured from 4-track cassettes and remastering them. This is the first fruit of that effort. The original has been cleaned up using plugins, EQed and a little more processing (e.g. a little tremolo and was in places) - but no new audio added.
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It was 1992. I had borrowed (from various places) a Yahama DX7-S, a Korg TR 505 (I think) , a Korg Poly 800 and a Roland S-10 to augment my own set-up which comprised the Kawai K4 and an Amstrad Studio 100 four-track recorder.

I started toying with some ideas for a piece that was meant, from the start, to evoke early Jean-Michel Jarre. I think I pulled it off, to some extent. At least to start with.

Oddly, about half-way through the piece seems to be winding down but then transitions into what seems be completely unrelated material. It's even in a different time signature (moving, quite seamlessly if I say so myself, from 4/4 into 3/4). The second part is based on a riff I had earlier played with as a standalone piece (and which crops up in a couple of other pieces). On this occasion I added an oboe-played-like-a-keyboard-saxophone solo. For some reason. This was one of my first entirely improvised keyboard solos and, sadly, it shows.

Dreamtime (2021 remaster)

Originally recorded circa 1992 on (IIRC) a Fostex 4-track. The piano and strings where recorded in one take on a Kawai K4, then vocals recorded on a separate track.

A few years ago I found the tape and digitised it into Logic, then recently dug it out and used some plug-ins to clean it up. While I was there I also tracked down the TV show that plays in the background of the Pink Floyd version, and added those excerpts (including the "Surprise, surprise, surprise" bit) in, along with some road noise at the start and the additional shouting. I also added an extra high vocal backing to the "there'll be nobody home" part near the end,

Nobody Home (Pink Floyd) (2021 Remaster)

Recorded this cover of Jan Hammer's theme for Miami Vice (well, one of them) in the early 90s. IIRC I used an Atari ST, Kawai K4 and Korg TR 505 drum machine. The guitar breaks during the "chorus" were a combination of my old Les Paul copy and a keyboard guitar.

The image was a photo I took after one of the hurricanes when I lived in Fort Lauderdale, just up from Miami.

The State of Play

Crockett's Theme (Jan Hammer)

This is Ahayeah (https://soundcloud.com/phil_nash/ahayeah) but with the addition of the interview from The Orb's Little Fluffy Clouds.

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original description:

This track came out of a collaboration with Ben Pluck, sometime in 1993.
We had been playing with a sampling app on the Amiga and had grabbed Morten Harkett's scream at the start of "Living A Boys Adventure Tale" (A-ha). With a bit transposition and effects we had something quite fun and decided to build a track around it. So we imported the sample into Music-X, fired up Ben's 01W/FD, and started jamming.

After all-nighter we mixed down this piece under the working title of "Ahayeah" (for, hopefully, obvious reasons). Of course it never moved beyond the working title stage.

Perhaps the best attribute of this recording is the natural compression as a side-effect of recording an over-bright master on cassette tape so we could take dulled down copies at more normal levels (a sort of "poor man's noise reduction")

It's also fun to reminisce that we couldn't work out how to sequence the sample playback, so, while the rest of the track is sequenced all the Harkett samples are triggered by mouse clicks during mix-down!

Ahaclouds

I started work on this cover of Radiohead's classic in 2006. It was meant to be just a way to get back into making and recording music after many years out of the game. 
I originally used Apple's GarageBand to lay down the tracks, but then bought Logic Studio 7 and imported it into that. 
The guitars are all real - captured using my MOTU 828 - but everything else was in Logic. 
Most of the drums were performed on my Macbook Pro keyboard on the commuter coach along the A2 going to or from work! I had intended to get back to them...
The lead guitar parts were stop-gap performances that I had also meant to come back to - they are a bit embaressing in places.

Unfortunately (for the song) my first daughter, Liea, was born before I had a chance to finish it all and have never had time to revisit*
Even this mix-down is evidence of that - as, for some reason, it is missing the first few bars and just drops in a bar before the vocals start!

(* obviously the event was not unfortunate in itself!)

Creep (Radiohead)

Sometime in '92/ '93 I borrowed a Roland D110 from somebody (I forget who!). 
Together with my Kawai K4, a Boss digital delay box and an Amiga running Music X I developed a riff I'd been toying with for a while into a complete piece. I had to return the D110 the following day so I stayed up all night to finish it! 
I collaborated with Ellis Mordecai on this who contributed the first part of the keyboard solo towards the end, as well as a few other details (I don't remember them all). 
We almost fell out over whether one of the bass notes should be a full or half beat - talk about attention to detail - it's a shame that's not so evident in the production values. 
Of course we were limited in what we could work with. I had no audio multitracking (only the MIDI sequencer), so, for example, I could only use the digital delay in an all or nothing way. As a result the keyboard solo lead sound bounces been extreme left and right in the stereo field because we set it up that way for the polyrhythm sections.
My favourite part is where the, overlong, repeated main section finally (!) gives way to a middle-eight section - then builds up the main riff again before dropping into the keyboard solo.


Sequentials I

This song started out with a fragment of lyrics from Paul Sadiq (the first verse, or part thereof, IIRC). I developed the fragment into a full song's worth of lyrics and Ellis Mordecai initially wrote the music.
Some time later (years?), around 1992, Ellis and I got together with Darren Laurie (drummer) and Graham Stroud (guitar) to record a a few tracks. One of them was Through The Ages.
In the process the piece fleshed out significantly - with Darren bedding it down with some solid drumming, Graham providing some killer guitar riffs and an outstanding, if ostentatious (which is what we asked for) solo, and all the details coming together nicely. 

Finally, with the instrumental recording complete we took a four-track to Chris Spring who added the vocals.

While I didn't write the music to this piece, I did contribute some of the details (such as the off-beat bridge before the chorus), as well as the overall production. Not to mention most of the lyrics. So I still keep this in my own collection.

Unfortunately we had to bounce the tracks down so much that what started out as quite promising recording quality really lets it down.

The song itself is about time travel - and time travel paradoxes in particular. It addresses the theme of what happens if you go back in time and change even the smallest thing - will that multiply as a "butterfly effect" into the future?

Through the Ages

I originally wrote a riff in 1991, which I tried to fit into a few pieces (including Dreamtime). It is particularly identifiable due to its use of the Senegal sound from the Kawai K4.
A few years later Ellis Mordecai met with members of a band that I was nominally part of (not sure if I ever played with them as a band), including Paul Sadiq (drums) and Tom The Bassist (I don't remember his surname now).
They had a jam session around my riff, which Ellis recorded, then later produced his own version of.
This track is actually Ellis' version, but since my riff is so integral to the piece I still include it in my collection.
At the time Ellis had managed to borrow an impressive array of synths - so it's no surprise that this track features of smorgasbord of, slightly over the top, synth effects. That's not to detract from the production which is very well done and develops my riff in ways I would not have thought of.

In The Beginning

Electric blues

Written as a sound bed for a CLion (JetBrains) video, I thought I'd put the raw music up here.
It's mostly 2-3 layers of Apple Loops, with a bit of Omnisphere in there from time to time.

Ecpc

Cover of Harold Faltermeyer's classic.
All recorded in Logic, using an M-Audio Axiom-67 controller keyboard.
Plugins used: Alchemy and Ultrabeat (both bundled with Logic).

Axel-F (Harold Faltermeyer)

I'm a self-taught keyboard/ piano player (+ a bit of guitar) but have never been that great at the performance side.
I started writing my own material in the 80s and through the early 90s but then life caught up with me and I have been mostly dry since then. I've had a few dabbles in the intervening years and have an open, "I'm going to get back to it soon", motto.
In the meantime I'm dumping some of my older stuff here so I can point people at it.

I'm including some links here for completeness but I should warn you I mostly write about programing and technology.

Phil Nash

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