Some of the saddest music written - for cinema, as an underscore to our sad world or just when the mood strikes - is combined with music that stirs resolution, forbearance and peaceful acceptance.

This music was written as I moved back to my beloved Sydney and amongst the upheaval, new learnings and excitement of the potentials, I remained determined to keep this practice in place.

Astro Teller (Captain of Moonshots) has a great story about the importance of just doing the work to unlock the solution. Every day, cast the clay and as Bukowski said, do it because you have to. Love what you do and do it for no other reason.

Arc of life - Album released July28 2023

Corporate tracks

English suite for virtual orchestra (Album released 28 Feb 2025 - Spotify etc)

Solace - Album released June 20 2025 (Spotify and other platforms)

Ikigai (New album released 4th August - Spotify and other platforms)

The achingly beautiful Baltic Voice of the Tallinn chamber choir recorded in the 13 Century Niguliste Kirk provides the sonic canvas for this piece. In part Gothic in part modern and slightly grainy - oscillating between Cm and Bb it glides without resolving like the soft clouds drifting across the face of an icy moon.

Clouds across the moon

There is a bitterness about the world when a hope is unfulfilled. But you deserved it! You were owed it! You are entitled! But hope was never a strategy. Did you really earn it? Are you going to let it eat you up or are you going to get back up and get on with the blessings you have.

Hope unfulfilled

Beautiful, delicate and capable of sustaining flight is grounded and spattered as the weather turns. "Like tears in the rain" - all that has gone before to be lost and forgotten. For this is the nature of life. A very minimalist piece that builds through repetition, like a heart beat and the ephemeral hopes of the dreamer.

A feather in the rain

In C minor, this piece leverages some of the lighter textures of Frank Elting and The Solo's granular synthesis design. With the organic textures of the human voice, blown instruments and piano the evocation is a return to a place once full of life and (mostly) happy memories. But this place, and everything else, has moved on and, while the sunlight still filters through, it is filled with silence, dust and fading memories.

The empty house

A string orchestra and an intimate piano paint a bittersweet picture of longing, love and hope. Compassion and passion, a fit, like a hand in a glove. There is nothing like absence to realise what you have. Never, ever take it for granted.

Another day without you

Spring Promenade with bass

taking a break

Stepping up

Echo of the past

Clear air

Celebration of Spice

There is an exquisite daintiness in some of Murice Ravel's orchestrations - breathtakingly beautiful. Common practice with that particular French flavour but with a dusting of the new jazz from that peculiar melange from the New World of French and African cultures. This piece attempts to tap into that zeitgeist - mostly pianissimo to mezzo piano. It was my beautiful wife who evoked the butterflies.

Butterflies (1st draft)

This draft has a major change in that the main library was changed to Spitfire BBCSO. It was also transposed to D maj - a common key for love themes. There were also quite a lot of production changes compared to draft 1 with parallel compression being (variously) applied to the Abby Rd Vln1 and Celli. Lots of small changes to the WW and mid strings to smooth out the harmonic accompaniment. An important lesson was to continue to use the Spitfire Solo Strings instead of the Vln and Cello leaders in BBCSO - both very weak from an expressiveness and vib point of view

Embrace (draft 2)

Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis was a landmark work and, over more than 10 years, drew me into the glorious world of the early 20th centry British music - late Victorian-Edwardian-early Elizabethan. A time of great change for the Empire but when British orchestral composition enjoyed a real renaissance. A giant of that time was RVW and this piece owes a lot to a close analysis of the Fantasia and Dives and Lazarus.

English Suite No 4 - Levatio

English Suite No 5 - Claudere

English Suite No 1 - Introitus

English Suite No 2 - Caligo

English Suite No 3 - Lascivio

Gotta Let Go (re-edit)

Lightly, with wonder and purpose (re-edit)

It was a small one room apartment - the Cathedral just behind. But it was home.

A view from a window in Montmatre

Sunset promenade

Free Port Hustle

Lunchtime with Borges

PanHan Alley

Orchid Bloom

Snow drifts from the north

Dōgen's whispers

Sunrise from orbit

The space between

Holocene Dreaming

This valley is my home

Autum Meadow

Firelight reminiscence

Drift

A persistant hope

Boîte à musique ballerine

Time's tide

Nervous Energy

Softly goes Europa

Undertow

My first attempt at Melodic house - after Ben Bohmer

Celebration Day (rough mix)

Springtime draft 1

Create your own reality

Nefelibata

First light

Blue moon

This place (never sleeps)

chrysalis

On the wire

The 3rd Man (Anwesenheit)

At the intersect of classical and digital music, leveraging the traditions of Western music through the lens of new technology, speaking to the human heart. For musings, more music and technology see http://scarlile.org/
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Simon Carlile

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