What would happen if a cliché of Hans Zimmer would decide to play a cliché of Mike Oldfield? Well, this.

If Hans Zimmer was abducted by aliens and an identical looking imposter was left in his place, but lacked Zimmer's greatness and depth, and was only a cliché version of him, and was asked to compose his version of Tubular Bells, this is what would come of that.

A project I started as a joke, and soon went down into a rabbit hole so deep I ended up in China. It was going to be just the Pandora Burts from Project Sam's Free Orchestra along with a couple of tracks of the Tubular Bells recognizable piano intro, except not in piano, but in staccato strings instead.

So naturally, this being a cliché of Hans Zimmer, I threw Spitfire's Hans Zimmer Strings right away, at first just the usual 60 violin ensemble, but then continued with celli, basses and so on. 

Then I thought "Why stop there?". So I started throwing other strings like Symphobia, Opus, etc, and of course, a 1727 Stradivari violin and also a Stradivari cello.

But it was missing something. And I soon realized it was SYNTHS!!! So I pulled out of the virtual closet my CS-80, and several more tracks were born from that.

I also had some new stuff I wanted to try just for the sake of it, like Arkhis and Monolith, some other stuff I don't even remember. I'm so sick of this thing, I've been working on it for a week, and every time I think it's ready, there's something there that I want to change. 

So tonight I said Screw It! It's a joke, and it sounds like a joke, so that's good enough for me.

So put on your headphones (this sounds terrible on speakers for some reason) and enjoy. One warning though: it gets really loud around 30 seconds in.

And just in case anyone is offended, this may be a joke, but is also a labor of love and admiration. Both these guys are in my top five list of the best composers of all time, and they shaped my taste in music very deeply.

New tracks tagged #musical joke