Music Projects

Since 2004, I've slowly been setting up a home studio. Here are some of the tunes I've been involved in since then. In most cases, I play the instruments and engineer/mix the tracks. All the recordings are licensed under the Creative Commons License [by-nc-nd].

Richard Paris & Chris Thomas

Through my last band, I met Richard (usually known as Rik), who writes songs with a few friends and was looking to record them. This turned out to be a dream set-up, as I don't sing or write many tunes. I wanted to play instruments for songs and produce some tracks, and Rik wanted to record his songs, so we got to work. (The tracks are listed in reverse order.)

W.A.S.T.E.

This is the first song we've done that I think sounds commercial. We're quite pleased with the results, so I'll let the music speak for itself. By the way, the title is explained at the end of the lyrics. ;o)

• W.A.S.T.E. (Paris/Paton/Price) [mp3 - ~6MB]

Do You Know

This track was started as a break from the demos we'd been doing, but not finishing. I had just got a proper studio microphone and we were recording some acoustic guitar. Rik suggested we record this nice, simple song to see how it would work.

• Do You Know (Paris/Paton/Price) [mp3 - ~4MB]

Take You Back

After the quick success of our first track (Inside Of You), we wanted to do a track 'properly'. Rik had played this tune to me some months previously, and we spent a few hours every couple of weeks arranging and recording and then mixing. In addition, we had some recording problems, and as I got some new kit, we realised we could make some things better. It took months and never seemed to finish! But we're pleased that we took the time to do it properly, and are both rather proud of how it turned out. (I also used lilypond to create the music score.)

• Take You Back (Paris/Paton/Price) [mp3 - ~6MB]
• Take You Back (Music Score)

Inside Of You [Demo]

This was our first collaboration. He came round one day and asked if we could have a go at recording one of his songs. We rushed out, bought a cheap microphone and we laid down some acoustic guitar. Then I added some drums and a bass line, and we played with keyboards for a bit. The whole process took us about 4 hours, and it was more an exercise in learning how to record properly. We were so impressed with the output, we went back and mixed it the next week.

• Inside Of You [Demo] (Paris/Paton/Price) [mp3 - ~6MB]

Solo Stuff

Necessario Del Formaggio

Also known as 'The 1991 House Cheese Project', this tune was written to sound authentically 1991 or thereabouts. I had been reminiscing about the good old days of dance music with a musician friend and I decided it would be great to make a dance track from that period. All that Italian-influenced house music. The 909 drum kit; the fat analogue bass line; the tinkly pianos; the single note of strings sitting atop the mix. I had a great piano line written since the early 90's that I'd never done anything with, but I lacked the vocals. The Internet is a wondrous thing, and a quick web search and I found a collection of huge vocals. So in June 2004, I sat down to write a tune for a genre of music that was already nearly 15 years out of date! I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

• Necessario Del Formaggio [mp3 - 6MB]

Voodoo Auntie

Voodoo Auntie is a Hendrix-inspired track written by Tristan Greaves. He invited me to supply some keyboard parts for it, and this is the finished article. I arranged and played the keyboard parts and was a sounding board for the mixing. What's perhaps most remarkable about this track is that we never got together to record it - it was entirely an Internet-based collaboration.

• Voodoo Auntie [mp3 - 6MB]

My Bands

I've played in a few bands over the years, mostly playing cover versions of rock and pop songs. As I'm not actually with any of the bands any longer, and because the songs were covers of commercial tracks, I haven't put any band recordings or demos on the website.