This is my second album, Her Majesty Poverty.
Once again, I have written, composed, recorded and mixed everything myself, trying to improve the mixing quality. I hope you will enjoy it.
I wrote this album in 2007 and 2008. This album has not been published or sold, it's just a bunch of files on my hard disk, there are no physical copies of a nice box with a CD inside. I only own a few copies at home. Nevertheless, I regard these songs as part of my first personal album. It contains 11 songs that you can listen right here. I hope you will enjoy them.
As my girlfriend is part of a theater amateur company named Art Scénique et Compagnie (Scene Art & Co, all in French...), I have the opportunity to make musics for them every year. To make these musics, I mostly use virtual orchestra instruments, rather than my usual guitars and bass.
Miss Doolittle (2008)
In june 2008, Art Scénique et Compagnie introduced its own version of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. The company adapted the play by mixing dialogues from the film My Fair Lady by George Cukor and the original book by Shaw, which is not as funny as the motion picture. The play was pretty successful. Many people were baffled by the actors who played their characters with enthusiasm and talent, and were even compared to professionals, although they're merely amateurs, which is a very nice compliment indeed. More than 400 persons came to see the play, making this play their most successful to date!
For this play, I made several musics, including a few ones with lyrics (presented here in their instrumental version). I enjoyed myself a lot composing these tunes. I made all the musics and sound effects for the play, except for one piece of classical music from Mrs Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini.
Harpagon's Nightmare (2007)
In May 2007, Art Scénique et Compagnie rehearsed an adaptation of the French 17th century play L'avare (The Miser) from Molière and entitled it Le cauchemar d'Harpagon (Harpagon's nightmare). The play was presented at the Saint-Maur theater amateur contest (in France, near Paris), then was played again in October 2007 in front of classes (students aged 11 to 15), and played once more at another theater amateur festival in a nearby town in November 2007.
The soundtrack included a few famous musics (like the Austin Powers theme for instance), but also 4 short pieces of music I especially composed for the play.
And then there were none (2006)
The first series of musics I composed for a play was for the adaptation of Agatha Christie's And then there were none by Art Scénique et Compagnie. Somebody said it would be a good idea to have a simple tune, like a childish melody, that would play at various moments of the show. With this idea in mind, I have tried to write an easily rememberable melody, which I then declined in different versions to illustrate the action on stage. This play has been presented six times at the Saint-Maur theater (in France, near Paris) in May 2006 during a theater amateur contest.
The reason I started composing on the Amiga at the time (a computer I had bought mainly to play) is that after playing numerous great games, I received a new piece of software that changed my priorities. This piece of software was Aegis Sonix.
Sonix means "Sound". The Commodore 64 made me open my ears and start listening to music thanks to its incredible capabilities and the Amiga made want to start composing music. Sonix was a music composition program, simple to use and very efficient. It was not a sampler. By the way, I regret not to have taken interest in the numerous samplers that existed on the Amiga, but I must confess I did not really understand what they were for at the time. Pity, but well, I caught up with that later...
Sonix's main window displayed a music score. The Amiga could produce 4 sounds simultaneously, and you had to deal with it. That was one voice more than what the Commodore 64 could offer. The sound quality was even higher. The Atari ST on the other hand, although it was part of a new computer generation offered a sound quality inferior to that of the Commodore 64. The Atari's sound chip was identical to that of the Amstrad CPC, which was not really good...
So Sonix would allow to select a different instrument for each of the Amiga voices, and even better, it was possible to change the instrument anywhere in the score. One voice could then be given a different instrument for each note, very easily. I had many instrument sounds, but they were all pretty synthetic. I was not lucky enough to own digitized instruments. There were such instruments, but I never could get them, and they were way too expensive for me to buy them, so I just dealt with what I had.
And then I composed a lot of musics. I still have some of them, with a few good ideas and moments, but my musical knowledge was rather rudimentary. I still listen to these musics with a sense of nostalgia, but I can understand that other people do not really enjoy them. Nevertheless, I add them in a player on this page, you may find that amusing!!! And, who knows, you may even like some of them...
Un grand Merci !!
Je monte mon 1er home studio... Habitué des vrais studios et tables analogiques, je suis (j'étais ..) perdu pour choisir les softs et le hardware.
Je ne connaissais pas ces sim d'ampli gratuites, le matos dont tu parles rentre dans mon raisonnable budget et tes explications claires me confortent dans mes choix.
Merci.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Grebz : De rien, content que mes propres galères aujourd'hui résolues puissent aider d'autres personnes !
Bonne continuation musicale !
Tulgitam,
2010/07/02
Très beau travail, merci pour ce moment d'évasion "j'suis au boulot". Je n'ai pas assez de compétences pour donner un avis technique, mais le son me plaît beaucoup.
Bonne continuation
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Grebz : Merci beaucoup !
Bepro,
2010/06/01
Désolé, mes petites compos sur Deezer ne sont pas écoutables par le public (voir message plus bas).
Vous en avez un aperçu sur cette vidéo.
Le son n'est pas très bon. Je l'avais repiqué sur cassette audio, puis sur PC et réencodé en mp3. Puis à nouveau réencodé dans MovieMaker. Alors... Voilà
Mikael,
2010/05/07
J'adore le son Amiga, certaines de tes compos me rappellent l'atmosphère des années 70/80 dans les films de John Carpenter...
CelticBreizh,
2010/04/12
J'ai bien aimé "Chrysalide". Merci encore pour les réponses à mes questions. À bientôt. CelticBreizh
Pastamiam,
2010/03/19
Salut,
Juste pour te dire que tes samples sortent très mal, comme s'il y avait un bug d'encodage mp3. Peut-être que c'est dû à l'interface Flash ?
@+
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Grebz : Merci de l'info, mais je ne sais pas desquels tu parles. Que ce soit chez moi au depuis le boulot, je n'ai pas de souci... Je ne sais pas trop quoi faire, malheureusement...
Joe la Bûchette,
2009/12/08
Salut Grebz,
J'ai comme promis écouté "Her Majesty Poverty" ! De très bonnes choses même si j'ai une petite préférence pour "The Cradle of the Mind" ! Cependant, un morceau m'a beaucoup interpelé : "Boomerang", très péchu, rythmé et incisif, je pense que c'est le meilleur de ton dernier opus !!!
En tout cas félicitations, c'est encore une fois du très bon boulot ! Au plaisir de te revoir bientôt sur scène, bonne continuation !!!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Grebz : Merci beaucoup monsieur CB !
notten13,
2009/09/18
Un album très réussi je trouve (encore une fois !) Continuez ce que vous faites !
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Grebz : Merci de vos encouragements, c'est très sympa ! Pour ce qui est de continuer, c'est bien mon intention :-)
J'ai encore quelques petites retouches à faire sur cet album, et je dois y ajouter encore 2 ou 3 chansons, mais j'y travaille encore...
Nounou 125,
2009/06/22
Ce que vous faites est fantastique. Je vous dis bravo et continuez.
Sincères salutations.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Grebz : Merci beaucoup !
Pastamiam,
2009/04/19
Salut,
J'ai atterri ici suite à ton message sur Audiofanzine (test de Sonar 8 ça suffit).
J'aime beaucoup tes compos faite avec Sonar. J'ai également eu un coup de nostalgie en voyant tes captures d'écran de Sonix. J'avais fait une reprise de Metallica avec ce soft et le son (très années 80 genre synth lead avec de l'écho) était tout simplement surréaliste.
J'ai mis ton site dans mes favoris, je repasserai. J'essayerai de donner mon avis sur tes compos sur Jamendo également.
A+
PS : Tes samples C64 semblent avoir des soucis d'encodage, ça saute régulièrement.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Note de Grebz :
Il y a parfois des petits soucis de chargement des pages et des fichiers audio peuvent alors sauter... Dans ce cas, essayez de recharger la page ou de quitter puis de revenir. Désolé pour ce problème qui dépasse mes compétences de programmation !
