Author Archives: sara-garrard

Before parting (Robert Burns)

Posted by sara-garrard

And some actual music:) I think it’s been a clear month since I made any song settings. This is a quick recording of a Robert Burns lyric that might be called “The Silver Tassie”, with a new tune by me. My pronunciation is not… stable… I’m afraid, but shh.

Go fetch to me a pint o’ wine,
An’ fill it in a silver tassie;
That I may drink, before I go,
A service to my bonnie lassie.
The boat rocks at the pier o’ Leith,
Fu’ loud the wind blaws frae the ferry,
The ship rides by the Berwick-law,
And I maun leave my bonnie Mary.

The trumpets sound, the banners fly,
The glittering spears are rankèd ready;
The shouts o’ war are heard afar,
The battle closes thick and bloody;
But it’s no the roar o’ sea or shore
Wad mak me langer wish to tarry;
Nor shout o’ war that’s heard afar,
Its leaving thee, my bonnie Mary.

A new demos page

Posted by sara-garrard

I have a nice shiny new demos page! This is mainly intended to be a landing page and something I send to game developers in particular, but any random netizen is welcome to check it out – and to give me any feedback/thoughts, if you like.

I also need to update the main page and playlist with Shadows Infinity stuff…. too much website making this week though!

A Service of Celebration of Women’s Priestly Ministry

Posted by sara-garrard

I attended a service last Saturday marking 28 years since the first women were ordained in the Church of England, there in Bristol Cathedral. It was a moving and uplifting service and I was struck by the sense of history more than I was expecting…

Bristol University Schola Cantorum sang selections from my Missa Brevis as part of a very nicely chosen set of music: all the songs had either words or music or both by women. Which of course shouldn’t be a big deal but, you know, is. Extremely honoured to be heard alongside Hildegard of Bingen and my hero Catherine Winkworth!

This new plaque, listing the names of all the women ordained on 12th March 1994, was unveiled as part of the service
And here are some of them!

BEHOLD (some kind of crossover rpg fighting game… has a name now?)

Posted by sara-garrard

I mean, the name is ridiculous and I dunno if I’ll stick with it – but I probably should. Ridiculous is absolutely fine for this. My some kind of crossover rpg fighting game soundtrack is nearly ready. And we’re going with Shadows/Infinity: Battle Zone, I guess. (Capitalistion is not confirmed, but high level of specific punctuation seems quite in-genre. And it comes from Shadows of Fortune, my first imaginary game series from my teenage years, x Infinity Crystal and Infinity Crisis. Plus “battle” because it’s a fighting game.)

And now… a listening page!

Go here to hear previews of the 29 tracks!

— and let me know any issues with playing these on various devices as well as whatever general feedback 🙂 Getting back into my webpage making and figuring out audio (…did you know the silent mode/physical mute button on the iPhone works in a REALLY INCONSISTENT WAY? Yeah.)

These are pre any final mixing and mastering (and only excerpts anyway), but here’s the general idea! Do you like the track art? 😀 it’s mostly from artbreeder.

Some kind of rpg crossover fighting game soundtrack UPDATE

Posted by sara-garrard

Earlier post here.

I was putting all the tracks so far onto a playlist and iTunes, and it’s just tipped over the 1 hour mark, which is a nice mark, but aside from which… I think we’re just about if not completely done with this “OST”! …with the composing of it anyway, still in any case will have to go over everything and then do a little mastering and getting everything leveled and lined up and decide how looped I want to present things.

Here are some more clips of the tracks I’ve done since then! They’re a mix of battle themes and walking/story themes, often but not always based on Main Themes or World Map types.

set #3
  1. River Walk
  2. The Absolute — remastered version of the penultimate track on the ANGEL BIRD soundtrack
  3. Infinity Crystal Main Theme WINTER — twinkly wintery version of Infinity Crystal‘s main theme. The original of this was a more standard FFVII style slow orchestral piece — rather similar to:
  4. Shadows of Fortune II Main Theme — early 2000s, originally a midi, this piece has one of the more faithful to the original remakes

What is this? As I explained/vaguely alluded to:

Continue reading →

Between in God’s eternity @ St Mary Redcliffe Church

Posted by sara-garrard

Last night Bristol University Schola Cantorum was the guest choir at evensong at St Mary Redcliffe Church, and sung two parts from my piece Between in God’s eternity as the introit and anthem. I wrote this for the group a few years back, for a project specifically about sound and silence in a cathedral space. It wasn’t necessarily meant to fit the pattern of an Anglican service in this way, but that was always something I hoped would be possible, and the selections Emma Hornby made for this worked really well. “Bells”, sung at the start, uses the opening phrase “I will come into thy house” from “Psalm”, which is sung later.

Not sure how long this will stay up, but the service was livestreamed, so you can watch it online here:

https://vimeo.com/679053589

(11:43 and 50:03 for the choir pieces.)

Catherine Winkworth (et al) musical hymns 2022

Posted by sara-garrard

Flicking through the Lyra Eucharistica to sketch out things for the Catherine Winkworth songbook… actually most of the texts there aren’t Winkworth translations, but by a happy coincidence I ended up with one by her and two by another poet who I’ve actually set before as part of Between in God’s eternity.

Sketches below:

  1. Daily Bread (Adelaide Anne Procter)
  2. Oh how could I forget him (translation by Catherine Winkworth)
  3. I do not ask O Lord (Adelaide Anne Procter)

We had La La Bar – open mic musical theatre – the other night, where I played piano, and I think you might be able to hear a bit of influence of that style here. Not that “musical theatre” is a style exactly, but … styles, and the third one is very specifically wanting a full-on Sondheim accompaniment if I could sing and play it at the same time. So they’re actually pretty much not super-congregational-friendly in this case.

1.

Daily Bread

Give us our daily Bread,
O God, the Bread of Strength
For we have learnt to know
How weak we are at length :
As children we are weak,
As children must be fed ;
Give us Thy Grace, O Lord,
To be our daily Bread.

Continue reading →