Couple more hymns

Posted by sara-garrard

A few more hymns, not by Winkworth —

“God of mercy, God of grace”
By Henry Francis Lyte
GOD of mercy, God of grace,
Show the brightness of Thy face:
Shine upon us, Saviour, shine;
Fill Thy Church with light divine;
And Thy saving health extend,
Unto earth’s remotest end.

Let the people praise Thee, Lord;
Be by all that live adored;
Let the nations shout and sing
Glory to their Saviour King;
At Thy feet their tributes pay,
And Thy holy will obey.
 
Let the people praise Thee, Lord,
Earth shall then her fruits afford;
God to man His blessing give;
Man to God devoted live;
All below, and all above,
One in joy and light and love.
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Hello, Hildegard

Posted by sara-garrard

After recently building music boxes, taking battle music back to its Vivaldi roots, playing ukulele to an appreciative and sleepy dog, experimenting with AI animation to make a fake virtual choir, and doing some more ff7 soundfont versions, including of my own music, I remember I missed actually writing for choir/voices and try to get back to that…  Of course it’s tricky at the moment especially if I want things I can share and have listened to, but, eh, never used to stop me.

The last couple days just been gently getting back into things fairly impulsively, using some words by Hildegard of Bingen and seeing what I came up with.  (Just the words and not the chant tunes I know…… controversial….)

I also made some extremely reverby recordings, to pretend I am sixteen people in a cathedral.

These are so far for slightly different vocal groupings, unless singers are prepared to be rather flexible. For the second one I attempted what I remember of “Old German Latin” from singing with Schola Cantorum.  For the first, just some vague church Latin….. (and I said “beata” instead of “beati”, making it grammatically nonsensical, oops.)

Vos flores rosarum,
qui in effusione sanguinis vestri
beati estis
You buds of roses,
who in the shedding of your blood
are blessed
O mirum admirandum,
quod absconsa forma praecellit,
ardua in honesta statura,
ubi vivens altitudo
profert mystica.
 
Unde, o Disibode,
surges in fine,
succurrente flore
omnium ramorum mundi,
ut primum surrexisti.
O wonder, O how wondrous!
A hidden form, so hard, so high, so steep,
surpasses in its lofty honor—
where Living Height itself
reveals the mysteries.
 
And so, O Disibod,
you shall arise at the end of time
as first you rose—
the flower of all the branches
of the world
comes to your aid.

trans. Nathaniel Campbell

INFINITY CRISIS: First listen

Posted by sara-garrard

I was just looking up when I did the Infinity Crystal soundtrack last year — it was a little later in Spring. Which is just as well because this new sequel/prequel/spinoff project I have in mind might take a little longer than that did… but it’s hopefully coming sometime… soon… this Spring?

Another RPG soundtrack (that I plan to put on itch.io as well as bandcamp and streaming etc, so people can use it in their games), this time with a slightly different sound and style. Something a little more “action” and also with more fancy/realistic sounds …. but mainly …. I had the idea to do a score that included:

  1. taiko drums
  2. electric cello

And I’m really pleased how well that’s actually working! Taiko (..and though I’m also looking into the genre and music for real on the side, I’m not writing accurate or drum-only music here; if it’s slightly more in the realms of reality than most of what’s written with like EPIC TRAILER TAIKOS!!!11 that’s good though) broadened into including a few more traditional Japanese instruments (making up something like the ensemble Japan Marvelous Drummers uses for softer numbers). And electric cello brought a general rock band with it, so I also want to feature massive fun electric guitars for this kind of mood.

Field Running
‘Private Words’
‘Rush’ – one of the battle tracks
No title yet, but uses the background countermelody from Private Words and slightly unites the two sides/styles.
Theme: ‘Now is the cherry in blossom’ (ensemble version)

Now is the cherry I actually wrote first as a song! and have recorded and played a couple ways. it’s gonna be a recurring theme in this game and go with some of the relationships/characters 🙂

Spotify

Posted by sara-garrard

A few of my albums are up on Spotify now! go here to listen & follow. At the moment we have one album of piano and one of game music, which I guess is a pretty representative sample.

Sorry for the lack of updates here – I have been posting videos on youtube, and also working on a couple of other projects still in progress…

Angel Bird: Space Combat

Posted by sara-garrard

So, remember “aerial combat” one of the midi tracks I did last week? I’ve made this a whole thing, a whole mini soundtrack thing.

It’s inspired in a general way (and name-wise!) by Keiki Kobayashi’s Ace Combat soundtracks which I hear are really really good, but I’ve so far only listened to one track of them, and the track he did for FFVII:R, The Valkyrie. Then I wrote “The Absolute”, from this soundtrack, decided this was a fighter pilot/space shooter thing and wrote the rest. So I’m not sure how similar Space Combat is to Ace Combat, but…

Mainly, it’s all about the 1990s midi sounds 😀

Project page here.

The Trust of the Tried (Winkworth)

Posted by sara-garrard

Words by Paul Gerhardt, translated by Catherine Winkworth.

To God’s all-gracious heart and mind
My heart and mind I yield;
In seeming loss my gain I find,
In death, life stands revealed.
I am His own whose glorious throne
In highest heaven is set;
Beneath His stroke or sorrow’s yoke
His heart upholds me yet.

If happy sunshine be Thy gift,
With joy I take it, Lord;
If o’er dark stormy seas I drift,
I hear Thy guiding word;
If lengthened life, with blessings rife,
Before my feet be spread,
So Thou my Guide wilt still abide,
With joy that path I tread.

But must I walk the vale of death
Through sad and sunless ways,
I pass along in quiet faith,
Thy glance my fear allays;
Through the dark land my Shepherd’s hand
Leads to an end so bright,
That I shall there with praise declare
That all God’s ways are right!
Yes I shall there with praise declare
That all God’s ways are right!