Music

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Music - The Art Of Plinky-Plonk Noise

The music on these pages contains some Plinky-Plonk Noise. This is music written on computer; not played on instruments. I wrote them using some free Sound Studio Evolution Gold software; writing the notes on musical staves, using a lot of guesswork involving known ways to build up chords (for example: D F# A for a D Major, or A C E G for an A Minor 7th). I do not claim to be a musician - I can strum a guitar badly. If something sounded 'right', I would expand it. If it didn't sound 'right', I might still use it. Some people might say none of it sounded 'right'.

There are one or two tunes that I think sound all right...

Most of these Plinky-Plonk Noises last between two and three minutes long and are saved in mp3 format, so are roughly two to three MBytes in size - which shouldn't take too long for them to load.

Sound Studio Evolution Gold

I spent many happy hours, at perhaps not the happiest point in my life, on Sound Studio Evolution Gold, writing hours and hours of Plinky-Plonk Noise (as it became to be called). The software was free - off one of those CDs that are stuck to the inside cover of a Computer World (or some such) magazine; which is surprising really, as I didn’t buy those magazines. This software enabled music to be written, on a screen with musical staves or piano rolls, that could be output to different musical voices (piano, guitar, drums) and mixed together to be output as MIDI files or recorded as WAV files.

I ran the software on a Windows 95 machine that someone had built for me out of left over motherboard, hard drive and cables they had, and a sturdy pc case that they had found, and to which I had subsequently added a sound card, at the exorbitant price of £15 - which probably represented a week and a half’s food money for me at that (not so happy) time. (One of the best £15 I have ever spent.)

I can play the guitar to a limited degree: Jimmi Hendrix would have been proud of the number of hours I had put in practising guitar, but would have been biting his guitar strings in anguish at the tortured sound that came from my playing (I had been practising to play the guitar badly, you see), so my musical skills came from two years of Music ‘O’ level, during which the music teacher was absent for nine months and at the end of which I failed (the only exam I did fail). As a consequence of this my knowledge of musical skills are limited.

In the evenings, after work, and during the week-ends, I would apply my limited knowledge of musical construction to the stave input screen of this software, building up chord and note progressions through the simple rules of ‘Western music’ of one: three : five for chord structures (for example: the notes C E G for C major or A C# E for A major or A C E G for A minor 7th. In most cases this guesswork approach seemed to work, although some of the results tended to be repetitive.

Dora

SwimFish1

Whitsand bay

Thank-you For Purchasing This Product

Ned Rag (Ragtime)

In the garden, Ned's wife nags,
So Ned ...rags.

Wind Clock

Through the trees we wind;
Leaving life behind.
Thoughtlessly, we sinned;
Snapped the trees like wind.

A Collection Of 78s

Colonel Bogey

Washington Post

The Hymn That I Sang As A Boy

Guitar Noodling By 'Bad Fingered' Pete

I can play the guitar to a limited degree: Jimmi Hendrix would have been proud of the number of hours I had put in practising guitar, but would have been biting his guitar strings in anguish at the tortured sound that came from my playing. I had been practising to play the guitar badly, you see, and I have perfected that style of playing.

A Gentle Stroll Down The Frets

See also:

• Further Plinky-Plonk Noise