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Music I made in the 80’s

These are my very first compositions, starting from 1984. Of course, by the time I first had an opportunity to play with recording in 1988, I had no equipment, no real keyboard skills, and no idea what I was doing. Still, I figured out some chords and did some productive experimenting with arrangements - by way of Lon’s (rapidly antiquated) computer setup ‒ a quasi-286 PC with an Adlib sound card and Visual Composer software. This is the pre-SoundBlaster days, believe it or not.

Anyone need music for a video game? In the late ’90’s I managed to salvage these from an already ten-year-old 5 1/4” floppy and convert the obsolete .ROL files to MIDI files.

listen to page - queue all songs on this page.

gbOne 1:24 ~983kb MP3
Ah yes, back in the days before songs had names. This is the first lame melody which I plucked out after school one day. It haunted me until I could finally lay it to rest here after adding some supporting lame instrumentation. Please enquire about video game licensing.
Listen. Fraunhofer VBR ProMP3.

gbTwo 1:58 ~976kb MP3
This one’s kind of perty. What it lacks in composition, it makes up for in redundancy. Remind me to transfer a less mucky copy soon.
Listen. Fraunhofer VBR ProMP3.

gbThree - Even Now 1:11 ~660kb MP3
I just laid this down to get it out of my head. There are words somewhere on a scrap of paper that I haven’t burned yet. This went in quite a different direction in the later years, as you can hear in that other keyboard “solo” version.
Listen. Fraunhofer VBR ProMP3.

gbFour (unnamed Fanfare - versions A & B) 1:45 ~921kb MP3
Just a little fanfare-type thing I stumbled upon while playing with intervals. As you can hear I tried to expound upon it with only a little success. Also found in the solo area of this site.
Listen. Fraunhofer VBR ProMP3.

gbFive 0:51 ~356kb MP3
Another potential video game. I’m not sure I could remember how to play this one any more, but luckily I can peek at the MIDI file and pretend I never forgot.
Listen. Fraunhofer VBR ProMP3.

gbSix (version A) 0:54 ~538kb MP3
I gotta do something with this. I like it. Maybe these days I could go back and have more success finishing it.
Listen. Fraunhofer VBR ProMP3.

gbSix (version B) 0:55 ~555kb MP3
See, I tried to mix it up and now I must live with this banjo atrocity.
Listen. Fraunhofer VBR ProMP3.

gbSeven (genesong) 1:56 ~1.34mb MP3
My first saga masterpiece. I desperately tried to name it, to no avail. Too bad this is so stuck in the 80’s; I bet I could take this further now.
Listen. Fraunhofer VBR ProMP3.

gbEight 0:49 ~385kb MP3
After a taste of drama-in-orchestration, I could never again avoid the temptation. Really this is just a snippet as I had planned a whole opera around this one. Unfortunately it just resolves itself so well that I could add no more. :(
Listen. Fraunhofer VBR ProMP3.

Mystery (version A) 1:24 ~983kb MP3
This one isn’t technically in the same genre. I believe I tried to sequence this on the computer, but using it to drive Lon’s Kawai K1 synthesizer, with patches I tweaked out specifically for this. This is the first time I feel I truly came up with real chord changes. ...Oh yeah. In its other incarnation (solo page) this song is one of my best full piano pieces. Here it’s kind of synthesizery. It will live again...
Listen. Fraunhofer VBR ProMP3.

listen to page - queue all songs on this page.
listen to all - queue all pieces.
Note: The variable bitrate makes some players incorrectly list these songs as shorter, eg: about half their actual lengths.

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