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Cruvsa Dristrop

8/18/2019

4 Comments

 
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"Cruvsa Dristrop" is an album of pieces ("songs") created between mid July and mid August 2019 using Mixcraft and Soundplant programs on a Lenovo computer.  The titles of the album and the songs are nonsense words that I adapted from surrealist poems that I wrote.  They are meaningless and are meant only to identify the tracks.  The basic tracks are a combination of prefabricated public domain loops (drums and instrument phrases, mostly edited and recombined) and original elements using virtual (sampled) instruments in Mixcraft.  Soundplant was used to add sampled elements such as prepared piano, glitch electronics, orchestral brass, and female voice (sliced and recombined individual phonemes from an English phrase tutorial).

​In this album I spent much more time than I usually do fine-tuning, adjusting, editing, and polishing the tracks.  Now that I am retired from a day-to-day job that I had I have much more free time to work on music.

The front cover image is four lines of text that read Tom/Furgas/Cruvsa/Dristrop, typed using the "Bookshelf Symbol 7" font in the GIMP program I used to create the covers.

The album is free to be downloaded and burned to CD (which I recommend to make listening more convenient).
tom_furgas_-_cruvsa_dristrop_-_front_cover.jpg
File Size: 46 kb
File Type: jpg
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tom_furgas_-_cruvsa_dristrop_-_rear_cover.jpg
File Size: 65 kb
File Type: jpg
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Below, stream each track in 192 kbps MP3, and Download WAV files.
01. Erubberett
01_erubberett.wav
File Size: 39249 kb
File Type: wav
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02. Filkoan Movis
02_filkoan_movis.wav
File Size: 35922 kb
File Type: wav
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03. Polt
03_polt.wav
File Size: 35280 kb
File Type: wav
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04. Mopsin Duzii
04_mopsin_duzii.wav
File Size: 28553 kb
File Type: wav
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05. Vyllamala
05_vyliamala.wav
File Size: 34353 kb
File Type: wav
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05_vyliamala.wav
File Size: 34353 kb
File Type: wav
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06. Ipsyki Neppille
06_ipsyki_neppille.wav
File Size: 36938 kb
File Type: wav
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07. Vagiupeinen
07_vagiupeinen.wav
File Size: 39391 kb
File Type: wav
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08. Vykle Effsitt
08_vykle_effsitt.wav
File Size: 37044 kb
File Type: wav
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09. Bilwi Whele
09_bilwi_whele.wav
File Size: 34371 kb
File Type: wav
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10. Scoararti Obporr
10_scoararti_obporr.wav
File Size: 24433 kb
File Type: wav
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11. Bymybbe Tupp
11_bymybbe_tupp.wav
File Size: 38859 kb
File Type: wav
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12. Rht Tumbwhot
12_rht_tumbwhot.wav
File Size: 37144 kb
File Type: wav
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4 Comments

Concerto For Prepared Piano And Strings

4/8/2019

7 Comments

 
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listen in streaming audio to 320 kbps MP3
download 196 MB WAV file
concerto_for_prepared_piano_and_strings.wav
File Size: 196156 kb
File Type: wav
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The music is made up of sampled acoustic instruments performed with Soundplant; various solo strings performed by members of the Chicago Symphony (multiplied by overlapping performances and layering three of those performances with Mixcraft 7) and a performance of a sample set of prepared piano sounds. The prepared piano sounds are those created by John Cage for his work "Sonatas And Interludes", recorded and packaged by Big Fish Audio.  I paid $100 for the sample set, and it was one of the best investments in musical material that I have ever made.
7 Comments

Trio For Flute, Guitar, and Cello

12/4/2018

4 Comments

 
This trio was also composed, recorded, and mixed down with my Mixcraft programs. As with the other pieces that appear on this EC page it uses sampled instrument sounds. This piece was done with the intention of being as melodic and tonal as possible. Mostly, it is modal, with various shifts in mode and tonality, but avoiding atonal and abrupt effects. Done largely as a respite from the more challenging atonal and disjunct pieces I'd been doing. But I definitely wanted to avoid the usual, boring "New Wave" sound that would be normally associated with "pretty" tonal music with this instrument combination.
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trio_for_flute_guitar_and_cello.mp3
File Size: 21597 kb
File Type: mp3
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4 Comments

Septet For Flute, Alto Sax, Percussion, and String Quartet

12/2/2018

3 Comments

 
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This piece was composed and recorded with Mixcraft Pro Studio 6 and mixed down with Mixcraft 7. All sounds are those of sampled, "virtual", instruments.  This piece was created by composing short sections of music of different tempos and time signatures, directly abutted to each other, mixed and matched with no particular organization other than the desire to make the transitions as abrupt as possible. Ken Clinger has likened this piece to a View Master or a slide show, with the individual segments changing unexpectedly. Many segments reoccur, altered or unaltered, as the piece progresses. Generally tonal, but with many atonal elements, again with the emphasis on unexpected changes and shifts of perspective.
septet_for_flute_alto_sax_percussion_and_string_quartet.mp3
File Size: 22148 kb
File Type: mp3
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3 Comments

Orchestra Piece 2018

11/30/2018

15 Comments

 
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tom_furgas-orchestra_piece_2018.wav
File Size: 165110 kb
File Type: wav
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"Orchestra Piece 2018" was composed and recorded with Mixcraft Pro Studio 6 and mixed down with Mixcraft 7. It was composed with "virtual" (sampled) instrument sounds, all done on the computer. Scored for flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, trombones, percussion, and strings. My goal with this piece was to create a work that was as idiomatically "orchestral" as possible using sampled instruments. With sampled instruments it is easy to do a lot of things that a "real" orchestra would never do, and I wanted to avoid that. It required a lot of study and understanding of the way the various sections of the orchestra interact, and kinds of melodic contours and voicings that one hears in orchestral pieces. For example, I avoided "quantizing" the rhythms which would have made them so tight they they'd sound like they were done on a computer.  Some of the entrances of choirs of instruments are staggered slightly, as is usually heard in even the most tightly rehearsed ensembles. The harmonically astringent and rhythmically disjunct sound of my work was inspired by the atonal "classical" music of the post-war period (late 1940's onward).
15 Comments
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    Tom Furgas

    Born in Youngstown, Ohio
    in 1954.

    Piano lessons beginning
    at age 5.

    Started composing
    at age 12.

    Made tapes on a portable cassette 
    machine starting
    ​in 1969.

    Started home-taping seriously in 1983.

    Have sold and traded tapes and, later, CD's since then. 

    Musical 
    interests:
    contemporary classical, free improvisation,  electronic

    music both popular and "classical", noise, audio collage, experimental
    music of all kinds.  Have done many collaborations by mail and electronic media.

    E-mail

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