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Peter Smith click on picture

the artist Music has always been important in my life, so has Nature. My dad, a free-time violin-player himself, taught me how to play the recorder; when I was nine years old, we got a piano, and I took classes in piano-playing. As a family we lived close to a beautiful forest, and not far away from the beach, with nice dunes-landscapes; my dad took us to the forest and the dunes frequently, and taught us more than by words only. With mom we often went to the beach and had a wonderful time there, playing with the sand and the waves, looking for shells and other gifts from the sea. Many years later, I once listened to a piece of music called ‘Music Mantra’. I was convinced that the sound I heard came from an real flute, but it turned out to be a synthesizer. Not much later my acoustic piano was sold, and in time I was able to create songs with many ‘instruments’ instead of only one. Compositions by Larkin, Kitaro, Aeoliah, Vangelis and others inspired me in finding my own way of creating music with synths, especially by combining music with sounds of nature. Music and Nature: sometimes we find ourselves in them, longing for our true nature . . .

unicorner-studio click on picture

the making Normally, when I am creating a song, I have no preliminary plan: most of the time I use a sound that I ‘incidently’ find in one of the synths, and ‘play around with it’; then, sometimes there ‘evolves’ a melody that I like; I will use this melody as a start to build a part of the song. Then I listen to this theme, listen to it again and again, and sometimes I ‘hear’ a second sound, instrumental, a voice or some sound from nature that seems to be nicely in tune with the original sound. I search for it and check whether they match with each other. And so, this process goes on and on . . . The name of a song comes up in time, and to me it reflects the character of the song, and maybe its message. I do hope some songs will touch you as much as they touched me while I was creating them. The set-up I use: Korg-M3R, Kurzweil-K2500R, Yamaha-SY85, Roland Piano- 4500S and a PowerBook G4 with Cubase; for recording sounds in nature: Sharp MD- recorder MT831H with Soundman OKM-II microphones, recently replaced by an outdoor-recorder: the Olympus SL-10.

Plessur-river, Switzerland click on picture

the music Most of the time I compose music because I like to. People often tell me they experience relaxation while listening to this music. There is a healing quality in some songs as well. In many songs you hear sounds from nature: birds, dolphins, whales, babbling water, the surf, a river, melting ice, the wind in the trees, thunderstorm, fire, etc. In most songs there are easy-listening melodies. Nearly all songs are instrumental, in only two you hear the voice of a real singer: Ellen Pieterse features in Clarity (CD Song of Nature), in In My Heart (CD Gratitude) and in Harmony (CD Awakening). In two or three songs I used themes from famous composers like Bach and Chopin.

Ellen Pieterse click on picture for website

Challenge

the labels The pictures I use for the CD-labels were created by Christina by a special technique, called encousting. Information about this technique you will find on the art-pages. To create the labels itself I use the program Discus; go to the links-page for more information.

Christina click on picture for art-page