Computers have had mixed success with music. It is certainly true that they have revolutionised the commercial music business, but much computerised music tends to sound computerised, and that isn't necessarily a Good Thing.

Nevertheless, some kinds of music do lend themselves well to computerisation (and, conversely, others don't). Music that depends to a large extent on the musician's interpretation of the piece for its effect has generally not enjoyed much success in the hands of a microprocessor. On the other hand, some pieces of music are highly mathematical in their structure. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was perhaps the finest musical exponent of mathematical forms that this world will ever see, and his music sits very comfortably indeed on modern microprocessors.

For the not very musical home enthusiast without that purist streak, however, composition programs are a real boon. Even with little or no playing skill, anyone with a composition program and a reasonable grasp of musical form can produce a reasonably interesting piece using nothing but time, energy, determination, and a computer.

This is just as well, since I have little or no playing skill. (I'm a good enough guitarist to fool non-musicians into thinking I'm a musician but, alas, I'm not good enough to fool real musicians.) Nevertheless, I quite enjoy composition, especially if I don't have to play the pieces I compose, just to hear what they sound like. Hence the importance of MIDI.

The two pieces you can download from this page are both original compositions of my own (although I think it's fair to say that the first of them is very definitely trad arr!). In each, every single note was moused into place, since I never quite mastered the art of recording directly from a MIDI keyboard. (My experiments yielded very unsatisfactory noises indeed. Sigh.) Please, please, please play them through decent kit. Typical PC sound cards aren't up to the job, and tend to make the music sound very tinny. A good MIDI keyboard is a much more realistic proposition.

The first piece, which is of course an arrangement of the classic "Greensleeves" melody, is really just an exploration of the kinds of things you can do with a familiar tune. Part of this adaptation dates back as far as 1989; the keyboard part was written at about that time, on, would you believe, an Amiga. The vast majority of the piece, however, was added in 1999, on weekday evenings whilst I was working far from home. I used Aegis Sonix for the original keyboard part, but the whole thing was put together using Cakewalk Home Studio.

The second piece, which was written in 2004, was originally intended to demonstrate key changes. It starts in D major but, if you listen reasonably carefully, you will detect a number of key changes, each of them lifting the key by three semitones. In due course, this strategy returns the key to D. This piece, too, was composed on Cakewalk Home Studio.