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Pipe Dream

Meaning:

An unrealistic hope or fantasy

The following album has been a labour of love and at times felt like a “Pipe Dream”, I started writing the tracks back in 2009, and the songs are mainly inspired by my honeymoon to Thailand 12 years ago. Originally these songs were written for the sax (as a sax player) but I never really recorded the tracks and the ones I did never had a sound that suited the songs. Then in June 2013 I felt that these tracks had laid doormat long enough and should see the light of day. I set about re-recording the ones I had already done, re-writing and re-laying out the songs I hadn’t, recording them with a sound that suited the tracks, for this I chose an instrument I had always liked the sound of and one which gave the right feel to the tracks (the flute).

The album doesn’t feature a single saxophone as a lead instrument which may seem odd (as a sax player) but instead I recorded the album using an electronic wind instrument which is played in the same manner as a sax so I guess loosely this is still a sax album.

All lead instruments were played on a Casio DH-800 digital horn playing an Apple Logic EXS Bansuri Flute patch, the wonderfully expressive Orangetree Samples Passion Flute patch, the Garratian Solo Violin Patch, AMG “Kick [*****] Brass” trumpet patch and other Orangetree Samples virtual instruments (steel string guitar and the rosewood grand piano) and AAS Strum Electric. The album was composed using PG music Band in a Box, recorded and mixed in Apple’s Logic Studio Pro 9 digital audio workstation software, mastered in Apple’s Logic Pro9 and Waveburner mastering software and features PG music realtracks, realdrums and various other software instruments from various vendors.

This is an album about love, hope, peace and tranquillity it borders on many styles, Smooth jazz, soul, rock, pop, ethnic and new age and mixes a lot of ethnic instruments, Sitar, Bansuri, Steel Drums, Bongos and the kalimba. Songs have simple pretty melodies and there is a mixture of up tempo uplifting songs and slow brooding tracks. All songs whilst having a similar theme running through them are individual but work well in harmony with each other. The fusion of styles helps to give that separation between songs but the common instrument set helps to marry them up. It has been a lot of fun to write, record, produce and mix and master this project; I hope it shows what can be achieved with a lot of hard work, some great utilities, technology and a little talent.

Pipe Dreams

From Band in a Box point of view various styles were used, some tracks are melodist for some parts some chord progressions and solos added by Band in a Box. Some songs started as melodist tracks then underwent major changes, all tracks with exception of Dragon Boat Ride have the lead and some solos played in by wind controller, Dragon Boat is completely sequenced.

If anybody wants to know more about how each track was created/styles used etc. please let me know.

I hope you like this album I’m very proud of it and it’s nice to finally turn this “Pipe Dream” in to reality.

Cheers
Adrian

I listened to parts of the first 5 tracks.

I liked #4 quite a bit. nice things going on in there.

Putting together an album is a job.... so many decisions to make and if you're like me, I'm never really satisfied with a song's mix....

congrats on the labor of love

Thanks for the listen

Yes totaly agree, I have had to draw a line under this one otherwise I was in danger of CTD "Compulsive Tweaking Disorder".

Hi Adrian,

congrats on your album.
It's a little too much flute. I would have expected at least one sax track. Now I don't know how you sound in real.
I enjoyed it though.

Guenter

Hi Adrian !:))

A very nice album indeed !
There´s a lot of really good
songs on it, my favourite
being Summer Love !!!:))
You would not happen to
have any lyrics written to
any of the songs, do you ?

In any case, a very fine
album !:))

Cheers
Dani

Thanks for the listen and nice comments. Having not picked the sax up for nearly two years when I started work again on this project I was supprised I could still gat a note out of the sax however my intonation was well off so for this project the sax was put away and the wind controller used.

It has however spurred me on to get back my sax chops.

Hi Dani

Thanks for listening and the nice comments. The songs on the album were written as instrumental although a couple were written round lyrical ideas.

One Shining Light and Pipe Dreams being the two however I dont have full lyrics to them just a few lines here and there that drove the melody.

Cheers
Adrian