Ambient melodies and rhythmic patterns for electronic and sampled orchestra. Meditative, joyful, sad, strange and funny music from the composer for Bob and Margaret.

15 MP3 Songs
ELECTRONIC: Ambient, NEW AGE: Neo-Classical

Show all album songs: Strange Rain Songs


Details:
STRANGE RAIN, like Patrick's CD BLUE NIGHT, features entirely electronic music, but unlike BLUE NIGHT, with its mainly acoustic-like instrumental sounds, STRANGE RAIN is much more an "electronic" adventure, and is both a departure, and a return to earlier explorations.

Spinning opens the album with fluid rhythms and melodies as it shifts and flows through multiple episodes, and leads to the dream-like Strange Rain, which was created from processed vocal sounds layered with synth washes. Next is Whispers, a slow incantation for solo synth flute and drones. These first three pieces form a 17 minute long suite of other-worldly space music, incorporating trance and drone elements, with detailed textures and the classically influenced sense of melody and structure typical of Patrick's music.

Spring changes the mood with a rapidly whirling burst of bells, flutes and hammer dulcimer samples, and introduces And Did Those Feet?, the title of which is taken from the first line of William Blake's poem Jerusalem. Built over a loopy hammer dulcimer pattern this piece features ecstatic solos using the sounds of pan drums, and flute.

Black Moon also uses trance movements, with bell sounds underpinning brass and woodwind melodies, and a deep and ever shifting watery background texture, creating a mood at once medieval yet futuristic.

Patrick is also well known as a composer of music for animations, and the next section of STRANGE RAIN features a selection of miniatures influenced by this work.

First is the peculiar reggae-esque Wobblebirds, then the entirely silly Snoke, which may be taking place inside the skull of a witless dupe, and Slammit,which features a rhythmic groove of slamming doors coupled with unlikely harpsichord filigree.

Monkshood, with its eerie manipulated voices, DarkTrain 's claustrophobic whirrs and clatters,and the buzzing bugs and wonky 15/7 drum beat of Zuttze form a moody soundscape.

Next is Holes In My Socks , a brief rocker for two pianos which sets up the angular, eccentric pyrotechnics of Angry Hobbits, for electric bass, bassoon, mutant vacuum-cleaner and mallets.

The album concludes with Cedar Wind, a peaceful meditation on the passage of time and loss, featuring slowly unwinding melodies for voice and woodwind sounds. It starts with the wind rising in the forest, and ends with the breathing of unknown and invisible worlds.


Electronic Musician Profile
Tunesmith

Patrick Godfrey forges an ambient new world

By Diane Lowery

Patrick Godfrey has gone from creating pieces using a grand piano, a double-manual harpsichord, and a marimba to working with a pile of black boxes, computer equipment, and cables. Although he admits all this gear drives him crazy, it lets him combine improvisation, composition, and musical notation so that everything is at hand and in his control. For Godfrey, the boxes have become his instruments, allowing him to integrate the composing and recording processes.

Godfrey has composed scores for television, film, and animation, including the Academy Award-winning short, Bob's Birthday. With his CD, Strange Rain, Godfrey strove to combine melodic, ambient, trance-like instrumentals and lively, humorous, cartoonish pieces to demonstrate a wide range of musical styles.

"I sometimes use pieces that I created several years ago, such as with the song 'Black Moon'", Godfrey says. "I had created a shifting, irregular rhythm pattern, and I waited until I found the right bell sounds to use with it. I added an electric-bass part that gently shifts across the rhythm. Then I improvised a solo with a trombone sound and a more lyrical melody with an English-horn sound. I filled in the background with some wet, splashy electronic cymbals. I wanted to keep the trance quality of the original pattern intact while adding long, winding melodies that create a deep, constantly changing background. It was a process of adding and subtracting until the whole seemed in balance."

Godfrey creates most of his work on a Macintosh IIci and sequences with MOTU's Digital Performer. His sound modules include a Roland JV-1080 and JD-990 and a Kurzweil K2000R, but he still uses an old Yamaha KX88 controller for sketching out ideas.

"I use Digital Performer to build up lots of raw material," he says. "I can revisit sequences, find a part I like, then chop it out, and extend it to create a pattern. Any part of any piece can become the seed for a complete composition. For example, 'Spinning' started with an exploration of very fast, repeated note patterns."

However, Godfrey found that the insistent quality of the repeated notes did not give him the feel he wanted. So he cut out the "performed" notes that repeated and used a delay to re-create the pattern with a softer, spacier feeling. "This small segment became the basis for a bed to which I added melodies," he explains. "After that, I went back to the bed, and I added and took out guitars, bass, and other sounds and instruments to help propel the song in its new, softer direction."

For many musicians, making the switch from acoustic instruments to electronic gear can be tough, but the drastic change can open up a wealth of creative possibilities. "Just as it took a great deal of study and practice to become capable of real spontaneity at the piano," says Godfrey, "it took serious labor to organize my MIDI studio to the point that I feel the same sense of connection between playing and composing. Music is the thought behind the sound. Art isn't about tools and technique but about ideas."

Patrick Godfrey Bio

Born in Toronto, Patrick began playing piano for church dances in 1960 at age 12. Early influences were Fats Domino,Henry Mancini, Leonard Bernstein and JS Bach. He played and sang in a number of Toronto rock bands, including the Omegas, The Diplomats, and RCA recording artists Simon Caine. His performances led to session work with many well known Canadian musicians including Bruce Cockburn, Murray McLaughlan, Raffi, Marc Jordan, Shirley Eikhard, Ben Mink, Daniel Lanois, Ken Whiteley, David Essig, Fraser and Debolt and Mendelson Joe.

His work with singer Len Udow took him to Winnipeg one Summer around 1970, where he met Richard Condie and wrote the music for Richard's first animation, "Oh Sure". So began a friendship which continues today; Patrick has scored all of Richard's animations including the Academy Award nominated classics The Big Snit and La Salla and most recently, Etudes and Impromptus.

Patrick has worked with many other animators, including David Fine and Alison Snowden for whom he scored the Oscar winner Bob's Birthday and all 52 episodes of the resulting TV series Bob and Margaret, seen around the world. There are links to many of these animations from www.apparitionmusic.com/animations.html.

Patrick has been in demand as a producer; he created the evocative soundscapes and was associate producer on the million-selling Classical Kids productions Mr. Bach Comes To Call, Mozart's Magic Fantasy, and Beethoven Lives Upstairs, and he has produced albums featuring artists such as Holly Cole, The Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, The Lafayette String Quartet, and Michael Jones.

Patrick's personal recording career to date includes his most recent release Still Life Still, 8 improvisations recorded on his new Yamaha S6 grand piano.

Blue Night, described by Heartsong Review as ..."electronic music at it's best...captivating! " and Strange Rain were released in 1995 and 1996.

Critics greeted his first album, Ancient Ships...as "the surfacing of a major talent", possessing "an enormous sense of calm and joy". Keyboard noted the music's "clarity and grace". Released in 1980, Ancient Ships is now available on CD.

Released in 1982, Downbeat gave Bells Of Earth four stars, Cadence called it "the most distinctive solo piano LP of the previous two years" and The Montreal Gazette described it as..." a refuge in troubled times".

Of 1985's Small Circus, The Globe and Mail said "The harpsichord pieces team with ideas and roll along with a wonderful kinetic sort of energy; the instrument has never been as funky....".

Of his solo piano concert at The Montreal International Jazz Festival, The Montreal Gazette wrote..."positively spiritual...the stunning material he played to an awe-struck crowd ranged freely from Bach to boogie, with flat-out jazz, romance and the hypnotic music of the East filling in the spaces in between...he kept the audience in mute wonder with the delicate beauty of his melodies, superhuman left hand patterns, and a right that moved with the delicacy of a butterfly in flight."

Patrick continues to perform in concert and teaches improvisation, composition and song writing at the Victoria Conservatory of Music, Victoria BC.

In concert he plays a mix of piano music both composed and improvised, and songs, mostly originals, with some favorites ranging from George Gershwin and Harold Arlen to Bruce Cockburn and the Beatles.