Eclipse - By Jeremy Squires and John Stone


This page is dedicated to a song I wrote with Jeremy Squires for our electronic music class back in 1992. Although we were never able to finish the song, it is something that I'm very proud of and will always remember. The song is special to me because it brings back a lot of fond memories from years gone by. I remember staying up all night long a couple of nights during "dead week" working on this song with Jeremy, despite the many exams both of us still had to study for.

There are two versions of our song, the original one that we did together, essentially all night long one evening, and the version Jeremy did for his CD "More than words". The reason that there are two versions, is that the original work we did, which was stored on a computer in the electronic music lab, was lost via deletion by a third party. The original work was done using nine synthesizers, and it used to take us almost an hour of custom wiring and setup in preperation for work on our song. It was a MIDI nightmare to say the least *smile*.

The original, rescued from a dying tape recording...

Jeremy's recording from his "More Than Words" CD

Here's a list of the synthesizers used, maybe someday I'll even figure out which patches we used.. Someday I'd love to redo this with the right gear. There was an entire section of this song that I still remember that we never finished enough of to actually record :-)

  Alesis QuadraVerb+  reverb+effects
  Yamaha ???          reverb+effects

  Alesis D-4          susp cymbals

  E-Mu Emulator       Oboe melody, Tympani 
 
  Ensoniq Mirage      bell tree, bassy synth near end 

  Kawai K1r           airy synth pads, harder synth sound at the end

  Korg Digital Piano  piano

  Roland JX-8P        string synth pads /w aftertouch at beginning and end

  Roland MKS-50       thick synth pads, especially /w aftertouch 
                      towards the end

  Roland D-50         pluck sounds, 5ths, pitch bent bird cry sort of sound

  Yamaha SY-77        bass line at the beginning, washy synth sounds, 
                      bass with bite at the end.

Here's what Jeremy wrote about our song in the liner notes to his CD, More Than Words.

  ECLIPSE  

  Written by JEREMY and John Stone 

  I wish we could have finished this one.
  This actually is not the original 
  version.  There was a magic in the 
  studio that night.... Wires and cables 
  strung across the room in a tangled 
  mess, blinking red and green lights of 
  the keyboards, and only the glow of a 
  computer monitor to work from.....  Two
  minds working in complete sync.
  
  The original sequence, however, was 
  lost along with sounds, and a creative
  effort that can never be recreated.

  Only two cheap tape recordings exist 
  of the original version.

  I did the best I could with what I had.