Music

On this page I present some music that I have written in the past.

It all started when I was a 10-year old boy. After having played the blockflute for two years I started taking piano lessons. I had piano lessons for eight years. During these years, I liked to compose my own songs.

Later, in the early 1990′s, I was an MSX fanatic. One day I met Ruud van Gestel and Vincent van der Meer. All three of us liked creating music using a synthesizer or keyboard. Together we made several music editors for the MSX computer and we used these programs to create music ourselves.

Around 1994, Ruud and I started working on a serious MIDI sequencer for the MSX. We got quite far: our sequencer was able to play and record standard MIDI files. That was not bad for a 3.5 MHz machine! (Okay, I had to write my own multitasking operating system on the MSX, but it worked fine.) Unfortunally all digital copies of this program were lost, but Ruud recently informed me that he still had a printed copy of the source code…

After 1994, due to my computer science study, I didn’t spend time on my MSX anymore. In 1995 I even sold it. After a few years I bought a digital piano and used that to create music, using a MIDI sequencer on a PC.

Here are a few songs that I have composed myself. You may use these songs for your own purposes. If you intend to make it available to a bigger audience (e.g., on radio, TV or as part of a movie or game you make yourself), I would be happy if you just notify me about this and mention me as the composer.

The songs are available as mp3 files. If you would like to have the original MIDI files, then please send an e-mail.

augustus99.mp3

This is the first song I composed after I bought the Roland JV-1010 sound module. I wanted to experiment with its sounds.

bridge.mp3

This song was originally the bridge of another song. I liked the bridge much better than the rest of the song, so I made it a separate song. The original song was made somewhere around 1993 on my MSX. I created this bridge in 2003.

campfire.mp3

This song was composed as a song to be played on a guitar at a campfire.

december1999.mp3

This song was composed in december 1999. It lacks a melody. Nevertheless, it can be used as background music.

lucky_ducky_egbert.mp3

This honkey-tonk music somehow made me think of a tottering duck. Don’t ask me why, but that is how it got its name.

mei1998.mp3

I created this song a few days before a volleyball tournament that a few friends and I organised for Tamar. At that moment I had a good feeling about the tournament and I turned that feeling into this song.

nieuw1.mp3

This is one of the first songs I created on the PC. I like the piano part very much; the melody needs some improvement.

oktober1998.mp3

A short song, inspired on the music of Sensible World of Soccer 1998 (which I think is one of the best soccer games for PC ever made).

september2001.mp3

I just finished the software technology program at the Stan Ackermans Institute when I wrote this song.

september3.mp3

I don’t remember in which year I created this song. I was experimenting with some organ sounds for the melody.

surprise.mp3

I created this song on my MSX as an easter egg in our music editor. This is a song I am quite proud of. It is funny honkey-tonk music. Since it was created with a step-time editor, it was very hard to actually play it on a real piano. Nevertheless, After a lot of practice, I learnt to play it on the piano!

vibrafoon.mp3

This song is an experiment with the vibraphone. It also sounds quite well when played on a piano only.