Allegro In F Major
Written: June 2004
Recorded: September 2004
Download: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra - Allegro In F Major (Josef Griffiths)
Allegro in F Major was the first composition of mine to be performed by a live orchestra. My music teacher, Mr. Merrick Stein, submitted an application for my friend Kieran Gallagher and myself to attend an annual music composition workshop for young composers, organised by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and hosted by New Zealand composer Dorothy Buchanan. This piece was performed by select members of the NZSO in the Wellington Hall in September 2004.
My violinist friend Byron eagerly ran around taking photos of the orchestra on the day of recording in September 2004.
The workshop comprised two parts: a primer course in the afternoon where we learned more about the various instruments of an orchestra, their limits and strengths, timbres, and the little quirks that could be performed; part two was a recording day, having the experience of seeing a professional orchestra interpreting our ideas, and getting a feel for the effects of dynamics within an orchestra.
We were given a month to write a composition and submit it. I'm not incredibly quick when it comes to this sort of thing, so I used the composition I originally wrote as a first piece for NCEA 2 Level 2 Music. Some minor modifications, part redistributions and score clean-ups were needed, for instance I originally had two clarinets, but as only one clarinet was available the second line had to be moved to the viola line. The piece features full strings, clarinet, oboe, timpani and snare.
I was pretty nervous on the day of recording, not a single dry pore on my hands (after all, how many times does the average person get something they wrote played by a professional orchestra?) Even though it was my work I was still in a shy and modest mindset - you don't tell the NZSO how to play. So the performance was slightly slower than I wanted, but what you don't speak up for you don't get. In any case it was a fantastic and rather emotional experience.
As it was the beginning of a beautiful, warm Spring on the day of the recording, some City Council engineers deemed it an excellent day for fixing the Hall's roof. After finishing the recording of the Allegro (it was first on the recording list for that day) we began to hear loud banging sounds on the roof. The report was that the repairs would continue for nearly half an hour, so we all left to explore the arts and crafts around the Wellington center. When we returned, the workmen were still hammering away. This caused a little distress to the others sitting next to me, waiting to hear their compositions played.
Kieran Gallagher was preoccupied with his metal band Magnum Opus and didn't have the time to write a composition for the workshop, but he came along to listen to mine and see what happened. His band was advancing through the heats of the CokeSmokeFreeRockQuest (New Zealand music competition) at the time and he needed full concentration on the performances. The band got very close to winning, reaching the finals. It was a big opportunity for the band to get commercially kick-started, and one they wouldn't let slip away if they could help it.
This piece was played during the staff procession at the 2005 Paraparaumu College Senior Prizegiving, and two of the three Junior Prizegiving ceremonies.
All Your Scrag
Written: October 2002
Download: Scragadelic (Josef Griffiths) - All Your Scrag
This is my rendition / remix of an old craze techno song written by a group called The Laziest Men On Mars. The piece was a satire of the poor but amusing English translations of a 1991 Japanese side-scrolling space shooter videogame on the Sega Genesis console, called Zero Wing.
The song became widely popular with its Macromedia Flash version, which featured pictures of cars, business meetings, comics, buildings, billboards, roadsigns and other everyday environments, modified or "photoshopped" to include the rather amusing broken English phrases from the game, such as "all your base are belong to us" and "take off every zig!".
All your base are evidently belong to them.
The Flash version evolved into a full-on craze and flourished to the far corners of the Internet, with the malformed phrases appearing in density between 1992 and 1999 in many publications, webjournals, newsgroups and productions in various contexts. The phrases could even be found on items of clothing.
Zero Wing itself, as I discovered with a ROM of the game and an emulator to match, looks and plays like a crappy budget clone of all those old parallax space-fighters that were all the rage with hardcore videogamers. While the saga would undoubtedly hold a page in a giant encyclopedia of Internet culture, the humour value has long past and as time progresses it will become less relevant to the newer generations of Internet users.
Worthy of noting is that the tune from the techno version was actually taken from the in-game music, and was removed from MP3.com until the copyright was confirmed to be disowned. Also, the voice I used in the remake is the same as that of the original techno song - the voice of Cats is computer-generated from the Colossus voice from an old program called Shit-Talker, designed to aid prank calling. The words aren't very clear - I didn't have a soundcard capable of re-routing sound from other sources at the time, so I had to record the sound by concaving a few speakers around a microphone. The words are:
Pick off every Scrag.
All your frag, frag, frag, all your frag, are belong to Scrag (x4, interlude, x2)
How are you gentlemen! (x2 (stuttered))
All your frag -
You are on the way to ZDaemon. You have no chance to compete, make your time. (x2 (stuttered))
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you. (x2 (stuttered))
All great Doomers, pick off every Scrag.
How are you gentlemen!
Sounds Of The Uro
Written: July 2002
Download: Scragadelic (Josef Griffiths) - Sounds Of The Uro
No, I don't know what the title means either, but it sounded better than "Beatbox Session #1". This was an experiment in vocal effects gone wrong. Everything you hear in this song is a completely natural vocal sound, recorded with nothing more than Sound Recorder, then tuned up and tracked out in Modplug Tracker to form a melody, of some coherence. It's in the dance-funk kind of genre.
The song goes through three themes: one is my own which extends to about 3:45, the second is a vagueness from the song "Sunday" from the album Play by electronica artist Moby, and the third is a rather demented version of the theme from the techno song "Children" by Robert Miles. The whole song is ten minutes altogether, and I'm rather proud of it.
If I could make a music video for this song it would consist of a group of animated dancing sharks.
Radiance Of The Moon
Written: December 2001
Download: Scragadelic (Josef Griffiths) - Radiance Of The Moon
I was in a dreamy mood in the evening of Christmas Day 2001, and I wrote this piece as a kind of expression of my elation and wonderment, observing the full moon and the star-studded sky with the happy thoughts of the Christmas celebrations - that indeterminate feeling of Christmas magic one loses as time progresses.
This is a fairly slow song and most of the melody comes from a choir-type sample. If you can remember to, try listening to this song and staring at the moon on a Christmas eve.
The solo guitar riff at 2:33 is the theme of the music from map E1M8 of Doom. I suppose I thought this was appropriate for a reason I have since forgotten.
These here are the remixes I have done of some of the music from the world-famous first-person shooter, Doom. They were originally intended to form a collection under the name of "Master Of Plagiarism" but my lack of time (⇒ dedication) thwarted the project.
You can find a full collection of the original Doom and Doom II music here and here.
E1M1 - Hangar
Original: At DOOM's Gate
Remix: At DOOM's Gate (Master Of Plagiarism Remix)
Written: March 2003
E1M2 - Nuclear Plant
Original: The Imp's Song
Remix: Floating Imp Body (The Imp's Song - World Of Unreal Remix)
Written: March 2003
Older remix: E1M2 Recreated
Written: October 2002
E1M3 - Toxin Refinery
Original: Dark Halls
Remix: Corridor Of No Light (Dark Halls - System Of A DOOM Remix)
Written: March 2003
E1M4 - Command Control
Original: Kitchen Ace (And Taking Names)
Remix: Drumming Ace (Kitchen Ace (And Taking Names) - Remix)
Written: September 2003
E1M5 - Phobos Lab
Original: Suspense
Remix: Mystic Voices (Suspense - Remix feat. Tool, Linkin Park & Rob Dougan)
Written: December 2003
Old remix: Old School E1M5 II.mp3
Written: October 2002
E1M8 - Phobos Anomaly
Original: Sign Of Evil
Remix: E1M8 Recreated
Written: October 2002
E2M8 - Tower Of Babel
Original: Nobody Told Me About id
Remix: E2M8 Recreated
Written: October 2002
Map18 (Doom II) - The Courtyard
Original: Waiting For Romero
Remix: Waiting For Romero (Bluestring Remix)
Written: December 2002
These are some of the very first tunes I wrote when I started experimenting in composition. They're mainly just here for historical purposes, not really for public consumption. All of these MIDI files were written with a program called Anvil Studio, a gimpy, clunky notation-based music editor that happened to a. be free and b. export to MIDI format.
Citrus
Written: July 2001
Download: Scragadelic (Josef Griffiths) - Citrus
This was a short experiment with an R&B / dance type beat, inspired by the R&B / pseudo-techno style of the songs "Inside" and "Sunday" by Moby. The tune would be fitting for a music video featuring a basement full of glowing breakdancing stick men.
The Undercover Scrag
Written: June 2001
Download: Scragadelic (Josef Griffiths) - The Undercover Scrag
I wrote this song for Tunnels, one of my DOOM modifications.
Scraggy's Sad Dream
Written: May 2001
Download: Scragadelic (Josef Griffiths) - Scraggy's Sad Dream
This was a musical interpretation of some weird dream I had once. I was a toddler / elf / midget lost in a giant maze-like vineyard in the middle of the night and couldn't find the way out.
Dance Like A Scrag
Written: May 2001
Download: Scragadelic (Josef Griffiths) - Dance Like A Scrag
I made this in my first year of secondary school so I didn't have to keep dancing to this retarded rap song from the early 1990's called "Baby Got Back" during every period of P.E.
Escalator Cat
Written: March 2001
Download: Scragadelic (Josef Griffiths) - Escalator Cat
If there was a melody to perfectly fit a music video featuring siamese cats with abnormally large penises dressed in spacesuits dancing around a campfire at midnight, this would be it.
And here's some other random weird crap.
The Corporate Ladder (January 2001)
The Gumboot Song (January 2001)
The Cork (January 2001)
Doom ScragStylez (January 2001)
Overdrive (December 2000)
Early Morning Walk (December 2000)
Mystic (December 2000)
Folk Song (December 2000)
