Many thanks to

for the Creative Artist's Bursary which made this music possible, and to

Frank Rittberger

for allowing his excellent freeware sample sequencing program MIDI Locator Free to be used in this project, and to

Harry Horse

for inspiring the music and allowing me to put scans of some of the drawings from The Ogopogo on this website.

Ogopogo's Dream

Dick Lee 2002

 

The Creative Artist's Bursary I was awarded by the Scottish Arts Council last year has enabled me to continue the line of study and development I started 10 years ago, when (also courtesy of the S.A.C.) I studied computer music at Edinburgh University's Music Department with Peter Nelson.

 

This music is designed to be played around with by anyone who wants to - go to the foot of the page to download it as an MP3 file (7.73Mb) and/or to obtain the multitrack version, which includes the freeware sample sequencer program MIDI Locator Free.

Ogopogo's Dream is based on impressions of Harry Horse's great book The Ogopogo, published by MacDonald Publishers, Edinburgh. It's in 6 sections:

0m 0sec Creatures of the Deep

1m 50sec Roller Skating Round the Equator

3m 3sec Feet in the Sea Without a Care in the World

4m 21sec Sharks!

5m 3sec Squeaking and Grunting

6m 32sec Only the Wind

Total duration 8m 27sec

The sounds come from 6 sources:

1. The sea

2. Anne Evans' flute (Louis Lot 1892)

3. Railway truck buffers struck with a brick

4. A weird electronic ululation which appeared as the totally unexpected result of a file transformation which didn't work.

5. A Glass Harmonica with watery pitch bend.

6. A MIDI drum track played on the Roland D110 which is never heard itself but gives rhythm to other sounds.

The composition Ogopogo's Dream in MIDI Locator's MIDI file format (which contains extra program-specific commands but is otherwise a standard MIDI file), and all the samples and other files (including MIDI Locator Free) needed to play it in its multitrack version, are available from the composer. Because the files add up to a healthy 70Mb it's not a very enticing website download, but an email to dick@dicklee.org.uk including a postal address will send it winging its way to your letter box. Click on the button opposite to download Ogopogo's Dream in MP3 format.

MIDI Locator Free V.1.11 is a freeware sample sequencer for the PC by Frank Rittberger. It also exists in a shareware version which includes the ability to render the multisample performance to a single .wav file, all for the very reasonable sum of $15. Go to www.midilocator.com for both versions and for more information and links.

As the music is in MIDI file format it can be reconstructed for other platforms such as Mac, Linux, Atari Hades etc. by matching the Program Changes in the MIDI file.