Doctor Who, 10k+ and more..

Back last may, I'd finally decided that I'd try putting up some of my piano playing online, so I mashed around a little in C minor, which has long been a favorite place to play in, and found the Doctor Who theme..

Ok, it was a little more chilled, lacking the electropop noises, and was more influenced by the themes of the past shows than the current.. but it had a nice feel to it. So I hit record, and used two layers to capture the sound.. this is the tale of that tune..
Recording isn't easy, once that little red LED is on, you become hyper-conscious that everything you do this time is for keeps. For someone who normally just plays as a way to relax, and have fun, it's an abnormal pressure.

Sure I've played for an audience in the past, and I'll have a bash at that whenever there's a piano around..(sadly, I don't carry one around with me in my backpack).. but Live is easier than Recorded.. with Live you can try stuff, if it doesn't work, you get feedback, and adapt.. with Recorded.. the LED just stays lit saying "Hey.. whatever you play.. is fine with me".

So making that choice to not only attempt to record something, but decide to put it online, was not easy. However, on the plus side, my tiny little blog had a pretty exclusive readership of  "People I've sent the link too, plus anyone who followed the link on twitter.." so it wasn't like there'd be hundreds, or thousands of people listening to what I've played.

Except now, there are.

See recently I did a little project to read a whole pile of floppy disks with an auto-loader.. which got me onto Hackaday a site which has a pretty decent reader count. And because reading a Floppy is a slow, somewhat dull process, I overlaid the video with a bit of music.. and yes, I chose the Doctor Who one. I figured time travel was a nice idea for reading floppies ;p

So now over 10 thousand people have heard me play the piano.. and some of them even realized it wasn't canned music, and some were motivated enough to post comments, not about the crazy floppy loader, but about the tune itself.. if you are one of those people, thank you.


Feedback is great, as I've said, I play mainly for my own entertainment, but it's awesome to think that others can enjoy my random mashing of keys ;p

So if you've ended up here, because you liked the tune, or were looking for more, or just wondered where the link went.. why not follow some of these for more.. It's been almost a year since I recorded Doctor, and I've steadily uploaded others since then.. some of which I really like, some of which I'm not so fond of..

  http://soundcloud.com/dwellertunes  - the current place I put random things..
  http://audioboo.fm/DwellerTunes - another place, which won't run out of space so quickly..

Finally credit to Bill Bailey, who played an awesome 'Belgian Jazz' version of the Doctor Who tune.. which (in typical Bill style) was a lot brighter & more upbeat than mine, but I think they both share a common heritage somewhere..)