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yaco Group: Members Posts: 23 Joined: Feb. 2002 Posted: May 09 2011, 10:22 i've hated this song for so long i decided i had to finally do something about it. sat down, edited the loud nonsense and cheap straight rock parts out, tried to understand it a bit. i recognized a lot of sounds in there... besides the multitude of Proteus FX samples, the piano + strings sound is clearly one of the M1 presets ("Str&Piano" IIRC). the brass hits sound like the original proteus, but the synth sax that plays lead a couple of times is an M1 classic preset too. another M1 classic is the "PickBass" sound used in the straight 8ths bass parts, in fact that section of MFTB sounds quite similar to the basic M1 demo! i always imagined Mike doing this thing in a weekend on vacation (in some hotel's room balcony!!! ) using a couple of rack units, a controller and sequencing soft on a laptop. probably created a basic reference drum track to be replaced by Simon Philips later, and added most of the guitars in a couple of afternoons when he got back home. MFTB sounds like a demo, like he wasn't paying too much attention to the music (there's even some silly quantizing errors left in there, like the piano chords at 13:10 and 18:12). and that's one of the reasons why i never liked it. the other reason is the sloppy mix, a rough first version probably, almost without processing except for the too loud reverb on the drums, and very little care about levels and placement, pretty sure Tom Newman wasn't "assisting" on this one. but working on it i realized there are great ideas in there, much better than a ton of stuff he's been doing in the last few years, IMHO. pity he didn't take the time to work them out properly and left us with this lazy demo instead. the reasons are quite obvious, as it was the last track filling up half of what probably must have been one of the records he hated the most doing. after hearing it while editing it did start to make some sense, but that didn't help much. some things in there are awesome, and getting just a glimpse of what could have been drives me mad! one of this great moments is the piano chord theme, which works as a finale for the whole piece before the unnecesary and ugly repeat of the synth sax thing. it is really awesome, and quite different from what Mike has done before and after. i would have loved getting a real record done with this kind of stuff! i'll post a couple of reduxes in the Fan Remixes forum after this. MFTB gets much more enjoyable without the loud nonsense and silly rocky bits. i didn't edit out the monkeys, btw... always liked those critters running around. EDIT: you can find the reduxes here: MFTB No Mayhem and Nincompoop Reduxes section list / analysis skeleton: 0:00 A-PnoStr1 0:53 B-MuteGtr1 1:19 A-PnoSTr2 2:12 B-MuteGtr2 2:38 C-Mayhem1 3:02 A-PnoStr3 3:23 D-ElectricMonkey1 4:08 C'-MediumMayhem1 4:26 D-ElectricMonkey2 5:01 D-ElectricMonkey3-3on4 6:04 F-Relax1-ChorusGtr 6:40 C-Mayhem2 7:04 G-LowMarimbaA1 7:22 G'-LowMarimbaB1 7:39 H-Fear 7:57 I-SynthSax1 8:16 F-Relax2-Synth 8:34 A-PnoStr4 8:56 C'-SmallMayhem2 9:12 J-StraightRock-Base1 9:28 J-StraightRock-Brass1 9:44 C'-SmallMayhem3 10:00 J-StraightRock-Base2 10:16 J-StraightRock-Bigfish1 10:47 J-StraightRock-Brass2+SaxSolo 11:17 I-SynthSax2 11:36 I'-SynthSaxThemeClimax 11:54 AI-PnoStr5+SynthSax3 12:16 A'-PnoStrVar-PnoChordIntro 12:29 K-PnoChordThemeA1 12:54 K'-PnoChordThemeB1 13:33 K-PnoChordThemeA2-Climax 13:58 I-SynthSax3 14:17 J-StraightRock-Bigfish2 14:50 G'-LowMarimbaB2 15:07 L-GuitarModulations 16:08 C-Mayhem3 16:54 A-PnoStr6+SlideGtrSolo 17:37 K'-PnoChordThemeB2-Synths 17:56 K'-PnoChordThemeB3 18:15 K-PnoChordThemeA3-Finale 19:03 I-SynthSax4-Coda best, yaco\ ps: hello, people! i've been lurking around for years, mostly whenever i get into one of my cronic oldfield frenzies, and this is an amazing place, full of interesting and fun stuff, and great people. only posted a couple of short notes, so this is my first real contribution, hope you enjoy it. -------------- music is dressed silence Back to top

HR lover Group: Members Posts: 548 Joined: Sep. 2010 Posted: May 09 2011, 13:01 I always thought MFTB was Mike's attempt to produce jazz. And I don't just mean the instruments, but looking at the bigger picture: the composition of the piece. When I'm comparing Heaven's Open, Islands and Earth Moving, to the rest of Mike's work it feels to me he wanted to create power in these works. A lot of Heaven's Open tracks try to reach this power by unusual means. With unusual means I mean quickly changing between one part and another, but I can't really explain it well.  I believe that an album like Heaven's Open is as experimental as Tubular Bells or Amarok. For me it isn't near as good as TB and Amarok because this power Mike is trying to achieve only partially works for me, but for me it remains quite an awesome piece of work and I really like the jungle sounds. -------------- Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. Back to top

yaco Group: Members Posts: 23 Joined: Feb. 2002 Posted: May 09 2011, 13:13 well if you check the section list you can see nothing in there lasts for more than about 40 seconds, unless you 'group' similar sounding sections (and there are not many of those! ). it was funny while editing one window of 60 seconds was enough to find all of the sections, never needed to change the zoom setting: mark, mark, listen, next page, mark, mark, listen, and so on. -------------- music is dressed silence Back to top

Cavalier (Lost Version) Group: Members Posts: 598 Joined: Nov. 2010 Posted: May 09 2011, 17:24 Playing the thing in my head (high time I got myself a new cassette player, while I still can) I realise I've never tried to rationalise what some sounds are, in a much loved track for my part.  Synthesiser limitations are obvious when an artist signposts that they are playing a specific sound - for example; a cover version where they emulate a well-known solo or hook as previously played on a real instrument.  All I can say is that if Mike intended to make me think "Aha!  Saxophone!" where you've identified a sax pre-set, yaco, he failed!  I just took it to be a weird distinctive sound that suited his creative mood at the time.  Not even the intertwining with real brass in your SynthSax 4-Coda section clued me in.  Anyway, that bit has Courtney Pine laughing, so someone was having a good time! -------------- "Who was that?" "That was Venger - the force of Evil!  I am Dungeon Master - your guide in the realm of Dungeons & Dragons!" Back to top

yaco Group: Members Posts: 23 Joined: Feb. 2002 Posted: May 09 2011, 17:52 well those gadgets did have some great sounds, and unless you've used them a lot it's normal to hear the 'real things' instead of the samples. the M1 piano, for instance, was one of the more realistic ones around 1990, everybody loved its sound, and you could recognize it as a fake only if you had played on it a lot! one crazy anecdote (which may be bogus... no wikipedia back then! ) from the production of "Back on the block" by Quincy Jones: one of the songs had a very prominent strings arrangement and, after recording the thing with a full string section, they thought it didn't sound right, so one of the co-producers stacked about seven M1 rack units and programmed the whole thing again using them as orchestra, and that was the sound they were searching for! y. -------------- music is dressed silence Back to top

nightspore Group: Members Posts: 4770 Joined: Mar. 2008 Posted: May 09 2011, 19:08 Quote (HR lover @ May 09 2011, 13:01) I always thought MFTB was Mike's attempt to produce jazz. And I don't just mean the instruments, but looking at the bigger picture: the composition of the piece. When I'm comparing Heaven's Open, Islands and Earth Moving, to the rest of Mike's work it feels to me he wanted to create power in these works. A lot of Heaven's Open tracks try to reach this power by unusual means. With unusual means I mean quickly changing between one part and another, but I can't really explain it well.  I believe that an album like Heaven's Open is as experimental as Tubular Bells or Amarok. For me it isn't near as good as TB and Amarok because this power Mike is trying to achieve only partially works for me, but for me it remains quite an awesome piece of work and I really like the jungle sounds. Yes, I think the jazz connection is undeniable... I'm no very fond of jazz, as I've said on a number of occasions, but the fact that MFTB contains some of my all-timefavourite MO moments draws everything together. Back to top

starfish Group: Members Posts: 93 Joined: June 2009 Posted: May 12 2011, 19:08 My thoughts (WARNING: Long-winded rant approaching)... I agree with the thread-starter to some extent. The entire album was supposedly a bit of a rush-job, recorded in a hurry in order to fulfil contractual obligations to Virgin. Crediting himself as Michael (rather than Mike) Oldfield can be interpreted as a way to distance himself from the album. It's no wonder, therefore, that MFTB sounds like an unfinished demo - a piece that encapsulates the slapdash nature of the entire album. But... Maybe it's not like that. Maybe there's more care gone into this album that we realise. Certainly we know that Mike took extensive singing lessons to get his voice to the required standard. The fact that there are (at least) two very distinctive versions of the album's title track demonstrates that yes, Mike did take the time to carefully fine-tune each song until he got them sounding right. Listening to the album as a whole, it seems to me, rather than being just thrown together in a rush, that this work is more personal than any other Oldfield album. He sings the lyrics himself, and the lyrics are quite transparently about his personal contractual struggles. This indicates to me that, through the 'Heaven's Open' album, we are getting closer to the artist than ever before. It's a very intimate self-portrait. Given the above, I feel sure that there's much more to MFTB than just an unfinished morass of cobbled-together ideas. Maybe it sounds the way it does for a very good reason. Moods change from moment to moment, the synths varying wildly from harsh staccato stabs to warm melty sax and everything in between. If it sounds off-the-cuff then it's deliberately so, IMO. If it was a piece of literature the term we'd be using would be 'stream of consciousness'. Mike Oldfield always strikes be a being a little arrogant and aloof, distant even. This is no bad thing in the music industry. There's a confident swagger and bravado in much of Oldfield's work (although the guard briefly slips in Incantations). 'Heaven's Open' is the one album in the entire canon where we strip away most of the brash facade and reveal the vulnerable man underneath. Yes, MFTB is a bit strange - discordant, dramatic, schizophrenic, sometimes even a bit sloppy. But I think it's supposed to be that way. It's imperfect because it's a snapshot of Mike's imperfect psyche. It sounds incomplete because, as the lyrics in the deeply personal 'Gimme Back' suggest, Mike himself is incomplete. Back to top

nightspore Group: Members Posts: 4770 Joined: Mar. 2008 Posted: May 12 2011, 22:16 Quote (starfish @ May 12 2011, 19:08) My thoughts (WARNING: Long-winded rant approaching)... I agree with the thread-starter to some extent. The entire album was supposedly a bit of a rush-job, recorded in a hurry in order to fulfil contractual obligations to Virgin. Crediting himself as Michael (rather than Mike) Oldfield can be interpreted as a way to distance himself from the album. It's no wonder, therefore, that MFTB sounds like an unfinished demo - a piece that encapsulates the slapdash nature of the entire album. But... Maybe it's not like that. Maybe there's more care gone into this album that we realise. Certainly we know that Mike took extensive singing lessons to get his voice to the required standard. The fact that there are (at least) two very distinctive versions of the album's title track demonstrates that yes, Mike did take the time to carefully fine-tune each song until he got them sounding right. Listening to the album as a whole, it seems to me, rather than being just thrown together in a rush, that this work is more personal than any other Oldfield album. He sings the lyrics himself, and the lyrics are quite transparently about his personal contractual struggles. This indicates to me that, through the 'Heaven's Open' album, we are getting closer to the artist than ever before. It's a very intimate self-portrait. Given the above, I feel sure that there's much more to MFTB than just an unfinished morass of cobbled-together ideas. Maybe it sounds the way it does for a very good reason. Moods change from moment to moment, the synths varying wildly from harsh staccato stabs to warm melty sax and everything in between. If it sounds off-the-cuff then it's deliberately so, IMO. If it was a piece of literature the term we'd be using would be 'stream of consciousness'. Mike Oldfield always strikes be a being a little arrogant and aloof, distant even. This is no bad thing in the music industry. There's a confident swagger and bravado in much of Oldfield's work (although the guard briefly slips in Incantations). 'Heaven's Open' is the one album in the entire canon where we strip away most of the brash facade and reveal the vulnerable man underneath. Yes, MFTB is a bit strange - discordant, dramatic, schizophrenic, sometimes even a bit sloppy. But I think it's supposed to be that way. It's imperfect because it's a snapshot of Mike's imperfect psyche. It sounds incomplete because, as the lyrics in the deeply personal 'Gimme Back' suggest, Mike himself is incomplete. I agree with this (for what that's worth   ) One interesting aspect for me is that the lyrics of the song "Heaven's Open" are in the second person: MO says "... your baptism". It's as though he's on the outside, looking in. Back to top

yaco Group: Members Posts: 23 Joined: Feb. 2002 Posted: May 13 2011, 12:10 Quote (starfish @ May 12 2011, 19:08) Maybe there's more care gone into this album that we realise. Certainly we know that Mike took extensive singing lessons to get his voice to the required standard. The fact that there are (at least) two very distinctive versions of the album's title track demonstrates that yes, Mike did take the time to carefully fine-tune each song until he got them sounding right. the track i think didn't pass the "demo" stage is just Music From The Balcony. the rest of the album (ie: the songs) sounds much better, done with a lot of work and effort. so yes, i agree Mike did care about this album, even to the point of stepping forth and singing all the songs, and getting prepared for it. but i still think he didn't care much about the side-long instrumental track. if you jump back and forth from the songs to MFTB you can clearly hear the difference in mix quality and production! and btw i do like the songs a lot, even the ill favored reggae (awesome bagpipe style intro! ). -------------- music is dressed silence Back to top

starfish Group: Members Posts: 93 Joined: June 2009 Posted: May 13 2011, 13:11 Quote (yaco @ May 13 2011, 12:10) the track i think didn't pass the "demo" stage is just Music From The Balcony. the rest of the album (ie: the songs) sounds much better, done with a lot of work and effort. I suppose it just goes to show how different Mike Oldfield fans can appreciate different aspects of his work, I guess. I've had a listen to the remixes you've done, and I was quite surprised - the parts that I most love (the loud, manic bits mostly) are the parts that you've seen fit to cut out! Please don't take this as a personal sleight - I have all respect for your opinions and music editing skills - but I'm not a big fan of your remixes. One of the hallmarks of MFTB, for me, is its sheer unpredictability, the swiftly-changing moods, the highs and the lows. By excising all of the crazy loud bits, there's no contrast there at all. It sounds a bit depressing and flat, to be honest. Hacking out the frantic guitars is, in my eyes, a bit like trying to edit the thunderstorm sequence out of 'Hergest Ridge' or the caveman sequence out of 'Tubular Bells'. Or even skipping past 'Out of Mind' and 'Out of Sight' when listening to 'Guitars'. My point is, many of the latter Oldfield albums (especially 'Tr3s Lunas' and 'Light and Shade') suffer from being a tad featureless and bland, an endless plateau rather than a mountain range of peaks and valleys. Variety is the spice of life! By taking the 'spicy' bits out of MFTB you've diminished the piece in more than one sense of the word - a rip-roaring rollercoaster has been flattenned to the ground! Back to top

yaco Group: Members Posts: 23 Joined: Feb. 2002 Posted: May 13 2011, 14:40 Quote (starfish @ May 13 2011, 13:11) By taking the 'spicy' bits out of MFTB you've diminished the piece in more than one sense of the word - a rip-roaring rollercoaster has been flattenned to the ground! i don't mind the crazy unpredictable bits in any of the other pieces, in fact my unbeatable favorite, the one i'm always hoping mike will come back somehow to, is Amarok. the decision to cut out the manic bits was a surprise to me too, somehow. i was just marking sections to understand the piece and noticed i did enjoy the other, less 'manic' parts, but when those showed up i started feeling my old hatred for mftb creep out. and i was aware of what i was doing... my favourite of the reduxes is precisely called "Nincompoop Redux" for a reason! i think it comes back to the problem i see with the production quality. i find it's much more difficult to do crazy stuff and do it right than to do softer stuff. in amarok every crazy sound, every louder-than-possible hit, every unexpected cut and section work like clockwork. you can really hear the amount of work spent thinking, trying stuff, mixing and polishing them. or at least that's how i understand / feel them! similar ('crazy' bits in mftb sound like he was thinking "ok, so here i should put some crazy stuff, maybe like this", pounded on the keyboard for a while, and never got around to doing the real thing. those are the main reason it sounds like a demo to me! it would be interesting to somehow find a demo of amarok, probably sounds quite like the published mftb. or maybe it sounds like the ommadawn "lost version" in the deluxe edition, and he decided to do a new thing instead of rebuilding ommadawn in amarok? ps: i have a personal problem with unfinished stuff in general, can't stand "conceptual art" in spite of being an experimental musician myself, so when i hear this kind of things i get mad. sorry for the rants, then, and thanks for all the comments!!! -------------- music is dressed silence Back to top

0+1(I1) Group: Members Posts: 418 Joined: Mar. 2011 Posted: May 13 2011, 14:49 Quote (starfish @ May 13 2011, 02:08) My thoughts (WARNING: Long-winded rant approaching)... I agree with the thread-starter to some extent. The entire album was supposedly a bit of a rush-job, recorded in a hurry in order to fulfil contractual obligations to Virgin. Crediting himself as Michael (rather than Mike) Oldfield can be interpreted as a way to distance himself from the album. It's no wonder, therefore, that MFTB sounds like an unfinished demo - a piece that encapsulates the slapdash nature of the entire album. But... Maybe it's not like that. Maybe there's more care gone into this album that we realise. Certainly we know that Mike took extensive singing lessons to get his voice to the required standard. The fact that there are (at least) two very distinctive versions of the album's title track demonstrates that yes, Mike did take the time to carefully fine-tune each song until he got them sounding right. Listening to the album as a whole, it seems to me, rather than being just thrown together in a rush, that this work is more personal than any other Oldfield album. He sings the lyrics himself, and the lyrics are quite transparently about his personal contractual struggles. This indicates to me that, through the 'Heaven's Open' album, we are getting closer to the artist than ever before. It's a very intimate self-portrait. Given the above, I feel sure that there's much more to MFTB than just an unfinished morass of cobbled-together ideas. Maybe it sounds the way it does for a very good reason. Moods change from moment to moment, the synths varying wildly from harsh staccato stabs to warm melty sax and everything in between. If it sounds off-the-cuff then it's deliberately so, IMO. If it was a piece of literature the term we'd be using would be 'stream of consciousness'. Mike Oldfield always strikes be a being a little arrogant and aloof, distant even. This is no bad thing in the music industry. There's a confident swagger and bravado in much of Oldfield's work (although the guard briefly slips in Incantations). 'Heaven's Open' is the one album in the entire canon where we strip away most of the brash facade and reveal the vulnerable man underneath. Yes, MFTB is a bit strange - discordant, dramatic, schizophrenic, sometimes even a bit sloppy. But I think it's supposed to be that way. It's imperfect because it's a snapshot of Mike's imperfect psyche. It sounds incomplete because, as the lyrics in the deeply personal 'Gimme Back' suggest, Mike himself is incomplete. I would just like to add that I feel that Starfish has made some valid points in his attached post. I am sorry to be coming in on this thread at a late point. However I would like to say that I feel Mike would never throw something out at us, in which, he did not have total faith, plus you have to realise it could, if the album flopped, have a bad effect on his future, even if he had already signed to a new label!. I read far to much criticism on posts here and elsewhere, saying he does not care is not so "HE CARES" for many things HAPPY?. What I get from MFTB is that his last track for virgin is a man packing up his desk you hear the animals sounds from the balcony in the forest/jungle fighting & rowing over food (our equivalent of MONEY) for some reason I could also swear I hear the words "let me out now" repeating & "let me go" or "I`ll go"  then we hear a authoritarian voice saying "DO IT" (at 5:27) and a person most lightly Mike saying to rich  ard "NO". this turmoil is broken by blissful periods of piece almost silence and it all ends with a section of jubilant/triumph (at 18:13) and from at 19:04 a short section to the end which is a period in which Mike is very aware of the fact that these last few notes will be his last ever (its his swan song) with virgin, & I hear him almost playing what he must be thinking "what now?   where do I go now?, what do I do now?. I41 feel this OVER 2 U I1. PS just noticed Nightspores post all I can say is "YES" so I had 2 make a minor edit  and right at the end its definitely JAZZ poss the best I have ever heard and so short it was 1derful !!!SORRY TO THOSE WHO LOVE IT. Jazz mostly sounds more like a war being waged with loosely aimed & fired instruments to me... -------------- L◎ST ◎MMADAWN VERSI◎N RIDDLE ANSWER  mIChaeI GOrDOn OIDfIeId. =  I C   1  G◎D   OO ID I I or replace the L's that were turned in to I's & 1 gets ID◎L G◎LD ID◎L (4 ANSWER IN FULL + EXPLANATION, C ALBUM SECTION/☮MMADAWN/i-say-i-say-i-say-i-say-in-answer4XXX4Acr⊕ss Back to top

0+1(I1) Group: Members Posts: 418 Joined: Mar. 2011 Posted: May 13 2011, 21:15 Quote (starfish @ May 13 2011, 20:11) Quote (yaco @ May 13 2011, 12:10) the track i think didn't pass the "demo" stage is just Music From The Balcony. the rest of the album (ie: the songs) sounds much better, done with a lot of work and effort. I suppose it just goes to show how different Mike Oldfield fans can appreciate different aspects of his work, I guess. I've had a listen to the remixes you've done, and I was quite surprised - the parts that I most love (the loud, manic bits mostly) are the parts that you've seen fit to cut out! Please don't take this as a personal sleight - I have all respect for your opinions and music editing skills - but I'm not a big fan of your remixes. One of the hallmarks of MFTB, for me, is its sheer unpredictability, the swiftly-changing moods, the highs and the lows. By excising all of the crazy loud bits, there's no contrast there at all. It sounds a bit depressing and flat, to be honest. Hacking out the frantic guitars is, in my eyes, a bit like trying to edit the thunderstorm sequence out of 'Hergest Ridge' or the caveman sequence out of 'Tubular Bells'. Or even skipping past 'Out of Mind' and 'Out of Sight' when listening to 'Guitars'. My point is, many of the latter Oldfield albums (especially 'Tr3s Lunas' and 'Light and Shade' suffer from being a tad featureless and bland, an endless plateau rather than a mountain range of peaks and valleys. Variety is the spice of life! By taking the 'spicy' bits out of MFTB you've diminished the piece in more than one sense of the word - a rip-roaring rollercoaster has been flattenned to the ground! Sorry to the tread starter but I too have given your mix a part of my life & I too feel as starfish does (& puts so well in her attached post) that your mix has detracted from the piece, it has lost its heart & soul you may of felt you cleared a path though the forest but now it is bare, & become bland, I am not joking when I say I had to fight to stay awake. SORRY to say IMHO you removed most of its razzle jazzle. You should/must rem its far easier to mimic a masterpiece, than create one from scratch, without ref point or guidance so please approach your consideration of others work from this point, & ask yourself, could I have created better, given nothing to start from.   The stone and stick would never of become the first tool if they had laid on the ground, it was the very first tool maker that we have to thank or despise for turning them into the axe and hammer that lead to almost every thing we as humans have decorating our modern day lives, he/she was the original creator & as a precision engineer I never forget their astonishing creativity given no tools to work with or books or guidance to have ref to, they displayed pure genius, the complete opp of the imitator. OK MO has ref material & a world of instruments but I have never felt like I have heard anything like it before when I hear a new track of his. Even with tubular bells yes they are similar but the same NO, & that in its self must take some doing. So I would like to say to all those who cut down trees in the woods, when they go in and get lost, stay on the outside its easy to see your way in, but resist the temptation to go in, its far harder to get out! when you are stuck in there!, most things look simple from the outside! do they not? PLEASE KEEP OUT & STOP BEING MUSICAL LUMBERJACK`S this mans forest, I find for filling as it stands, without undue criticism and in my opinion it is not for felling, even by the experts its Mikes work you play with & the answer is simple to me, if you don`t like it do not PLAY, try instead to create something of your own from zer0. Mike deserves praise & gratitude for a lifetime of great works not to have his work pulled apart by people who claim to be fans... -------------- L◎ST ◎MMADAWN VERSI◎N RIDDLE ANSWER  mIChaeI GOrDOn OIDfIeId. =  I C   1  G◎D   OO ID I I or replace the L's that were turned in to I's & 1 gets ID◎L G◎LD ID◎L (4 ANSWER IN FULL + EXPLANATION, C ALBUM SECTION/☮MMADAWN/i-say-i-say-i-say-i-say-in-answer4XXX4Acr⊕ss Back to top

yaco Group: Members Posts: 23 Joined: Feb. 2002 Posted: May 16 2011, 03:51 Quote Sorry to the tread starter but I too have given your mix a part of my life & I too feel as starfish does (& puts so well in her attached post) that your mix has detracted from the piece, it has lost its heart & soul you may of felt you cleared a path though the forest but now it is bare, & become bland, I am not joking when I say I had to fight to stay awake. SORRY to say IMHO you removed most of its razzle jazzle. i'm really sorry if i have taken a part of your life with my redux (it's not a remix, just a simple edit). my intention was in fact the complete opposite, and the "audience" for this reduxes didn't include you or starfish or any other of mike's fans that like/enjoy/love mftb, but just the other ones! as i stated in the first post, i was just doing an exercise of analysis and a little experiment to see if i could also like/enjoy/love the only one of his works that i kept always skipping because i found unbearable (may i find one of mike's works unbearable?). i think it did work, at least for me. one of the reduxes is now on my playlists, all three of them: "complete", "no-pop" and "selected" (may i select and prefer some pieces better than others, or should i listen to the whole thing always? may i avoid listening once again to another toned down TB remake?). since i started to enjoy mftb after "profaning" it a bit, i thought it would be a good idea to share this edit with other fans. again, not with the ones that already like it (no point in converting the converted! ), but with the ones that like me couldn't listen to it. i just thought maybe some of them would enjoy a "nincompooped" redux. and yes the name's ironic... i couldn't live without listening to amarok every once in a while! starfish felt that "a rip-roaring rollercoaster has been flattenned to the ground". you feel that i should "PLEASE KEEP OUT & STOP BEING MUSICAL LUMBERJACK`S this mans forest"... sorry guys, i'm quite sure i do have the right to do as i please with what my ears listen to, and that nothing (really nothing at all) is holy, not even one of those glances. this was something i did for me, and thought would be interesting to share with some people here that, like me, don't like mftb at all. it's a pity all it did was get a couple of you annoyed, will probably not post any more edits here (yes, i do a lot of these... hope you're not also a fripp acolyte! ). couple of loose ends: Quote its far easier to mimic a masterpiece, than create one from scratch, without ref point or guidance so please approach your consideration of others work from this point, & ask yourself, could I have created better, given nothing to start from not much point maybe in saying this, but i do approach almost any sound work i do with the greatest consideration. i love what i do, and i do sounds. and yes, every time i create something i ask myself if i could have created something better, if what i created is the best it could have been, if i am being truthful and committed to the initial idea, to that glorious moment when the seed of something shows up in my head/heart/guts. it's not easy to work like that, but it's really fulfilling, and the only way i know. again, what i don't like about mftb is that i feel mike didn't respect his own ideas. but that's just my opinion (may i have some of those?). it would be great to get to bahamas and speak it over a good pint with the guy! and about guidance well... no one (no not even the holy mike) works "from zer0". i know everything you've experienced can show up in what you create. even folk picking styles from when you were twelve, auto hypnosis tapes, celtic anythings (themes, harmonies, forms, instruments), traditional african drumming, past prime ministers and drunken sailor songs can end up in the most unexpected of places! best, yaco\ ps: still can't find the JAZZ in mftb... but it's probably a problem with my blaspheme ears... or maybe it's because i do like jazz? ps2: just added my website to my profile page (can't remember why i didn't put it there in the first place! ), so you can listen to some of the stuff i do if you want. it's got some nice razzle jazzle, a couple of loud manic bits, a lot of unpredictability, and if i remember correctly not a single musical note or harmony. and yes, you can download it, chop it to pieces, create something from something! you don't even need to ask... most of it is copylefted! ps3: my intention wasn't to start a flame war (never ever, i hate those things! ), so i'll refrain from posting any more responses like this one. hope others will understand and respect that. -------------- music is dressed silence Back to top

Sir Mustapha Group: Musicians Posts: 2802 Joined: April 2003 Posted: May 16 2011, 10:05 I think there's quite a bit of undeserved hostility here. So Music from the Balcony is one of my favourite Oldfield pieces and I like it much, much more than other "fan favourites" such as Taurus II and I think that's fine the way it is, but why should that keep others from trying to reinvent it in their own way? That's the beauty of art: creation is free, and even the act of recombining already existing works is, in itself, a form of expression. Yaco may as well be a "musical lumberjack", but music is not destructible like a forest: by "chopping down" pieces of music, you're merely creating new ones. Yaco's point with his redux is valid, he has based his opinions very well, and the fact that he took his time to "cut down" Oldfield's pieces only show how much he cares about the artist -- otherwise, it would have been much easier to simply throw the whole song away, right? I think he deserves a little more credit for the vision he has to share, but only about Music from the Balcony, but for music as a whole. We're not in a church, here; there's no reason to scare away the "heretics" or to condemn them for destroying anything. On the other hand, we should encourage contribution and intelligent discussion in here. We're all grown-ups, aren't we? -------------- Check out http://ferniecanto.com.br for all my music, including my latest albums: Don't Stay in the City, Making Amends and Builders of Worlds. Also check my Bandcamp page: http://ferniecanto.bandcamp.com Back to top

starfish Group: Members Posts: 93 Joined: June 2009 Posted: May 16 2011, 14:53 Quote (Sir Mustapha @ May 16 2011, 10:05) I think there's quite a bit of undeserved hostility here. I'm not really sure about that. The guy (I'm assuming the poster is male - If not I apologise) was posting his new edits on a public forum, inviting comment. I don't see how any of the criticism of yaco's edits descended into open hostility. Indeed, I made sure to preface my criticism with caveats such as... Quote (starfish @ May 13 2011, 13:11) I suppose it just goes to show how different Mike Oldfield fans can appreciate different aspects of his work, I guess. and Quote (starfish @ May 13 2011, 13:11) Please don't take this as a personal sleight... Any negative comments I had purely concerned the new edits and yaco's interpretation of the piece - nothing personal or below-the-belt, I feel. Anyway, besides my feelings towards these edits (or indeed the original poster), two valid points remain: 1) No matter what the original poster thinks of MFTB, bandying around words such as 'unfinished' and 'demo track' is a sleight against Mike Oldfield's professionalism. As a big fan of both Oldfield and the track in question, You can understand why the original poster has garnered such negative comment. For instance, I'm no fan of (for example) 'Foriegn Affair'. But just because I don't like the song doesn't given me licence to claim it's some sort of unfinshed demo - that's a low blow indeed. 2) As far as I am aware, MFTB is copyrighted material belonging to Mike Oldfield. Distributing it online (albeit in editied form) is illegal without the copyright holder's (Mike's) consent. Hopefully no-one here has any problem with valid criticism. Indeed, reasoned and intelligent critical debate is one of the reasons why we're all here! Back to top

yaco Group: Members Posts: 23 Joined: Feb. 2002 Posted: May 16 2011, 16:01 i think a couple of my opinions were misunderstood... when i said mftb sounded like a demo it was mainly from a technical point of view, and not an attack on mike or anyone that likes the piece. i was just saying what i said: it does sound like a demo to my ears. no below-the-belt hits or anything else implied. another point that maybe i couldn't make clear is that i reallly love a lot of mike's music. i've been part of this forum (without posting much) for almost 10 years now! i think amarok is one of the masterpieces of the last 50 years, and probably the best edited + mixed + produced record since the 70s. hergest ridge (any of them mixes) drives me to tears... even some of the poppiest songs can wake me up and make me sing! (and i'm a terrible singer!). funny thing: Foreign Affair is one of the songs i really like a lot... goes to show we all find different things in his music, and that's great! about copyright: again this was a personal edit, shared here just because i thought others maybe would enjoy it. lots of forum members do that, making derivative works and edits from mike's pieces, and we all do it just because we want to share with the rest some things we've done or found that can be interesting. copyright is mostly an industry legal trick to get more money in their pockets (not the artist's ones!), it is dying, and it didn't make much sense after the first couple of changes (edits!) they did to the laws, really. and anyway i'm pretty sure none of the edits / remixes / derivative works posted in the forum were made with the intention to make money. we take the time and do this things out of love for the music! i'm pretty sure mike has heard some of the work others have posted here and in other places, and probably enjoyed them, maybe even found some interesting stuff he had not noticed about his own works! and yes, i'm enjoying the debate! best, yaco\ ps: i forgot my website is in spanish... if you want to listen to some stuff (i will accept any criticism gladly!) you can go straight to http://blog.yaco.net/category/listen/ and click on the little play buttons or the track name links to download them. -------------- music is dressed silence Back to top

starfish Group: Members Posts: 93 Joined: June 2009 Posted: May 16 2011, 16:31 Quote (yaco @ May 16 2011, 16:01) about copyright: again this was a personal edit, shared here just because i thought others maybe would enjoy it. lots of forum members do that, making derivative works and edits from mike's pieces, and we all do it just because we want to share with the rest some things we've done or found that can be interesting. Oh, don't get me wrong, I know your intentions were pure! But whatever the case, it is still illegal, and your defence doesn't really hold up. Just because others commit crimes doesn't mean you should do the same! Quote (yaco @ May 16 2011, 16:01) copyright is mostly an industry legal trick to get more money in their pockets (not the artist's ones!, it is dying, and it didn't make much sense after the first couple of changes (edits! they did to the laws, really. An industry legal trick? Really? I'm a part-time musician myself (mostly small-scale stuff, radio jingles, incidental music for public-relations and training videos, that sort of thing), and every day I am thankful for the copyright laws that protect my music and my income. I personally would not appreciate someone putting my music online and available for free to the general public. I would also like to control where and when my music is heard. Have you heard the story about some of Mike Oldfield's music being illegally used as the soundtrack to an erotic movie? It sounds silly but if you are the artist and the author you do not want your music used in inappropriate situations! In today's world where so much music can be downloaded for free, it's harder than ever to make money from paid compositions. Don't just think of the fat-cat record labels and millionaire pop stars - copyright protects the little people as well, and for that I'm truly grateful! Back to top

yaco Group: Members Posts: 23 Joined: Feb. 2002 Posted: May 16 2011, 16:48 hmmm... i don't think this is the place to start arguing about copyright. it's a long winded complex subject that can get out of hand quite easily. we can follow on PM if you like, and i hope you don't mind my suggesting a couple of links to read below. yes they're looonnnggg boring reads. but i believe (with a ton of others) that the world is really changing for the better because of all this! http://creativecommons.org/about http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html http://www.fsf.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_culture_movement and no i'm not talking about the guys that sell pirate copies of bad movies on the sidewalk... ;) best, yaco\ ps: i'm a professional musician myself. i make a living out of my music. and you can download most of it for free, cut it up, remix it, even use it as toilet paper or porn soundtrack (that would be quite fun actually... experimental noise porn! ). -------------- music is dressed silence Back to top

yaco Group: Members Posts: 23 Joined: Feb. 2002 Posted: May 16 2011, 17:05 Quote (Sir Mustapha @ May 16 2011, 10:05) That's the beauty of art: creation is free, and even the act of recombining already existing works is, in itself, a form of expression. Yaco may as well be a "musical lumberjack", but music is not destructible like a forest: by "chopping down" pieces of music, you're merely creating new ones. there's a great quote by George Bernard Shaw about ideas, that i think also can be applied to music and any creative activity: "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." i'm quite sure most of us would like to live in a world with more music like the one mike does, right? -------------- music is dressed silence Back to top

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