Prog-Sphere forums

Greetings folks !  I'm a new member, and this is my first post on this board.  I suspect that what I will say here will be of great interest to many of you, as much as it was for me.  First though, a brief introduction.

I am a composer, musician, audio engineer, and software engineer.  And music lover.
Like all of you, I am a fan of interesting music (any style of music that is good and has something to say musically), and much of the progressive rock from the good old days (70s/80s) has been a favorite of mine for a long time.
I have been a fan of Kit Watkins since the late 70s.  A good friend of mine and fellow musician had way back when purchased one of the HTM albums, and had bought it only because it said on the cover that somebody played minimoog on it.  My friend of course is a keyboardist.  He loved the music and recommended it to me, telling me in particular that the guy who plays minimoog is great.  Well, great is an understatement.  It is my opinion that Kit is the best person to ever lay a finger on a minimoog, especially its pitch wheel.

It was therefore my incredible great fortune to recently come across a piece of music written by Kit, from about 1984 or so, but until now unknown to me.  Actually, it's likely unknown to almost everybody, as it was (in my opinion) an unfinished, unreleased, and untitled work.  It had keyboards on it, played by Kit of course, but was vert short at only 1:18.  It was imbued with Kit's trademark compositional beauty, but wasn't quite a complete piece of music, since it didn't have enough repetition and development.

I was entranced by this song and its beauty, and deeply motivated to see what I could do with it.  I pulled an all nighter, working through the night until 6 AM, performing copy and paste of various sections of the tune, to extend it to a full 3:00.  I repeated sections, created an intro, etc.  Throughout all of this, my only intention was to attempt to imagine what Kit himself would have done, had he actually extended this "brief idea" into a song of full length.  I did not record any new material, I only reused the material from the original song via copy and paste.  I didn't pitch shift or time shift anything, I only used repetition.  I specifically did not want to impose any of my composer's esthetics on it.

I then invited a local drummer to play on it, I asked my daughter to play flute and sing on it, and I played guitar and bass.  I then sent the mix of this tune to Kit, hoping of course that he would like it.  His response was better than I could have imagined.  He really liked it, a lot.  That completely made my day.  I asked kit if he would allow me to release this tune publicly, and he agreed to allow it.  And so folks, you can have a listen to a "new" track composed and played by Kit in about 1984, along with my modern day arrangements and additions, on my You Tube channel here :

https://youtu.be/90cuw4rKyqQ

While you're over there, you may also be interested to hear some of my music, on my YT channel :

https://www.youtube.com/c....o3YdzClfAw

In particular, I recommend my song Hope (written at the beginning of the covid saga in March 2020, and intended as positive uplift) :



and my song Good Advice (dedicated to our friend and brilliant Brasilian bass maestro Arthur Maia, who died 12/15/2018 of a heart attack at age 56) :



If you like what you hear, you may also like to know that my first two CDs are for sale on discogs.com here :

https://www.discogs.com/r....-Handiwork
https://www.discogs.com/r....-Nota-Bene

I am currently working on 3 or maybe 4 other CD projects of material (my songs, and those of other composers too).

I truly hope you enjoy this Kit Watkins tune as much as I do.

My email address is available in my profile for anyone who wishes to contact me directly.

Cheers

Bob