Children/Robert Miles - (Novation Circuits Dream Version)

video upload by Guinan

"Huge thanks to @hansotto8563 for this suggestion. Thanks again to all subscribers for their support. I’ve always loved this track and it remains a favourite to this day.

First released in 1995 this song was originally composed by DJ Robert Miles (real name Roberto Concina) as a ‘wind-down’ track for the end of his DJ sets. Credited as starting the genre of ‘dream house’ it was conceived as a way of reducing the death toll for clubbers returning from Italian clubs and falling asleep at the wheel.

The whole track was programmed and played on just the two machines’ pictured, a Novation Circuit Tracks and Circuit Rhythm. No additional synth or effects were used and the track was recorded straight from the output of the Rhythm (which mixed in the audio input from the Tracks).

I hope you enjoy the end result and check back soon for more tunes.

More details for synth nerds;

I’ve been thinking for a while as to how to cover this. Very much of the 90’s, it used sampled instruments and this made it harder to keep this an all-Circuit track. So much of the track relies on the impact of the piano and guitar samples I needed to reproduce these convincingly. I used my Circuit Rhythm purely as an expander in this case and all the sequences are played from the Circuit Tracks.

The Circuit Rhythm is running purely as a MIDI slave device for channels 3 and 4 only. I plan to detail how to do this in another video – mainly because the title ‘Make Rhythm Your Slave’ popped into my head and seemed too good to waste!

The original piano sound was apparently played on a Kurzweil K2000 and I managed to find a sample of the same sound. The Rhythm is monophonic and the sample is not multisampled but I think (with lot’s of reverb and delay) I managed to get it sounding not too bad.

The patches are self-programmed and I had some fun putting together the thunder and rain ambience effects from free online sample libraries.

The tracks are as follows.
TRACKS
Synth 1 – M1 Organ bass-like patch
Synth 2 – phased detuned sawtooth pad
MIDI 1 – MIDI channel 3 to piano sample track on Rhythm
MIDI 2 – MIDI channel 4 to acoustic guitar sample on Rhythm
Drum 1 – bass drum, 909 sample
Drum 2 – 909 snare sample
Drum 3 – 909 hihat and closed hihat samples.
Drum 4 – ambient samples for thunder, rain etc. (from various free online sample libraries) edited via phaser effect as per original track.
RHYTHM
Track 3 (MIDI channel 3) Kurzweil K2000 sample.
Track 4 (MIDI channel 4) Kawai acoustic guitar sample.

The remaining sample tracks and sequencer on the Rhythm were not used (to reduce the complexity of the track). I based the track on the Dreams version of the song and had to simplify it somewhat to fit in the Tracks. Many of the patterns were played at quarter speed and the notes played unquantized to use micro-steps to squeeze longer squences in. Nonetheless I’ve had to simplify the arrangement but I hope I’ve captured the spirit of this classic.

Thanks once again for watching. Fire away with any questions in the comments and stay tuned"