Duration: 58:23

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5

Available on Bandcamp! - https://jimsjams.bandcamp.com/album/tribute-to-the-shrine

Tracklist:

01 - Feeling At Ease (Apr 2015-Aug 2017) [0:00]
02 - Journey (Dec 2017) [2:37]
03 - Sunrise (Dec 2017) [4:09]
04 - Sunrise - Rock Version (Dec 2017-Dec 2019) [6:30]
05 - Under The Stars (Feb 2018) [11:04]
06 - A Charming Lady - Slow (Apr 2018) [14:53]
07 - Thinking of You (Apr 2018) [16:46]
08 - Lonely Man (May 2018) [20:00]
09 - Something (Jun 2018) [22:11]
10 - Lullaby - Cover (Jul 2018) [25:10]
11 - Melody Exercise ~Inspired by Kohei Tanaka~ (Nov 2018) [26:54]
12 - My Lighthouse Home (Jan 2019) [29:17]
13 - Starry Moonlit Night ~For Piano~ (Apr 2019) [31:30]
14 - Molentary Express ~For Piano~ (Apr 2019) [36:25]
15 - Friends of Different Age (Jul 2019) [39:46]
16 - Tell Me Why ~For Piano and Guitar~ (Jul 2019) [41:54]
17 - All Summer Long (Jul 2019) [45:10]
18 - Looking in the Right Direction ~For Piano~ (Aug 2019) [47:17]
19 - Piano Exercise (Aug 2019) [50:49]
20 - Phantasy Star III Title Theme ~String Quintet~ [52:47]

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A collection of songs I composed in private during my time at the Cork Academy of Music college. along with arrangements/covers of other pieces I came up with when I figured out how to do chord charts earlier on this year. (It's worth mentioning that parts of each track have been cleaned up and newly arranged to show what I've managed to learn over the last two years, though it's still based on what I'd originally written at the time).

It's mostly done in MuseScore, so it's essentially an album's worth of MIDIs. I previously composed music by ear, and this was my first time making music through sheet music, using my understanding of music theory and terminology to help me out.

This album is named for the now-defunct FFShrine forums, and specifically the community of the Big Orchestral Action Music Thread. This is a community where we would upload and discuss orchestral music, mainly in media. It's one of my favourite places on the web, having learned and discovered so many interesting composers, works and so on.

My interest in composing had become reignited after I started frequenting the thread, and I wanted to become good enough at my music knowledge to engage more meaningfully in those discussions and create music that I hoped could even slightly compare to anything I'd heard being praised and discussed.

Over the next two years at the college, I learned a good deal about music theory and terminology, which I've been using ever since to become better at composing and arranging songs - to the point where I feel I've become much better at it than I used to be.

But just as importantly, I also made a lot of new friends who I still keep in contact with regularly enough, ended up performing a song with a band (something that especially meant a lot due to my own performance anxieties and how easily I suffer from sensory overload), and worked on two college plays in various capacities such as writing, acting, lighting, and more.

I've even been able to get into a big-name college because of what I had done - where I'm continuing to learn more about music, along with a few other subjects that I've found endlessly fascinating.

This may sound silly, but I feel that I wouldn't have been able to do all this if it wasn't for the community for that thread, both in inspiring me to get out there and for cheering me up when I didn't have any confidence in myself through many, many, MANY excellent discussions. Whether it's on FFShrine or SquidBoard (the thread's new home), the community have come to mean the world to me, and I wanted to show my gratitude through an album.

Thank you.

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originally released on December 26th, 2019.

Tracks 1-19 arranged by Jim McGrath, track 20 arranged by Jim McGrath and Jeremy Robson.

Tracks tracks 1-9,11-12, 15, 17 & 19 composed by Jim McGrath.
Track 10 originally composed by Kevin Ayers, for the 1971 album "Whatevershebringswesing".
Track 13 originally composed by Kumi Tanioka, for the 2003 game "Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles".
Track 14 originally composed by Tomohito Nishiura, for the 2007 game "Professor Layton and the Pandora's Box".
Track 16 originally by Penpals, for the 1997 anime "Berserk".
Track 18 originally by Paul Slade, for the 1984 album "Friend".
Track 20 originally composed by Izuho Numata, for the 1990 game "Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom".

Composed, mixed and mastered in:

Musescore (tracks 1-3, 5-20)
Cubase (most instruments in track 4)
Ableton Live 7 (melody and solo guitar in track 4)

Composed from August 2017 to December 2019.