The last few years have seen a huge proliferation of software packages for PC based soundbanks and music production. The recognised downside of this technology is that music can all too easily end up sounding like the software on which it has been written. Runestone has always been anxious to avoid this approach.

Aside from a few guitar compositions, most of our music starts out as a basic keyboard score. We have come to prefer the Roland XP and Korg Triton workstations out of all the keyboards we have tried to date. Our Roland synths have been expanded with World, Asia and Vocal soundcards and most of our favourite sounds have been edited in some way to make them a little different to the norm.

We try to select sounds that do not carry strong associations with our modern civilised world. Formal orchestral sounds such as strings and piano do not generally have a place in our music because the imagery is wrong, being more evocative of concert halls and formal settings than for mysterious atmospheres and journeys of the imagination? The same can be said for electric guitar and western drum kits where we much prefer to use hand-played frame drums, rattles, world percussion and acoustic alternatives.

Another characterisation of our work is an extensive use of phased low frequency drones and long, expansive reverb effects. Both of these techniques used to be regarded as signature ingredients of New Age music and are thought to enhance its relaxational qualities. Our ideal choice of synth sounds tends to centre around those based on choir samples and anything with an ethereal, unfamiliar or primitive feel.

Runestone is a writing partnership and, working on a keyboard score sometimes becomes like an email version of Pass-the-Parcel or a game of Consequences, sending files to each other, adding changes and sending them back. The process repeats until we feel the arrangement is ready to have acoustic instruments added. At this point, the keyboards are routed into a PC based recording package called Cubase and then

  . . . we have some more tea