Well I had no idea that the Tim Carleton Darrick Deel collaboration of Opus number 1 was so popular!  I had blogged about it a while ago when I was looking for the infamous hold music.
Popularity of Opus #1
I got one quick heads up that the stereo version of the popular ‘hold’ track would be uploaded, but once it was I got 5 notifications! Â One from a Darrick! Â It sure sounds nicer than the mono version, but when you are on a phone what do you expect?
Apparently NPR will only host the mp3 for the weekend, so of course I’ll keep a mirror.
For anyone unfamiliar with the song, here is a little bit of history from here:
This was not a proprietary mix made by Cisco. It was licensed to Cisco for non-exclusive use in their CallManager product. Tim composed this song and is who performed it for this recording. I helped him record it one day in his garage. This recording is actually from the late Eighties.
I had the opportunity to submit the song to the guy compiling the music on hold CD and he included it in our upcoming product. The Synths used to record the song had very favorable acoustic qualities when transmitted over VoIP with a G.711 encoding. As a result Tim’s Opus No. 1 became the default hold music on Cisco’s product.
The original version has a nice stereo effect on the clapping and a real breathiness and richness in the Synths. There have been a number of people over the years that have tracked me down due to this music. It is always exciting for us to find more people that like the music enough to track it down after an encounter with it while on Hold. Tim and I will discuss the options for making this available and post back here.
This is is just begging for a MOD or MIDI conversion. I bet the MIDI mix could even be optimized for an 80s synth (for authentic sounding reproduction of course) like the Roland MT-32 given its limited polyphony.
I finally SHAZAM’d this song while on hold. BAM! Opus No 1. I have found you! There is also a YouTube clip wW0VYKtJisw. I have been telling my office that this song was the bomb diggity for a couple of years now.
Future readers of this blog post…
If a midi track of this ever becomes available please send me a message and let me know.
@jimparker
Tim and Darrick created the coolest hold music ever. They should officially post it on Amazon and allow people to buy it as a thank you. If not set up some way for others to send them a tip or something.
Couldn’t get the MP3 on the NPR Website. Looks like their under heavy load. Can’t wait to put this on our PBX. Thanks so much. Long live Opus #1!
Tim & Darrick, if you’re watching this you guys are to be congratulated. I agree, if you publish it on Amazon or iTunes I’m sure people will help give new life to the stereo copy and reward your past efforts! Good job!
I sure hope that Cisco already rewarded them for their efforts 🙂
Perhaps I should just publish my paypal address for donations. No need to give Amazon or iTunes a cut since we put the music out there for free. 🙂 I will gift half of any donations to Tim.
my first name(dot)last name (at) do no evil’s free email service
Thanks for all of the kind words.
Darrick
I guess the other question is, do you have any more works? Sorry I’m outside of NPR territory so if it was covered, I didn’t hear it.
Yeah, I have a stack of master tapes that Tim and I recorded. I’m going to work on remastering them and go from there.
Cool! I know I’m looking forward to it! And I can bet there is a lot of people around the world will want to hear it as well!
Hi,
I cannot figure out that email address. I would really like to send you and email.
Thanks,
Denis
denis [at] smajlovic [dot] dk
“do no evil’s free email service” is just “gmail.com”. The rest is self-explanatory.
I love this music! There’s been a resurgence in popularity of a lot of “vintage” synth music lately and this song is amazing. If you have other similar works I’d love to hear them, I can listen to that whole hour while doing other things and it never gets boring. I play synths myself, what did you use on this recording? Sounds kinda like a Roland D-50 or something similar to me.
@Eric It is a Yamaha DX7 IIFD synth with a Yahmaha RX-17 Drum Machine and an Aleisis Midiverb II.
Hey! If I wanted to change my company’s hold music to Opus one, how could I procure the licensing? Would that be necessary?
Please let me know!
Drop Darrick an email. I would imagine he’d be ok with it… but I can’t speak for him.
What’s his email?
I also love that song. I’ve been listening to it for several years when on hold and have wondered if it was a real soundtrack I could get. Today it finally hit me to use Shazam. With the tile–Opus No. 1– in hand, I hit google and started searching for it. I’d love to have it in it’s entirity, along with anything else similar. I like to play “interesting” “wordless” music white working. A variety of pieces similar to this, one after the other, would make for a great couple of hours of work.
Awesome! Took me FOREVER to find this song.. Great job!!!
Trust me it took an insane amount of effort to track it down when I first found the source, back in 2011. Which is kind of sad as I did deploy the 1st and 2nd generation of cisco phone systems, complete with Opus #1, I just never really looked into where on earth the music came from.
I’m still hoping Darrick and Tim release more of their 1980’s synth music.
What are the Licensing for Opus Number 1.
I want to use it in my PBX