Impression No. 1

Impression No. 1

First in a planned set of seven Impressions. Impression of what you ask? That is up to you and your ears to shape. Listen to this piece in a tranquil and quiet spot, close your eyes and let the music take your imagination on a trip.

Impression No. 1

One Eighty Five

Well I have started working on a new piece for big band. The “head” is in a standard AABA form, but with some of my particular peccadillos. In the A section every fourth Bar (bars 4 and 8) are in 5/4 time (the rest of the bars are in 4/4 time). And the B section is nine instead of the traditional eight bars long. The B section is also built on a Tone Row and Tri-Chords.

The A section features the Vibraphone over a four bar bass ostinato; id est the bass ostinato is a 17 beat pattern that is played twice in each A section. In the B section the tri-chord change every three beats; thus we have a “harmonic” rhythm of 3 beats occurring over four beats of the drums and the melody and results in us having a nine bars of 4/4 for the B sections (4 X 9 = 36: 36/3 = 12: 12 tone row played 3 times (O,R,I).

The working title is “One Eighty Five”.

The First Time I Saw Her

Well I have gotten tried of messing wiht the mix for this Frankenstein Piece of Music, so here in all of its imperfections is The First Time I Saw Her
 
   
   

The First Time I Saw Her (Update)

Well I am the process of trying to get the balances better between all of the tracks.

I burned a test CD and put in the cat stereo yesterday. The problem is that I had let my son-in-law borrow the car and he had turn the bass all the way up, thus when the bass came in at bar seven it damn near rattled the car apart. :-)

Once I adjusted the bass it was fine, but there are several other places than need better balancing. I am working on it as fast as I can, but the wife has decided to do a major house cleaning and rearranging. The entire house is in chaos this week!

The First Time I Saw Her!

The current piece of music that I am working on is a bit of a Frankenstein Piece of Music. It is not about Mary Shelley’s Monster nor is it about Edgar Winter’s piece of that name; but from the fact that it comprises material from several pieces that that have written over the years.

The title comes from a set of theme and variations for piano that I wrote in the late 1970’s. And the six bar prelude (intro) of the piece is a re-orchestration of one of the variations. Other than the title and those six bars no other material from that piece is used. The bass line is derived from a common Baroque passacaglia pattern. In 3/2 meter the bass is laid over a six bar drum and bass patter in the drums. The main theme is a E minor pentatonic theme that I wrote for string orchestra when I was doing my music blog pieces in the winter of 2004/2005. The second theme is from a stench I had done last year (or the year before) but had never done anything with. The rest of the material comes from various fragments from by note books along with some new material (the 9/8 sections is new). I am still working on the mixing of the piece and I should have at least a rough mix within a week. A score will take a bit more time as another aspect of the Frankenstein nature of the piece is that only some of the music is currently in score format and some of it was directly played into Sonar so I will need to bring those bits back into Sibelius to get a final complete score, that is if I feel motivated to do so.

Stay tune and I will let know when there is something to listen to.

Ursus Demens

The silent voices

    

The silent voices

and echoing memories

of those who have gone

    

 

waiting

I am sitting here in my hospital room waiting for the nurse to bring me my 4mg of morphine.

Current music projects

Music

Well have starte making some sketches for a couple of new pieces,  but most of my time is spent mixing existing pieces.

I hane what sounds like a ground fault on my speakers, but everything I have hss had no effect on the problem, so I am stuck mixing on headphones.

String Quartet #1

String Quartet #1

雪

This is a short five movement piece for string quartet. Each movement is only about one minute each. And each movement is one line of a tanka that I wrote about Snow (Yuki). I wrote the second movement first and all of the material in the other four movements appears in or is derived from the second movement. Given this, one can think of the first movement as a prelude with the second movement being the main movement. The fifth movement re-states the main motifs of the first four movements, combining them into one large polyphonic mass.

Unable to sleep

I listen throughout the night

to the silent song

of falling snow in my yard.

With the soft dawn, satori.

• The first movement is built around the pentatonic scale F# G B C# D. (The Japanese Hirajoshi Scale )
• The second movement is built around the pentatonic scale C# D F# G# A.
• The third movement is built around the pentatonic scale D Eb G A Bb.
• The fourth movement is built around the pentatonic scale C Dd F G Ab
• The fifth movement is built around the pentatonic scale C# D F# G# A

MP3 at: http://www.scoreexchange.com/scores/22295.html

Sakura

Sakura
falling in the breeze.
Life goes on

Haiku of the week

   
Like the morning dew
Under the harsh light of day
Your lies fade away.
   

Dancing Up the Morning Sun

A  Serendipitous Experiment in Sound

 Dancing Up the Morning Sun

Not sure if this works or how it works. 

No score for it since the score would make no sense.

Just an Atonal ("atonal" as it only uses unpitch percussion and sounds) experiment in sound and rhythm.  

Tanka of the day

  

Crisp spring rain

snow on the mountains

bright sunlight

bills I have to pay

to work I must go

  

Haiku of the week

   

Listen to

naught but emptiness

and silence.  

   

Inner Flow

Inner Flow

A nine minute Jazz : Ambient: Meditation in 27/8 time.

MP3 and Score at: Inner Flow (Score & MP3)

MP3 only: Inner Flow (MP3)