Tanka of the Day ~ This old coat of mine

    
This old coat of mine
    smelling of stale cigarettes
        with its torn pocket
    a reminder of my youth
        and many forgotten sins. 
   

   
(July, 2015)

Haiku of the Day ~ California days:

 
California days: 
The wind playing with the palms.
Bright clear pale-blue skies. 
     

Haiku of the Day ~ Monday morning haze,

    
Monday morning haze,

Southern California June,

    prelude to summer.

   

Haiku of the Day ~ (We pull to the side)

   
(We pull to the side)
Feeding the radiator
    the ice chest water.
    

Haiku of the Day ~ At the Tastee-Freez

     
At the Tastee-Freez 
    we loiter on the benches 
         with melting ice-cream.
   

Haiku of the Day ~ Guarding the highway

    
Guarding the highway
    under the piercing sunlight 
        a lone Yucca waits...
   

Tanka of the Day ~ As the sun raises

   
As the sun raises 
        we descend from the mountain
    (passing  a Semi).
            At the junction we veer left, 
                north across the Mojave. 
   
  

Haiku of the Day ~ With both windows down.

 
With both windows down.
      Hot desert wind in my face.
(two forty air con.)
 
  

Haiku of the Day ~ Summer comes early

 
Summer comes early
        (lonely, arid, wild, and bare)
    to the high desert.
 
     

Score of the Week: Eous

Eous

"Eous" is a piece for a Jazz group consisting of Soprano Sax, Vibraphone, Bass and Drums.

Please take a listen to the MP3 for an example of one way the piece could be interpreted. Thank you.

"Eous" is a made up word with no meaning.

Score and MP3
 
   

Mediation on the Sierpinski Tetrahedron

           

Best experienced with eyes closed in a dark and cool room.

An experiment in the layering of synthesizers and rhythms over both a bass drone and a bass ostinato.

Score and MP3> Mediation on the Sierpinski Tetrahedron
     
Video You Tube: Mediation on the Sierpinski Tetrahedron
          

Other People's Squirrels

    
 Well after my last update I started to veer off the path. At first it was only to down load updates and patches to my existing software. That then morph is a short bit of time searching for Freeware VSTs, and that was not too bad as I was continuing to sketch out ideas for the fourth movement. But on Friday I decided to open up the first project I ever did in Sonar 5 way back in 2005 [What Ever]. That is when the first squirrels arrived. I decided to redo the entire piece in the newest version of Sonar Platinum and the updated Garritan JABB libraries. That initially went well, but then Saturday arrived.

   Saturday was the day my Mother and Sister was holding their big annual charity Tea Party and the last couple of years my Wife and Daughter have gotten into helping  with it. Additionally I was on call for work. Saturday the the other people's squirrels arrived. 

 First I need to run last minute errands with my wife to get flowers for the tea party. No big deal you think? Well you do not understand the enormous amount of time it takes my wife to pick out flowers (and I do love her very dearly). Once that was done and the flowers dropped off at my Mother's place I need to shuttle my wife back home and the plan was to then have me shuttle the Daughter back to my Mother's place and that would have worked, except it takes her like 15 minutes to get out of the house. Still not a real problem except I get the page (text message technically) from work.

 So I have the leave the wife a daughter to their own designs and go into my room to fire up the computer to see what the issue. As I was doing that the Wife and Daughter take off to my Mother's house and leave the Granddaughter in the house with me. Soon the Granddaughter is yelling at me because the dog is going crazy and I have to deal with it instead, luckly just then the Wife was back and I could get back to work. But I consider everything a packed up my stuff and drive into the office.

 A couple hours later I had everything resolved and left the office. The Tea party was in full swing, buy because of the hot weather I need to pickup extra bottle water on my way there. To cut to the chase. The rest of the day was spent bouncing between the tea party and the office (I got another shorter call later) and just simply waiting on my family. I think I was finally able to roll into bed at one AM.


  Since then I spent most of the week working on the new mix of “What Ever” and it is almost finished. I made what I call a raw recording of the piece to listen to for a while before finalizing it. The good news is I am back working of the second movement of my new piece. But as for the fourth movement I have decided to step back from it for a few days as I am not longer happy with the initial ideas I had and I might end up taking it in a completely new direction. So unless the evil squirrels rear their heads I am focused on finishing the second movement and getting back to working of the first movement.


   May your days be squirrel free.


Ursus Demens
                 

No Squirrels

I was able to keep focus all week and spent it working on the mix to the second movement of my new multi-movement piece I talked about last Friday.  I am very happy with the way the movement is coming along. And I hope to finalize it this weekend.  Currently I do not plan on releasing it until I have finished all the movements.

I am still working on titles for each of the movements.  So far they are:

• I Subatomic Emotions
• II Surreal Anxieties
• III Forgotten Thoughts or Forgotten Memories or Disregarded Sensations or ... ?
• IV Quiet Madness or Silent Rage or ... ? 

 
Hopefully I will soon get back to working  on the first movement.  I have already started sketching out a rough outline for the last movement.  And I still have the new ballet sitting on the back burner waiting to distract me. 

Squirrels Everywhere I Look

               

So I am in the process of finishing working on Impression No. 5 with the hope that I can mix it over the weekend. But. As I am sitting here eating my lunch I got an idea for another large project and spent half of my lunch starting to sketch it out. Only God knows if I will get back on track with Impression No. 5 or spend the next weeks working on my new idea for a new piece (lets not even mention that I still have the Ballet to work on).

Ballet Update:

   

The Music is coming along fine. The music for second and third scenes are both about 98 percent done, with just final editing and polishing to do. I have written two drafts of the first scene, but have started sketching out a completely new third version of the first scene last night. I have made notes on several other scenes, but have not yet put a note on the paper for them.

The current working instrumentation is:

• A string nontet (4 violins, 2 violas, 2 cells, and bass)
• A double reeds nontet (3 oboes, English Horn, 4 bassoon, Contra-bassoon)
• Percussion (both pitched and un-pitched, several players)
• Flute (maybe doubling on Piccolo and Alto).

Haiku of the day

         

The squirrels in my head

running and jumping around

what was I doing?

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!

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

Haiku of the week

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

Taulma V

Taulma is a made up word, but sounds a bit like the name of a planet in a SciFi novel.

Music by me, and a bit different than my usual stuff.

Taulma V