It’s been an animal-centric year for yours portly. Sweet Murphy crossed the rainbow bridge; Nugget is still going strong; and we’re likely adopting a puppy in a few weeks. The koi and other creatures are doing well—I even wrote an entire album about it (still 90% off with promo code koipond)—and our bird feeder continues to attract lots of birds—and lizards. I’ve seen a nasty skink slinking around, too.
It’s been a moderately busy week for yours portly, so writing has fallen on the backburner a bit. Dr. Wife and I spent much of Labor Day knocking out some projects around the house, including assembling a blue bedframe that has been the bane of my existence. I finally found some screws that would work to hold the footboard to the frame (I have no idea where I packed the original screws), so the bed is safe for human use.
Yesterday, while a bit more relaxed, also feels like a bit of a blur. I set to work fairly early on writing and arranging some music for my students, including “Will’s Waltz,” the subject of yesterday’s installment of New Music Tuesday. I also arranged a piano version of the legendary Tetris theme song, available for purchase here, here, and here (or you can screenshot it, you cheapskate, and print a copy). The famous “A Theme” from Tetris is based on the Russian folk song “Korobeiniki,” which is about a peddler seducing a woman—whoa! Now we associate the theme with dropping blocks and clearing lines.
Today I’ll be installing a WiFi mesh (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchase you make through that link, at no additional cost to you—TPP). Our router from Spectrum isn’t cutting it in our house—the signal here in my office is very spotty, although my PC is connected via a dedicated Ethernet port—and my younger brother helped me find a scorching deal on the model linked above (which was almost $100 pricier the last time I checked). Our old house has plaster walls, which apparently disrupt WiFi signals terribly, so the three-point mesh should give us the coverage we crave.
One of my favorite ways to write new music is to take ideas that pop up in music lessons and turn them into something fun. One common counting issue that turns up without almost every student is the tendency to rush a sequence of quarter notes when they come right after a sequence of eighth notes.
Something like that happened with one of my students, the titular “Will” of today’s piece. There’s a piece called “Waltz Time” that features a sequence of descending quarter notes in 3/4 time. For whatever reason, students tend to rush those quarter notes, even though they’re not preceded by a sequence of eighth notes. Good old Will was doing it consistently enough that I pointed out he was essentially turning every other measure into 3/8 time and/or a set of eighth-note triplets.
That got us talking about music theory and multimeter pieces, and we started to play the piece wrong on purpose to see what we could come up with (then I insisted he play the piece as written so he doesn’t program his fingers to rush those quarter notes). I floated the idea of writing a piece that intentionally switches between 3/4 and 3/8, and Will seemed very excited about that idea.
So it is that I sat down this morning and put together this little piece, which Will and I will explore during his lesson later this week. It’s a piece that I can use with my other students, too.
As far as the mixing and such, I just added a “Large Room” reverb effect—my go-to reverb effect—in Audacity, then a “Bakelite” preset that I turned down a bit. It gives it that kind of retro, phonograph sound.
Ah, yes, another Labor Day here in the United States. Now that I don’t work full-time, every Monday is Labor Day, except since today actually is Labor Day, Dr. Wife is home, too. I might have to swing by Food Lion and pick up some hot dog and hamburgers and baked beans—’tis the season!
Today represents the spiritual end of summer throughout the nation, although most students have been back to school for three or four—or even five or six!—weeks already. It’s an odd, late Labor Day, as 1 September fell on a Tuesday. I imagine the kids and their teachers have been eager for this brief reprieve.
We’re still a good ways away from dog days of summer being over, but I’ve already begun detecting that crisp bit of autumnality stirring in the early mornings and at night. A little over a week ago I took a late walk as a storm was approaching, and it positively felt like I was walking through a Ray Bradbury story. I was positively chilly. It was the howling wind and swaying tree branches, though, that saw me cut my walk short and scurrying home to Dr. Wife and Nugget. I kept praying that the Lord Would Spare me from a massive widowmaker branch falling from one of the town’s ancient oak trees. He Saw fit to spare me for another day—and I’m sure I’ll take other walks in dubious weather again!
Fall is also a great time for music; if you haven’t already, you can still pickup Koi Dance for 90% with promo code koipond. You totally should!
I’m fairly convinced that Lindsay Clancy is a witch who sacrificed her children to Satan. Can I prove that? Absolutely not. Does it make sense? Probably more than post-partum psychosis. I believe that post-partum psychosis is real, but the devil had his hand in the infanticide of those children one way or another.
Regardless, I decided to link to my two recent posts on Clancy and her recent trial. More uplifting content to come.
“SubscribeStar Saturday: Clancy Mistrial” (SubscribeStar) – Some reflections on the consequences of the mistrial, as well as considering the wisdom of allowing consensus-seeking, irrational women serve on juries.
After lengthy deliberation on what should have been the most obvious verdict in human history, the jury came back hung in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial. One heroic juror (almost certainly one of the three men on the jury) held out in the face of what must have been overwhelming pressure from his fellow jurors and, it seems, at least half of the country (and, sadly, a massive amount of women).
My younger brother sent me this video:
I agree with the caption: give that man the Nobel Peace Prize!
The only silver lining here is that Lindsay Clancy will still be held at the Tewksbury State Hospital until and/or if a retrial occurs. She won’t be roaming at large, looking for children to lure into her candy cottage in the woods (or whatever modern witches do other than strangling their own children to death). Had that man caved to the pressure, she’d be walking free, probably heading to Lowe’s to buy a cauldron suitable enough for cooking babies.
Of course, this outcome is still a miscarriage of justice, one that suggests the serious need to reconsider our approach to jury selection—and who is even eligible to serve.
Koi Dance has been out almost a month on all streaming platforms and on my Bandcamp page, and it’s still 90% off with promo code koipond! That makes it about 8⅓ cents per track.
That promo code is also good for everything on the site, including a full discography purchase. That means you can get thirty-one (31) releases—almost all of which include tons of original artwork, scores, videos, essays, etc.—for $9.70 with promo code koipond.
Also, it’s Bandcamp Friday, which means Bandcamp waives their usual 15% cut of sales, making it the absolute best time to support your favorite pudgy composer—me!
Lately I’ve been working on a number of chorales, which will probably end up on Leftovers V. I’m also working on Säx II: Noodling, which will largely consist of improvised, experimental saxophone tunes that incorporate “found” sounds, repetitive vocal chants, homemade percussion, and—of course—saxophone. It’s a pretty wild departure from the kind of meticulous computer music I usually write. I’m not sure when I’ll release those (although Leftovers V will probably be the day after Thanksgiving, per tradition), but here’s my favorite track from SIIN:
You can read about how I composed that track here.
Yours portly is heading to see his older brother down in the Lowcountry this weekend, so it seemed like a good time to look back at this series of classic posts about road tripping around the Southeast and beyond. I’ll be back “on the soulless, boring Interstate Highway System”—specifically the particularly dreadful I-95—but there’ll be some good backroads, too.
I’ve got quite a bit of driving ahead of me. In a couple of weeks I’ll be presenting a couple of workshops at the South Carolina Independent School Association’s (SCISA‘s) annual teachers’ conference. I’ll be covering two topics: how to create a DIY garage band music program; and how teachers can make extra money teaching private music lessons. Naturally, I’ll be sharing the slides and resources with my paid subscribers once they’re done!But I’m looking forward to some open road and checking out the Upstate.
Yes, it seems September will see me all over South Carolina. I should write a book about that (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you).
I had a bit of staff paper and some time Saturday afternoon, so I jotted down another little piece. I wanted to do something in the chorale-vein I’ve been mining lately, but also change it up a bit. The result is today’s piece, “Clusters.”
I imported the WAV of the finished product into Audacity, where I applied a “Medium Room” reverb filter; a “Wide Synth Pad” chorus effect (one of my favorites); and a “Vintage” master effect.
