culture / music

Open Mic Adventures XLI: “Serenade for a Sleepy Student No. 2”

The Portly Politico12 Comments

This time next week, readers are going to get a brand new song from yours portly (indeed, by the time you read this post, it should already be on my YouTube channel; if you’re subscribed, you’ve probably already seen it).

In the meantime, I decided to take a brief break—don’t panic, Ponty!—from the live performances to feature one of my short Red Tardy Slip compositions.  It’s the sequel of sorts to another piece, “Sleepy Student’s Serenade,” which I will likely rename to “Serenade for a Sleepy Student No. 1” if I ever record and release this self-indulgent project.  This one, of course, is entitled “Serenade for a Sleepy Student No. 2.”

I like the simple, melancholic feel of this piece.  I also love the little F diminished chord I put in the penultimate measure.  The original manuscript score (below) has an F minor written, but I changed it to the diminished version of the chord (F, Ab, and Cb [B]) on a whim, and loved the sound of it.  It also feeds in nicely to the G in the same major (G, B, D), with the repeated Cb / B:

And, as always, here it is on YouTube:

Finally, here is the score.  Note that the F diminished is written here as an Fm7 (F, Ab, C, Eb), but I ditched the seventh interval and made it diminished, as noted above.  Had I left the Eb, it’d be an F half-diminished seven chord.

Serenade for a Sleepy student No. 2 - Red Tardy Slip Manuscript

Happy Listening!

—TPP

Other Editions of Open Mic Adventures:

12 thoughts on “Open Mic Adventures XLI: “Serenade for a Sleepy Student No. 2””

  1. First of all, I love the freudian slip here: “I like the simple, melancholic feel of this peace.” Simple = peace; I suspect there’s wisdom in that.

    It’s very pretty. I have no lexicon for music so hopefully you won’t be offended if I say ‘pretty’ instead of something more in tune (pardon the pun…) with the presentation.

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  2. I often wonder whether your style would be suited to the video game industry. There are a lot of short piano pieces in them – some of the most beautiful appearing in Silent Hill 2 and Skyrim – and for a lover of composition, it’d be right up your street.

    I like the mystery and wonder in the first keys of this track. I don’t think the last keys quite fit for me.

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  3. One way to get your creative juices flowing is to find a scene in TV or film, mute the volume and imagine what sort of soundtrack, whether subtle or obvious, could potentially work for it. When you get invested in something, you’ll find you have more strings to your bow than you thought.

    I sometimes do that with my writing. Think about the extension to a scene and write an alternative, how I see it developing, not how it actually develops. It can be quite fun.

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