Category: music

Open Mic Adventures LXXVIII: “Robobop”

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For this week’s edition of Open Mic Adventures I’d like to feature the opening track of Leftovers II, which you can find it at the following sites:

If you like 1950s rock ‘n’ roll and robots, you’re going to love “Robobop“:

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Heptadic Structure

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Yours portly took a brief break from composing to catch up on some other work, but I’m back to composing, albeit not with quite the same intensity as during the late winter months.  I released Leftovers II earlier this month, and Four Mages is coming very soon (2 May 2024).  I’ve also completed a funk album, Advanced Funkification, which is coming on 7 June 2024.

If you’d like to listen to Leftovers II, you can find it at the following sites:

I figured that was a pretty good slate of releases, and that I might take a rest.  But then I started jotting down a little melody in the incredibly rare (and, admittedly, self-indulgent) time signature of 7/16:

Heptadic Structure Prewriting

What resulted was the piece “Heptadic Structure.”  The piece itself is exactly twenty-one written measures (although it’s technically longer with repeats).

That gave me an idea:  if I wrote seven pieces in 7/X time consisting of twenty-one measures each, I’d have a total of 147 measures of music.  14 + 7 = 21.  There’s a beautiful mathematical symmetry there.

Why 21?  It’s the multiple of 3 and 7.  Three represents the Holy Trinity; seven is God’s Number, a heavenly number.  So 21 is a reference to the Trinity and Heaven.

I came upon the term “Heptadic Structure” when looking for a title for this piece.  Apparently, the concept of a heptadic structure is nothing new, and is a major concept in the rather esoteric field of Biblical numerology.  The argument is that various portions of the Bible breakdown in mathematically consistent and beautiful ways, always with the number 7.  It’s a fascinating concept, one about which I only possess a passing familiarity, but I love these mathematical structures.  Maybe it’s all a grand coincidence—or, more likely, it’s all part of God’s Grand Design.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Support Culture, Not Political Machines

The Portly Politico5 Comments

Last week regular contributor and senior correspondent Audre Myers wrote a piece for Nebraska Energy Observer entitled “Lets Chat” [sic].  In the piece, Audre ponders the question of whether or not to continue donating to the Republican Party (by which I take her to mean the Republican National Committee), and solicits readers for their opinions on the issue.

Audre is quite aware of the perfidious machinations of the RNC, but the source of her quandary is whether or not to help cash-strapped President Trump with his campaign.  If you’re going to give any money to any candidate, my personal, unsolicited advice is to give to only two sources:  Trump’s presidential campaign directly—not through the RNC or any PAC—and to local candidates (or, alternatively, your county GOP).  That’s where your money will have the most impact.

Overall, though, I advise strongly against giving any money to out-of-state political campaigns or to political parties generally.  Indeed, in my comment on Audre’s piece, I argued that our money is much better spent supporting small conservative creators.  I think I made a compelling case:

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The TJC Challenge

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Readers, I’m issuing you a challenge:  The TJC Challenge.

The TJC Challenge

The TJC Challenge

What is The TJC Challenge, you ask?  It’s simple:  undertake a marathon stream of every release I have on Apple Music (or your streaming service of choice).

Apple Music Method

If you’re an Apple Music user, it’s pretty easy.  Here are three simple steps:

  1. Click or tap this link to my artist profile (preferably on your phone)
  2. Hit “play”
  3. Listen to my tunes!

If you don’t select shuffle, it will play through each of my albums in alphabetic order by title.  That means you’ll start with Contest Winner EP and end with Spooky Season II: Rise of the Cryptids.

YouTube Method

Don’t use Apple Music?  No problem.  The cheapest method (no monthly subscription to a streaming service) is via YouTube.  The only downside is that there’s no way to play through all albums without having to select individual releases.

Still, here’s the YouTube method:

  1. Follow this link to my “Releases” on my YouTube channel
  2. Hover over one the album you’d like to listen to first and click “Play All”
  3. Rinse and repeat for each album

The entire challenge will take about 185 minutes—give or take a few seconds and/or minutes—to complete, or around three hours and change.

The beauty is that if you’re doing laundry or household chores, it’ll breeze by, and you’ll enjoy some great tunes in the process!  If you need to turn the volume down a bit to focus on another task, that’s fine, too.

One-Hour Variation

If you’d rather take on a shorter challenge, consider listening to Leftovers II, Epistemology, Firefly Dance, and Spooky Season II: Rise of the Cryptids (YouTube links here, here, here, and here, respectively).  They come out to almost exactly one hour when played consecutively.  These are also my four most recent releases.

Time for Just One Release?

If that or the one-hour challenge are too daunting, and you can only pick one release, I recommend Contest Winner – EP (YouTube link here).  The entire EP is only twenty-one (21) minutes long, roughly the length of a television show without commercials.  It’s my only release that isn’t instrumental, and it consists of six of the best songs I’ve ever written (well, at least four of them are really good).

Time for One (or Two) Instrumental Releases?

If lyrics are distracting and you want one good instrumental release, I’ll make two recommendations:  Epistemology and/or Firefly Dance (YouTube:  here and here, respectively).  Both are about fifteen minutes long; you could listen to both over a lunch break, or listen to one while driving to work.

Conclusion

If you listen to my entire discography, you’ll travel from my early MIDI compositions in 2006 all the way to last week (1 April 2024).  That’s eighteen years of musical growth and development (hopefully not musical regression—gulp!).  You’ll also be doing yours portly a huge favor.

If you do the challenge—or even part of it—let me know!  What were your favorite releases?  Which ones didn’t “do it” for you?  What would you like to hear in the future?

Happy Listening!

—TPP

Open Mic Adventures LXXVI: “Black Mage”

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I’m still promoting my latest release, Leftovers II, but I’m also excited for my next album, Four Mages, which releases Thursday, 2 May 2024.  Of course, if you’d like to hear Leftovers II, you can do so at the following places (and probably more):

Today, however, I’d like to look at the fourth of the Four Mages, the dreaded “Black Mage.”

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Lazy Sunday CXLIV: Four Mages, Part I

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Last week I released Leftovers II, and in just a few weeks I’ll release my next album, Four Mages (2 May 2024).  If you’d like to hear my latest release, you can do so here:

Readers might have noticed some of the colorful mages popping up over the last few weeks on this blog.  I’ve posted three of the Four Mages so far (“Black Mage” is coming this Tuesday, 9 April 2024—stay tuned!), so I thought I’d share them with y’all this Lazy Sunday:

  • “Open Mic Adventures LXXIII: ‘Blue Mage’” – “Blue Mage” is a duet for oboe and bassoon, built upon a mysterious whole tone scale. The piece is written in 5/8 time, further lending to the mystical feel of this magical journey.
  • “Open Mic Adventures LXXIV: ‘Red Mage’” – “Red Mage” is a mischievous and playful duet for oboe and bassoon. It is the companion piece to “Blue Mage.” The piece has a playful, mischievous feel, and I love how it sounds very much like it’s from a fantasy JRPG soundtrack.
  • “Open Mic Adventures LXXV: ‘White Mage’” – “White Mage” is a bright but flowing solo for flute with celesta accompaniment. A piano could be substituted in place of the celesta. It has a delightful Final Fantasy vibe.

Happy Sunday—and Happy Listening!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

April 2024 Bandcamp Friday

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Today is Bandcamp Friday!  That means Bandcamp waives their share of any purchases made on my Bandcamp page today (Friday, 5 April 2024), so it’s the best possible time to buy my music if you want to support yours portly.

Earlier this week I released my sixteenth Bandcamp album, Leftovers II.  It consists of tracks leftover from other composing projects, as well as two older pieces (“Robobop” and “Pwrblld [Ballad II]“) and a lo-fi organ piece I recorded using an old computer microphone sometime in 2007.

You can listen to the full thing on Bandcamp for free a few times before Bandcamp locks out full track playback.  However, if funds are tight and you’d rather not pay $5 for the album (which you should totally do anyway—it’s just five bucks!), you can listen to the album through the following services:

Thanks for listening!  Even just streaming helps me out a great deal.

—TPP