Tag: ballad

Open Mic Adventures XCI: “Tu Me Manques”

The Portly Politico8 Comments

Yours portly has been composing a ton of instrumental music over the past year (ten releases since 1 September 2023:  Spooky Season, Spooky Season II: Rise of the Cryptids, Leftovers, Firefly Dance, Epistemology, Leftovers II, Four Mages, Advanced Funkification, Heptadic Structure, and White Boy Summer), but my songwriting has lain fallow for some years now.  As far as I can tell from my records, the last song I wrote to completion was back in 2019.  D’oh!

So I finally sat down this past weekend and hammered a new song, “Tu Me Manques”; it translates to “I miss you” in French, but the literal translation is “you are missing from me”—far more poetic.  I took that concept and wrote this 1970s-style piano ballad, with liberal use of common French phrases.

Read More »

Open Mic Adventures XC: “Balladic Processional”

The Portly Politico8 Comments

Yours portly released a new album earlier this month, Heptadic Structure.  It’s an exploration of pieces in 7/4, 7/8, and 7/16 time.  Each piece is twenty-one written measures, for a total of 147 measures across the seven pieces.  Math is fun!

You can listen to and/or purchase the album at the following links:

This week I’m featuring the third track from the album, “Balladic Processional.”  It’s a tuba solo with harpsichord accompaniment.  I boasted on Facebook that it’s the “best tuba and harpsichord piece ever composed (because it might be the *only* tuba and harpsichord piece ever composed)”; that was incorrect.  There is piece by Mack LaMont called Seven Movements for Harpsichord and Tuba.  It’s worth a listen in and of itself.

Regardless, I really like “Balladic Processional.”  I hope you will, too.

Read More »

Son of Sonnet: A Frozen Ballad

The Portly Politico4 Comments

It’s nearly the end of 2021, and while it’s technically winter, it’s been unseasonably warm here in South Carolina.  Indeed, “unseasonably” is a bit of a misnomer, and it is often hot and humid on Christmas (as it was this year).  I vividly remember playing football on New Year’s Day in shorts and a t-shirt.

Nevertheless, it’s winter, and January and February tend to be the coldest months here.  We’ve already had quite a bit of frosty weather (though no snow, which is rare as it is, but especially rare before January), so we’re fully into the wintry hygge.

A couple of weeks ago, regular contributor Son of Sonnet (subscribe to his SubscribeStar page here) put out an invitation for fans to submit themes for some new poems.  I proposed “Winter coziness“—’tis the season—and my Telegram buddy and fellow SoS fan WS responded “I was going to go dark, seasonal affective disorder.“

That led to my compromise theme:  “The dualism of winter: warm coziness and dark despair.”  I probably meant “duality” instead of “dualism,” but Son delivered “A Frozen Ballad,” combining the two aspects of winter into a ballad all about nostalgia, hope (and hopelessness), and trusting in God in our darkest moments.

The poem has received some positive feedback on Son’s Telegram page and on the esoteric Telegram chatroom Occam’s Razor Chat, which WS created as a space for escaping politics online, instead dedicating the chat to exploring the unusual, interesting, and supernatural.

Now, with Son’s blessing, I’d like to share “A Frozen Ballad” here:

Read More »