Yours portly is squeezing in a quick, post-cruise Lazy Sunday with some recent posts featuring reedy chorales:
Enjoy!
—TPP
Yours portly has been in a chorale mood, to the point that I was asking CoPilot about churches that actively commission original sacred pieces (it’s information was fairly dated, unfortunately, as the few leads it offered were from some years ago). I love playing around with little mathematical harmony problems, and seeing where long, sustained notes will take me.
When putting together last week’s piece, one of the proposed instrumentations I pitched to readers on various platforms was soprano saxophone, English horn, and oboe—a highly unorthodox blending of higher reeds. I ended up going with a more traditional woodwind trio of flute, oboe, and bassoon, but I wanted to try that other instrumentation for this week’s effort. I was pleased with the outcome.
The piece itself began as some jotting after Dr. Wife and I had our pre-breakfast Bible reading time together. I wanted to play around with writing a chorale in 6/4—something a bit different, which would also give me some more flexibility in moving the voices.
The process for mastering/mixing this piece was virtually the same as last week’s piece. I imported the WAV from Noteflight into Audacity and applied a “Small Dark Room” reverb effect; an “Wide Synth Pad” chorus effect; and a “Tape” master effect. The granular effects are probably slightly different, as I tend to tweak the chorus and master effects slightly, but listeners will recognize a similar soundscape as the one I shared a week ago.
I then took the audio and pictures of the score and track artwork and imported them all into iMovie. From there, I imported the resulting video into YouTube Create, where I added my favorite filter, “Vaporwave.” I got this one churned out quickly, as we were packing for our cruise (I took advantage of a Dr. Wife nap to hammer it out).
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Dr. Wife and I had some errands to run last week, and while she was tending to a few things I jotted down today’s piece. I will sometimes keep little bits of staff paper open in my music journals for short musical sketches, and I had three glorious staves waiting for an opportune moment to do some hasty composing.
The result is this set of three chorales. I posted polls on Substack and Telegram asking for feedback about the instrumentation, but results were limited. I initially arranged it for a string trio—violin, viola, and cello—but changed to a woodwind trio of flute, oboe, and bassoon. I think that captured the sound I wanted better.
I imported the WAV from Noteflight into Audacity and applied a “Small Bright Room” reverb effect; an “Wide Synth Pad” chorus effect; and a “Tape” master effect. I then took the audio and pictures of the score and track artwork and imported them all into iMovie. From there, I imported the resulting video into YouTube Create, where I added my favorite filter, “Vaporwave,” and added one bit of text that reads “<–“(C# Locrian)” to indicate that the “A major” section in the handwritten score is, actually, in that highly unusual key signature.
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I’m still brainstorming what my next music composition project will be, but I’ve been noodling around with a few ideas. Even when I am not sure of a thematic direction, I keep composing.
Composing is one of those things that scratches a very deep itch for me. I like to tinker with sets of music theory rules—some of my own creation—to see what kinds of sounds and ideas I can develop within fixed limits. The challenge of “solving” the problems these limitations create is part of the fun for me, as I tease out melodies and harmonies within whatever confines—arbitrary or otherwise—I’m set for myself.
One thing I’ve been interested in lately is writing trios consisting of three of the same instruments, or three very closely related instruments. It limits the palette of sound fonts I have to work with, but that also creates unique opportunities for music expression.
The piece this week is one of the first such attempts, a piece that explores the airy, high woodwinds.
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Want to play the sax? Read my ultimate guide to getting started for under $350.
Wanna be utterly perplexed while laughing uproariously? Grab a copy of my first book, The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link, so I’ll receive a portion of any purchase made through that link, at no additional cost to you—plus I’ll get the book royalties).
Yours portly is all about amorphous chorales, oozing harmonic dissonance and consonance in a blurry, flowing amoeba of sound.
That’s the gist of this week’s selection for Open Mic Adventures, “Cosmic Choral II“:
Yours portly uploads a bunch of content to YouTube. Most of those videos only get a handful of views (other than the shorts of Murphy, which usually garner a few hundred views).
Sometimes, though, for inexplicable reasons, one of my musical compositions—which usually clock views in the single digits, or maybe in the 20s-30s—will take off and get a (relatively) large amount of engagement. That still might only translate to a 100 views or so, but it’s always fun when it happens.
So this week, I’m looking at some “sleeper hits” in this installment of YouTube Roundup.
Yours portly released a new album earlier this summer, 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. Also, 14+7=21. Math is fun!
You can listen to and/or purchase the album at the following links:
This week I’m featuring the fifth track from the album, “C20r4735 (Chorales)“; the numbers in the title add up to 21—hey-oh!
My readers have been clamoring for more covers of classic rock and pop hits, but I continue to deliver up self-indulgent neoclassical foolishness. Have no fear, friends—I will have some timeless classics back soon.
For now, I’m offering a three-for-one deal with a polytonal piece of reedy churchiness.
Okay, I’ll admit—this week’s Open Mic Adventure is a bit of filler. Even the best albums have some filler, right?
I really have been trying to up the content game a bit lately, but in an effort to work ahead on the blog a bit, I’m digging deep into some compositions that are really more exercises for me than intended for general consumption.
Still, I thought this piece would give a bit of an insight into how I go about composing, specifically when I write chorales. I like to try to challenge myself to link together a single note across multiple measures in one or two of the voices, morphing the other voices around those pedal tones. The challenge comes in trying to find chords that fit these pedal points.
“Listless Chorale” is one such attempt. I’ll confess, I’m not totally pleased with the outcome—thus the “listless” in the title, as it feels like it’s not really moving anywhere—but you might find some beauty in its harmonies.
By the time you’re reading this post, I should be about an hour or so into a long drive to Indianapolis, where I’ll be visiting my older brother for a week. We’ll laugh, we’ll cry, we’ll vomit—well, probably not those last two, unless I overindulge on the chicken sausage dogs he picked up for the Fourth of July.
In the spirit of keeping Lazy Sunday lazy, here are three more pieces of original music from Open Mic Adventures, the series that keeps on giving:
Happy Sunday—and Happy Listening!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
