Yours portly is squeezing in a quick, post-cruise Lazy Sunday with some recent posts featuring reedy chorales:
Enjoy!
—TPP
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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After a month of on again, off again composing—with a good chunk of “off-again” in there—I have finally finished composing “Japanese Trapdoor Snails.” I started the work on 15 April 2026 and wrapped it up late on the evening of Wednesday, 13 May 2026.
It’s an unusual piece, as snails are unusual creatures. I wanted to capture something mystical and contemplative—and, in a hackneyed kind of way, something vaguely Japanese—in the opening bars, with are a slow, flowing 5/4 time. I thought 5/4 fit the slow movements of snails, as if they need an extra beat to get where they’re going.
The “B” section, of sorts, shifts to 3/4 (after some shifting from 5/4 to 4/4) in the same tempo, with the flute moving in dotted quarter notes and the oboe moving in quarter notes. My goal here was to blur tonality and, again, to depict the kind of shuffling crawl of snails along the edges of a pond.
After a recapitulation that shortens one 4/4 phrase to 7/8, I launch into a lively 3/8 portion that has a sort of gypsy and/or Slavic feel to it. In retrospect, I think of this section as capturing the trudging lives of a Japanese Trapdoor Snails going about their never-ending business of pond cleaning. Note that I wasn’t quite sure how this portion fit thematically with the rest of the piece until after listening to it, which happens sometime—an idea pops into my head, I develop it, and then try to figure out if it should stay with that piece.
To be clear, I’m still not convinced it does fit, but I like the contrast and I think it gives some life to this otherwise contemplative and reflective piece.
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Happy Tuesday, dear readers!
No New Music Tuesday today, I’m afraid. With the school year winding down, several aspects of the job are winding up as we enter into exam review season. I’m attempting to squeeze in one last mini-unit covering the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and European exploration in the span of three lessons, so my unstructured time has been spent putting together slides for those quite vast topics. We’ll see if I can speed run the biggest events of 1300-1600!
The point is not an in-depth analysis of these major movements, but to keep the students a taste before they head into United States History next year. The first part of United States History examines the political, social, and religious context of late medieval/early modern Europe, as that context is significant in the exploration and colonization of the Americas. I’d like the students to finish the “story” of World History in such a way that it dovetails with the “story” of United States History.
I’ve tinkered with my latest composition, “Japanese Trapdoor Snails,” slightly, but have hit a bit of a block with it. As with writer’s block, the solution is simply to write—in this case, music. To do that, though, I need to have a bit more unstructured time, and what I’ve had has been dedicated to more pressing matters.
It’s a quick installment of New Music Tuesday today, friends. I’m working on a piece called “Japanese Trapdoor Snails”; I’m attempting to capture a quintessentially “Japanese” sound, although I’m not sure if I’m succeeding just yet.
It’s for flute, oboe, classical guitar, and drums (so far). I’ll likely continue to add instrumentation as needed.
Here’s a thirty-second bit of what I have so far:
Still a bit static, but what do you think of this odd little piece in its current form? Does it have legs—or one big, fat, muscular belly-foot?
Happy Listening!
—TPP
My Middle School Music Ensemble students have been learning the iconic “Morning” (sometimes called “Morning Mood”) by Edvard Grieg in preparation for the SCISA Music Festival this Thursday, 12 March 2026. I began toying with the main theme and came up with today’s piece.
Yours portly is continuing to work on his collection of pond-based tunes, Koi Dance. I introduced some rosy red minnows to our koi pond about a month ago, which inspired today’s piece.
I’m continuing to work on my pond-based pieces, and have a fourth piece completed. This duet incorporates whole tone scales, which possess a mystical, mysterious quality. The piece is broadly in Bb major, but the second and third sections feature some secondary dominants that, at times, push the key closer to D major. The whole tone scales also give a sense of atonality to sections of the piece, representing the mystery of moonlight.
It’s a quick Lazy Sunday this week as Dr. Wife and I hunker down in the cold. I’m casting my gaze back to two posts from earlier this week, one based in the coolness of the watery depths, the other in the fiery crucible of the modern restaurant industry:
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
I’ve been working hard on this week’s piece, “Koi Dance,” for about two weeks now. It’s a chamber piece featuring two flutes, bassoon, and piano, and draws inspiration from Bedřich Smetana’s “The Moldau”; that piece also features a flowing theme that depicts the movement of water.
I plugged the finished piece into Audacity and applied some additional reverb and a master effect, both of which I think have allowed the sound to “pop.”
