Tag: independent music

Phone it in Friday XL: YouTube Roundup II

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June is nearly over, and July starts tomorrow.  I’ll be hitting the road for a week in Indianapolis to visit my older brother, which means I’ll probably get another poorly-selling travel book out of the deal—maybe something like Midwestern Musings, Washingtonian Woes.  Of course, I need to finish my series on the wild, stressful trip to Washington, D.C., from this March.  For whatever reason, I just haven’t had it in me to continue writing that saga, even though the best (and, at the time they occurred, the worst) parts are yet to come.

But I digress.  In the spirit of shameless self-promotion, here’s another edition if YouTube Roundup, in which I showcase some of my recent YouTube uploads.  Feel free to follow my YouTube page.  Watch a video, like it, leave a comment—whatever you’d like.  I upload approximately once a week, sometimes more.

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Open Mic Adventures XXXVIII: “Quasi-Date”

The Portly Politico7 Comments

It’s been refreshing to get back out to open mic nights and to do some live performances again.  In the spirit of getting back out and playing again, I’m digging deep into my back catalog and playing some really obscure originals.

My mind is also percolating for the first time in years with ideas for new songs.  Here’s hoping I have some time to sit down at the keyboard and do some actual writing and composing.  Sure, I’ve been composing a great deal of instrumental music lately, mostly for the piano, but I haven’t written a proper song since about 2019.

That said, at last week’s open mic I decided to pull out a really old piece, one I wrote way back in 2010, called “Quasi-Date.”

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Lazy Sunday CCVIII: Original Music, Part I

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Ah, the glorious summer.  I can already feel it slipping through my Vienna sausage fingers like the grains of sand in an hour glass, or the metaphorical sandbags I’m desperately stacking up against the inexorable tide of the new school year.  I love teaching, but having mornings free to write and the like is glorious.

One perk of summer is that I can actually get out to open mic nights again.  I’ve missed playing live, and I want to find sustainable ways to play during the school year.  It’s difficult, though:  I typically don’t get in from an open mic until 10 PM.  That’s doable during the summer months, but during the school year, I’m usually zonked out by 9 or 9:30 PM, not hanging out with hipsters in some coffee shop.

Regardless, here are some recent posts featuring original pieces, two of which are open mic performances:

Happy Sunday—and Happy Listening!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Supporting Friends Friday: New Works from Robert Mason Sandifer

The Portly Politico6 Comments

Two years ago I wrote “Supporting Friends Friday: The Cinematic Compositions of Mason Sandifer” about the composing work of one of my student, Robert Mason Sandifer.  Mason (as I call him) started distributing his music to all the major platforms (Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube, etc.) earlier this month, and he is directly responsible for inspiring me to put my old instrumental music on the same platforms.

Mason is currently undertaking an ambitious project to compose instrumental music that tells the story of the Bible, from Genesis through Revelations (or, as my friend Steve O would say, “from Genesis through Maps”).  It’s an amazing concept, and he has executed it beautifully so far.

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Phone it in Friday XXXIX: YouTube Roundup I

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Thanks to the gentle prodding of Audre Myers, I’ve decided to upload videos actively to my YouTube channel.  I’ve had this channel for almost fifteen years (apparently), but only used it to upload a short video from the video game Spore in 2008 and some footage of my old group Brass to the Future playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever” on Independence Day 2010.

I’ll mostly upload original music.  There are plenty of songs I love to cover, but uploading those covers to YouTube without obtaining permission from the original songwriters is technically a violation of copyright law.  I’m a big believer in the protection of intellectual property, and I’d rather not run afoul of the YouTube police, at least not for something legitimate.

That said, readers are welcome to cover my tunes, just let me know about it.

So, I thought I’d periodically post a digest of some recent uploads for readers who want to dive deeper into my music—for free!

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Open Mic Adventures XXXV: “The Rings of Saturn”

The Portly Politico5 Comments

Last week I wrote a short post about Saturn’s (extremely slowly) disappearing rings.  In that post, I referenced one of my songs, “The Rings of Saturn,” which I wrote way back on 7 August 2015.

Naturally, that got me thinking:  I should record that for Open Mic Adventures!  “The Rings of Saturn” is one of my personal favorites of my original tunes, but I wrote it after the release of Contest Winner EP, and I’ve never made it back into the studio.  It didn’t help that my life and work grew exponentially more demanding in those years, but I also went through a long spell of creative dryness that never fully relented.

That said, it was time for “The Rings of Saturn” to make its official Internet debut (and its YouTube debut).

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Gig Day VII: TJC Spring Jam III

The Portly Politico6 Comments

It’s time for another front porch concert!  This event—the TJC Spring Jam and Recital—will be the sixth Front Porch concert I’ve hosted (I think), and I’ve learned quite a bit from the others, including the last Spooktacular.

This year marks the third Spring Jam, which has become a popular event with my private music students.  These front porch concerts started out as a way for my buddy John and me to play gigs during The Age of The Virus, when nobody was open for live music.  I realized that if I wanted to play in front of a live audience, I’d have to circumvent the hysteria and become the venue and talent.

Gradually, the concept morphed from a self-indulgent concert into a recital for my private music students.  The Lord has really blessed me—far beyond what I deserve—with a large clientele of private music students (around twenty-two at the time of writing, working out in practice to anywhere from twenty-to-twenty-four lessons a week), so it made sense to offer a couple of recital opportunities a  year for them.

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Open Mic Adventures XXXIII: “Spore Song (Mushroom Dance)”

The Portly Politico8 Comments

I found myself with a rare bit of free time last Thursday, 18 May 2023.  It was Field Day at school that afternoon, and while the kids were frolicking in the rain (yep, it was raining steadily yesterday), I slipped inside for a few quiet moments.  I found myself at the piano and, staring down a blank sheet of manuscript paper in my music journal, I decided to compose.

While I didn’t name it right away, the result was “Spore Song (Mushroom Dance).”  I’d been wanting to compose a piece named “Spore Song” after reading Stacey C. Johnson‘s post “Spore Song” at her blog Breadcrumbs.

The more I listened to this airy, atmospheric piece, the more I realized that this was “Spore Song.”  Because it’s mostly in 3/4 time (with two brief measures in 4/4), I added the parenthetical title “Mushroom Dance.”

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