Ah, yes, Christmas—a magical time of year, when a doughy blogger belts out your favorite classics with lyrics modified to fit his own eccentric brand of chubby humor.
Ah, yes, Christmas—a magical time of year, when a doughy blogger belts out your favorite classics with lyrics modified to fit his own eccentric brand of chubby humor.
Hi all,
Spooky Season IV is out now. Get it for 30% off with promo code ghost.
That’s all I’ve got today.
Happy Listening!
—TPP
Pickup my newest releases, Säx and Electrock III: Euroclydon, and Triple Deluxe! Spooky Season IV is coming soon, too!
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).
Today is Bandcamp Friday, when Bandcamp doesn’t take it’s usual 15% cut of proceeds from sales. It’s a great time to purchase tunes from yours portly.
My latest EP, Säx, released last month, as did two full-length albums, Electrock III: Euroclydon and Triple Deluxe.
My full discography typically goes for $87.64. Considering it’s twenty-nine (29) releases, some of which are not available on streaming platforms, that’s pretty good—and just $3.02 per release!
Thanks for your support! And if you haven’t already, check out my YouTube series 31 Days of Halloween.
Happy Friday!
—TPP
Pickup my newest releases, Säx and Electrock III: Euroclydon! Get 50% off with promo code storm. That’s 50% off ANYTHING and EVERYTHING on my Bandcamp page, including the album, full discography purchases, merch, etc.!
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).
My latest EP, Säx, released earlier this week, as did a full-length album, Electrock III: Euroclydon. They’re normally $9 and $12, respectively with promo code storm they’re only $4.50 and $6, respectively.
My full discography typically goes for $82.64, but with promo code storm it’s $41.32, or roughly $1.48 per release. Twenty-eight albums, constituting of over nine hours of music, for $1.48 per release is ludicrous.
But it’s even better—if you purchase anything from Bandcamp today (Friday, 5 September 2025), Bandcamp does not take their 15% cut. I get more money, and you get insane amounts of music for pennies on the dollar. That’s the beauty of Bandcamp Friday!
As I detailed some weeks ago, yours portly needs your financial support. Purchasing my music is one way you can help—and enjoy some enigmatic tunes in the process!
Happy Friday!
—TPP
Over the course of the last two years I’ve composed a ton of music. I treat composing the way the Native Americans treated the mighty bison: I don’t waste anything. That means I probably release a lot of “filler” tunes, but I find that pieces I think of as throwaways compositions are sometimes the most popular.
I do not know if the pieces shared today fall into that category. But for whatever reason, I like writing pieces with “Roll” in title. These are always based, in part, on food.
The first of these was “Orange Roll,” an odd little piece in 5/4 time. The “Orange” comes from the fact I used an orange pen to compose it; the “Roll” came from the rolling feel of the melody.
Later, I wrote “Tomato Roll,” a clarinet duet in 5/8 time. I wrote the piece mainly because I spent way too much time drawing a detailed tomato in MS Paint as a way to illustrate a concept to my Economics students during a couple of days of online learning.
Finally, I recently composed “Crunchy Roll,” which is a bass guitar in 3/4 and 4/4, but with lots of odd timing.
But enough of my yakkin’—let’s boogie!
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.
I’m in the process of working on three different releases right now, two of which consist of old material (some of it very old), one of which includes new works. My tentative plan is to release all three of them on the same day, so listeners will enjoy an explosion of new-to-them pieces from yours portly.
The collection of new pieces is Ringtone Circus. The pieces don’t all have a Nokia cellphone ringtone feel to them, but several possess that plinking, happy, upbeat quality.
Today, I’m sharing the pieces that prominently feature mallet-based instruments: vibraphones, marimbas, etc.
The first piece is the title track, “Ringtone Circus“:
“Ringtone Circus” is a trio for marimbas. It sounds like a lively cell phone ringtone!
To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.
Pickup my newest release: Leftovers IV!
Want to play the real sax? Read my ultimate guide to getting started for under $350.
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.
I’m continuing to dig up ancient MIDI compositions (now converted to glorious, lossless WAV files) from twenty years ago (give or take). This weekend I’m sharing some digital saxophone compositions with readers.
I probably intended these pieces to be played by an actual saxophone quartet/quintet/sextet at some point. I played in a saxophone quintet in high school (two altos, two tenors, one bari) and a saxophone sextet in college (I can’t recall the exact instrumentation, but I think it had soprano, two altos, two tenors, and one bari), so I did quite a bit of arranging and composing for those groups. I also arranged a ton for Brass to the Future, the brass quintet (with saxophone) that my brother and I played in for a number of years in the early 2010s.
Now they exist as ghostly digital instruments, honking and squawking through the musical musings of a plump young Portly with a head full of dreams and a belly full of Cheez-Its.
I’m not sure what the original title for this piece was meant to be, but I do remember wanting to emulate the sound and rhythms of a 1970s classic rock organ in the context of a saxophone ensemble. “Saxophonic Organ” is the result of that experimentation, and I rather like it.
To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.
Earlier this week I posted one of my recent compositions, “Clarinetti” (the Italian plural for “clarinet”), and I’ve composed quite a bit for the instrument over the last year; as such, I thought I’d cast a glance back at some pieces that feature, or at least use, clarinet:
Squidward would be pleased.
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
Pickup my newest release, Leftovers IV! Get 80% off with promo code ham. That’s 80% off ANYTHING and EVERYTHING on my Bandcamp page, including the album, full discography purchases, merch, etc.!
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).
My latest EP, Leftovers IV, released a couple of weeks ago. It’s $5, but with promo code ham it’s only $1. My full discography typically goes for $72.14, but with promo code ham it’s $14.23, or roughly $0.55 per release. Twenty-six albums, constituting over eight hours of music, for $0.55 per release is ludicrous.
But it’s even better—if you purchase anything from Bandcamp today (Friday, 2 May 2025), Bandcamp does not take their 15% cut. I get more money, and you get insane amounts of music for pennies on the dollar. That’s the beauty of Bandcamp Friday!
As I detailed a few weeks ago, yours portly needs your financial support. Purchasing my music is one way you can help—and enjoy some enigmatic tunes in the process!
Happy Friday!
—TPP
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Last year I issued to my readers The TJC Challenge, a challenge to listen to all of my music on either Apple Music or YouTube/YouTube Music. At the time, The TJC Challenge took about three hours to complete, appropriate for a morning of shirking responsibilities at the office.
The entire challenge now takes approximately seven hours and eleven minutes. If you just listened to the albums (some of which are, ironically, shorter in playtime than the EPs), it would take five hours and fifty-eight minutes—just shy of six hours.
Actually, it’s a bit longer: when I initially did the above calculations, I forgot to include my latest release, Leftovers IV, which clocks in at nineteen minutes, thirty-nine seconds. That brings the total playtime up to 7.5 hours and change.
Also, you can now attempt the challenge on Spotify as well. I gave up my doomed boycott of releasing to Spotify. I don’t really make any money from streams there, sadly, thanks to their thieving streaming policy, but I realized that the vast majority of music listeners (including my older brother and Dr. Girlfriend) use the service, so I might as well let the people I love have the ability to listen to my music easily.
The point is, it now takes about an entire workday to listen to all of this music. I don’t expect most people to do it, but I will send a free hat to the first person who listens to all of my releases on the streaming platform of their choice. All you have to do is listen to every release, then send me a 100-word blurb about which albums/EPs/songs/pieces you liked—and which you did not—and tell me why. And, no, I’m not going to count every word; you can write more or less. Years of teaching have taught me that people crave a word count or page requirement, so there you go!
Do you have the guts to take on The TJC Challenge? Or the free time, for that matter?
With that, here is 10 April 2024’s “The TJC Challenge“: