Tag: independent musician

Open Mic Adventures CXLVIII: “Funky Sax II”

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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.

With even more apologies to Ponty—don’t worry, mate, I’ll have more shorts of me playing piano and hamming it up for the camera next week (I think)—I’m sharing an old original composition this week, “Funky Sax II” from Electrock III: Euroclydon (50% off with promo code “storm”).  Like last week’s piece, I think this one dates back to Fall 2004, when I was in a saxophone sextet at the University of South Carolina.

I don’t have access to score for this piece anymore, but it’s either a saxophone quintet or sextet.

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Open Mic Adventures CXLVII: “Funky Sax I”

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

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.

With apologies to Ponty—don’t worry, mate, I’ll have more shorts of me playing piano and hamming it up for the camera soon—I’m sharing an old original composition this week, “Funky Sax I” from Electrock III: Euroclydon (50% off with promo code “storm”).  I think this piece dates back to Fall 2004, when I was in a saxophone sextet at the University of South Carolina.

I don’t have access to score for this piece anymore, just the MIDI file, and I can’t remember if I wrote this for six saxes (soprano, two altos, two tenors, and baritone) or fewer, so I’m not exactly sure, but it has the hallmark of my college era material for saxes:  funk, blues scales, countermelodies, etc.  As far as I know, my college saxophone sextet never played this piece, but it would be fun for a sax ensemble to try.

Regardless, I slapped together a video for the piece late Sunday night (I actually uploaded it to YouTube while drifting off to sleep) and here is the glorious result:

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September 2025 Bandcamp Friday!

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

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

Open Mic Adventures CXLVI: Cover of Loverboy’s “Working for the Weekend”

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Yours portly hasn’t uploaded any original compositions to YouTube lately, nor have I actually been to an open mic night in many, many months.  But I have been enjoying playing covers of tunes on my grandmother’s old Kimbrell console piano, which I had moved to my house this summer.

My High School Music Ensemble is working on Loverboy’s “Working for the Weekend,” so I decided to take some time to attempt my own, abbreviated piano cover of the classic ode to the weekend.

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Memorable Monday: Happy Labor Day [2025]!; New Releases!

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Pick up my newest releases, Electrock III: Euroclydon and Säx, for 50% with promo code storm (promo code is good for any release and works through 1 October 2025).

Another glorious Labor Day has dawned here in the United States.  I hate the Communists, but God Bless those red diaper babies for getting us a random day off in September.

This Labor Day is particularly auspicious:  I’m releasing two albums today, Electrock III: Euroclydon and Säx.  I was hoping to release a third, Ringtone Circus, but my distributor, CD Baby, took issue with the use of the word “Ringtone” in the title.  Apparently, that set off some kind of filter against what they call “pre-cut ringtones,” which they do not and will not distribute.

I pointed out that I was using the name euphemistically, and that the pieces are not ringtones, but, alas, I had to change the title of the album and its related track.  So now I’ll be releasing the album as Triple Deluxe on Monday, 15 September 2025.

I’m also working on Spooky Season IV, which still has a long way to go before it’s ready for distribution and release.  It will likely be my last full-length release for the year, with Leftovers V landing the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Otherwise, I’m not sure what today has in store for yours portly.  I do know that the first couple of weeks of school have already kicked my butt (but they’ve been awesome), so I’m hoping to catch up on some rest today.  Dr. Fiancée has to work, sadly, but such is residency.

With that, here is 2 September 2024’s “Memorable Monday: Happy Labor Day [2024]!“:

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Open Mic Adventures CXLV: “Murphy on the Storm”

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Here’s something a bit different for today’s Open Mic Adventures.  I’m never one to let anything go to waste, and that includes silly, improvised cover songs that I send as voice texts.

One morning a couple of weeks back I sang a “cover” of “Riders on the Storm,” the song by The Doors, but changed it to “Murphy on the Storm.”  I amused myself so much with my shenanigans that I texted a rendition to my older brother.  I then took that audio and plugged into iMovie on my phone, along with a picture of Murphy.

The result is absurdist hilarity.

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Open Mic Adventures CXLIV: “Divertimento in D”

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Assuming CD Baby does its job and approves my submissions, I’ll have three albums releasing on 1 September 2025 (which also happens to be Labor Day this year in the United States).  Regardless, they’ll be released in the wee hours of Labor Day morning on my Bandcamp page.  These releases will be my first since Leftovers IV landed on 21 April 2025 (the day after Easter).

Today I’m featuring another piece from one of these releases, the album Ringtone Circus.  This piece was one of the last I wrote for the album, but it’s one of my favorites.

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Open Mic Adventures CXLIII: “Tubae Sonitus: Ambitione”

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Yours portly has three albums releasing on 1 September 2025.  I’ve been sharing some of the pieces from one of those upcoming releases, Ringtone Circus, the past few weeks.  This week’s composition is the last one I wrote for that album.

The piece is a fanfare, and I wanted to see what “fanfare” would be in Latin.  The first result was “Ambitione,” but as a I dug deeper, it seems that one possible way to write it is “Tubae Sonitus,” literally “trumpet song.”  Apparently, our word “tuba” was the Latin word for trumpet.

Regardless, I like the title and I like the piece.  I hope you do, too!

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