Tag: indie musician

Open Mic Adventures CLXI: “Clean-Shaven at Christmas”

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Christmastime is pretty busy for yours portly, which means my shaving routine tends to get disrupted.  I usually find myself nearing beard capacity by the time Christmas approaches, so I always take the time to do a thorough shave before the big day.

That being the case, I made up a little song, “Clean-Shaven at Christmas,” some years ago.  My nephews in particular love it, and will sing it—unprompted!—as Christmas approaches (I also taught them to wake up on Christmas morning shouting, “It’s Christmas!  It’s Christmas!”).

So it was that I decided to piece together a YouTube Short of the phases of my shaving with my voice accompanying.  There’s even a gross closeup of where I cut myself while shaving—gasp!

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Open Mic Adventures CLX: Church Attempts “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains”

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Way back in January I featured the missionary hymn “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains” as part of “Open Mic Adventures CXV: ‘From Greenland’s Icy Mountains’” as a jingoistic tribute to the then-recent inauguration of President Trump, who had designs on annexing Greenland.  Instead of singing the piece—a very old missionary tune by composer Lowell Mason, with words by Reginald Heber—I played it a few times as a bit of instrumental prelude music.

There this obscure piece of music sat until my September, when my pastor had the idea to pull out some lesser-known hymns for our church to sing during our fall revival services.  My pastor shares something of my absurdist sense of humor, so when he stumbled upon “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains,” he half-jokingly proposed we sing it one night as our congregational piece.  I enthusiastically agreed to play it, and so it became reality.

I took the opportunity to record a little bit of it and upload it to YouTube.  Below is the church’s valiant attempt at singing a song that virtually no one in the congregation knew:

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Open Mic Adventures CLIX: “Dido’s Lament”

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Want to play the sax like yours portly?  Read my ultimate guide to getting started for under $350.

Years ago, my dear mom found a copy of The Usborne Book of Piano Classics (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you) at a book sale and picked it up for me.  I have used that book countless times over the years for gigs, piano lessons, practice, arranging, etc.  My High School and Middle School Music Ensembles have performed arrangements based on those in the book many times at the annual South Carolina Independent School Association Music Festival.

While it consists of piano arrangements of famous pieces from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, I often play the pieces on saxophone.  I found myself pulling the book out in preparation for a gig this past Sunday (a wedding proposal—the client’s girlfriend said yes!), and came upon a melancholy piece from the Baroque composer Henry Purcell, “When I am laid in earth,” perhaps better known as “Dido’s Lament.”  It’s from Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas.

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Open Mic Adventures CLVI: “March of the Goliath Beetles”

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I have a lot of great bass guitarists in my Music Ensemble classes, and I have always wanted to experiment with an electric bass ensemble—a small chamber group consisting entirely of electric basses.  I think it can be done (and probably has been done, if I took three seconds to Google it).

The challenge with basses is that those low tones can get awfully muddy, so composing for multiples of the instrument requires exploring the full breadth of the fret board.

Today’s piece, which I deem to be incomplete (although it does have a satisfying conclusion), is one such attempt at blending three basses into one.  I have yet to try this piece with my three High School Music Ensemble bassists, but I have worked individual parts with them with me playing one of the other parts.  I’m excited to see how and if the three will blend in Reality as well as they do in digital form.

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