Pickup my newest release: Spooky Season III! Use promo code spooky to take an additional 20% off all purchases on Bandcamp! Code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Thursday, 31 October 2024.
Today I’m featuring the fourth track from my latest album, Spooky Season III, “Boneyard Blues.” It’s a swingin’ little tune that evokes a cool skeleton jiving about in the old boneyard.
Spooky Season III is out now on all streaming platforms (including Spotify)! Pick up the digital download at Bandcamp, and take 20% off any Bandcamp purchase with this promo code: spooky (code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Thursday, 31 October 2024).
The spooky season keeps on rollin’! Hopefully by the time you read this post yours portly will have completed some Halloween decorating, and maybe even some pumpkin carving. Fun!
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
Pickup my newest release: Spooky Season III! Use promo code spooky to take an additional 20% off all purchases on Bandcamp! Code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Thursday, 31 October 2024.
Today I’m featuring the third track from my latest album, Spooky Season III. It’s called “Curious Little Ghosties,” and it’s similar in style to last week’s selection, “Dancing in the Graveyard.” According to my music journal, I jotted down the main melody for this piece on 5 September 2024.
Pickup my newest release: Spooky Season III! Use promo code spooky to take an additional 20% off all purchases on Bandcamp! Code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Thursday, 31 October 2024.
Today I’m featuring the second track from my latest album, Spooky Season III. It’s called “Dancing in the Graveyard,” and it’s actually the first piece I composed for the album. The tiny manuscript that would morph into the full piece dates to 3 September 2024:
The instrumentation choices I made for this piece would impact that of several other pieces on the release. I love the mischievous sound of the oboe; it seems to depict ghoulish ghosties and happy haunts nicely.
Pickup my newest release: Spooky Season III! Use promo code spooky to take an additional 20% off all purchases on Bandcamp! Code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Thursday, 31 October 2024.
Ah, yes, Bandcamp Friday has returned, which means I hope you will consider pitching in a few bucks to buy my music—or my second book! It’s the most magical Friday of the month!
The first Friday of a bunch of months in 2024 will feature this pro-indie music observance, a day on which Bandcamp waives its usual 15% commission on sales. Today (Friday, 6 September 2024) is one of those days.
In other words, when you buy my music, almost 100% of it goes to me, instead of almost 85%.
Naturally, yours portly has a brand new release, and my longest to date: Spooky Season III is available now on Bandcamp, Apple Music, YouTube/YouTube Music, Amazon Music, etc., etc.—pretty much anywhere and everywhere digital streaming is available—including, for the first time in nearly a year, Spotify!
Spooky Season III is forty-one (41) minutes of Halloween-ish jams, from the driving opener “Heavy Metal Mummy” to the creaking creepiness of “A Haunted House” to frightful “Flight of the Vampire Bats” and more. SSIII features pieces in multiple genres: heavy metal, rock, country-western, classical, Romantic, smooth 70s pop, and, of course, Halloween music!
My full discography is 50% off (and the 20% promo code spooky can be used for that, too), so it’s only $57.14 to purchase twenty-two releases. That’s just $2.80 per release—and dozens of hours of music, not to mention hundreds of megabytes of musical scores, artwork, liner notes, videos, and other goodies that are packed onto nearly every release.
With the 20% promo code spooky the total comes down to $45.71, or $2.08 per release.
My plan is to release (at least) one more album or EP this year, Leftovers III, which should release Friday, 29 November 2024 (the day after Thanksgiving). That’ll make ten releases in 2024.
Thank you for your support, and rock on!
—TPP
Pickup my newest release, Math: And Other Delights, now! And stay tuned for Spooky Season III releasing this Friday, 4 October 2024!
Now that it’s October, I think it is time to move away from featuring tracks from White Boy Summer; instead, I’m going to feature a somewhat spooky track from my latest album, Math: And Other Delights. It’s not a scary song, but it has a cool, ancient, mysterious feel to it, and involves Pythagoras.
Years ago, yours portly was in a brass ensemble called Brass to the Future. Yes, I play saxophone, which is a woodwind instrument, but the guys let me join—ha! Our gimmick was playing instrumental arrangements of classic hair metal tunes and some modern pop. I did most of the arrangements for the group.
Needless to say, I love the warmth and fullness of brass instruments. It’s not surprising, then, that I’ve been composing more lately with brass instruments, especially the trombone (which my younger brother played in BttF for many years).
As such, here are some recent editions of Open Mic Adventures featuring some of my (digital) brass compositions:
Happy Sunday—and Happy Listening!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
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Yours portly has been composing like a madman, and finished up Spooky Season III this past Wednesday, 25 September 2024. It’ll be hitting Bandcamp and all streaming services (including Spotify for the first time in a year!) this Friday, 4 October 2024, which is also Bandcamp Friday.
It is a massive release: eleven tracks in total, clocking in at around forty-one (41) minutes of music. My goal was to move away from the super short compositions, and specifically to avoid any tracks under one minute. Only two tracks are under two minutes in length, and those are just one and four seconds under.
Last week I previewed four tracks for subscribers (and one for my freeloading—uh, I mean, loyal—readers): “Dancing in the Graveyard,” “Rain on Halloween,” “Curious Little Ghosties,” and “Boneyard Blues.”
This week, I’ll feature four more. Here’s one for all of my readers to enjoy, the opening track: “Heavy Metal Mummy”:
What other succulent tunes await?
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Pickup my newest release, Math: And Other Delights, now!
Even with my hot new release Math: And Other Delights out in the wild, I still have several tracks to showcase from August’s White Boy Summer.
As such, I’m diving into one of my favorites from the release, “Mellow“:
Pickup my newest release, Math: And Other Delights, now!
With so many releases this year, and with more releases in the works (I’m currently plugging away at Spooky Season III), I have kind of lost track of which album and which piece I’m supposed to be featuring here on Open Mic Adventures. Of course, the title of this series has itself become something as a misnomer, as now I might upload an actual open mic performance just a few times a year. D’oh!
Regardless, it looks like I’m still on pieces from White Boy Summer, my collection of smooth summer jams. This week’s feature, “Perambulating,” is an upbeat piece depicting a vigorous summertime stroll.
The Portly Politico 