Tag: indie musician

Open Mic Adventures LXI: “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Christmas may have been yesterday, but as every traditionalist wag will be quick to point out, it’s AHKTUALLY still the Christmas season, through 6 January 2024, Epiphany (it’s also Boxing Day).  So, why not continue the fun with some Christmas carols!

This week, I’m featuring a short video of myself playing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” on piano. It’s a jaunty and rousing carol.  With lyrics from Charles Wesley and George Whitefield and music from a Felix Mendelssohn cantata, this carol was destined for yuletide greatness.

I’ve actually featured this piece in Open Mic Adventures before (“Open Mic Adventures XIV: ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’“), so we’ll see how this version stacks up to last year’s rendition.

Read More »

Open Mic Adventures LIX: “Listless Chorale”

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Okay, I’ll admit—this week’s Open Mic Adventure is a bit of filler.  Even the best albums have some filler, right?

I really have been trying to up the content game a bit lately, but in an effort to work ahead on the blog a bit, I’m digging deep into some compositions that are really more exercises for me than intended for general consumption.

Still, I thought this piece would give a bit of an insight into how I go about composing, specifically when I write chorales.  I like to try to challenge myself to link together a single note across multiple measures in one or two of the voices, morphing the other voices around those pedal tones.  The challenge comes in trying to find chords that fit these pedal points.

“Listless Chorale” is one such attempt.  I’ll confess, I’m not totally pleased with the outcome—thus the “listless” in the title, as it feels like it’s not really moving anywhere—but you might find some beauty in its harmonies.

Read More »

Open Mic Adventures LVIII: “Kartofelsalat”

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Amid last week’s chaos I managed to squeeze in a little composing one night.  I was messing around with yet another waltz in my music journal, which I then edited quite a bit once I got into Noteflight and started putting in the notes.

I did not start out with German potato salad (the meaning of “Kartofelsalat”) as what I hoped to portray musically.  I was just scribbling around, and when it came time to assign my little piece a title, “Kartofelsalat” popped into my head.  It perhaps makes sense:  it sounds funny, it’s vaguely German (this waltz has a bit of a German flare to it), and it’s a mix of various musical ingredients, much like the delicious side dish.

Read More »

December 2023 Bandcamp Friday

The Portly Politico1 Comment

Here we are again—another Bandcamp Friday.  There’s never been a better time to buy my music.

I released a new EP on Black Friday (24 November 2023), Leftovers.  It’s a short EP of four tracks leftover from my recent composing projects, including an epic-length, eight-minute-plus track from the never-completed Electrock III called “Futura (Magnum Opus III).”  Here’s the delicious album cover:

Leftovers

Tangy!

The first Friday of a bunch of months in 2023—February, March, April, May, August, September, October, November, and December—will feature this pro-indie music observance, a day on which Bandcamp waives its usual 15% commission on sales.

In other words, when you buy my music, almost 100% of it goes to me, instead of almost 85%.

Currently, my entire discography of thirteen releases is $23.39, a savings of 50%, which is not bad for thirteen releases.  That’s $1.80 per release—not too shabby!  To purchase the full discography, click on any release, and you’ll see the option to purchase all of them.

You can also listen to a ton of my tunes on YouTube (and it’s free to subscribe!).

My first book, The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot, is $10 in paperback, and just $5 on Kindle.

My second and newest book, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures, is $20 in paperback and $10 on Kindle.

Finally, after I finish Offensive Poems: With Pictures, my planned third book, I’ll be uploading those doodles to Society6 as well.  I have high hopes (perhaps naïvely) for this book, but we shall see.  The doodles are some of my best work—and in glorious color—and without notebook paper lines!

Thanks again for your support!

Happy Friday!

—TPP

Open Mic Adventures LVII: “Firefly Dance”

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Over Thanksgiving Break, I renewed my subscription to Noteflight Premium and began fooling around with the software again.  My niece and nephews found it fascinating, and starting writing their own little compositions.

They asked me to write something, and I started with a simple theme in 3/4, which would become “Firefly Dance.”  After they left to go back to their home, I buckled down and expanded the theme into the piece I’m featuring today.

In order to have a working YouTube version available, I scheduled the video to go live this morning (Tuesday, 28 November 2023).

Read More »

Lazy Sunday CXXVIII: 2023 Releases

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

It’s been a prolific year for short-form electronic composing for yours portly.  I’ve released three albums and/or EPs in the past three months:  Spooky Season, Spooky Season II: Rise of the Cryptids, and Leftovers.  They’re all available on Bandcamp, but also on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, etc.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

New Release Out Today: “Leftovers”

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

My latest release, the EP Leftovers, is out today!  You can pick it up on my Bandcamp page for $5, or you can stream it on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, and pretty much every other streaming service out there.

My favorite track on the release is “Futura (Magnum Opus III)“; it’s the longest electronic instrumental piece I’ve ever composed, and it’s languished on a hard drive for ten years.  Now it’s finally seeing the light of day.

The other three tracks are pieces I composed and/or arranged while working on Spooky Season and Spooky Season II: Rise of the Cryptids, but which didn’t fit the themes of those albums—thus this EP’s title!.  They include “Augmented Fifthality” (an experiment in augmented fifths); “Carousel” (a bouncy bit of classical composing); and “Chorale for a Sleepy Wednesday Afternoon” (a laid-back little instrumental chorale).

I’d be honored if you gave these Leftovers a listen.

Lazy Sunday CXXVII: Indie Musician Rants

The Portly Politico2 Comments

I’ve been in a mood lately—a mood of laying everything out there and being even more candid that usual.  That’s manifested itself in some recent posts, in which I’ve ranted and vented about the trials, the tribulations, and the smells of being an indie musician:

  • “Sleep!” – A bit of a downer of a post, in which I contemplated shuttering the blog.  Only one person commented, so I suppose this cry for help and/or desperate ploy at getting attention failed.
  • “Spotify Theft: Another Indie Musician’s Rant” – The main response to this post was, “sorry, I don’t stream music.”  Well, perhaps none of us should now that Spotify is stealing royalties from small artists like me (or will be starting in 2024).
  • “Confessions of a Frustrated Creator” – A post detailing some of the frustrations that I and, I imagine, many artists face.

But, hey, who cares about art when we can have debates over the marginal tax credit and how much money to send overseas?

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Spotify Theft: Another Indie Musician’s Rant

The Portly Politico6 Comments

I’ve been using Spotify for years as both a listener and a musician, although I’m firmly in the Apple Music camp these days.  That dedication is only cemented further after Spotify’s latest announcement to changes to its streaming payments to musicians.

It seems that for tracks with fewer than 1000 plays per year, Spotify will take any unpaid streaming royalties for those tracks and redistribute them to major record labels (or, ostensibly, to all the other users on the platform who have tracks with 1000 plays or more).

That’s straight-up theft.  Spotify already pays abysmally low—something like $0.0011 per stream.  Put another way, a track has to be streamed about nine or ten times to make a penny.  I’m already not paid if a track is only streamed once in that particular time period, because Spotify doesn’t send royalties below $0.01.  I typically have about four or five monthly Spotify listeners (averaging seven at the time of writing—woot!), which comes out to a few cents every month—maybe.

“Well, Port, who cares?  You’re losing a few cents a year.”  That’s one to look at it.  The other, correct way is to view it as theft of my royalties for my music.  Stealing ten cents is still stealing—it doesn’t make it right.

Read More »