Tag: music composition

Open Mic Adventures LXVII: “Ode Napoléon”

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Late last year I started working on a longer work about Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.  I’d seen Ridley Scott’s Napoleon (2023), and while the film is riddled with inaccuracies, I still found it immensely enjoyable and fascinating.  I also find Napoleon fascinating as an historical figure, as did the leading philosophers of the nineteenth century.  How could his shadow not loom large on European and world history?

So I set about composing “Ode Napoléon“—one of the longer works I’ve composed in some time.

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Open Mic Adventures XLI: “Serenade for a Sleepy Student No. 2”

The Portly Politico12 Comments

This time next week, readers are going to get a brand new song from yours portly (indeed, by the time you read this post, it should already be on my YouTube channel; if you’re subscribed, you’ve probably already seen it).

In the meantime, I decided to take a brief break—don’t panic, Ponty!—from the live performances to feature one of my short Red Tardy Slip compositions.  It’s the sequel of sorts to another piece, “Sleepy Student’s Serenade,” which I will likely rename to “Serenade for a Sleepy Student No. 1” if I ever record and release this self-indulgent project.  This one, of course, is entitled “Serenade for a Sleepy Student No. 2.”

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Open Mic Adventures XXXI: “Carousel”

The Portly Politico5 Comments

Last week Ponty asked for more open mic material, thus proving the heavy burden of talent—the fans are never satisfied.  I’ll note that Ponty has a significant backlog of requests, all of which I’ll get around to approximately whenever I feel like it (or, more accurately, when I have time to learn the pieces—they’re quite challenging for a hedge-pianist like myself).  Perhaps I should ask him to favor us with some of his guitar repertoire.

I’ll certainly get back to the “true” open mic material soon.  Summer looms, and I’ll finally have the time and energy to get back out to open mic nights on a regular basis.  In the meantime, I’m continuing to experiment with short piano compositions, and wrote this little ditty, “Carousel,” between classes on 2 May 2023.

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Open Mic Adventures XXX: “Chorale for a Sleepy Wednesday”

The Portly Politico13 Comments

Yes, it’s Tuesday—the traditional day of the week for Open Mic Adventures.  No need to check your calendars—or to question my sanity.

I wrote this piece, “Chorale for a Sleepy Wednesday,” last Wednesday, 26 April 2023, during one of my planning periods.  I thought it would make a fun sightreading exercise for my Middle School Music Ensemble, and we spent class that afternoon sightreading this piece and “Song of the Bigfoot.”

When I write chorales (as I’ll explain in the video), I tend to do it as a music theory exercise.  I used to write them with the idea of sustaining one or even two notes for as long as possible, and always keeping notes within stepwise motion of one another.  That stepwise motion is largely maintained, with a few exceptions, in the manuscript below.

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Open Mic Adventures XXIII: “Gabbi’s Gavotte”

The Portly Politico6 Comments

I’m a tad pressed for time this week, what with the big Music Festival coming up for my students on Thursday.  It’s a flurry of activity for yours portly, so I have a very short little snippet for this week’s edition of Open Mic Adventures.

Regular readers will know of my red tardy slip composing project.  My students have largely been showing up to school on time lately—drat!—so I haven’t had occasion to pen many more miniatures, but I do have a short one that is a bit lively and fun.

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Hustlin’ with Private Lessons

The Portly Politico6 Comments

The school year is back in full swing, and with the brief respite of Labor Day behind me, it’s a long stretch of mind-molding from here until Thanksgiving.

Fortunately, the school year means music lessons, and music lessons—as one former colleague, now retired, frequently reminds me—mean money.

I don’t love money, but I certainly need it.  And I love teaching music lessons, so it’s a happy way to bring in some extra bacon while also teaching kids (and adults!) to make music.  There are few things I enjoy  more than nurturing a love of music; if I make a few quid in the process, well, all the better!

The Lord has blessed me with an abundance—perhaps an over-abundance—of lessons.  At the time of this writing, I am sitting at twenty-six lessons a week across twenty-four students.  Scheduling has been a bit of a nightmare, but I think I have it largely figured out (of course, whenever I think that, some conflict arises and I have to play scheduling roulette—ha!).

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Composing More Humorous Miniatures

The Portly Politico10 Comments

After releasing Péchés d’âge moyen, my short collection of twelve original piano miniatures, I took a short break from composing to take care of some other items.  Now that my insane two-or-three weeks of work have subsided into what is (hopefully) a quieter week—the eye of the storm—I’ve jumped back into composing by hand.

At the time of writing, I’ve composed six more short miniatures 11-14 March 2022.  In order of composition they are as follows:  “Diminished Minuet,” “Another L’il Divertimento in G major,” Three Rhapsodies in G major and Bb minor (consisting of “Largo in G minor,” “Poco allegretto in Bb major,” and “Adagio for a Rainy Day”), and “Pi Day.”  To match Péchés d’âge moyen, I’ll compose at least six more pieces, with a goal of releasing more lo-fi recordings by the next Bandcamp Friday (1 April 2022—a fitting date, indeed!).

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