Tag: music

aurora borealis on the night sky

Finlandia

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Good morning, all. Just a heads-up that I’ll be ceasing daily posts soon. Currently scheduled posts will go live as scheduled, and there will be occasional posts here and there. I’ll finish the book review series I’ve already started and will publish any of Ponty’s reviews that are currently in the hopper. Beyond that, the blog will consist mostly of occasional updates about music and book projects, with longer-form essays left on SubscribeStar.

Paid subs over at SubscribeStar will still have full access to all of the archives and will receive (roughly) weekly posts.

Unpaid subs will still have access to the archive of posts on this site.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, etc., you can reach me via the contact page.

I love this gorgeous piece by Jean Sibelius, Finlandia:

There’s a great conversation in the comments between a native Finn and myself. He (she?) sheds some additional light on the piece and its significance to the people of Finland.

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TBT^256: Mahler’s Composing Shack

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My album Koi Dance is still 90% off with promo code koipond. Pick it up today! —TPP

Tuesday night I had the opportunity to sit down for an interview with Roman Riva of Opium Tales. Regular readers will know that I’ve been reviewing his series of novellas (read my reviews of the first four books here, here, here, and here). We discussed music (Roman is a talented heavy metal guitarist), dogs, koi, art, and all manner of other topics. You can watch the interview on Substack or on YouTube:

Amid our conversation we talked about composing and my various musical influences. It reminded me of this post about Gustav Mahler’s composing habits.

I love this time of year, as the crisp, cool weather is conducive to creative activity. Time seems to speed up after summer, too, which creates an underlying sense of urgency to create and produce. I’ve been a tad lax on creating new works lately, as I’ve been doing some arranging for my students, but I’m eager to get back to composing original works.

With that, here is 2 October 2025’s “TBT^16: Mahler’s Composing Shack“:

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New Music Tuesday XXVI: “Parade of the Puppets”

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With the Tot-related busyness (and fun) I hadn’t had much time to compose, but I had a scrap of staff paper and a scrap of free time Monday and jotted down a little musical idea that became today’s new composition. It bears the hallmark of a good bit of my composing over the last two or three years, with some multimeter; tight, parallel motion; and a dash of whismy.

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Phone it in Friday CXLVI: YouTube Roundup CCVI: Videos with the Ululating Guy in Them

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Okay, this week’s PiiF:YTR is a bit of a stretch, but it is Phone it in Friday, after all. Frankly, yours portly just hasn’t uploaded as much to YouTube as of late, and I’m trying to work ahead on the blog a bit, so here’s the harebrained “theme” for today: videos I’ve uploaded with a doodle of this guy:

I wish I was this passionate about ululating

For whatever reason, that weird, ululating guy has been working his way into my videos, which are admittedly fairly low-effort, and really just vehicles for pushing my original music, which is slightly less low-effort than the videos themselves.

Perhaps it’s his striking blue eye—the result of using this cool pen Dr. Wife got me (it’s actually a whole set of metallic-colored pens)—which looks like a spice-addled denizen of the various Dune novels. Maybe it’s his baggy yellow jumpsuit, which seems to harken back to the parachute pants of MC Hammer.

Or maybe it’s just that it was conveniently located on my phone when I needed some images to slap into my little movie maker app.

Whatever the reason, that guy has popped up in a couple of my recent videos. Let’s look back on his illustrious career as some manner of ill-defined religious zealot:

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New Music Tuesday XXV: “Andante for a Late Summer’s Eve”

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Last Tuesday afternoon I set down and jotted out a short melody in my music journal, and when I plugged it into Noteflight, I realized it would work well as a violin piece. I don’t often compose for strings, but something about the melody and the harmonic structure seemed suited to the distinct, bright tone of a violin.

I went through and added in some piano chords, then added a little quasi-trio B section that sort of shifts from the original key of Eb into Bb. I had a lot of fun with this section, as the piano gets a little more motion with some left-hand staccato octaves.

I decided not to go overboard with the effects in Audacity. I applied the usual “Large Room” reverb preset, just because it adds a nice roundness to the sound (and I’m a sucker for reverb). I then used a “Modern Contour” master effect to boost the overall sound a bit. I refrained from my ritual abuse of the chorus effects because I wanted the digital violin to sound less electronic and more authentic.

As I wrote the piece, I just knew it was an “Andante,” but as I listened to the unfolding melody and the underlying harmonies, I realized it had a wistful, enchanting quality, like watching fireflies on a warm evening in late summer. Thus, I landed on “Andante for a Late Summer’s Eve.” It might be one of my favorite pieces I’ve composed lately.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: SCISA Talk 2: DIY Garage Band Music Ensemble

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Yesterday (Friday, 18 September 2026), I attended the SCISA Teachers’ Conference. I presented two sessions, one about creating a “DIY Garage Band Music Ensemble” from scratch, the other about teaching private music lessons to supplement your income.

I always like to have prepared remarks for any public speaking, so I’ve put together the following. The slides for this talk and the one whose text I shared last week are linked above.

For now, here’s “DIY Garage Band Music Ensemble”:

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

New Music Tuesday XXIV: “Weird Doll”

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While I was looking for an image to accompany “Lazy Sunday CDV: Music Lessons” I found the manuscript for an old piece called “Weird Doll.” As far as I can tell, I never did anything with this piece, so I decided to slap it together yesterday morning. I based the doodle on this creepy old doll my Mom had growing up, which is made out of some kind of strange rubberish polymer. It was so creepy.

Indeed, it was two dolls: a boy and a girl. I’ve depicted the boy in the doodle seen in the video below. The doll had these weirdly articulated eyebrows that were made from the same sculpted polymer as the rest of it.

As far as the mixing and such, I just added a “Ambient” reverb effect and turned the “room size” down from 100 to about 75 in Audacity, then a “Firm Bass” preset that I turned all the way up. I also applied a “Wide Synth Pad” chorus effect.

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Lazy Sunday CDV: Music Lessons

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Now that yours portly is essentially semi-retired (although maintaining our household is a full-time job in its own right), I have more time to work on music for my private music students. It’s really broadened my students’ repertoires with some fun pieces, and it gives us some recital-style work to do outside of the usual method books (although we still work from those, too).

Ergo, I’ve been writing more about lessons and such, so I thought I’d share some recent posts that relate to the teaching of music lessons:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

The titular “Will” loved his waltz!

SubscribeStar Saturday: SCISA Talk 1: Supplement Your Income with Music Lessons

The Portly Politico1 Comment

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

This Friday, 18 September 2026, I’ll be attending the SCISA Teachers’ Conference. I’ll be presenting two sessions, one about creating a “DIY Garage Band Music Program” from scratch, the other about teaching private music lessons.

I always like to have prepared remarks for any public speaking, so I’ve put together the following. I’m building a Google Slides presentation to go along with the prepared text, but it’s not quite done at the time of writing, so I’ll share that later.

For now, here’s “Supplement Your Income With Music Lessons”:

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

New Music Tuesday XXIII: “Will’s Waltz”

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One of my favorite ways to write new music is to take ideas that pop up in music lessons and turn them into something fun. One common counting issue that turns up without almost every student is the tendency to rush a sequence of quarter notes when they come right after a sequence of eighth notes.

Something like that happened with one of my students, the titular “Will” of today’s piece. There’s a piece called “Waltz Time” that features a sequence of descending quarter notes in 3/4 time. For whatever reason, students tend to rush those quarter notes, even though they’re not preceded by a sequence of eighth notes. Good old Will was doing it consistently enough that I pointed out he was essentially turning every other measure into 3/8 time and/or a set of eighth-note triplets.

That got us talking about music theory and multimeter pieces, and we started to play the piece wrong on purpose to see what we could come up with (then I insisted he play the piece as written so he doesn’t program his fingers to rush those quarter notes). I floated the idea of writing a piece that intentionally switches between 3/4 and 3/8, and Will seemed very excited about that idea.

So it is that I sat down this morning and put together this little piece, which Will and I will explore during his lesson later this week. It’s a piece that I can use with my other students, too.

As far as the mixing and such, I just added a “Large Room” reverb effect—my go-to reverb effect—in Audacity, then a “Bakelite” preset that I turned down a bit. It gives it that kind of retro, phonograph sound.

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