Tag: original work

TBT^4: Composing Humorous Miniatures

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My next album, PRISM, releases tomorrow, so I thought I’d look back at a post about the bit of online frivolity that, in many ways, kickstarted the massive amount of composing I’ve undertaken over the last year.

I never did get around to writing those flute pieces for that one guy (see below), but I’m not too worried about it.  I imagine one day I’ll get some more requests to compose some pieces, and I have quite a back catalogue from which to pull and adapt ideas.

With that, here is 29 February 2024’s “TBT^2: Composing Humorous Miniatures“:

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Open Mic Adventures LXXXVI: “1001 Arabian Nights” Redux

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My latest album, Advanced Funkification, is out now on Bandcamp and various streaming platforms. I’ve compiled the various links into one list for your convenience. I’m really proud of this release, and I think it deserves to be heard—and I think y’all will enjoy it!

Here is the current list of websites/platforms/services where you can listen to the release:

But this week, I’m getting back to an original song.  Indeed, it’s the second time a live performance of this piece has appeared here on the blog; the first time was in “Open Mic Adventures XLII: ‘1001 Arabian Nights’” from 8 August 2023.

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Open Mic Adventures LXXXII: “Brown Friar”

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Well, just like with Lazy Sunday, I was off on my Roman numeral numbering for Open Mic Adventures.  Fortunately, it’s just by one, but I made the mistake somewhere around the fortieth-odd post, so, like with Lazy Sunday, I’m just going to start the correct numbering back with this post.  As such, there’ll be two posts with “LXXXII” in their titles, but the list of “Other Editions of Open Mic Adventures” below has been corrected.  Goodness!

Regardless, today’s track is from my seventeenth album, Four Mages—the last one I have yet to feature here.  It is a collection of ten electronic tracks, all but one of which (“The Blind Prophet“) is color-coded. Each piece explores some facet of fantasy archetypes, weaving and casting a musical spell upon listeners.

Here are some platforms where you can listen:

I really enjoy this album, and I hope you will, too.  It’s about fourteen minutes in length, so it’s perfect listening for doing a short errand or for a quick drive.

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Open Mic Adventures LXXXI: “Yellow Knight”

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Today’s track is from my seventeenth album, Four Mages.  It is a collection of ten electronic tracks, all but one of which (“The Blind Prophet“) is color-coded. Each piece explores some facet of fantasy archetypes, weaving and casting a musical spell upon listeners.

Here are some platforms where you can listen:

I really enjoy this album, and I hope you will, too.  It’s about fourteen minutes in length, so it’s perfect listening for doing a short errand or for a quick drive.  This week’s feature has done a bit better than most on YouTube, too.

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Open Mic Adventures LXXX: “Purple Prince”

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Today’s track is from my seventeenth album, Four Mages.  It is a collection of ten electronic tracks, all but one of which (“The Blind Prophet“) is color-coded. Each piece explores some facet of fantasy archetypes, weaving and casting a musical spell upon listeners.

Here are some platforms where you can listen:

I really enjoy this album, and I hope you will, too.  It’s about fourteen minutes in length, so it’s perfect listening for a short commute.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Heptadic Structure

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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.

Yours portly took a brief break from composing to catch up on some other work, but I’m back to composing, albeit not with quite the same intensity as during the late winter months.  I released Leftovers II earlier this month, and Four Mages is coming very soon (2 May 2024).  I’ve also completed a funk album, Advanced Funkification, which is coming on 7 June 2024.

If you’d like to listen to Leftovers II, you can find it at the following sites:

I figured that was a pretty good slate of releases, and that I might take a rest.  But then I started jotting down a little melody in the incredibly rare (and, admittedly, self-indulgent) time signature of 7/16:

Heptadic Structure Prewriting

What resulted was the piece “Heptadic Structure.”  The piece itself is exactly twenty-one written measures (although it’s technically longer with repeats).

That gave me an idea:  if I wrote seven pieces in 7/X time consisting of twenty-one measures each, I’d have a total of 147 measures of music.  14 + 7 = 21.  There’s a beautiful mathematical symmetry there.

Why 21?  It’s the multiple of 3 and 7.  Three represents the Holy Trinity; seven is God’s Number, a heavenly number.  So 21 is a reference to the Trinity and Heaven.

I came upon the term “Heptadic Structure” when looking for a title for this piece.  Apparently, the concept of a heptadic structure is nothing new, and is a major concept in the rather esoteric field of Biblical numerology.  The argument is that various portions of the Bible breakdown in mathematically consistent and beautiful ways, always with the number 7.  It’s a fascinating concept, one about which I only possess a passing familiarity, but I love these mathematical structures.  Maybe it’s all a grand coincidence—or, more likely, it’s all part of God’s Grand Design.

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

Open Mic Adventures LXXVI: “Black Mage”

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I’m still promoting my latest release, Leftovers II, but I’m also excited for my next album, Four Mages, which releases Thursday, 2 May 2024.  Of course, if you’d like to hear Leftovers II, you can do so at the following places (and probably more):

Today, however, I’d like to look at the fourth of the Four Mages, the dreaded “Black Mage.”

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April 2024 Bandcamp Friday

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Today is Bandcamp Friday!  That means Bandcamp waives their share of any purchases made on my Bandcamp page today (Friday, 5 April 2024), so it’s the best possible time to buy my music if you want to support yours portly.

Earlier this week I released my sixteenth Bandcamp album, Leftovers II.  It consists of tracks leftover from other composing projects, as well as two older pieces (“Robobop” and “Pwrblld [Ballad II]“) and a lo-fi organ piece I recorded using an old computer microphone sometime in 2007.

You can listen to the full thing on Bandcamp for free a few times before Bandcamp locks out full track playback.  However, if funds are tight and you’d rather not pay $5 for the album (which you should totally do anyway—it’s just five bucks!), you can listen to the album through the following services:

Thanks for listening!  Even just streaming helps me out a great deal.

—TPP