Now that school is back in session, yours portly isn’t making it out to open mic night much, so I’m doing what I do best: mining the rich veins of my old, neglected works.
This week I’d like to share “Minuet for a New Moon,” which I composed on 9 February 2022 as part of Péchés d’âge moyen, the highly unpopular collection of lo-fi solo piano pieces I released largely as part of an inside Internet joke.
For the past three editions of Open Mic Adventures I’ve been featuring pieces from my modern classical piano project, Péchés d’âge moyen, which I released on 4 March 2022. I’ve been unable to get out to open mic night since school and lessons have geared back up, so I figured I’d dip into the portly video archives to bring back some goodness.
I also really liked this composing project, and I think I came up with some good material If you haven’t already, you can pick it up for a buck. I’ve got another piano miniatures composing project in the works, but more on that another time.
Regardless, I thought I’d take a break from the movie review retrospectives and look back at those three recent editions of Open Mic Adventures, all dedicated to pianistic noodling:
Happy Sunday—and Happy Listening!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
With Bandcamp Friday rapidly approaching, I’m diving back into 2022 and pieces from my modern classical piano project, Péchés d’âge moyen, which I released on 4 March 2022. This week, I’m featuring the final track from the collection, “Two-Day Minuet for Left Hand.”
The title is a bit on the nose—uh, I should write, the hand: I wrote it across two days, and the melody is in the left hand. See?
The first section, composed on 24 February 2022 (and in red pen, no less!) is in 3/4 time and consists of a slightly irregular seven-phrase theme. The second section, composed (you guessed it!) on 25 February 2022, is in 4/4 time. It’s an even more irregular five-phrase section, which shifts to 3/4 for the last two bars.
It ends with a little multimetered coda. On the manuscript, I forgot to make the final note a dotted half note, so technically it’s an incomplete measure of 3/4 time. D’oh!
For the second consecutive edition of Open Mic Adventures, I’m diving back into 2022 and pieces from my my modern classical piano project, Péchés d’âge moyen, which I released on 4 March 2022. This week, I’m featuring one of my favorite pieces, “Satiean Motion.”
It’s been a bit since I’ve been able to get back to an open mic, between school, Christmas, and illness. Belting out the tunes is pretty tough when your voice is a froggy mess of croaks and squeaks (although I’m sure some people are into that kind of thing).
As such, I decided to cast about through the Portly Video Archives and pull out some golden chestnuts from yesteryear—or, in this case, something I recorded about eleven months ago.
Readers might recall my modern classical piano project, Péchés d’âge moyen, which I released on 4 March 2022. It was a frivolous and fun little project that, like most such things, was born of “an absurd, self-indulgent inside joke,” according to the album listing on Bandcamp.
The recordings were pretty lo-fi, but some of the pieces are actually quite good (others are self-indulgent experiments in multimeter quasi-tonality). I also loaded the digital Bandcamp album with tons of extras—including the video you’re about to see—like scans of the handwritten manuscripts and scores for each piece.
It’s another Bandcamp Friday, so I’m taking a break from supporting friends to hawking my own goodies.
I managed to release two short collections of music in April—Péchés d’âge moyen II: One Week in March and The Lo-Fi Hymnal II. The Lo-Fi Hymnal II is totally free, though you’re welcome to pay more if you’d like to help out yours portly.
Currently, my entire discography is $26.48, which is not bad for ten releases. That’s $2.65 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.
I’ve also been painting a ton of little pictures. I’m selling all of my paintings for $10, with free shipping in the United States, regardless of how many you purchase. They’re one of kind, so once a painting is purchased, it’s gone.
I’ve done two landscapes recently that I really like—“Windy Nightfall” and “Playing in the Graveyard.” I think the former is the better painting, but the latter is a bit more fun. You can judge for yourself:
Well, that’s it for this month’s sales pitch. Thanks again for your support!
Happy Friday!
—TPP
My good buddy and regular poetry contributor Son of Sonnet launched his new Locals page last week at https://sonofsonnet.locals.com/. It’s $10 a month for all sorts of goodies—poems, poetry readings, etc. And the price per month drops as more users sign up.
As one of the chosen subscribers, I recommended a topic for a poem: my hilarious little release Péchés d’âge moyen, a short collection of twelve original piano miniatures. Son—as always—delivered the goods.
To be clear, this wasn’t an easy assignment: he had to write a poem based on twelve very short piano pieces that were largely written (initially) as part of an inside joke on the Internet. He consulted me on a few elements of the poem, including the cover art, an original painting of mine called “Apple Picking.”
With that, I give you—reprinted with permission from the poet—“The Sins of Middle Age” (originally published at https://sonofsonnet.locals.com/ on Wednesday, 16 March 2022):
Yep, Portly readers: it’s one of those blog posts: a general update on the latest with yours portly because I’m out of both ideas and energy. Sure, I should be writing about the war in the Ukraine or something important like that (instead of silly paintings and piano pieces), but, again—I’m more low-energy than JEB! at the moment. Or, at the very least, my pantheric intensity has to be focused towards more pressing matters than this humble blog.
Early March is always a time when everything comes to a head at once. Last week was the final week of third quarter, and was chock-a-block with various school events. That saw me scrambling around all over campus during my precious planning periods performing various feats of technical wizardry (but all of the standard hedge-mage variety; the really powerful audio/visual spells won’t be cast for another month). Incredibly, I managed to record all of Péchés d’âge moyen last week (give it a listen if you haven’t already—it’s less then seven minutes to listen to the entire album!).
Naturally, that meant a backlog of grading and comment-writing for report cards, which had to be completed over the weekend. I’m grateful to Pontiac Dream 39/Always a Kid for Today for his movie review Monday, because that saved me some valuable time Sunday (it’s also an excellent review—you should go read it!).
On Friday, I released Péchés d’âge moyen, my short collection of twelve original piano miniatures. At the time of writing, I haven’t sold any downloads via Bandcamp, but its tracks have a total of 113 plays from forty unique listeners, which is pretty good. Goth Kilts of The Sandwhich Press and Dr. Rachel Fulton Brown of Dragon Common Room have both been wonderful about promoting the recording via their respective channels. I mean, considering GK was the muse for the whole project, she’d better be pitching it!
Anyway, it was fun putting the pieces together, and in the spirit of album promotion (get it here!), here are the four posts about the project:
That’s it for this Lazy Sunday. If you haven’t already, take 6’35” and listen to Péchés d’âge moyen. If you’re feeling so led, pay $5 and pick it up. You’ll be helping me out in the process.
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
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Yesterday I released my collection of short miniatures, Péchés d’âge moyen. It’s been getting a lot of plays on Bandcamp thanks to support from The Dragon Common Room and The Sandwhich Press, both chats/channels that I follow and participate in on Telegram (if you use Telegram, you should join/follow both; here are links: DCR; TSP).
I’d hoped that in the few weeks I had between announcing the project and releasing it I’d be able to set up a more sophisticated recording rig. Instead, I recorded the twelve tracks in a white heat, using my iPhone SE’s voice memo app, and placing the phone on the old Baldwin Acrosonic piano in my school’s Music Room.
These made for less-than-ideal recording conditions, but in listening back to the album, it worked better than I thought.
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