In the wake of Anklegate 2023, I’ve been leaning on the Lord (and other people) more than ever. So it seemed appropriate to look back a piano performance of the hymn “I Need Thee Every Hour” from before the Sunday, 22 October 2023 morning service at my church.
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.
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While working on Spooky Season II: Rise of the Cryptids (coming to Bandcamp on Friday, 6 October 2023), I composed a couple of tracks that only somewhat related, “Meandering” and “Plodder.” These were pieces I’d written snippets of in my composing journal, but which were more or less experiments in unusual meters and concepts. “Plodder,” for example, is written to be intentionally muddy—lots of low-end bass notes and tight tone clusters, producing something akin to the effect of a small child or a cat leaning on the low keys of the piano:
I added in tuba and bass clarinet (the latter is quickly becoming my favorite, spooky sound) to drive home that thick, sludgy low-end sound.
“Plodder” fits the cryptid theme of the album a bit better of these two “movement”-inspired pieces. One could imagine Bigfoot or some zombie (are zombies cryptids?; maybe some variations would be considered as such) plodding slowly through the forests, although all the “footage” of “Bigfoot” I’ve seen seems to indicate he’s a fairly fast fellow.
Regardless, I found these two pieces particularly unusual and unorthodox, and opted to share them with you, my faithful subscribers, ahead of the album’s release.
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As I’ve delved deeper into YouTube, I’ve discovered the platform has a little blog for creators that points out the major Internet trends of the moment. The Internet is constantly evolving, with new trends and memes coming and going the shifting tides—but faster! Apparently, Gen Zers are running around calling charisma “rizz.” We have always been at war with Eurasia!
One meme doing the rounds is the “canon event” meme. The meme comes from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), where multiple Peter Parkers (or their equivalents) from multiple universes all experience certain “canon events,” which are (allegedly) unalterable: the bite from the radioactive spider; the death of a beloved family member; the loss of the love interest; etc. In meme form, YouTubers and TikTok(k?)ers will feature milestone or rite-of-passage events as “canon events,” often remarking, “I cannot interfere.” These events are typically something cringe-inducing or silly, like picking a weird name for PlayStation online.
I find the concept of “canon events”—what we used to call a “rite of passage”—interesting, and thought I’d hop on the Internet bandwagon with a little piano piece called “Canon Event.”
Ah, yes—another Tuesday, another edition of Open Mic Adventures in which I thwart Ponty’s dreams and feature a super short, experimental piano miniature instead of a gutsy, flabby live performance.
No worries—there will (probably) be more sweaty, robust live performances soon. But as we endure the heat and misery of August, I’m already looking ahead to the coolness and fun of Halloween.
So, what better way to get in the spooky mood than with a little skeletal gyrating?
There is little I love more than playing and singing my humorous original songs. But a close second is subjecting my readers to my bizarre short piano compositions. So, why not look at back at some of my weird piano music?
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
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.”
I’ve just got a couple of more open mic nights before I get into my school year schedule and become a slave to the grind, but I’m going to do my best to keep pumping out the goods. This time in two weeks, I hope to have a new song uploaded for your delectation; stay tuned.
In the meantime, I’m continuing my deep dive into my obscure deep cuts, songs that I’ve never managed to get recorded in a studio. Some of these songs are very good; some need some polish. Whatever the case, I’m realizing that I have enough material for another EP, and I might need to get back into the studio.
This week’s feature is “Parada.” I wrote “Parada” in 2015 during a particularly fertile period of open mic attendance. The Spanish word “parada” roughly translates to “stop” or “bus stop/station” in English. I wanted to capture the notion of lingering in a moment—stopping a poignant moment in time, trying to freeze it in place as long as possible.
Ah, the glorious summer. I can already feel it slipping through my Vienna sausage fingers like the grains of sand in an hour glass, or the metaphorical sandbags I’m desperately stacking up against the inexorable tide of the new school year. I love teaching, but having mornings free to write and the like is glorious.
One perk of summer is that I can actually get out to open mic nights again. I’ve missed playing live, and I want to find sustainable ways to play during the school year. It’s difficult, though: I typically don’t get in from an open mic until 10 PM. That’s doable during the summer months, but during the school year, I’m usually zonked out by 9 or 9:30 PM, not hanging out with hipsters in some coffee shop.
Regardless, here are some recent posts featuring original pieces, two of which are open mic performances:
Happy Sunday—and Happy Listening!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
In keeping with the vacation vibes of Memorial Day Weekend, it’s going to be a pretty short edition of Open Mic Adventures this week. The good news is that very soon I’ll be back to showcasing footage from actual open mics, and not just me noodling on the piano in my school’s tiny music room.
That said, I hastily recorded a video of a very basic piano piece I wrote for one of my students, whose name is Chase. It was a very quick sightreading exercise for him, and an opportunity for me to write some more student-focused material.
I suppose the “Dilemma” in the title refers to the presence of an F# accidental, as well as the necessity to move the right hand from C to D position and back again. The left hand is a simple ascending line with that playful F# tossed in the mix.
