Tag: rock ‘n’ roll

Open Mic Adventures LXXXIV: “Funk Chorale (Hymn to Funk)”

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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:

I always like to include a chorale on my various releases, and that includes on Advanced Funkification.  How do you write a funky chorale?  I’m not entirely sure, but this week’s installment of Open Mic Adventures demonstrates my attempt in the form of “Funk Chorale (Hymn to Funk)“:

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Open Mic Adventures LXXXIII: “Advanced Funkification”

The Portly Politico6 Comments

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:

For this week’s installment of Open Mic Adventure, I’m featuring the title track from the release, “Advanced Funkification“:

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Get 🎸Advanced Funkification🎸!

The Portly Politico6 Comments

As I wrote this morning, my latest album, 🎸Advanced Funkification🎸, is out now on Bandcamp and various streaming platforms. I figured it would be worthwhile to compile 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:

For YouTube users, here’s the full playlist:

Get funky!

—TPP

🎸Advanced Funkification🎸 Out Today!

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Hi Readers,

My latest album, Advanced Funkification, a collection of funk and funk-adjacent tunes, is out today. It’s my grooviest release yet, and it explores the boundaries of funk in intriguing and cool ways.

Pick it up for just $5, and you’ll not only get eight funky tracks, but full scores of each piece; MP4 videos; and original artwork. You can find it here: https://tjcookmusic.bandcamp.com/album/advanced-funkification

Time to enroll in Advanced Funkification!

The album is also out on Apple Music and YouTube, as well as other streaming services (except for Spotify).  I’ll post direct links in the comments as soon as I get them.

I have had a blast releasing tons of instrumental music this year, but I think this release is my best this year.  Let me know what you think!

Funkily Yours,

TPP

Lazy Sunday CCVIII: Original Music, Part I

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

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:

Open Mic Adventures XXI: Styx’s “Come Sail Away”

The Portly Politico7 Comments

On Valentine’s Day I took a few moments from a morning planning period to do a cheeky cover of Styx’s “Come Sail Away.”  My High School Music Ensemble students are performing it as one of the selections for our big Spring Concert (coming in March!), and I thought it would be a fun tune to play for Open Mic Adventures.

I often perform it live, and usually sing it in a higher register, slipping into my falsetto when necessary.  The song is in C major, which I find is a key that easy to play (no sharps or flats!) but sometimes difficult to sing due to my vocal range (I’m more comfortable around A major).

Due to a bit of congestion, I decided to try singing it in a much lower baritone-bass register, and I’m pleased with the results.  It’s not quite as powerful as Dennis DeYoung’s nasally, stratospheric, Broadway-influenced vocals, but I think it came out pretty well.

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Open Mic Adventures XVI: “Please Come Home for Christmas”

The Portly Politico2 Comments

I finally got around to writing the detailed review (it’s around 2200 words!) of my school’s Christmas Concert this year.  The full review is over at my SubscribeStar page, and includes the video for this performance and “O Holy Night,” which I wrote about last week.  It was a really stellar performance, and I am super proud of the kids.

This week I’m featuring the video of our grand finale, “Please Come Home for Christmas.”  Most readers will be familiar with the version by The Eagles, which was the version my High School Music Ensemble used as its primary reference.  The song goes back to 1961 and Charles Brown, a blues pianist.

It’s also quite challenging, with a lot of secondary dominant chords and a slightly irregular structure.  For example, sometimes students would hang on the B7 chord for four beats before resolving to E major, which shifted after two beats to a delightful E augmented chord.  Other times, though, the B7 would only play for two beats, followed by E major (or E7), before resolving to the tonic, A major.

A number of my private lessons leading up to the concert involved diving into some of the nuances of the piece in more detail (naturally, quite a few of the students enrolled in High School Music Ensemble also take private lessons with me after school).  The barre chords are challenging for guitarists, and the different ways of playing that fun little E augmented chord also provided some educational mischief.  For my bassists, we worked quite a bit on the various walkdowns, such as the opening A->Amaj.7/G#->A7/G sequence.  That’s not hard to play, but there’s a lot a budding young bassist can do with it.

Regardless, as you’ll hear, this piece brought the house down, and the young man singing it was a hero the rest of the day—I heard him greeted to wild applause and cheers upon arriving to his first period class after the morning concert.  The video here is from the same mother who took the “O Holy Night” video, so if you see her lingering on a particular guitarist/bassist for an extended period of time, that’s why.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Yngwie Malmsteen Concert

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Last week I rode up to Silverado’s in Black Mountain, North Carolina, with my younger brother and his wife to hear Swedish neoclassical metal guitar god Yngwie Malmsteen.

Boy, it was an amazing concert.  He even played some Mozart!  Yngwie also played one of my personal favorites, “Albinoni’s Adagio“:

It’s been awhile since I’ve been to a full-fledged rock ‘n’ roll concert, and Yngwie delivered for a solid ninety minutes of neoclassical decadence.

This post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Open Mic Adventures IV: KISS’s “I Still Love You”

The Portly Politico7 Comments

Last Tuesday I forewent my usual trip to F.E. Pop’s to take an end-of-summer trip to Benjamin’s Bakery in Surfside Beach, South Carolina to play their new open mic night.  My girl lives down that way, and she’d never seen me play live before (although I send her videos of my pianistic noodling on a regular basis), so we decided to take advantage of this opportunity for her to hear me play a few tunes.  It was a fun evening, and a great opportunity to meet some new musicians in a different town.

Unfortunately, my girl was so enraptured watching me perform (and a little girl grabbed her attention for about half of my mini-set), she didn’t take any video of my powerful coffee shop crooning.  That performance is now lost to the mists of time (although I will always remember it; I hope she does, too!).

As such, I’m going back to the night of Tuesday, 26 July 2022, featuring a duet with my buddy John Pickett.

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Open Mic Adventures III: Joanie Sommers’s “Johnny Get Angry”

The Portly Politico22 Comments

Well, it was inevitable: after getting the early 1960s Joanie Sommers tune “Johnny Get Angry” stuck in my head, I had to cover it myself.  The version that really got me into this song is from the 1990 film Nightbreed, specifically the Clive Barker-approved director’s cut.  Other versions of the film apparently were missing the song—performed by actress Anne Bobby in the role of heroine/love interest Lori Winston—which is a travesty, as it’s really key to highlighting the struggle inherent in Lori and Boone’s relationship in the flick.

Here’s that version:

The Anne Bobby/Nightbreed version is the one I used as the basis for my own performance.  Instead of the iconic kazoo solo from the Sommers original, I replaced it with a classic late 1950s/early 1960s voiceover part after the key change.

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