Tag: suite

Open Mic Adventures CVI: “Hanging Gardens”

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

This Friday, 29 November 2024 my tenth release of the year, Leftovers III, will hit all streaming platforms (including Spotify).  In advance of the EP’s release, I wanted to feature the composition that is the centerpiece of LIII, “Hanging Gardens.”

Subscribers to my SubscribeStar page received an early sneak-peek three days ago.  Now I want to share this lengthy piece with all of you!

Before that, though, just take a moment to appreciate this decadent album artwork:

Leftovers III Album Cover

I think I made that sandwich over the summer, and took a picture of it about halfway through.  No wonder my blood pressure and waistline are showing such high numbers!

But onto the piece itself.  “Hanging Gardens” is the longest piece I have ever composed, clocking in at about 10:46 (I think the YouTube video has it at 10:47).  I actually wanted to make it longer—around twenty minutes—to give it a more symphonic feel, but I reached the point where I a.) had to finish it to meet the 29 November 2024 release deadline and b.) I was out of ideas to pour into this enigmatic suite.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: “Hanging Gardens” Preview

The Portly PoliticoLeave a 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.

It took some rapid, almost-last-minute composing, but yours portly has completed his tenth release for 2024, the EP Leftovers III.  It’ll hit Bandcamp and all streaming platforms this coming Friday, 29 November 2024—Black Friday.

While I have many older, unreleased pieces locked between the FAT32 file system and within the confines of Cakewalk 3.0 (which ran on DOS-based Windows 3.1!), I don’t have access to any super old material for this third Leftovers installment.  As such, I actually composed some pieces specifically for it, which runs somewhat contrary to the ethos of the Leftovers releases.  Leftovers and Leftovers II consisted largely of pieces I’d written (or started to write), but which I abandoned for one reason or another.  Some of them I finished for the releases, slapping on endings or tying up incomplete phrases.  Others were super old pieces that I’d never distributed digitally, so the only way to hear them was by being one of the few dozen people who received homemade burnt CDs with my tunes on them back in the late Aughts.

For LIII, I composed new works.  Some of them are just short snippets that I’d jotted down in my music journal.  But I also wanted to write something long and epic.

The result is “Hanging Gardens” a musical fantasy suite for piccolo, flute, trombone, and tuba.

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