The 30 Days Project: Day 20

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Another piece with sleep/dream-related theme today — I guess you could say I’m following that old writer’s dictum, “Write What You Know!”
I heard one of the Ysaÿe solo [...]

The 30 Days Project: Day 19

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Soooo tired!
I haven’t slept too well the past couple nights, and the past two days’ pieces were more time-consuming to get recorded than others. So I woke up feeling pretty [...]

The 30 Days Project: Day 18

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When I lived in San Diego (which was until about 3 months ago!) I was attending a meditation group at a Zen Center there. Every month, the members of the [...]

The 30 Days Project: Day 17

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In 1912, our friend Arnold Schönberg wrote a piece called Pierrot Lunaire, for a soprano soloist [...]

The 30 Days Project: Day 16

The Peregrine Muse
I mentioned on Day 11 that I love the viola. But I have to confess that my affections are divided. I really can’t pick just one favorite instrument, any more than I could limit myself to one favorite composer or piece. But the cello ranks pretty high on my list, in close competition [...]

The 30 Days Project: Day 15

There are a few of my favorite intervals…
A couple of days ago I talked about our friend Arnold Schönberg, and the musical ills he’s been blamed for — unfairly, in my view. It is true, though, that he was one of the first composers to get seriously into writing atonal music. Now, the word “atonal” [...]

The 30 Days Project: Day 14

An online buddy of mine, the hilarious and award-winning blogger known as Bill in Portland Maine, listened to the piece for Day 6, and commented that it reminded him of the score for the film JFK. Taking a cue from the suspense movie reference, I’ve given that piece the title Mission: Asynchronous. Ah, music theory [...]

The 30 Days Project: Day 13

Triskaidekaphobia!
Since today is Day 13 of the Project, I naturally started thinking about Arnold Schönberg, who is generally held responsible for the invention of 12-tone music, also known as serialism. He was also scared to death of the number 13 — I mean literally, as described toward the end of this brief biography. Poor Schönberg, [...]

The 30 Days Project: Day 12

I thought about doing something with another hymn tune today — the one I had in mind was Be Thou My Vision, which is one of my favorites. And it would have satisfied the Celtic requirement from Andy’s request, because it’s an Irish tune. But when I started playing around with it, I found [...]

A Special Tribute

VirgoMom passed away on August 23, 2000. (Read the VirgoMom story here.)
I’ve been giving my recording equipment a real workout lately, and as long as I had everything set up, I thought I’d record a tribute to her. The song is called Wings of Speed, and it was written and originally recorded by Paul Weller [...]