I’m asked quite often about what strings I’d recommend for students. My personal favorites are the Kaplans from D’Addario. Strings can be so expensive, but these are actually affordable and you don’t end up sacrificing a good tone quality to save money.
"The Whole Town Knows" | The Adenium Project
Here is my newest original!
Lyrics:
It’s here with an innocent weekday wink
Only to be seen by a bound and a leap
Found on a tiny town road or the deep
Stare of an old man’s eye
The town knows, the whole town knows
Every kitchen is met with a cryptic glow
From when the sun says mornin’
‘Til the coffee gets cold
But the light can be friendly with a deeper sight
Breathing in the dust and the rust from the tracks
But the trains never brought us any bread, only facts
Are they though?
Are they though?
Hundred twenty minutes for a mind to roam
They fluttered out a whistle and I came back home
Tall and grown
Tall and grown
But it’s here with an innocent weekday wink
Only to be seen by a bound and a leap
Found on a tiny town road or the deep
Stare of an old man’s eye
The town knows, the whole town knows
Every kitchen is met with a cryptic glow
When the sun says mornin’
‘Til the coffee gets cold
But the light can be friendly with a deeper sight
What do you see?
I see it too
At least I think I do
What do you see?
I see it too
At least I think I do
What do you see?
I see it too
Out with the truth
Feeling beautiful as heels click click
Over bridges that a father and a mother built
They don’t know
They don’t know
Casually when put upon their shoulders how
The weight of every city whittles furrows on the brow
Heavy load
Heavy load
It’s here with an innocent weekday wink
Only to be seen by a bound and a leap
Found on a tiny town road or the deep
Stare of an old man’s eye
The town knows, the whole town knows
Every kitchen is met with a cryptic glow
When the sun says mornin’
‘Til the coffee gets cold
But the light can be friendly with a deeper sight
Instr.
What do you see?
I see it too
At least I think I do
What do you see?
I see it too
At least I think I do
What do you see?
I see it too
Out with the truth
It’s here with an innocent weekday wink
Only to be seen by a bound and a leap
Found on a tiny town road or the deep
Stare of an old man’s eye
The town knows, the whole town knows
Every kitchen is met with a cryptic glow
When the sun says mornin’
‘Til the coffee gets cold
But the light can be friendly with a deeper sight
The town knows
The whole town knows
(4x)
Cello Bow Review
A quick review of the Holstein 2-Star Pernambuco bow from Fiddlershop: https://fiddlershop.com/collections/cello-bows/products/holstein-2-star-pernambuco-cello-bow
Asymptotic | Song Sketches
Here is my latest addition to the Adenium project. It is only a quick sketch of the song idea (just a rough draft). The transitions need to be smoothed, the layers mixed properly, and the form expanded. A completed recording will be shared soon.
Lyrics: I’ve never been so far I’ve never been so close
The only course that I perceive
Reaches to infinity
Here dusk and dawn feud
As mighty foes
By the battle raging
Pride becomes debris
Here I am in perplexity
What an asymptotic reality
You’re fairly frightening in your complexity
Can you accommodate any simplicity
I need rescue from anxiety
From drawing in a thought variety
Show me who you are and show me quietly
Easy to accept without false piety
Be my boat or be my sea
Maybe both
Bliss of my ignorance
Couldn’t stay the tide
As I follow the curving line
I need you, I need you
To hold my hand My mind
I’ve never wanted more
Than to want for the most
Flawless explanation
As to why my whole self is aching
It would take a wiser one
To study and know
But to my consternation
You require my observation
So I’ll pursue you breathlessly
My asymptotic reality
I’ll pray for length of days and for revelry
In what I’ll never know
But you must promise me
You’ll be my answer and my mystery
Be both
Be both
For me
Be both
Notes on Conlon Nancarrow
I started reading a new book today - The Music of Conlon Nancarrow by Kyle Gann. Reading without listening would have been a waste of time, so for the past hour and a half, I have had the sounds of a player piano blasting out of my speakers. No. 25 (from his Studies for Player Piano) is my favorite so far.
First, a bit about Nancarrow - he was so progressive in his approach to rhythm, that musicians were unable to perform his works. Henry Cowell (one of Nancarrow’s inspirations) wrote,
“‘An argument against the development of more diversified rhythms might be their difficulty of performance…Some of the rhythms developed through the present acoustical investigation could not be played by any living performer; but these highly engrossing rhythmical complexes could easily be cut on a player-piano roll. The would give a real reason for writing music specially for player-piano, such as music written for it at present does not seem to have.’” (pg. 1)
And so, after reading Henry Cowell’s New Musical Resources, Nancarrow left for Mexico City and began creating rhythmically complicated (for lack of a better word) compositions to be executed by player pianos.
From the first chapter, here are a few details that I found particularly interesting:
Rather than creating lengthy works using the compositional technique of motivic development, Nancarrow instead wrote short and compact pieces based upon long lines. He was able to maintain this compact structure because the long melodic or rhythmic lines were “juxtaposed simultaneously”(pg. 3).
Le sacre du printemps by Stravinsky was an important inspiration.
Nancarrow blended Cowell’s method of divisive rhythm (associated with Schoenberg) - “taking a larger unit…and dividing it simultaneously or successively into equal parts of various lengths” - with Stravinky’s method of additive rhythm - “the grouping of small durational units into irregular meter progressions”. (pg. 7) Here is an example of how Nancarrow did this in Study No. 1:
“Paying homage to Cowell’s divisive rhythm, Nancarrow notated 4/4 meter in one staff as equal to another’s 7/8. His rhythmic groupings within those meters, however, are largely additive, changing between articulations of 3,4, and 5 beats.” (pg. 7)
In regards to harmony: “Nancarrow aims not for consonance or dissonance, but for a key vaguely defined by the omnipresence of its seven scale steps and blurred by the gradual introduction of foreign pitches.” (pg. 12)
Also in regards to harmony: “during decades in which all but the most reactionary composers avoided major triads as irretrievably banal and exhausted, he used them in good faith and invested them with a function that carried no shadow of their earlier meaning in tonal music.” (pg. 15)
A list of the different forms used by Nancarrow: arch form, palindromic, loose arch form, variation over ostinato, sonata-allegro, tempo canon, sui generi, and tempo canon.
I am out of time to read and write, but there are plenty more details in just the first chapter that might be of interest to you. I would highly recommend reading the book for yourself! Potentially more blogs on this book to come.
A Tip for Overcoming Writer's Block
When I was about 16 or so, my grandfather gave me an important piece of compositional advice: put the core idea into different art forms in order to develop it in your own mind. Using the mediums of dance, prose, painting, etc… this instruction has helped me overcome writer’s block a myriad of times. Most recently, I found I was unsure of what aesthetic to pursue in one of my original songs, but turned what I did have into a painting (currently unfinished but shared below). The process is quickly helping me to define the exact feel of the song and though the painting is fairly cliché, so long as I can capture a mood and get the creative juices flowing again, I am satisfied.
To my fellow artists, please share with me your own personal tips on how to overcome hindrances in the creative flow.
The Adenium Project - Introduction
Dear Reader,
Over the past three years, I have been consistently posting song scraps to Instagram. My goal now is to turn them into full songs, create demo recordings, then produce a final, professional collection of the ones I particularly like. My lovely followers over on Instagram have a bit of say in the project and I hope to include readers here as well.
Once all of the final versions are complete, I will release the collection as an album on iTunes, Spotify, and other online stores. It will be my first, professionally produced album and I plan to mix a good deal of classical elements into each track.
The overall feel of the album should draw some inspiration from my West Texas surroundings (country music excluded) and I hope each song will capture the mood of my home and background.
This first video is unfinished in terms of arrangement, but I like the piano and voice version well enough to share.
