music

I've been honored with an invitation to blog regularly at The Master's Artist.

As my friend (and now co-blogger) said, "What is this place coming to?"

Nevertheless, I will pop my head up on The Master's Artist every other Tuesday, beginning today.

A snatch from my inaugural piece (unless you count my guest blog a few weeks ago, but since that was a trial run, I suppose we can still call this one the inaugural post):

In my college music composition study, I worked on a violin unaccompanied sonata for an upcoming master class. For the first movement, I took a five-note motif and stretched it, condensed it, turned it upside-down and inside-out. I layered it in fugue and counterpoint. I syncopated its rhythm with hemiola.

In other words, I made that sucker work.

For the second movement, from the same five-note motif, I created an idyllic, fairy-inspired melody.
Proud of my gut-wrenching, music-changing first movement, I showed the work to my professor.

“Nice ideas in the first movement, but the second movement is where you really shine.” He pointed his long, bony finger at me. (Okay, so it wasn’t really bony, although it was long, but bony fingers make better stories.) “In this lyricism, I begin to see you.”

Harsh words to take as a young composer. It got worse.

Read the rest here.

Update: Sorry the links were not previously working. They're working now.

For your afternoon jog, create a playlist on your iPod (or other mp3 player) of, say, Jamie Cullum's "I Could Have Danced All Night," "La Vie Boheme" from Rent, Chopin's Etude #5 ("Revolution"), and U2's "Elevation." Human nature demands you incorporate dance steps into your jog.

Sure, you may incur odd looks from parents walking their children home from school (the children will understand, of course), but your heart-rate will double, you'll extend your run for the fun of it, and you'll actually look forward to your next jog.

Josh Havens (of The Afters) and I continue our conversation. In this episode, we talk his favorite and least favorite parts of being a musician and his challenge to Christian artists.

This audio podcast is under 7 minutes. You can download it by right-clicking on the link.

(P.S. The dog makes rare appearances in this episode.)

Click to play

Josh Havens (of The Afters) and I continue our conversation. In this episode, we talk about the creative process.

Yes, the dog barks on (perhaps it's poetic). And no, now that it's fully night, you can't see us. I'm looking into getting the audio-only version. I know it's out there somewhere.

Ah-ha. I'm starting to get somewhere. But apparently, blip.tv can't handle having both available on the same blog. Since it's dark, let's try the audio-only (mp3) version today, shall we?

Also, if you right-click on the "Click to Play" link, you can "Save link as" a file on your computer. That way, you can download it on your iPod. I know you want to take me everywhere you go, don't you?

 

Click to play

 

A few days ago (meaning sometime in January, February, or perhaps March), I sat down with Josh Havens, lead singer of the Dove Award-winning band, The Afters (as well as guitar and keyboards) and apparently Coffee Master, and talked about music.

This podcast is Part One of that interview, where we discuss how Starbucks is working toward Total World Domination in good ways.

Please ignore the incessant dog barking. Also the fact that we decided to have the interview outside with no outside lighting at night. I promise that is, indeed, Josh Havens.

Also, you can subscribe to these podcasts (and more!) through Blip.TV or through iTunes. Rumor has it the audio-only (mp3) version is floating around in cyberworld (on iTunes, I believe), but I have no idea how to get it on this post.

Psst--If you find this post interesting and think others might as well, would you mind taking a minute to stumble it? It would mean a lot to me.

Today's is more upbeat. Appropriately entitled "Let's Dance," I might have broken into a little bit of dance in my office to this sound.