Month: April 2010

Your Perfect World

Now for something–as Monty Python would say–completely different. Usually I post my own compositions on this blog, but this time I’ll be posting an arrangement of sorts. A remix, to be exact.

You’ve probably heard pop songs that have been released, and then various remixes are issued at later dates–dance remixes, extended club versions, etc. In the world of electronica some artists make their “stems” (raw tracks from the recording) available so that fans and DJs can freely create remixes. One such case is Celldweller, who not only made their stems available online, but are hosting a remix contest.

How could I resist?

You can get a feel for the original song from this YouTube video. Then take a listen to how most people remixed the song–they usually lean a bit heavier toward the dance/techno side of things, but it’s still similar to the original. Me? I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I decided to recast the song as if it were a performance by a band of lounge lizards from the 1950s. Go to the FiXT Remix website where my rendition resides. While you’re there, why don’t you go ahead and vote a bunch of times to bump up my ranking.

Art Music

Dinosaur

dinosaur logo

Long before I became the composer of music my mother generally enjoys, I was the composer of music my mother generally responded to with non-committal accolades like “Did it sound like you wanted it to?” (I.e. “Please tell me they played it wrong.”) Some call my early compositions “scary monster music.” I like to think of it as street cred.

But let’s not dally on questions of whether I’ve sold out or seen the light; let’s get right to the music. One of my compositions from my grad school days was called “Dinosaur,” so named because it was thin on one end, much much thicker in the middle, and thin again on the other end. It’s an aleatoric composition, which means that instead of reading from a score that tells exactly which pitches to play and when, the musicians are given small chunks of music and freedom to improvise within certain parameters. For example, “repeat this phrase for the next 20 seconds” or “improvise on this scale in duet with the Violin 2.” Perhaps the most famous example of aleatory is Terry Riley’s In C.

Take a listen to the Carnegie Mellon University New Music Ensemble taking on a scary monster, in this case a Dinosaur.

Colin

If Only I Had Wings

A song that I wrote with Colin Gordon-Farleigh in 2008, If Only I Had Wings, has now been recorded by Jennifer Douglas. She has a beautiful voice and does a great job with the song. But wait, there’s more! There’s also a video of the song. Check it out: