I’ve actually already done a post on this piece, but it wasn’t all that in-depth. The first project in my 2008 film scoring class was to write a theme, then develop it into three versions that would be appropriate for scenes in a movie: the “main” theme over the titles, the “action” theme during an action sequence, and either a “love” theme or a “death” theme. This, of course, is the “action” theme. It sounds a bit like a car chase from some sort of ’70’s cop movie (complete with a jump over a raising bridge in the middle in slow motion) which is pretty cool.
This piece was also important in that it was the first time I’ve really been able to pull off an electric guitar without it sounding obviously fake, using just some sounds found in Logic Pro 8. Some members of the class even wondered if I recorded an actual guitar in this thing (which I didn’t). Since then I’ve written a lot more songs in that style (mostly for murder mystery shows), using the principles I first discovered while working on this little ditty, and it truly is one of the first professional-sounding pieces I’ve ever done that I wouldn’t be at least somewhat embarrassed to show to potential clients. Not bad for a 75-second music cue!
Coming up next week: the Battle Music from RR: The Game (a different RR game than before)!
(For those not familiar with Travels, this may help.)
To quote from my Travels memoirs:
Another personal favorite. This one dispenses the washed-out feeling we’ve had since A Dangerous Sign and sinks its teeth right back into the meat of the story. Accompanied by a rock organ instead of a distortion guitar, this one has a much more low-key feel than ‘A Dangerous Sign.’ The beginning of this song is the happiest time for Marco during the entire show, and it’s a bit jarring to hear the beautiful string lines turn minor and sour right before the rock section. The oboe there also adds a bit of emotion. The MIDI file is a rockin’ one, as is the tape, but the CD loses a lot of the heavy bass that I love on this song.”
A funny thing happened when I orchestrated this show. The first five or six songs I really put a lot of effort into and tried to make sound awesome. Then the reality of having thirty-five or so songs left and only two months to do them in became quite apparent and a lot of the rest of the orchestrations didn’t have nearly the time and care put into them. This particular song, “What’s Going On?”, is one of those early pieces. There’s some counterpoint, some nice harmonies, a sax solo that didn’t actually work in real life — good times. The song is the first time we’re finally introduced to the core conflict of the show: Marco Polo’s idealism vs. the realities of the Mongol Empire. Since this is three songs before Act I ends, I’d say that’s a bit of a pacing problem, but once it’s introduced it makes for a compelling drama for the rest of the show, Marco’s whining notwithstanding. This is also the first piece I did where I gave the two main characters a distinctive instrument to represent them musically: an oboe for Mei Hwa, a clarinet for Marco. I used this same motif in a few other pieces, although sadly, by the end of the process I didn’t have the time to make it work throughout the entire show.
This piece is one of the four that actually sounds like a rock opera (not counting reprises, the other three are “Who Is This Stranger?”, “A Dangerous Sign”, and “Who Do You Think You Are?”), albeit a little more low-key than any of the others. Interestingly enough, this song showcases perfectly why I both really enjoy and bash the CD recording: the string part at the beginning is gorgeous, while the rock part doesn’t work at all. I guess that’s what happens when you record in a choir room instead of an actual studio, or at least when you don’t correctly mike the rhythm section, especially the drums. Ah, well, still a fun song.
Coming up next week: the “Action” theme from my film scoring class!
The origin of this piece actually requires a bit of backstory. In 1999 I became a part of the online Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers community, with its main seat at the Acorn Cafe. It was a fun place to discuss random things about the TV show and collaborate with fellow Ranger enthusiasts (and it was completely PG-rated). After posting a MIDI file I did of the opening theme song to the show, a few people asked me to do some music for their various RR-related projects. One such project was an RPG starring the Rangers made by a fellow Cafe member named Hermes. It was called “Rescue Rangers The Game: The Future Will Never Be the Same,” and sadly, I don’t remember anything about the plot, or who some of those extra characters are on this poster for it:
The game itself never saw the light of day, but I did write a few short pieces for various locales in the game. Our subject today was one such piece, written for the sewer level. It doesn’t really have much music: it’s more of an ambience track than anything else, but it’s still kind of fun and creepy.
Coming up next week: “What’s Going On?” from Travels!
There seem to be a slew of “end-of-decade” remembrance blog posts cropping up, so I thought I’d do my own. But instead of just doing a general overview of each year, I thought I’d categorize each year. First, a general overview of what I did. Second, the best picture from that year. Third, the best song I wrote that year. Fourth, the best blog post from that year (for years that have blog posts for them). And finally, what I learned from that year. Onwards!
2000
To celebrate New Year’s of the new millenium, Kjersti and I were at the Bawden’s house with Lyndee and Carina Jensen. At midnight, to do something memorable, I threw myself headlong into a snowbank in the front yard! Sadly, the snow was quite old and more ice than snow, so I just kind of bounced off and rolled on the ground.
The decade started off with Travels! For me that means skipping every other day of school to orchestrate music! ~Forty songs in two and a half months! It burned me out! But still, even to this day, it is the largest single work I have done, even when you consider that I didn’t actually write the show, just orchestrate it. Soon after that, I graduated! Yay! 2000 is also when I worked for three days at the Utah Fun Dome, quit because it sucked, then spent the rest of the summer and Fridays in the fall working at some filing system installation place with Chuck Fields as the computer guy. I’d do such grand things as jiggle the mouse when the boss’s screen saver would come on and he’d freak out, thinking he lost his work. Both hilarious and sad! Mostly I just got paid to surf the internet. Then finally, in the fall, I started my first semester at BYU. This was back when the people I went to school with were still my age or older, not like now when everyone on campus (undergrads, anyway) is younger.
Best Picture
From Concert Choir Tour 2000 in Disneyland. I look like I’m ten, for some reason.
Even though I have limits, when pushed, I can accomplish quite a bit more than I previously thought possible. I also need a fairly large recharge time, though. Also, don’t live forty minutes away from your college classes.
2001
The first six months of this year found me living in Deseret Towers at BYU. This was the first time since I was an outcast student in middle school that I had a chance to forge my own identity instead of taking the one that my older siblings gave me, and boy, did I choose a geeky one. Eight-player Starcraft matches nearly every night, an ongoing campaign of Dungeons and Dragons which was incredibly fun (I was the only Good-aligned character to survive the entire campaign, and I was a gnomish bard. That’s not supposed to happen, but it did!), Super Smash Bros. tournaments — man, it was a lot of fun. There were, of course, some angsty moments when I was quite lonely, but since that’s been a factor in pretty every year of my life I’ll just mention it right now to get it out of the way and move on. Sadly, during Spring term I ended up contracting shingles and missing the last third of the term, which sucked. The rest of the year was spent at home, prepping for a mission, doing shows in Midvale with Annelise, and generally being really bored. I got so stir-crazy that, during the last three weeks of the year, I burst forth with crazy creativity and produced the Josh Reese Christmas Carol.
Shingles sucks. Also, when I make my own friends and live my own life instead of the one I think my family would most want for me, I end up generally happier, if only for the fact that it’s my own choice. You know, it’s better to choose to live in your own trailer than be forced to live in someone else’s mansion. And finally, don’t be an art music composer, unless you have a lot of old money, are somewhat insane, or plan to teach. Or a combination of those.
2002
On January 1st, 2002, I was set apart as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, going to the Barcelona Spain mission. This made it quite easy to track my two years as a missionary, since it really was just two calendar years, straight down the line. After spending about five weeks in the Provo MTC, learning Spanish, listening to the Lord’s anointed, and drinking a lot of orange juice, they shipped us off to the MTC in Madrid. There I learned that I sure didn’t know Spanish, and that Spain, like much of Europe, is full of weird juxtapositions between centuries-old architecture and teenage street punks with tight sweaters and nice shoes.
Into the mission field I went next. Trained in Granollers, a small town north of Barcelona known primarily for its obscurity, and windiness. To Lorca I was then shipped, where I spent six months eating fruit, talking to Ecuadorians, and suffering from dysentery. Lorca was also known for being one of the two most southernmost points in the mission. Considering the amount of time I spent both here and in Cartagena (the other most southern point in the mission), I’m convinced that for some reason both President Bowen and Watson wanted to keep me as far away from the mission home as possible. Finally, on my birthday, I moved to Elche, a land of palm trees and shoes.
Best Picture
In Lorca we lived above a dollar store (or a Euro store, I guess, although then it was a 100 peseta store) called “Zarahemla.” This was obviously owned by a member (the elders’ quorum president, in fact).
Best Piece of Music
I didn’t write any music during this time. although I did make a wacky tape with Elder Linford when I was sick for a month. Probably the best of that was “After Dark,” which was the name of one of the demo songs on the keyboard they used for church in the Orihuela branch.
Best Blog Post
I was on a mission; I didn’t have a blog.
Lessons Learned
Where to start? Besides the wonderful spiritual lessons I learned, which were many and awesome, I learned that, although countries are different, cultures are different, and people have different customs, under it all people are people no matter where you go, and we have way more in common than we have differences.
2003
Still on my mission. The year started still in Elche, still a land of palm trees and not much success, although my companion and I were featured in a short film entitled “Lies.” Don’t worry: the lies weren’t about the gospel or anything, it was us saying “We don’t want to take much of your time!” Then it was off to Palma, which, speaking from an objective viewpoint about the area, was the best area of my mission. It was on the island of Mallorca (or Majorca for you English speakers), off the coast in the Mediterranean sea, and it was absolutely beautiful. This also meant we just ran into a lot of tourists (especially the area my companion and I covered, which was the old part of town with all the cathedrals and forts and touristy stuff) and the work progressed slowly. Still, what a wonderful place. If I had enough money, I would totally go there for my honeymoon. This is also the period of time in which my father passed away, but being so far away from it all and still having to continue the work, coupled with a lot of ambivalence over my dad’s and my relationship, made that event far less traumatic than maybe it would’ve been.
I then got moved to Cartagena in May, where I would spend almost the rest of my mission. Even though it came fairly late in my mission, Cartagena was probably the defining moment of my mission, and speaking from a subjective viewpoint, my absolute favorite area. This was mainly because I grew quite close to the people we worked with, specifically the SanchezandNadal families. If I were to go back to Spain just to visit people, I would spend most of my time here.
The year ended in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, a suburb of Barcelona and the first time since Granollers that I was anywhere near Barcelona itself. I celebrated New Year’s by eating 12 grapes at midnight, which is the tradition over there.
Best Picture
This doesn’t do justice to the beauty of Palma, but it’s one of the best pics I have (I didn’t take a lot of pictures on my mission, as it was in the age before ubiquitous digital cameras). One day I’ll convince Nate Winder to go there, and then you can see a lot of wonderful pictures.
Oh, heavens! This was when my testimony of the gospel solidified. Whenever I have doubts, I think about Cartagena and the miracles I saw there (which were nothing flashy, just mostly changes of heart), and I know that the gospel is true. Also, Alfonso Sanchez once told me, as we were in a hospital emergency room waiting for doctors to treat one of our investigators, that I had a certain capacity to love people that he had rarely seen in missionaries, which is one of the kindest things I have ever had said to me, and one of the reasons I love Cartagena and its people so much. After pondering out what exactly it means to me, I think it means that, instead of loving a lot of people broadly, I love a few people very, very deeply.
2004
This year started off with a triumphant return home from Spain, and an immediate dive into BYU-Idaho. I chose to go here mainly because Ben and Kjersti were already there, which really turned out to be both a really good decision and a really bad one, as will be explored in the “Lesson Learned” section. I started being the piano man for the improv troupe “Comic Frenzy,” which was a lot of fun, and then worked on the running crew as a “tree-pusher” for Into the Woods, a position which was portrayed in a documentary.
During the summer I moved back to Riverton. Most of the summer was spent spinning my wheels, but I did spend a lot of time with Nick Greer, of all people, working on the Pimp Lando DVD as well as a DVD of stuff I’d done in high school. He was very generous and supportive, letting me use his equipment and so on with no expectation of recompense. Good guy, that Nick.
In the fall it was back to BYU-I, where a lot of time was spent getting ready for Fiddler on the Roof, which was performed in 2005. I played the Russian constable who drives everyone out of town. Also, I did sound for nearly every other show done that semester (well, OK, just one show: Over the River), but it was fun!
Best Picture
Striking the set of Into the Woods. I am a sweaty, sweaty man.
Best Piece of Music
I didn’t really write much music while at BYU-I, since I was living the theatre life that Ben and Kjersti were living. So I’ll pick this song from Pimp Lando 7: Don’t Cry For Me, Pennsylvania, sung by a vampire.
While being a younger brother to Kjersti automatically earns a person a bit of prestige no matter what (since if there’s one thing Kjersti knows, it’s how to promote people), life in Rexburg felt like a regression from the lessons I learned in 2001. BYU-Idaho was certainly someone else’s mansion: I was somewhat well-known, at least among the drama crowd, and I got a lot of good experiences out of it, especially on the tech theater end. But it all felt like a sham, especially since none of the people that Ben and Kjersti were friends with felt like my good friends too (with the possible exception of JD Taylor, but that’s mostly because JD is pure awesomeness in a can). As a result, I wasn’t very happy, much to the befuddlement of Ben and Kjersti (well, OK, mostly Kjersti). I guess the main thing I learned this year was just a reinforcement of what I learned in 2001: I need to live my own life!
2005
Still at BYU-Idaho, I performed in Fiddler on the Roof and also did sound for Our Town. It was also at this point where I got within a hairsbreadth of having my first girlfriend, but that’s a complicated subject that I’m still not willing to discuss on an open blog. It was also at this point where I knew that I needed to get out of the shadow of my brother and sister and become my own person, so at the end of winter semester I left Rexburg for good. I decided to go back to BYU and apply for the Media Music program, but in the interim period I got a job with my brother-in-law Mickey Murphy working for Title One, a title insurance company. I was once again living at home with my parents in Riverton, but since I was working full-time instead of just waiting for my mission it was much more bearable than it was in 2001. In the fall of 2005 I took a few token classes at BYU, but mainly I was just working and saving up money to be able to survive in Provo until I was eligible for pell grants.
This was also when I attended the singles’ ward in Riverton, which at the time encompassed most of Riverton and Bluffdale and all of Herriman, so it was basically the entire southwest corner of the Salt Lake Valley. This also marks the first time I actually pursued one of my famed one-sided crushes when I dated Holly Fuellenbach, but it didn’t end well, as she wasn’t really interested. Oh, well. I have not purchased flowers for anyone since then.
Best Picture
Part of a photo scavenger hunt I did with Casey and Holly and some other people from the singles’ ward. What kind of name is Vanderkooi?
This is the year I actually started this blog (as opposed to just entries in my journal), so there’s more to pick from. Probably most important for me was the story of Kim Isom.
Lessons Learned
When I played the Russian constable in Fiddler, I tried to play him as a sympathetic character, hoping to get some depth out of an otherwise one-note personality. I hope I succeeded, but this is also when I learned that I’m actually not that good of an actor. Oh, sure, I can be pretty funny sometimes, but that doesn’t really mean I can act. That’s why I haven’t really been in any shows since 2005. I instead turned my focus to music instead of drama, and I’ve found I like it more, although I still enjoy doing the odd improv show here and there.
Also this year I learned of the glory of financial independence, something I haven’t much tasted since. Cooooolleeeeeege!!! *shakes fist*
2006
The first eight months of 2006 found me doing a job that I adored: pulling old house deeds from various county courthouses in Northern Utah. I liked this for a few reasons: 1)a lot of my coworkers back at the office were pregnant and kind of um, witchy, 2) I love driving in the mountains, especially if I’m getting paid for it, and 3) I didn’t have to deal with customers. Sadly, the position doesn’t exist anymore, due to counties getting their records online, or I would go back in a heartbeat. Oh, well. I also got involved again with Hunt Murder Mysteries, doing sound for them. Although working with the Hunts themselves is an, um, interesting experience, I had a good time doing some of the shows, especially More Mystery on the Moors. I convinced Casey to try out for that show, and not only did he make it, but went on to do a lot more work for the Hunts and even met his future wife! How about that!
In early 2006 I was accepted into the Media Music program at BYU and made preparations to move back to Provo in the fall. I had also secured my friend Steve Porter a job at Title One, so we made plans to live together. He had already graduated, but needed to get married before he could continue doing what he was trained for and wanted to do: teach seminary. So in the fall we moved to Bountiful Court, an apartment complex in which we stayed together for nearly three years, where Steve even met his future wife! How about that!
It was also at the BC that I realized that I was now older than the average college student (turning 24 that November), a feeling that’s just gotten worse. Oh, well. The car I’d been driving since I knew how to drive finally died, so I got my grandma’s old car, which I’m still driving today.
Best Picture
I apparently didn’t really take many pictures in 2006. So here’s me dressed as some sort of professor in my bathroom hallway.
Best Piece of Music
Although I did write Phrustration this year, I didn’t actually turn it into its awesome version until ‘08, so for this year I’m going to have to go with Magic Trick for a Vase.
Staying at home working is fun, for a time, but there comes a moment when a person has got to get out of his comfortable rut and work on his dreams. That’s what going back to college was for me. I think I finally learned how to better get along with Kjersti this year. She moved home to do her student teaching, and so this was the first time she entered into a social environment where I’d already established myself (the singles’ ward) and not the other way around, so I didn’t have that feeling of “they just think I’m cool because Kjersti talks me up, but wouldn’t give me the time of day otherwise” that I did at BYU-I. Also, college sucks the money right out of your wallet.
2007
2007 set the pattern for the next two years. In January I got my job at BYU Vending, where I’ve spent nearly every weekday afternoon since. I was still plugging along in school, but getting fairly burnt out, and not doing as well as I should have been. The bright spot in this was my involvement in the BYU Men’s Chorus, which was a lot of fun and also meaningful and if I had the time and health I’d do it again. This was also the first summer (besides my mission) that I didn’t spend at home in Riverton, electing instead to continue my job in Provo. I also took a trip to Vegas with Billy and Casey, which was a ton of fun, and a trip to Walt Disney World with Kjersti and Ben, which oddly enough, wasn’t nearly as fun, but more on that later.
Living at the BC was fun, and Steve made a lot of friends.
2007 is also when I started to feel confident about my professional music-making abilities, and my music output greatly increased, getting close to high school years (well, not counting Travels) in terms of pieces produced. Also, this is the year that our improv troupe, Absoludicrous, really started taking off, even facing off against some sort of Happy Pirates in December.
Also, Billy got married.
Best Picture
This was taken during the Vegas trip. I don’t think I need to say why it’s the best picture of the year.
Best Piece of Music
The piece I’m most proud of is “Can You Find It?”, but since that’s just a clone of a They Might Be Giants song, I guess I’ll go with “Never Had a Girl.” Oddly enough, the song mentions that I was 25, and it was the week before I turned 26 that I finally got a girlfriend. Eerie!
Best Blog Post
A lot of good ones to choose from, but I’m going to have to go with The Meaning of Tarantella, which was my own personal interpretation of a song we sang in Men’s Chorus that year. A close second would be The Visitor, where I finally figure out how I felt about my father and some other issues that I’d been having. (Odd that all these “close seconds” seem to revolve around DS9.)
Lessons Learned
Going on trips with Kjersti and Ben aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, especially with the previous issues I’ve outlined regarding those two. I think it would be funner if I went with a different group. Well, OK, it still would be fun to hang out with Ben, too, but not to be tied to hanging out with him. By the way, I think the moment that crystallized the way that I feel about hanging out with Kjersti’s friends occurred on this trip. It was Saturday night, and I had been horrendously sunburned at the beach earlier that day. I was in a lot of pain. Kjersti and Ben had to run inside to some store for about half an hour, leaving me in the car with Amy Harper, Kjersti’s best friend. Who completely ignored me. The whole time. Except once when she asked if I was OK because I was making painful noises, and I said, “No,” and she didn’t say another word.
Please let me make my own friends. Your friends are your friends. I don’t make you hang out with those D&D geeks I was friends with in 2001, so don’t bring me across the country so I can spend time with people who pretend I don’t exist. Thank you.
Moving on, I also learned that the Lord calls who He sees fit to be the elders’ quorum president, even if said person is a quirky redhead who certainly didn’t fit the stereotype.
2008
More of the same. School, vending, yadda yadda. But hey, Ben got married in May, which was pretty neat! I also put on my Junior Recital in April, which is the performance I am most proud of. It was a ton of fun to do, everybody there enjoyed themselves, and Casey damaged some school property by smashing glass against a desk! What’s not to like?
I also became fairly good friends with Amanda Knight that summer, then promptly destroyed that friendship by trying to take it a step beyond. D’oh! However, later that year, I finally did have success when I started dating Suzie! That lasted a month! But it was certainly a whirlwind of a month!
Also, Casey got married.
Best Picture
A whole slew of redheads. We’re not going extinct!
Best Piece of Music
A ton of really good ones to pick from here, due to my junior recital happening this year. Since I already mentioned Phrustration, I guess I’ll go with a tie between JuniorRecital and Backseat Driver.
Best Blog Post
This is when my blog transitioned from “personal posts about my life” to “random stuff that I want to post” due to it gaining more readership. Still, there are a few gems in there, so I think I’ll go with “Embrace the Impossible,” although probably more people would be interested in my tryout for American Idol.
Lessons Learned
Given the opportunity, I can put on a damn fine show. It’s getting the opportunities that is not my strong suit, or even my weak suit. It’s just not really a suit I hold. Also, I can have successful relationships! Successful in the fact that they happen at all, not that they continue for any long period of time. Also, the physical parts of relationships suck without a good social/emotional/personal foundation. Hey, my church leaders were right this whole time! Who knew?
2009
Still more of the same, although the ending was now in sight. Still going to school, still working at vending, still not able to get out of the cycle! I did date Sarah in February, but it was a wash, since she found out that she didn’t really like me as more than a friend. For some reason we tried it again in May, but surprise, surprise, it still didn’t work! There was no chemistry whatsoever! Which means I still haven’t been able to hold on to a girl for more than a month!
2009 was also the year that Poison Ivy Mysteries, Annelise’s murder mystery company, started up, and I spent a lot of my free time writing songs and doing sound for her. This is, of course, still going on. In fact, today I wrote part of a disco for the new show opening in January!
Having lived in the BC for three years now, I decided it was time for a change, since all the people moving in were fresh out of high school. So I took my good friend Johnathan’s advice and moved into Alta Apartments, where I’m still living today. Turns out there are a lot of 18-year-olds here too, but there is also a higher percentage of older people. I kind of gave up on the social scene in the fall, but this winter I’m determined to make up for that!
Also, Steve got married.
Best Picture
Yes, I did grow a mustache. No, you didn’t see this.
Best Piece of Music
Besides the year of Travels, I have produced more music this year than any other in my life. Therefore, there are a lot of good ones to choose from. I’ll have to go with my top three, for very different reasons: Miss Me, Testin’the Mic, and Misfile, which is what I finally decided to name that Factor X song, although I still haven’t come up with lyrics.
Best Blog Post
Slim pickings, actually, since I didn’t write a whole ton of stuff, posting instead some random stuff that I thought was cool (including the 52 Weeks posts). So I guess I’ll go with “Why do people listen to the music they listen to?”
Lessons Learned
There needs to be some physical chemistry as well as a good emotional/social/personal foundation in order for a relationship to work. Hey, all those pop songs were right this whole time! Who knew?
It’s also become increasingly clear that it’s time for a change. I have lived in the collegiate environment, more or less, for this entire decade! That’s a long time to be stuck in one phase in life, especially without a family of my own. I don’t know what’s waiting around the corner. My goals in life have changed more times than I can count (other than “get married and have a family,” of course) and it’s crunch time. So I guess the lesson I learned is that I need to learn some sort of lesson about this, and quickly.
———
Well, that’s it for this decade. Ups and downs, lefts and rights. I think the main theme of the decade is figuring out my identity, and while that’s not entirely solved, I think some good progress has been made. What wonders does the next decade hold? Hopefully all the things I hoped for this decade but didn’t quite achieve (marriage, graduation, etc.). I guess we’ll find out.
(For this week, instead of picking an image from flickr, I uploaded this one of Ben’s yet-unnamed firstborn child, who was born yesterday. I figured, since the piece is called “Bens!” it would be appropriate.)
This isn’t really a song. It’s barely anything coherent. I guess it would be best to describe it as more of an experiment than anything else. Sometime in 1997, when SaXon Geat was still in its formative stages, Ben wrote a bassline and some ear-splitting guitar chords that lasted all of fifteen seconds, then later I added a melody. Then I added a bass solo. Then I added another sort of B section. Then I repeated the first part, slower and shifted down a whole step. It was basically just a meandering thing that never really ended, so it has no form whatsoever, but it still has some interesting parts.
You may note that the MP3 featured here sounds like Nintendo music. That’s because recently I’ve been having some fun with making chiptunes out of old MIDI files, such as “Lightning,” or, even better, Gustav Holst’s “Mars, the Bringer of War.” I did it with “Bens!” because the sound quality of the original MIDI was so horrifyingly bad that to listen to it one’s ears might bleed. (If you want to subject yourself to it, you can certainly do so. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Because I did.)
This was the second part of the strangely-titled “Mixed Quintet? You Bet!” project from my freshman BYU year. The object of this particular part was to create something humorous, so I came up with this weird poem:
There once was a man from Nantucket
Who could hold his breath for over thirteen minutes
Here now is his story.
This man had a brother, who, try as he might
Could not hold his breath as long
So instead he decided to give up that racket
And now he’s written this song:
The older one went to the younger one day
And saw that something was wrong
He asked “Little brother, what’s the matter with you?”
And in return he heard this song:
The older one laughed and smiled and laughed as he said,
“Young one, there’s no need to fear!
For you are a cello player, you see,
And can play a note for a year!”
The younger one thought he’d try it out,
And so one note did he play
He played it year in and he played it year out
And he’s playing it still to this day!
The conceits were: the older one (the baritone player) actually couldn’t hold his breath very long, which is why he suddenly stops playing and starts wheezing near the beginning. Everyone else stops and waits for him to catch his breath, then they begin again! Hilarious! Then, when the younger one’s plight is heard in “this song,” the main theme of the work is played at varying dissonances: first a tritone, then a minor second. So sad! Finally, on the line “one note did he play” the cellist plays a note and holds it for the rest of the piece! The note is even still being held when movement 3 starts (which I may get to someday as part of this whole thing)! Ha ha!
Anyway, this was a fun piece to do. We weren’t allowed to talk to the performers about the piece, so I have no idea what was going through their heads, but it must have been a bit disconcerting, as the violin enters early after the second stanza, which is why you hear some guy loudly singing the actual entrance. That was our illustrious teacher, Mr. Murray Boren, who conducted all these pieces. I got some fun compliments on the tune from the other students in the class. Apparently they thought I’d be a good kids’ songwriter. You know, for kids! That’s as well as maybe, and who knows? Maybe I’ll end up going that way some day.
Coming up next week: “Bens!” Obviously a collaboration!
So it’s finals week. You make it to the BYU testing center, nervous but eager to get your test over with. But your last final isn’t on chemistry or advanced calculus or business or even English. No, you’ve taken jazz history this past semester, and it’s time to take the final listening ID test. You grab your bubble sheet and question booklet as the testing center worker also hands you an MP3 player. As you enter the testing room, tension fills the air. Hundreds of students around you are taking tests, scratching their heads in a desperate last-minute plea to pull off whatever grade they’re shooting for.
You take a seat. To your right is a girl trying to define some sort of chemical bond structure. To your left, a guy sweating and desperately punching numbers into a calculator to solve some sort of physics question. Ahead of you, a small freshman apparently trying to remember exactly which state nullified the tariff of 1833. These are not happy faces. These are faces of determination, desperation, concentration. Complex problems need to be solved; complex formulas need to be applied; obscure facts need to be remembered. Some of this strikes you as you take your seat, hoping beyond hope that you’ll be able to do as well these uber-serious fellow students of yours.
As you plug in your headphones you take special notice of the silence that permeates the air. Aside from pencil scratchings, calculator-button-pushing, and an occasional cough, the room is dead silent. Some of these students have already been here for an hour or more, some of them will still be here for another two hours. Sweating, writing, praying, all in dead silence.
Suddenly filled with energy, you note that the entire testing center atmosphere seems to have lost all of its anxiety. The test isn’t just surmountable, it’s now AWESOME!
What is the name of this piece? “Time Check!” BOOM!
Who was the bandleader? Buddy Rich! BOO-YAH!
When was this piece recorded? 1973, y’all!
The guy on your left is still frantically pushing buttons. A student takes a seat behind you, fully prepared to spend the next three hours writing a long-involved essay about human rights in South Africa. Meanwhile, you turn to the next example in your test!
Who wrote it?Joe Zawinul! He was Austrian, but that’s not part of the question! DIG IT!
The next few examples fly by as you get more into it! John Coltrane! Chick Corea! Ornette Coleman! Modal improvisation! Postbop pentatonic solo techniques! And, of course, MILES DAVIS?!? Each answer seems to flow right out of you, doing these pieces justice. You’re excited! You’re pumped! You’re going to pass this test, and you’re gonna do it in style!
Finally, the last example plays, you answer the last question, and you turn the MP3 player off. The girl on your right is still drawing molecular bond diagrams, the student behind you has barely started the first paragraph of an essay, and the guy on your left is still working that calculator. Each of them are furiously working, filled with anxiety and stress. They have to solve complex, impersonal problems while in the hated testing center. But you got to listen to Buddy Rich!
(For those not familiar with Travels, this may help.)
To quote from my Travels memoirs: “This was the first attempt at orchestration for the show. It was started mid-December of 1999 at Nate’s house when we were still trying to figure out how to work the whole process. This was even before it was decided that I do the orchestrations. It was mostly finished in December but touch-ups and other work were applied later before I printed it.”
And also from the overview in that same document: “When I first really started helping Nate in December of 1999 during my senior year of high school it was because I knew a lot more about Finale than he did. It had been decided for a while that I was to direct the pit orchestra, but the decision of who was doing the orchestrations wasn’t made until near the end of December. We had finally finished the first piano reduction for 1. Prologue/Overture at Nate’s house when I started playing with the orchestra parts to it. I asked Nate if I could also orchestrate the rest of the show, and he said something like, ‘Sure, whatever.’ Little did I know what I was getting myself into.”
Ah, the beginning of Travels. As was noted above, this piece I orchestrated at Nate’s house while he was still trying to figure out Finale. I’m not even sure that we had a firm instrumentation down at that point (for example, I wrote a guitar part for it before it became clear that we weren’t going to end up having a guitar player for the show).
Being the prologue, this piece was special for a number of reasons: it laid out the basic tenets of the plot, those being that the entire show was a flashback of Marco’s travels, that something horrible happened to Marco personally that he didn’t want recorded, and that now he’s been put in jail somewhere with a writer named Rustichello who’s writing everything down. Also this is one of only three pieces that has spoken dialogue in the entire show. In fact, according to Nate, all the spoken dialogue in the prologue comes directly from the actual book of Marco Polo’s travels itself. There’s not much to say about the music itself. It’s given a sort of regal, even martial feel with the staccato horns, snare drum, and steady beat, with a B section taken from a later piece in the show (“12. In These Mountain Tops”).
The overture is just a paraphrase of the main theme of the show (“6. Travels”) with a harp arpeggio at the end seguing into the second piece (“2. Day After Day”). This theme plays at various time skips or commencements during the show: here, when the show flashes back; during song #6, when Marco actually begins his travels; at the end of the first act, when Marco decides to change things (and we move to several months later when act 2 starts); at the end of the escape song before we return to the “present” Marco in jail, and finally to close out the entire show. That’s a lot of ground to cover for one theme. I’ll speak more about it if/when I talk about the song “Travels” itself.
Also one random note: this song let my brother Ben answer a Final Jeopardy! answer about a famous explorer who dictated his story to a prisoner in 1298. Ben was just playing along at home, but still, it was pretty neat.
Coming up next week: Mvmt. 2 of “Mixed Quintet? You Bet!” entitled “Endurance”!
As I’ve mentioned before, I wrote a lot of songs for SaXon Geat. During high school it was the instrumentation I used for virtually every song I wrote before Travels. This particular one, while not one we ever performed , rehearsed, or even gave an official name to, is still one of my favorites. I’m not quite sure why, but I think it has a bit of that “factor X,” which I believe is related to the major 7th chord in the first measure of the main theme. In any case, it feels like it’s got a bit more feeling behind it than some of the other stuff I wrote around the same time.
At first I wrote up to 1:12, and then let it sit for a while. When I came back to it I ended stealing the melody of the bridge from the ending credits theme to Chrono Trigger: “To Far Away Times,” which is still one of the most sublime pieces of music I’ve ever heard, despite its SNES 16-bit sound-chip origin. Then I closed it up repeating the main theme.
I remember playing this for Nate back in the day, and he liked it so much he ended up incorporating the short line played at 0:54 into Travels, during the song “No Better Timing.” Oddly enough, “No Better Timing” was the one song I never even tried to orchestrate (well, besides “The Parade,” but Nate never even wrote that one down), but even so I suppose I had a little influence on it, which means I had a hand in every single song in that show, except “The Parade.” Just thought I’d throw that out there.
Coming up next week: the “Prologue/Overture” to Travels!
A funny thing happened after high school. During most of my high school career I had written for two basic formats: SaXon Geat, and Travels. Consequently, I had a good amount of experience writing for both a pit orchestra and a ska band minus guitar (yeah, yeah, I know). Now, all of the SaXon Geat stuff I’d done hadn’t been under a deadline or under any pressure or even really for a client (since none of my songs actually got performed by the band anyway). However, both Travels and the stuff I wrote for assignments during my first year of college were obviously under more constraints, both in terms of creativity and time. So somehow, whenever I wrote anything that wasn’t for a specific purpose (to blow off steam, to explore musical ideas, etc.) I defaulted to writing another SaXon Geat-type song, i.e. writing for a rhythm section (bass, drums, keyboard), and a brass section (trumpet, trombone, tenor and alto sax), even though the band itself had long since been disbanded.
“Dun dun dun!” was one such piece. It never really had an official title, and was just something I wrote for no particular reason during the summer of 2001. While not a particularly inspired piece, it still possessed a fair amount of energy driving it, even in this early MIDI incarnation. The bass was a better sample than usual, it had a synth lead, and some strings were used for a pad (which is something I actually do a lot, I’ve noticed; even in my most recent work.) The sounds had a certain fluidity that built upon each other and created a smooth, driving, groove experience. All except the brass sounds. Since I still always wrote a part for the brass, we’ve got one here, accenting the off-beats of beats three and four. However, since the brass sounds I had at the time were atrocious, they seem to interrupt the flow the music is trying to create rather than add to it. The result is a potentially awesome sound ruined by this “eeh-eeh” every measure. Hopefully, I learned my lesson. If memory serves, this was the very last piece I wrote with that instrumentation thrown in there as a throwback to SaXon Geat days. All the songs I’ve written since then that have a brass section have had one because I wanted that type of sound in the piece, not simply because they were there by default, and I think it’s improved my compositional techniques.
The piece is still fun to listen to, despite the horrible brass sounds (and the fact that it’s basically just a 50-second loop).
Coming up next week: “New,” yet another untitled SaXon Geat-esque work!
Of all the more “serious” pieces I’ve written, this is definitely one of my top three or so. “Phrustration” was originally written for my final project in a music theory class, proving that I could write a modal piece: in this case, the Phrygian mode. It was just a piano piece, with a person saying, “Frustration!” every so often and screaming and breaking glass near the end. Phrygian mode + Frustration = Phrustration! I originally planned to do it with Casey coming in and breaking a bottle, but he bailed on me literally in the last minute, causing me to grab some random girl from the class to do it instead (with no bottle break), which didn’t work nearly as well, but whatever; I passed the class.
A year and a half or so later, I brought this piece back and orchestrated it to present at my junior recital. It was the first real project I worked on using Logic Pro, the program I’ve used nearly exclusively since then. For the recital I once again brought Casey back (this time he showed up, too!), and we worked out a whole routine where he was sitting at home trying to do homework or something, but increasingly frustrating things started happening: he broke his pencil, he spilled his drink all over his homework, he couldn’t find anything to watch on TV, he got his foot stuck in the wastebasket, he asked a girl out on the phone only to find out she got married, etc. etc. Near the end he was supposed to smash a picture frame against the desk and scream. Now, I had dubbed in the glass breaking sound on the track and taken out the glass from the frame to make sure Casey didn’t injure anything in the auditorium. However, he replaced the glass before the number and actually smashed it against the desk sending glass flying everywhere. Now, keep in mind that this was in the Maeser building on BYU campus, and the first row of audience members is maybe three feet away. Luckily nobody was hurt, but it kind of brought everyone out of the moment when suddenly they have to fear for their safety. And for the rest of the night Casey was trying to clean it up while I continued with the recital. So, in short, both times I’ve performed this in front of an audience it really has been frustrating.
In any case, I love the Phrygian mode. It’s extremely dark, the second darkest of all the church modes, but it’s not so dark as to lose a sense of finality, as the darkest mode, the Locrian, does. The Locrian mode may imply a sense of loss, spiraling into madness and uncertainty, a despair so deep that it is not understandable. The Phrygian, in contrast, portrays the same level of despair, but without any of the madness. It is a final hopeless loss, one that can be understood but from which there is no escape. The lowered second (which is the difference between the Phrygian mode and the plain ol’ minor key)is what really drives the despair home. In a minor key there can be victory: a villainous victory, but a victory nonetheless. But in the Phrygian mode there can be no victory, not for the protagonist anyway. The opposing forces have overcome him, and he is aware of it all, but unable to surmount any of it. In a way that makes this piece and the one I just wrote last week sort of companion pieces if you will. In this one he is driven to the depths, but in the other he finds redemption and can soar once again.
It was also with this piece that I learned a lot of tricks I hadn’t quite been able to master to make my pieces sound more realistic, especially with the cymbal rolls, orchestral swells, glockenspiel, and harp glissandos. I’m still working on the brass, but I think the rest of it sounds real enough that people don’t automatically say, “That sounds like a video game!”
Interestingly enough, this piece was featured on my last 52 weeks project as well (the one that only lasted four weeks).
Coming up next week: “Dun dun dun!” (And no, that’s not just a dramatic introduction of next week’s piece; it’s the actual name.)
All right, I’m sick of this. I’ve been doing these “52 weeks” posts for, what, seven weeks now, and not a single comment. Not. One. I already know these songs, people! I’m not doing this for myself! I want to get feedback! But since nobody’s said a word, I’m going to assume that either 1) people have stopped reading this blog, and it’s like the old Angelfire days again, where I can post personal things without fear of repercussion, or 2) nobody besides myself actually cares about my music. And I don’t mean in the “I care about you, Jeff, so I care about the things that you do” way, but in the “I am actively involved in the consumption of the product you produce” way. You see the difference? One shows a love (or obligation) toward the person, one shows an acceptance of the music itself. And only the second one will help me believe that I can make a living doing this. Since I’ve gotten no feedback, though, I guess I can’t. Because nobody cares about it. Let me reiterate: I’m not saying nobody cares about me, but that nobody cares about my music. At least not enough to add one little comment in nearly two months’ worth of posts on the subject, which, let’s face it, takes a minimal amount of effort.
This especially hurt with the piece I posted last Tuesday. I may not have entirely conveyed it, but that piece was my favorite I’ve done all year, and a true expression of the essence of what I’m trying to convey to the world through my music. Well, if the world doesn’t give a damn about the song that best expresses who I am, what does that say about me? If the song that means the most to me doesn’t even arouse a single person to make the smallest of comments, even when I post it on my Facebook page too, then what the hell am I doing here? Obviously I’m incapable of touching the chords of other people’s hearts, no matter how hard I try. And that’s the reason I got into music in the first place. And that just reiterates a point I’ve tried to make several times, with varying amounts of success: that I’m a different breed of person, and so hardto understandsometimes that most people have just given up trying, which is a major factor why I’m 27 and still single and haven’t been able to hold onto a girlfriend for more than a month.
Now, I fully expect to get a few, “No, it’s OK, Jeff, I still think you’re awesome” comments on this post. If I’m lucky a few of you may go back to those earlier posts and comment “Sounds good!” But I don’t need anyone’s pity. I don’t need this to be like when I was in elementary school with no friends and one day I burst into tears in front of the whole class and during the next recess a few people thought it was their duty to be nice to me, a duty which, once fulfilled for a recess, left me in the same place: friendless. If you’re not going to be sincere, I don’t need it. All the “You’re a good guy” comments would seem hollow. Actions speak louder than words. But if you are going to be sincere; if you are willing to take the time to listen to what I’ve got to say through what I write, and most importantly, stick with it because you like the music (or alternatively, you don’t like it and are willing to tell me why, which would be even more important), then I’ll keep making those posts. Otherwise I’m done posting music here. This blog will just become somewhere that I post funny Youtube videos once every six months or so. But that’s OK; it won’t be a big loss. One can’t disappoint an audience that doesn’t exist. (And hey, if the reason I’ve got no comments is actually that nobody’s reading this blog anymore anyway, then nobody will read this rant and nobody will feel guilty! It’s a win-win!)
For years I’ve been looking for the “it” factor when it comes to music. The one unidentifiable attribute that separates music that I fall in love with from music that I like. That separates the music with a good beat, catchy lyrics (if it’s a song), interesting orchestration, or whatever, from music in which you can take solace and forget yourself. Music you can wrap up in, like a blanket on a snowy night, and just let flow through you.
Several attributes have sprung to mind at different times. Some I’ve outlined in earlier posts. Whatever it is, I still haven’t been able to codify it yet. I’ve got a “Contemplative” playlist, consisting of nearly 1,500 songs (out of the 13,729 that I have on my hard drive) that somehow reach my heart in this way, and it’s as diverse of a list of music as you can get, ranging from predictable choices like arranged hymns and “The Luckiest” by Ben Folds, to less predictable, but understandable (if you know me), choices, like remixes of tunes from Chrono Trigger or the theme from Superman, to completely random picks like Weird Al’s “Hardware Store” or Homestar Runner singing “Todaybor Day is Labor Day.” All of these songs, to varying degrees, possess this “Factor X.”
I’ve tried to emulate it in certain songs I’ve written. Some of them I’ve tried and tried but they never quite clicked (such as “House of Saints” or “Cavernous Triumph”), others I’ve gotten pretty close (like “Lightning” or “Phrustration”), but even those two aren’t quite there yet (“Lightning” gets awfully busy at times, while “Phrustration” is too much of a downer).
Speaking of feeling down, I’ve been rather depressed lately for various reasons, the biggest being yet another birthday spent as an undergrad, so yesterday I took an afternoon off and poured out my soul in the best way I know how: into music. Spending an afternoon and a good chunk of the evening working on this resulted in the closest I’ve ever gotten to encapsulating perfectly that “Factor X.” And so, in lieu of a “52 Weeks” post this week, I’d like to share it with you. I don’t have lyrics for it yet, but I may never have lyrics for it. I’ll leave the interpretation of the music up to the listener, where it’s sure to be more personally affecting.
Felis Catus is your taxonomic nomenclature.
An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature.
Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses
contribute to your hunting skills, and natural defenses.
I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,
a singular development of cat communications
that obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
for a rhythmic stroking of your fur, to demonstrate affection.
A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents;
you would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.
And when not being utilized to aide in locomotion,
it often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.
O Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display
connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.
Written by Data for his pet cat Spot (actually written by Brannon Braga for the ST:TNG episode “Schisms”), the Ode to Spot is one of the more memorable little pieces of Star Trek that fans enjoy. To quote the whole thing is a true sign of Trekkieness. But to set the whole thing to music — well! It just needed to happen! So, for my junior recital, I did just that, and sang it with three myselves (if that’s a word) three times. How, you may ask? Let this recording from my actual junior recital tell you (part 1/part 2).
Jaff, Joff, and Juff were drawings of myself on the chalkboard made by Johnathan Whiting, and at the end I erased their mouths, so that no more villainous characters could make me sing it again. This was one of the funnest parts of my recital, and although the song itself is nothing groundbreaking, it’s still a fun little tune set to a very memorable set of lyrics (memorable not in anybody’s ability to actually remember the words, but just remember that they heard something so ludicrous). This was also before I learned how to pronounce “hedonistic,” apparently.
Pimp Lando is a series made by Casey Wayman, Billy Grant, and myself from 1998 until, well, we’re still going on it (we’re working on the tenth later this month). The seventh installment was made shortly after our respective missions, about four years after the sixth was finished, so we knew we needed to pick up the series with a bang. So we decided to make it a musical! Instead of writing original songs, however, we just rewrote lyrics from songs from famous musicals, particularly The Phantom of the Opera. This particular ditty closes out the show, where the story’s been wrapped up, Lando’s got the girl (who he loses in the epilogue), and everyone joins in a song-and-dance number. It makes a bit more sense after viewing the episode in its entirety, but not much.
I’m working on fixing Pimp Lando 7 in order to upload a video of the whole thing (there are a lot of timing issues to fix), but for now, I’ve at least got a video of this song up:
Coming up next week: Ode to Spot!
(Oddly enough, flickr gave me no response to the search term “Pimp Lando Rhythm” so I just got a screenshot from the episode.)
So here’s something fun for you. Recently I was commissioned by a friend to write a theme song for a video he’s working on. I can’t reveal the name or subject matter of the video, however, so I issue you this challenge, dear blog reader: for what type of show would this theme be written? What would it be called? What would be the subject matter? Who would it star? And would it be on Fox?
Note: the theme goes for only about 17 seconds, and the rest of it is just to fade out whenever (probably after the credits).
(For those not familiar with Travels, this may help.)
I’m going to present all Travels songs in these three formats, as the differences can be striking and interesting. For example, with “Who is this Stranger?” the MIDI version has a lot more energy than the CD and live version, due to a faster tempo and a screwed-up keyboard in the other two (it was supposed to be a square wave, but due to some miscommunication it ended up being a Hammond organ, and the two sound nothing alike).
To quote from my Travels memoirs: “This is where the musical style of the show shifts from an old-fashioned musical to a rock opera. The energy level is high as the show gets rockin’. This is heightened in the MIDI file by the Square sound (the techno video-game sound) and on the tape by the slap bass line. Easily one of the songs that lost a bit on the CD, it still is a great entrance into China.”
“Who is this Stranger?” is one of the first songs I completed while orchestrating Travels, and I was really excited about the energy put into it. As time went on during the orchestration and rehearsal process, I discovered that what I put in the MIDI file and what the orchestra was capable of playing were often quite different, both in terms of skill level and just being real instruments, and as a result the CD suffers. The live version is a little more energetic, since the drums and bass were both killed on the CD.
“Who is this Stranger?” was also one of the only songs Nate asked for my lyrical help on. I think after I gave helpful suggestions like “I’ve never seen their kind or like, I kind of like their look, but look, they look just like Al Gore” and Annelise’s favorite, “Who are these strangers, strangers from Granger,” Nate turned elsewhere for lyrical help (although, in my defense, lines like “You will see it all as we push off my favorite pier/You’re gonna push your friend in the water?” stayed in the show).
Finally, the song should have been titled “Who are these Strangers?” since that’s what is actually sung, but oh well, whaddya gonna do?
Coming up next week: “I’ve Got Rhythm” from Pimp Lando 7!
The whole five-part quintet thing was composed as part of my Music 288 class (Composition 2) back in 2001, when I was still a music composition pre-major before I decided to jump ship and move to the media music department. Each assignment that semester was to write a piece for the same group of five instruments: flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and randomly, euphonium. Then we had what was termed a “real studio experience” where we’d go to Studio Y on campus and give our music to the players, where they would sight-read it and it would get recorded. We weren’t allowed to talk to them about performance notes or anything; we had to stay sequestered in the booth, so the performance was based strictly on whatever we had written on the score and parts.
This particular assignment was the first of five, and sadly, it was also the only one that I can’t remember now what the exact assignment was. It sounds ternary with repeating motives, so the assignment probably had something to do with that. Sadly, on this recording, the flute player didn’t show up for some reason, so the guy playing the flute was just one of the students in the composition class who played flute for a year or so in junior high, which is why the last note is kind of strained and stuff. Still, it’s kind of fun, and it’s one of the few pieces I have a live recording of, so that makes it special.
Coming up next week: “Who is this Stranger?” from Travels!
This short MP3 is less a song and more an awakening of possibility. It was made when I was experimenting with sounds while I was trying to write some music for a Rescue Ranger RPG that an online friend was making. I did several songs for it, even though it never got made. This particular one was made when I was trying to make some sort of ambient sounds, and for some reason it spoke to me, so I decided to save it. It’s short, peaceful, and you can do a very quick Tai Chi move to it or something. It’s called “Crystal” because that was the image I got when I wrote it. That’s about all I got on this one.
Coming up next week: Mvmt. 1 of “Mixed Quintet? You Bet!” entitled “Decision”!
