Semester 2: A fresh start. A confident start.

Semester 1 was a funny one.  For a start, I finally realised I wasn't the only keyboard player in the course, be it HND1, HND or even the DFM year.  I realised that I had to start working.

Last year, my feeling was that I had nothing to worry about.  I was the only keyboard player in DFM.  Bands who wanted a keyboard player had no choice but to ask me to play for them, and I happily did.  The amount of experience I gained last year was phenomenal;

I played more genres than I ever thought I'd play,
I gained more performance experience than I'd ever had before,
I gained a certain degree of confidence,
I gained a certain degree of competence when it came to recording and setting/gearing up for performances.

I began the year working at Grade 4 theory, requested to be transferred to Grade 5 two weeks before the exam and received a 94% mark after two weeks of solid work at it.

I jumped from playing Grade 5 pieces (my audition) to Grade 7 pieces (my final exam) without practicing all the 'recommended' work in-between.

The latter of which, I found unbelievable.  I went from playing Grade 5 pieces at a Pass level to playing Grade 7 pieces at Merit level.  I achieved an overall distinction for my work over the entire year.  As a musician, I progressed more than I ever thought I would in my first year at college.

That was last year, though.  This post is about this year.  And this year, for my first semester?

I was a lazy bastard.  For the first two months of the course, I still lived in Hawick, which meant regular travel (2.5 hours from home to college, each way) was my most common option.  It destroyed my will to attend.  It destroyed my will to work (who wants to practice after being at college for 4 hours and travelling for 6 hours in a single day?).  The only thing I felt improving was my theory knowledge. I was making a start on the jump from Grade 5 theory to Grade 7.

I will admit that I didn't do half the work I could have in the first semester, especially during our performance blocks.  Not to say I wasn't busy; I had pieces to learn for group performance classes, Glee club, my solo classes, new band work, etc...I got through them all, just not as well as I could have.

I then joined Sonic Thrill, a band comprised of people from inside and outside college.  The musicians in this band are phenomenal.  Playing a few gigs with them not only gave me more valuable live performance experience (I can now speak to a sound man confidently about how I want sound, along with how my keyboard setup can best be used) but playing with them made me want to be able to play as well as they did.  That was the start of my inspiration.

Inspiration; I'll stop there.  I think that's the main word I should use to describe Semester 1.  It gave me the inspiration to start doing that work I'm doing now in Semester 2.

I mentioned at the start of this post, other keyboard players, in my year and the year above.  I decided to speak to them all, even if I didn't know them.  Each one of them has more technical ability than myself on the keyboard.  I know this, I have heard all of them play off the bat.  They can improvise and make it sound good on the spot.  I can't.  But I asked them questions.  I may have got jealous and worried when our performance groups (our year and the year above) were merged meaning we'd be playing with more experienced players at the start, but I soon saw past that.  I saw it as an opportunity to learn and then challenge myself.  Which I have now done.  Every one of the fantastic keyboard players in the years/levels surrounding mine, be it above or below, I have questioned and learned from.  And I now do not find myself nervous playing in front of other keyboard players - last year I was the only one, so I didn't have to worry about people hearing my keyboard related mistakes.

Of course when talking about keyboard players, I should mention my new teacher, Steve Grossart.  Steve is a fantastic teacher.  From the way he talks and explains things to the way he plays, I leave every lesson inspired, with an optimistic buzz.

Steve is fluent in every genre, from classical to blues to jazz.  I can play the start of ANYTHING, be it a Bach Prelude, a melody from a less known blues track or a even just simple chord progression played to a certain rhythm, and he will say "oh, that is this, isn't it?" and play it through.  Like most piano teachers, he uses it as an opportunity to show off ["or you could play it like THIS..."], but that's what excites me.  It makes me think "I will can play that soon."  He was happy with my Merit reward for my Grade 8 piece two weeks ago; he now aims to bring my final performance mark up to a Distinction.

Which brings me to the main point of this post; work.  Last Semester I was sloppy.  This semester, I am letting no such thing happen.

I started the semester, as I said, achieving a Merit in my Grade 8 solo keyboard piece.  I am over the moon with this.  Last year at this time the very thought of performing a Grade 8 piece made me feel sick.  Now I have learnt that with the work, I will be able to play almost anything [note: anything is a strong word.  Not anything.]

The pieces I have chosen for my final exam are difficult pieces.  Stupidly quick ragtime, overly complicated pieces in 9/8 with a separate 4/4 swing section, more complicated Jazz pieces...it's daunting thinking that I have only two months to perfect them.

But I am confident.  Because for the past week now, since timetables have returned to normal, I have been practicing at least two hours a day.  Receiving such a good mark with my Grade 8 piece has made me realise that I can do anything I want, providing I put the work in.

For example, improvisation will always be a struggle to me.  My solution?  Buy a Jazz piano book written by one of history's most esteemed Jazz pianists, rent out books on improvisation from the college library and destroy all music saved on my phone so that it can be replaced by jazz songs.  Then transpose a selected few of said jazz songs.
And then practice my theory next to the piano; playing through every chord, every scale in every key.  Every night, before I even think about playing tunes.  If I do this, by March, hopefully myself and my tutors will see a huge improvement in my performing.

I have a lot of work to do.  And rather than spending my time blogging, I should be playing.  Expect more updates in future.

o/

Lots and lots and lots of things. Going. On.

This post is just a list of things I have to practice.  I am over the moon.  I'm filled with determination just now, and I know that after practicing everything here enough, I'll be a much better musician than I was last week.

-Grade 8 Piece 'Silent Movie Chase', for my Exam in January.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdGTDMW5IDw [I will play it better than that]

-Glee song, "Halo/Walking on Sunshine"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZorGm7Kcj4

-Autumn Leaves, stride style.

-Black and White - Ragtime piano
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQqBdezXKuI

-Blue Rondo a la Turk - Dave Brubeck
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc34Uj8wlmE

-All the Things You Are - Ella Fitzgerald (have learnt it in two keys so far, need to learn it in another one)

-songs for my band Sonic Thrill
www.facebook.com/sonicthrill

-Songs for the performance block (unknown yet)

Probably more, but I've forgotten.  This is just now, anyways.  As well as various scales, chord voicings and modes.  Love it.

I just hope my motivation sticks.

Composition Assignment

I have completed my composition assignment.  


Here is the result.

 Glass by noHopeforJordan

In short, for the assignment, we were basically to select two songs that interested us/we wished we'd written/songs we just liked, analyse the song in depth and then take certain elements from both to create our own composition.  Our composition was to clearly show influences from our two picked songs.  The influences could be anything, from melody, to rhythm, harmony, structure, instrumentation, etc...

My composition takes influences from two pieces; "The Lake and The River", by The Dear Hunter, and "Goodbye Sky Harbour", by Jimmy Eat World.  I link and analysis of these tracks can be found below.

If I were to put my composition (which for simplicity's sake, I'm going to call 'Glass') into a genre, I'd class it as 'progressive.'

Rather than following a typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure, it goes through several 'parts', which goes as follows;

From 0:00-0:50, I'll call it the introduction.

0:50-1:18 will be classed as the First bridge.

1:18-2:03 will be called the Vocal Verse.

2:03-2:18 is the Vocal Bridge

2:18-2:37 is the Gaptooth Bridge

2:37-3:43 is the Aggressive Blues section

3:43-4:02 is the Post-Blues, Pre-Ending Bridge

4:02-5:24 is the Outroduction.  

-Glass was composed entirely in MIDI, with everything, including vocals, recorded using Logic Pro 9.  

 -I stupidly didn't record everything using a metronome, so some parts seem out of time, if only slightly

- I went over everything afterwords with the piano roll and did my best to fix parts that needed fixing, but due to the tempo changes, some things I couldn't fix without having to re-record large parts of the song.  

-It should also be noted that I am not a vocalist, but I felt the song needed my own vocals in it.  Recording vocals and everything that comes with it was new to me!  

MIDI tracks used in the song are;

-Glockenspiel

-Analogue Keyboard

-Celeste

-Twangy Electric Guitar

-80s Electric Guitar

-Acoustic Pianos

-Icy Whirlpool Synth Pad

-String Ensemble

-3 Separate Drum Loops

-Various (up to 12) Vocal Tracks.

-Glass is in the key of E minor.

-Starts off with a lone glockenspiel playing a simple 4 note melody.  The analogue keyboard joins in soon after, setting down the track's guide melody, which returns several times throughout the piece.  The celeste joins in, followed by very quiet twangy electric guitars playing simple thirds over the three other tracks.  

I had written a small essay for each analytical part (for my composition and each influencing piece).  However, having reread the brief, I need to submit "brief notes".  So the essays have been deleted.  Instead of describing the piece and every little part in it, I'll leave it to you, the listener, just to listen to it and compare it to the below songs yourself.

The songs I picked for my composition are;

"The Lake and The River, by the Dear Hunter."

The Lake and the River, the Dear Hunter

I could spend days, weeks, months analyzing this song, it’s related songs, the various parts etc.  Instead, however, I am just going to write about the parts that apply to my composition.  

The main elements I took from The Lake and The River to form my own composition were the structure of the song, the instrumentation and the polyphony.

The song opens with a guiro, a glockenspiel and a drum kit, with the glockenspiel taking lead as the ‘main’ instrument with a simple melody. The bass joins in, followed by either two electric guitars or a guitar and a keyboard.  They all keep playing the same thing over and over; eventually another guitar comes in, playing a riff strongly resembling the initial glockenspiel melody, but with added notes and a more complex rhythm.  The various melodies in this song return later on in the song; sometimes the exact same, sometimes slightly edited, played by different instruments.   The melodies here reoccur later on and form the basis for many parts of the song.  This is something I have taken for my own composition.  The polyphony and reoccurring instruments can be heard in the Introduction of my Composition.

I messaged the band on Twitter and asked for any information on how the song was produced and written, since it’s such a packed song, and Casey Crescenzo [primary songwriter; vocals, guitar, keyboard] replied.  He was humble enough to converse with me, and he informed me that...

“...That song in particular was written entirely in midi first because I wanted polyphony to be the center of the track...since I can’t really write staff music that well, this is the easiest way for me to arrange.  After that it was just about translating what I had to acoustic and electric instruments...”

This is something I focused on.  Polyphony was to be the center of my track, and everything was done in MIDI.

Upon being asked what the first thing in the song was (or the idea he based the rest of the song around) he replied;

“The first thing was the opening rhythm and melody.  The song grew very organically from the beginning. “

-This is the same for Glass.  I wrote the opening melodies, went away, came back days later, added to it, left, came back, etc.  Everything from then came naturally.  I knew what I wanted to write before I wrote it.

This proves the point I made earlier about the opening melodies being the basis for other parts of the song.  

-Intro goes just to Crescenzo singing with strings and drums.  Influences Glass.

-After a 'chorus' and a 'verse', song builds up, gets louder.  Aggressive vocals, drums and guitars come in; 'loud' part of the song.  My loud equivalent is the piano solo section, when the temp goes up from 130bpm to 160bpm.

-Loud section ends, guitars ring out and the original glockenspiel melody can be heard as the introduction plays again, this time with added piano and a different rhythm being played by the drum kit. Again, the influence here can be heard in Glass, when the original melody comes through again, this time on a piano.  

My song transitions into the ‘Goodbye Sky Harbour’ part here, for the ending.  


There is one final similarity in that the end of TLATR is completely different to the the start, but at the same time, bears some resemblance.  Listen to both Glass and TLATR to see the similarities.  

The second song I selected for my composition is an even longer piece; "Goodbye Sky Harbour", by Jimmy Eat World.  

This song isn't for the impatient; at 16 minutes long, it slowly (very slowly) builds up to the climax at 13:46.  In order to see where the influence comes from, the song must be listened to as a whole.

Similarities; polyphonic vocals heard at the end of the song.

The similarity here is stupidly apparent; the overlapping 5 part harmony that ends the song.  Many artists put large harmonised vocal sections in songs, but I picked Sky Harbour as the first time I heard this was the first time I had ever heard vocals do so much other than sing a main melody.  
From 13:46 onwards it becomes more apparent that Glass is influenced by it, as the glockenspiel playing over layered vocals is something that can be heard in both pieces.

I am aware that Glass isn't as 'tidy' as it could be, and in comparison to some other composition entries my peers will be submitting, will probably be seen as messy.   But it rings true to the assignment brief we were given, and is really, the first time in my life I have ever composed something, written it down, recorded it, and spent hours and hours and hours locked in a room at a computer/keyboard, tweaking, adding, playing with, experimenting, trying to see what I can get away with.  It is the first real composition I have ever done that hints at things I'd like to write in future.  

If you listened to Glass, and the two pieces I linked, thank you.  Hopefully you got some inkling of enjoyment out of it - and by 'enjoyment' I mean 'that part of the music hit me, I liked that', not 'hahahahaha, what on earth is this?!'.  


Thanks.

Composition Assignment 1...

For our first composition assignment, we are two pick two pieces of music, analyse them, and use features of the two pieces of music picked to compose our own piece.

Right now, I am uncertain over which pieces of music I'm doing.  Which, really, I should stop.

I am definitely doing at least one of the pieces on a song by the band "The Dear Hunter".  TDH, in my opinion, are the perfect band; the mix so many genres together, it's unbelievable.

They've recently released a 9 EPs, spanning 34 tracks (ish), based on the colours seen in the colour spectrum (The EPs are titled 'Black', 'Red', 'Orange', 'Yellow', 'Green', ' Blue', 'Indigo', 'Violet' and 'White'.)  Each EP, while released simultaneously, each sound completely different from the one which precedes it, as well as any of TDH's work in their previous three albums; which is, I suppose, why I love them as much; they're diverse; a modern alternative/prog rock band who incorporate so many things I dare not list them.

Anyways, one of the songs I'm planning on doing is a song from one of their earlier albums, "Act II: The Meaning of, & all things regarding, Ms. Leading" (their first three albums are part of a 6 act long story which frontman Casey Crescenzo has written; think of it as a film/book in music form) prior to the colour spectrum, "The Lake and the River", a 10 minute long song which has so many contrasting ideas in it, it shouldn't work, but it does; the whole thing fits together perfectly.  Explaining it won't do it any justice, so I'll link it here and ask only that you listen to the whole thing from start to finish, like any patient musician should do with any piece of music!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MHd28VJo_M&ob=av2n

What I'm learning

Got myself learning a couple of wonderful tunes, which are simple enough to play! Or they will be once I practice them a bit more.  It's good hearing yourself playing something you've always wanted to play; the first of the two being what I mean.

The first one is a piano alone version of Freddie Freeloader, by Miles Davis.  It's the version in the Associated Board Grade 5 Jazz book.  It's only Grade 5, but I'm not sure if there's much in terms of Grade 7+ Jazz Associated Board pieces, but I'll have a look.  Apparently, graded jazz books are more difficult than their classical counterparts [eg. An Associated Board Grade 5 Jazz book may have pieces which are technically closer to those found in a Classical Grade6/7 level book.  Not that I'm saying classical is easy.  At all.  Hah.

I could have easily made a solo piano version for it myself with enough work, but didn't.  Now that I've been shown a version made just for piano though, with the sheet music, I've motivation to start playing it.

Here's the original version, from Davis' critically acclaimed album "Kind of Blue" (known to be "the greatest jazz album of all time".  Personally, I wouldn't agree (as I haven't heard that many jazz albums yet) but from what I've listened to in the jazz world so far, it's an album I keep finding myself coming back to.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6nbxwwxjcw

The other is a slow waltz piece, which has a classical influence though is still technically "jazz".
It's slow, easy, and lovely to play.  I'm mainly learning it so that once I begin to improvise properly, I'll have a song to improvise into.  Much like the player here [he's not me] has done;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_4uOarDEzE

I'll upload videos of myself playing these once I get them learnt properly and have started improvising at a level in which I'm happy at.

It's just occurred to me...

...that I compared something to Celine Dion in the last post.  I did that without thinking.

wat.

From Nothing to Everything

I've started getting lessons finally.  Hurray!  My teacher, Steve Grossart seems like he'll be fantastic.  Right now, I've been tasked with going over all of my scales, strengthening the modes and playing everything else in Swing timing.  Along with that, I've been given two tunes to learn, so that once we start improvising, I'll have something to solo and improvise into, rather than just soloing over random comped chords.

Still no idea what I need to do for my assesment, though.  Which is a worry.

I'm playing keyboards for Sonic Thrill,. an 80s-esque metal band at their EP launch this Thursday, which should be tremendous amounts of fun.  I've missed playing in a band.  Sneaky PEtes, Thursday the 6th of October.  I would say "get there", but it's sold out, hah!  

Also, I've began playing piano for the college's Glee club.  Which, when the ball gets rolling, I'm hoping will be lots of fun.  So in the space of a week, I've gone from having nothing to play to having every song ever written to play.  Or close enough...

And I dunno if you've heard it, but Florence and the Machine have a new song on Youtube.  Parts of it made me think of Celine Dion, and various ballads from the 70s onwards, and it has a basic as hell chord sequence (which isn't a bad thing, but it's unusual for her) but I loved it the first time I heard it. 

Also, Thrice have a new album, Major/Minor.  Need to get that listened to.

I should really be banning myself from listening to contemporary music until my head's filled with nothing but jazz, but I have next to no self control.  Which isn't a fantastic trait to have as an aspiring musician...