Daniel Powers

Archive for the ‘miscellaneous music’ Category

Yes, I am a serious artist! Really! I do it for art, not fame or money (which is good because I have neither!).

But I admit it; it’s fun to win stuff. Even if it isn’t money.

Last week I won a little contest on the Northernsounds forum (see this thread). It was for patriotically-themed music, rendered with Garritan products. I won with this piece, a mock-up of Dudley Buck’s Festival Overture on the American National Air, “The Star Spangled Banner,” which I mocked up mostly with Garritan Personal Orchestra, with a few winds from Garritan Concert and Marching Band.

I started this mock-up last year, when I published my edition of the piece. (You’ll find it on the Swan’s Wing Press site. I’m not putting a direct link right now because I’m fixing to upload an entirely new site as soon as I finish it, and I’m afraid the link will be messed up when I do. But it won’t be hard to find.

The original version from last year wasn’t much to hear. I just took the audio output directly from Finale, unedited, and posted it. I always intended to get back to it and work on it eventually, but didn’t get to it. There seemed to be little reason to. Other projects, with deadlines and eventual paychecks, took priority, so I left the Dudley Buck piece on the virtual back burner.

When I found out about the contest, it seemed that here was a reason to get back to it and polish it up a bit, so I opened it in Sonar and spent a week working on it. A week wasn’t enough. I was able to get through the strings and percussion parts, but the deadline came up before I could touch the winds and brass. Maybe I’ll finally have time to finish it next year.

I guess it was good enough, though. After forum members voted, I won. My prize was a free Garritan library, and since I already had everything else, I chose the Garritan Authorized Steinway Virtual Concert Grand, which arrived in the mail this morning. Hopefully I’ll be able to install it later today and start working with it.

It’s a good start to the day.

I almost forgot. I finally got around to updating my website yesterday, and uploaded my arrangement of Carol Of The Birds. I had planned to post the original, longer version, but after listening to it I decided that the short version was actually better. So that’s the one I posted.

Carol of the Birds is finished and has been sent in. The Garritan Community Christmas CD will be out sometime in November (one hopes!).

The version submitted was shortened from the original. We were supposed to keep things under 4 minutes for the CD, but I wasn’t paying attention to the length as I was working on it. Imagine my surprise when I actually checked the length and found that it was about 5 minutes 20 seconds. Yikes! How did that happen?

Oh, I know how it happened, of course. The song is 4 verses long, so naturally I wanted my arrangement to reflect that. But by adding an introduction and coda, and using a fairly slow tempo, I let the length get out of hand.

The fix was pretty easy, for once. I just cut the third verse from the arrangement and edited the transition somewhat. It now times out to 4 minutes 13 seconds, a little longer than it was supposed to be but not overly so. While the cut version will appear on the Garritan CD, I will post the full version on my website when I have time to update it, hopefully tomorrow. And of course, I’ll add a link from here as well.

My version of Carol of the Birds is scored for 10 solo strings, namely 4 violins, viola, 4 cellos, and double bass. The rather odd combination was dictated by the number of solo strings available in the Garritan libraries (contributors to the CD were restricted to using Garritan products). I used the Solo Stradivarius Violin as first violin and Gofriller Cello as first cello; for the remaining strings I just used all eight of the solo strings that are part of Garritan Personal Orchestra.

Now back to the piccolo concerto. The solo part is mainly done at this point, but there’s a lot to do yet on the orchestra score.

After my brief foray into glass music, I’m back to working on the piccolo concerto.

As of today, the first section is pretty much done except for a few details. As for the second section, the piccolo part itself is nearly complete except for a few gaps that hopefully won’t take long to plug. Most of the orchestra part currently exists only as a harmonic progression, with few details noted as to texture. Which is actually not unusual at this stage.

The frustrating part is the ending. I have a pretty clear idea of how I want the piece to end but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to connect it to the rest of the piece. Hopefully I’ll be able to fix this soon.

In other news, I’ve been contacted by an entertainment concern in Branson Missouri about using one of my older Christmas music arrangements as background to an e-card promotional campaign they’re planning, to announce their Christmas offerings. Something new for me. We’ve come to an informal agreement, but contracts and stuff have not been signed, so I’ll hold off on further information for the moment.

Today is our 15th anniversary. Yay us!

A couple of days ago, I had a great idea. Since the 15th is associated with crystal (like gold for the 50th), and since I have a modest collection of sampled glass instruments, why not write a piece for glass ensemble, record it with my sampled instruments, and give it to Martha as an anniversary present?

So I did. (Honestly, I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself, what with all my other projects, which I stand to get paid for, and which have deadlines!)

I found some time yesterday, wrote and recorded the piece in about 3 hours, and played it for Martha this morning. She loved it! (Don’t worry, it wasn’t the only thing I gave her.)

And now, here it is for your listening pleasure:

Crystal Anniversary for glass ensemble.

This was recorded with Vienna Symphonic Library’s now defunct Glass and Stones library (melody is Glass Harmonica, occasionally doubled with Musical Glasses; rhythm track is Glass Harmonica and Verrophone played with mallets) and Bolder Sound’s Crystal Glasses and Meditation Bowls. Enjoy!