Showing posts with label Recorders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Recorders. Show all posts

30 December 2011

Last Shepherd...

Do I have the right to be proud of my music compositions? Oh heavens, yes. The difference between a machine generated playback and a professional performance (even though she called it a practice) is so thrilling that you just can't miss this YouTube of International Clarinetist Marion Harrington playing my music. "The Last Shepherd" was written for her and may be included on her 2012 Christmas Charity CD or even on tour (which you can help with by visiting her link). Marion has called my music "melodic and atmospheric". Listen to her play and its a slice of heaven. http://goo.gl/Cde37

And now I'll go off and cry...

30 April 2010

Publishing Music...

There are many ways to publish. I have two fields of endeavor needing publishing so I'm always looking for the best way. Not only do we have various technical ramifications we then have marketing concerns for our publications. If they don't sell we don't make an income.

I find publishing music to be even more difficult than the process to get published in the big publishers arena. Knowing that with about 200 pieces of music to publish it would take me years just to query half of them I chose to begin publishing as an independent music press.

The first round, or rather the first effort, is now going to press. I have chosen to use MagCloud.com as the publishing house. They produce magazine format material. Although not the standard for sheet music the format does suffice for collected works of solo music, and for longer works in any chamber groupings. At the time of this posting I have already uploaded four issues of the Solo Music magazine and one issue of the Music of Daniel J Hay magazine.

I call them magazines because that is the format used, the paper type, and the publisher is a magazine publisher. In my own mind I think of them as books. In either case, they are on line to be ordered at any time, are produced only when ordered, and MagCloud.com maintains the files, handles the order, prints, and ships. Then they send me my profits. It may not be a perfect world, but this process is a good substitute.

Having lost all my music once before I don't want to loose the new works at all. So I do have a variety of backups in different locations, and now will have a printable and salable form in another safer location. This does not limit my efforts though. I can, and will, be releasing my music in other forms and to other markets because exposure is required. I don't feel my marketing via MagCloud.com would give me a large share of my intended market. And, in any case, this does not cover the mp3 format at all.

So there will be further publishing to cover different formats and markets. At this time you can access my music issues at http://danielhay.magcloud.com

07 March 2010

Lady Grey...

My favorite Internet haunts are overflowing with inane comments on what is happening at the Oscars. Like most programs on television, I figure if I wanted to know what was happening I'd turn on a television. The fact that I don't own one anymore is a moot point, I could easily buy one or just visit somebody who already has it on (or never turned off).

Instead of growing irritated at the flow of messages that I can't filter out without turning off the people I normally enjoy reading, I'm sitting here drinking a huge mug of Lady Grey tea and listening to the "Taking Tea With Lady Grey" trio that I wrote a short time ago. I am both writing at projects and composing another piece of music in snippets at a time.

As Lady Grey comes to a close I click on replay, click on the tab for the score, contemplate a few notes, click on the blog screen and enter a few letters, then back to the score, the blog, the score, the blog, and eventually to a moment of pause and bliss. Those moments are when I sip tea and consider the mood that the music just provided.

Listening to one piece of music while writing another one is a challenge. The first challenge is to make sure I don't mimic the aural sounds with the new written sounds. I don't want a clone of Lady Grey. I found her to be both tasty as tea, and delicious as music but do not need to create a copy of her. She is there for my enjoyment as desired.

Just a moment, click, click, click, click, the process had to be started over. When I tire of the same music I'll simple click on the mp3 player and have it randomly play through all of my music. Music from solo to an eighteen voice brass ensemble. Trumpets, trombones, timpani, to piano, strings, woodwinds and brasswinds. And because I play Recorder many of the pieces are computer-voiced as Recorder.

It makes for a pleasant time without the repetitive voice and commercials on television. It lets me do what I want to do while I plan for a move across country to a house with space for my studio. And it lets me still enjoy the onslaught of Internet activity - I just bypass the parts I don't wish to view.

So all is fine in the world when taking your tea with Lady Grey...

26 February 2010

Pay It Forward Project...

Some of my friends and readers will recall that I lost most of my instruments in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Along with the file box of over 300 pieces of my composed music, all of my handmade wood Recorders, and my handmade Cello were stolen while I was helping a family retrieve their items from a partially submerged car.

I still have not replaced all of my instruments. I probably will never be able to because of the expense, however, I have received several handmade recorders since then as gifts. I can never thank those people enough for their help. I still don't have a cello although I did buy a very cheap one which actually fell apart in the repair shop. I have since composed another 100+ pieces of music. So, life goes on...

As those people helped me I try to help others. There is a delightful lady in Brazil, Clara Borges, who plays Cello in several orchestras, plays piano, and Recorders. She also teaches music. Her cello is needing repairs that she can not afford to have done. Can you help her?

I have created a webpage at http://bit.ly/cuoxts just to help raise donations to help Clara. Any donation amount will be most appreciated. Please read the webpage for details. Please note the return policy if enough money is not raised.

All donations will also receive a pdf file of one of my compositions. The greater the donation the more pieces of music I send. I have pieces suitable for most orchestral instruments so be sure to tell me what you prefer.

01 February 2010

Tree of the Pyramids...

Some time back in history, during the dull, dry, text of bygone ages, there was a tree. Although this tree had never been exposed to humans and therefore didn't know an Egyptian from a Mayan, it was alive while pyramids were being built in more than one place of the world.

Something like 4,500 years ago stones were being quarried and heaved across the lands. They were carved and stacked, hauled, placed, and piled higher and higher, higher and deeper. The tree, just sunk it's toes deeper into the cool soil beneath the swamp. It was overlooked, nobody came around to cut it for firewood, nobody used it for construction of homes or palaces.

The tree, a common Swamp Oak, sometimes felt that it was all alone in the world. It was alone. It had outlived all the other nearby trees, and old trees just rot away. It didn't know that humans didn't want to build anything out of it. It just continued to grow and mind its own business.

Far away, pyramids were built and somehow the tree was destined to bear a carving that was even then being carved into walls of stone. It didn't feel the rumble of stone, nor hear the crash of carved stone striking the earth, but somehow a connection formed from far distant pyramids to the heartwood of this tree.

Years later, centuries later, thousands of years later, the pyramids are still in place. The swamp tree, long since having died, is discovered. It is not rotted away like it should have been. It hasn't turned to stone from petrification. The Swamp Oak is just very old wood and it is beautiful.

Parts of it made their way to an artist who carves Blockenflotes (Recorders) and slowly works of art were created. The art took the form of beautiful recorders from wood not normally chosen for such usage, but from wood that was over 4,500 years old. The wood from the heart of the Egyptian-ages Swamp Oak. As a sign of honor to its age the instruments are visual masterpieces as well as beautiful sounding playing pieces.

The carvings from the stone wall shared in these creations and were also carved into the new instruments. The link from far distant Egypt to the heart of the Swamp Oak was completed in limited editions only.

As a composer of new music for a very old family of instruments, and as a player of both modern and older version of those Recorders, I would like to obtain a set of the Egyptian Wood recorders. I would like to write new music for the old heart wood. I want to take those ancient wood instruments to young budding artists in our schools. I want to take the link from pyramids to a lonely old Swamp Oak to fertile minds of the modern world.

To do this I need to raise contributed funds of $4,500 to buy a set of instruments made from 4,500 year old wood. I am not tax exempt, but I would willingly form a non-profit if doing so will prove receipt of needed funds. I will make sure that all contributors are listed in the material honoring these fabulous instruments and the concert tours using them. If there are any proceeds from tours using these instruments those proceeds will be donated to other artistic programs as a way of paying forward on the heart of the old Swamp Oak.

If you can make any contribution please visit this link: http://eCa.sh/NPUw

05 December 2009

Naming Music...

When I start composing a piece of music it usually is because there is a melodic phrase POUNDING between my ears. Most instances there is no name for that music so the piece gets started with a number as the file name.

When I switched to using Finale for scoring I started using Opus numbers so that I would have a convenient way of naming files. Up until Hurricane Katrina I had just over 300 pieces of handwritten music stored in my lockable file box. When the box was stolen I started numbering at 313 to be sure there was no overlap of the earlier pieces. There was a slim hope that the filebox would be recovered and I didn't want to renumber later. I actually think 307 was the last piece prior to Katrina, but the memory is questionable.

I have recovered the first and second pieces I wrote. They were both written at Blair Academy. "The Hermit" for Oboe and Strings has never been performed although the computer playback is great. "Two Flutes and a Cello" was performed at Blair by myself and classmates Louise Ewing and Donald Blocker. (I have mentioned this before.) At least a few of our classmates were actually at the Headmaster's home for that performance. Not an exciting name for the piece, but it certainly was descriptive. As a tidbit, the only other piece I have written which is named for the instruments it uses is "Trombone and Timpani, with Piano and Strings".

Three other pieces, "Sarah's Trumpet," "Horn March," and "Brash Brass" have different stories. Both Sarah's and Horn were written for Recorder although the Sarah in question was actually a trumpet player and both are now stored on my computer with brass voices instead of Recorder. Brash Brass is an eighteen-voice brass piece that was written for a Dallas Symphony contest but due to illness was not completed in time to meet the deadline.

Names for my music generally come to me as I am completing the work, or later when I am rehearsing it. Some of my music has remained numbered and hence, unnamed, for years until the feeling that I knew the name I wanted came over me.

On the other hand, I do have pieces that are named from their very first note. Some of these are the four piece Blue Ridge Mountains Water Music, Sorcha Lawhir, and Shasta Snow Light. At a guess I would say that maybe 30-35% of my music compositions start out with names.

On the other hand, some are actually renamed because the music evolved as it was being written from the concept the name originally portrayed. Some had names applied for competitions and then renamed when I didn't win, and others get renamed to fit or to honor individuals such as "Susan's Concerto" for Englilsh Horn, Bassoon and Violin or "Bodil Diesen" who is the maker of two of my Recorders. And a few still bear the "Ode" titles with a number because I couldn't remember the original purpose of the music.

So is there an art to naming music? Most assuredly, but it is exercised differently for each composer. As a larger portion of my works are for solo performance it would be repetitive to name the piece for the type and number of instruments. Just a number for a name doesn't feel right to me. But still, at times the name is nothing more than a convention because it gets attached to the music that has been struggling to get out of my head.

One thing I promised myself was to never name a piece for the key it was written in. As an example, consider a Dance in A-minor; once it get's transposed it is no longer a Dance in the original key. So at least I have one restriction in my naming process even if the others all more closely follow gut reaction.

24 November 2009

Recorder Music...

When I was younger, in school in Hastings, Nebraska, I started playing Cello. The strings program there, in fact all the orchestral instruments, was fantastic. Then my family moved to New Jersey, and I had to go along with them since I was just 12-years old.

I spent two years at North Warren Regional High School. The first year I was the only string player in what was mostly a marching band that did two concerts on stage per year. I got featured in a front stage position and they taped a mic to my cello. Our band director didn't really understand strings and couldn't deign to note that I was trying to tune my cello from a string slippage. My A-string broke as I frantically tried to tune and I ended up playing the last two pieces entirely on the D string using advanced finger positions that I didn't really have mastered. Only a few people noted the difficulty, the adjustment, and the beads of sweat forming on my forehead. Two of those few were my mother and myself.

I learned to play both trombone and baritone and actually marched a few times with the band. I had tried using a wheeled device to trundle along the cello but it just wasn't successful. I wish now I had learned the flute or oboe then, or later.

Then I transferred to Blair Academy and although I still was not in a strings program I did have a private
teacher come out from NYC. I fear that teenagedness took over parts of my brain and I did not pursue my cello education as I should have -- but I did get a college scholarship on it and in voice.

While at Blair I was asked if I would join a starting Recorder Class. Ms. Kathyrn Phillips-Price, flautist, got me started on an instrument I have played ever since. In fact, even though hurricane Katrina was the indirect cause of loosing most of my music scores, and Recorders, and Cello, I still have the Soprano, Alto, and Sopranino Recorders from my Blair days. That makes a few of my instruments well over thirty years old.

Now I compose a great deal of music and much of that is for solo instruments. I started doing that because I wanted more music to play without having to buy it. On the computer I often voice them as Oboe because it sounds better, but I play most of them on Recorder. I like to think most are suitable for Cello as well and I have transposed some for Cello.

One day, perhaps, I'll begin marketing the music through a publisher. At this time I just fill an annual subscription to customers that gives them nearly everything I compose. This includes duets, trios, quartets, quintets, etc... in various instrumental groupings. Composing has become a large part of my life and I think I owe part of that to Blair and the Recorders.

So from Nebraska and my Cello, to brass and Recorders in New Jersey, there is an instrumental part of me that coincides with my vocal part. I've been in the business world and enjoyed the money but I much prefer the musical part of me, the peace within after completing a new piece of music, even if it means I join the starving artists.

21 November 2009

To Tell a Tale of Three Trios...

The last three trios, in reverse order, Op 477 Romance Turmoil, Op 472 Taking Tea With Lady Grey, and Op 470 Shasta Snow Light. While picking pieces for the Cello music collection I realized I probably have a collection of trio. Problem is they aren't all the same trio configuration.

Regardless of the instrument configurations I went through the list this early a.m. and find the second piece I wrote and the last piece I have written are trio works. The first, Two Flutes and a Cello I wrote at Blair
Academy and there it had its only performance thanks to Louise Ewing and Donald Blocker on flute and myself on cello.

I seem to have migrated to more Oboe and Cello groupings because I play Recorders and the Finale Allegro voicing for Recorder is poor - but the Oboe is great. The Cello voicing is great, but the Viola isn't. Its a shame since 477 is for Oboe, Viola and Cello.

Oh well, some day I'll have the extra cash to upgrade the software, (and then the hardware, and then the brain surgery too).

20 November 2009

Concert Tour...

I am beginning plans for my second concert tour. If anybody has suggestions please feel free to share them. I perform on Recorders and am available as well for school programs.