|
|
 CD Cover Art  Music Book Cover
Click on the mp3 player to play
| Title |
mp3 Audio |
Composer |
| Joy To The World |
|
George F. Handel |
| Silent Night, Holy Night |
|
Franz Grüber |
| Angels We Have Heard On High |
|
French Melody |
| Carol Of The Drum |
|
Katherine K. Davis |
| Go Tell It On The Mountain |
|
Spiritual |
| O Holy Night |
|
Adolphe Adam |
| O, Little Town Of Bethlehem |
|
Lewis H. Redner |
Each of these Christmas arrangements by Harold DeCou reminds us of his awesome musical legacy.
I have owned a copy of Harold DeCou’s “Christmas at the Keyboard” arrangements (cover pictured) for years. With this year’s revival of my effort to record all DeCou arrangements I previously played, I resolved to record this collection as my 2013 Christmas musical project. The notes I play are the ones Mr. DeCou wrote. The sounds are achieved by playing the original notes through my specially prepared (using our own special sauce…) Kurzweil synthesizer “program.” I attempted to follow Mr. DeCou’s recommended tempos and dynamics.
The “specially prepared synthesizer program“ I created is the 11th version of the original, multi-layered program I developed for this project, using my Kurzweil PC3K8 instrument. My synthesizer program features six distinct elements: right and left “plucked” sounds, solo-violin, an “organish-flutish” sound, synthesizer-brass, and glockenspiel. These sounds are different in character and are positioned across the sound-stage.
Changes to the sounding synthesizer’s program elements are achieved by turning on and off layers of the program – similarly to when an organist engages or disengages organ stops.
I sincerely hope that you enjoy these seven arrangements.
 It was during the fall of 1969, my freshman year as a piano major at Birmingham Southern College, that I can claim to have written my first composition. I was really enjoying my Music Theory I course because of the extreme head-start in music-theory provided by my Mother and other of my pre-college music-teachers.
Though I graduated from Huntsville High School (1969), my two younger sisters were attending Grissom High School – the senior as a junior and the junior as a freshman, during the school’s 1969-1970 opening year. I conceived the idea to write a chorale to submit as the Alma Mater for the new school. I had some familiarity with the then-band-director, Dave Ward and assistant-principal, Ray Reynolds; and, thought they might help to position my composition for consideration as Alma Mater.
 My music-theory professor at Birmingham-Southern, Dr. William H. Baxter, Jr. (author of the music-theory textbook whose cover is pictured, above) was more than willing to review my voice-leading and provided advise during several initial revisions. After that, I’m not sure what happened to my grand plan to propose this piece as GHS Alma Mater. But, obviously the plan fizzled completely and I went for years without thinking of the piece.
Sometime around June, 1999, I made an arrangement of the piece in D major instead of the original Db key. I have since discovered that during 1999, for an unknown reason, many of my compositions were in the the key of D major. I have recorded the 1999 D major rendition and have attempted to leave it largely unaltered from its original arrangement.
I again lost track of the piece until recently finding the original manuscript (pictured) that was the one from final revision with Dr. Baxter. This is the simple arrangement that I recorded and included with the short, featured animation. The accompanying animation uses several of my original Blender 3D models that I have pressed into double-duty from their normal role as header-graphics for this blog.
  “Girl Songs and Other Sketches” (2000) was the first CD that I produced. It is a collection of original, mostly-short pieces and sketches. A number of the sketches were inspired by females I loved. There are as-yet-published girl-songs. Hopefully, the unpublished tributes will appear as Volume 2.
Several of these tunes (Travelin’, Better Now, Manhattan Midnight, PsychoPop, Don’t Let Go, and Do-Wa) were written before I obtained my first music-computer. These pieces were originally recorded as MIDI onto my Alesis MMT-8. I later captured audio from the MIDI performances as Hi-Fi audio onto VCR tape. I dubbed them from VCR audio to the computer when I assembled Girl Songs in 2000.
The accompanying CD cover graphic features a younger, thinner, and less white-haired version of me. In retrospect, I am not sure why I didn’t engage several attractive female models to enhance the CD’s cover. We’ll leave that for Volume 2, I suppose… :-). The CD liner-notes include a list of the keyboards, musical-equipment, and computer-software and hardware that I used to record the CD.
Click on the mp3 player to play
| Title |
mp3 Audio |
| Travelin’ |
|
| Allison |
|
| Tracy |
|
| To Know You |
|
| Arubian Nights |
|
| Angelique |
|
| Before You |
|
| R & R |
|
| Better Now |
|
| Leah |
|
| Carryin’ a Bean (Carribean) |
|
| For Kay |
|
| Manhattan Midnight |
|
| Minor Ballade |
|
| PsychoPop |
|
| Minor Melody |
|
| Don’t Let Go |
|
| Pam |
|
| Do-Wa |
|
| Wanda |
|
| Tammy |
|
|
|
Recent Comments