With the hustle and bustle of this Holiday Season, I was not sure whether my musical colleague, Roberta Silva and I would be able to collaborate for this year’s Christmas project. Fortunately, Roberta was able to find time in her busy schedule to record these two traditional Christmas songs with me on Friday night, December 16, 2011.
I added (generated by my “old” Yamaha MU100R) vocal-harmony effect(s) to portions of both arrangements. The accompanying strings and choral voices are ones from my Kurzweil PC3K8. The piano is Synthogy Ivory.
I hope that you enjoy these productions of Roberta’s wonderful performances.
Satie’s college instructor(s) told him that he was untalented. Thankfully, he was undaunted and continued his musical pursuits – leaving behind a rich catalog of music that is still much-played and recorded today.
Satie’s circle of acquaintances consisted of then-well-known Dada artists and Impressionist musicians including Debussy and Ravel. The three Gymnopédieswere first published in 1896, or thereabouts… What an exciting time and place Paris must have been, at the turn of the twentieth (20th) century!
Satie rejected the overblown, Wagnerian, expressionism of musical Romanticism. His sparse style is thought to have inseminated significant musical descendents who include Brian Eno, George Winston, and other contemporary “ambient” composers.
(On a “lighter” note) an article I encountered, describes Satie’s “white diet” on which he only ate white foods. It is not well-known that Satie changed the spelling of his name from “Eric” to “Erik.” The article also provides the quotation that I transformed into the title of this post: “I have never written a note I didn’t mean.”
Some might say that there are already enough renditions available of the first Gymnopédie. But, I decided to record it again — with the other two, lesser-heard, companion sketches. For each of the “Gymnopédie” I have used a different “backing” sound—my attempt to add a little variety to the suite. This is because all three pieces are quite (ok, very) similar — are in 3/4 meter and are similar in tempo, texture, mood, and (melodic) shape.
I’ve been attracted to Gymnopédie #1 since hearing the Blood Sweat and Tears (BS&T) arrangement from their self-titled (eponymous) album. My recording uses the Synthogy Ivory “Italian Grand” piano. The “airy” sound that I chose for backing of #1 is a nod to the flute-based BS&T arrangement.
I had forgotten the Blood Sweat and Tears brass-ensemble-based, arrangement of Gymnopédie #2 — but, encountered it online and learned that its BS&T arrangement won a Grammy Award for best instrumental performance of 1969. There is some irony that the arrangement of the second Gymnopédie was awarded a Grammy. This article claims that Debussy considered the second piece unsuitable for orchestration and neglected it when he (Debussy) orchestrated the first and third.
Gymnopédie #3 is similar to the other two… The backing sound used with the piano is one of Synthogy Ivory’s built-in sounds called, “Piano Pad.”
The video was produced (in iMovie) to accompany the music (rather than vice versa) and features fall leaf pictures that I have taken over the last years. I hope that you enjoy the music and video production.
This post’s title may seem a little odd, if not alarming… It was a bit of a stretch for me to create anything approaching a clever parody of Fleetwood Mac’s (copyright, 1972) “Bare Trees” album art. I created the bare trees that are intended to invoke the spirit of the ones on the Fleetwood Mac album cover, using the “Bryce” 3D modeling app. And, (not by coincidence) my colleague, Jason Pike and I both use (Apple) Macs for our musical work.
The Danny Kirwan composition, Sunny Side Of Heaven was next-up from my bucket-list of songs and pieces that I intended to eventually record. Like Keith Jarrett’s “Pastel Morning,” this is one that I planned to record for more than thirty years. When I was unable to find a recording of this piece online, I ordered the CD from Amazon and transcribed the piece from recordings of my purchased CD.
Jason Pike channeled the spirit of Mick Fleetwood’s stylized, lyrical drumming while I attempted to channel the spirit of Danny Kirwan’s guitar solo to record tracks that were synchronized to the same audio track (and, therefore synchronized together). Unlike our previous collaborations, this project was the first where Jason provided me with MIDI drum parts rather than audio drum recordings. For our performances, each of us (separately) played along with the Fleetwood Mac recording as a guide to record our parts. Our rendition uses three electric guitars, acoustic guitar, Mr. Tramp (Wurlitzer electric-piano emulation), Synthogy Ivory grand-piano, electric-bass, and Jason’s MIDI drums.
For future projects, Jason provided me with recordings of each of his drums. We plan to use his (future) MIDI percussion performance to trigger audio samples of his actual drums that were extracted from his recordings, and that have been carefully staged for our evolving, recording-workflow. In this recording, the MIDI notes that Jason played are played by sound-programs on my Kurzweil PC3K8.
Special thanks to the departed Danny Kirwan for composing this song—and, to Jason for his always-excellent performance. We hope that you enjoy listening to our version.
With the hustle and bustle of this Holiday Season, I was not sure whether my musical colleague, Roberta Silva and I would be able to collaborate for this year’s Christmas project. Fortunately, Roberta was able to find time in her busy schedule to record these two traditional Christmas songs with me on Friday night, December 16, 2011.
Recent Comments