This last weekend was the 17th edition of the Two hour album challenge (and the third I’ve taken part in.) Every few months, a bunch of musicians separately each make a track inside two hours over the weekend, inspired by a theme randomly chosen just beforehand. This month’s theme was corruption, which is full of possibility! Definitely a lot of sonic possibilities, but I took corruption as a dramatic theme and tried to make a soundtrack-style piece around the idea of a hero (being) corrupted. Made me think, among other things, of Othello…
Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons Which at the first are scarce found to distaste, But with a little act upon the blood Burn like the mines of sulfur. … Look, where he comes. Nor poppy nor mandragora Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou owedst yesterday.
I was also really really concerned about setting out on this, for some reason! Once I got going though I had a fine time and I was pleased with what I managed in two hours — but at the same time two hours was nowhere enough to get it remotely polished or “finished”… The idea of the challenge is to let go your inhibitions and speed up your process (and raise money for cats, go donate for the album!) — kind of similar to my PIANOWRIMO challenge, but maybe I’m just more used to that by now, that and the scale is very different.
I like the first gathering of sound, and the “regret for what was lost” theme. The orchestration is… hinted at! best I could do in the time…
If you want to see the composition Process is devastating detail, we are encouraged to record/stream the whole two hours, so you can in fact do that here.
Or, in a more edifying use of your time, you can listen to all 60 tracks here:
The last thing I filmed before Christmas, this gorgeous piece from the end of the Advent Children movie, by Nobuo Uematsu. I watched Advent Children last Christmas Eve, for the first time since it came out (and in the Complete version which I guess I hadn’t seen) and honestly loved it this time round. Also felt like I’d been missing out on the soundtrack all these years. I’ve made a ff7 soundfont version, a music box version, and now…
The first melody is on the oboe in the full orchestral version too so I wanted to see how an oboe and piano take would sound.
I had to practise that piano part quite a bit!! (And even then don’t expect me to ever manage it live.) And the oboe, phew, a lot of sustaining needed.
30 pieces from this November, now (free!) to download on Bandcamp. These will be up on Spotify and elsewhere, and the sheet music on gumroad, at some point soon.
The original inspiration was pretty much Takeharu Ishimoto’s Crisis Core sound and we continue with that idea here… (Not exactly similar, and I’m not sure the string quartet was ever combined with the rock band there, but here ’tis.)
I historically haven’t been very into “developing” or “revising” my older pieces, tending to just think of them as done and move on to the next thing, but lately I’ve been doing a few things like like this… I think it’s because of arranging a lot of beloved vgm pieces this year, and that’s made me approach my old stuff (okay, in this instance it’s not at all old, but there’s others) not in terms of developing or revising but doing a different, new arrangement.
Yesterday Sing Clifton sang my arrangement of Loch Lomond and it’s been such a long journey that here’s a little post about it.
Mix of dress rehearsal and concert recording (featuring a fair bit of audience participation from the under-2s in the audience :D)
Of course part of it is the whole year that was 2020 and happened to most everyone — our last concert until yesterday was Christmas 2019 and we came out of that really on a high, singing strongly and with plans for more and more ambitious songs that seemed very much within reach. Hence this, a SSATB fairly complex and super long-breathed a cappella piece — and the 15 minute Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat arrangement that also finally made it to public performance yesterday, which I think divides SSAATTBB at a few points..
But I actually started this arrangement… I guess 2012? Anyway I remember sitting on a bus back and forth from my job as a learning support assistant, planning this alongside reading and rereading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, and planning out a novel the concept of which was basically the same thing, but with women, but set in 1800s Bristol. Sadly never completed, whoops. But I did finish this. And it’s funny to think back on now how I… thought I knew what I was doing writing for choirs and kinda sorta, sure, but also yikes. But I was definitely, as they say, having a lot of feelings. And I think that comes across in the best way.
(I was planning on doing a whole set — and I actually did make an exuberant arrangement of some kind of Ye Jacobites by Name too … that one very likely might need a fair bit of revising if I dig it out again, but maybe I should.)
But it’s like a lot of older pieces that I’ve polished up again lately …… that in itself is weird to say — I never used to have any interest in returning to old things and revising/developing, but I’ve done it with a few game pieces lately, and this a couple years back… ….Anyway, like other pieces too—while I had to reign in some of the really not vocally compassable lines, think about spacing, BREATHING, range and stuff like that… I kept a lot. The outline and a lot more. And like all these older pieces, I put a LOT of work into them back when and I think that showed — also a bit of slightly naive/fearless imagination/unashamedness in the simplicity of the harmonies etc. That wordless bridge!! I don’t know if I’d do that now, if I’d have the nerve — but maybe I’ll consider it, now I hear how it actually can sound.
All that to say that it’s a piece that’s been arranged a lot and will be again* …. But especially now I’ve had it rehearsed and performed and enjoyed by the choir, I feel like there’s definitely a place for this arrangement, it works.
* I suppose I can beg a little originality because I’ve chosen some of the lesser used words, I think? Vs the “me and my true love will never meet again” which I guess I wasn’t in the mood for. There’s one version/interpretation of two imprisoned soldiers, one who is to be executed and one let free, and that’s the meaning of returning home to Scotland by the “high” or “low” road. You can think of that here — with the added background it seems that these two knew each growing up and the first verses are describing an idyllic childhood — they parted, and now meet again, but for the last time…. …Or, hey, “wae is my heart until we meet again”; maybe they will meet again after all, and it’s okay:)
By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomon’ Oh we two hae passed sae mony blithesome days On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomon’
I mind where we parted in yon shady glen By the steep, steep sides of Ben Lomon’ Where in purple hue the hieland hills we view And the moon comin’ out in the gloamin’
Oh ye’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye. But wae is my heart until we meet again On the bonnie bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomon’
(Hum)
Oh the wee bird may sing and the wild roses spring And in sunshine the waters are sleepin’ But broken hearts ken nae second spring again, And the world does na ken how we’re greetin’.
(Aah…)
And the world does na ken how we’re greetin’.
Oh ye’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye. But wae is my heart until we meet again On the bonnie bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomon’
I’ve also tried to strike a balance, maybe controversially, with the lyrics of having a bit of a “flavour” of the Scots, but keeping much of it close to the English of my English choir. I suggest performing with your usual choir “round” vowels without attempting an accent as such, but to sing the words as written, noting spellings and apostrophes off the ends of words.
