Well, the Mayan calendar is coming to an end soon but the South Shore continues to bask in the sunshine for today at least. We made it past 12:12:12 on 12/12/12 without any earth-shattering events. The only disaster I was involved in was picking my letters at lunch-time Scrabble with Julia. Sheesh, I don't think I could have done worse if I was allowed to look in the bag as I chose.
All over Facebook today, there are "National Sound Check" photographs, 1-2 1-2 1-2. That's great but what about the bass players? Their sound check usually goes 1-5 1-5 1-5. And how many sound guys does it take to change a light bulb? None, it's the lighting guy's problem.
Enough with the frivolity - on to the music. I've been busy composing and have several new pieces on the go. Four of them are recorded - at least the guitar parts. At some point I'll no doubt be getting together with David Findlay to think about what other instrumentation we need to add but in the meantime, they exist as guitar solos and are available for listening and downloading on my website. You need to know where to find them so here's where they are.
A little bit of information about each of the pieces:
Bell Ringers came into being after I started tinkering with an old piece (called Bellringers Practice) that I didn't play very much any more. I added a few new bits and pieces to make it a bit more interesting, decided I had stopped practising and was ready to take it out on stage, so I dropped the Practice for the new(ish) piece.
Still Waiting is a follow-on piece for Waiting For McAfee which is on Wires Rosewood & Roots. I compose Waiting For McAfee while I was watching McAfee's customer support trying to fix their broken software with a remote session. After several attempts to get it right, it was still mis-firing and slowing my computer down so I ended up replacing it with a different security suite. Still Waiting is in the same tuning as WFM (Open G minor) and it started during yet another remote session.
Keep It Simple was a piece that (like many others) needed a title after the song itself was finished. At the OCFF Conference in Mississauga in October, I was playing the piece for Nicole (my manager) and she commented that it was a lovely simple piece and I thought, "Yes, we do need to keep things simple." and the title arrived.
Nova Scotia New Age Blues is a kinda-sorta blues-y folk-y new age piece. Kirk Bullough, in his review of Wires, described my music as Nova Scotian New Age Blues and I think this piece was the kind of thing he had in mind. I sent him a copy of the song for his listening pleasure and he thought it fit the description to a "T", so thanks to Kirk for the idea.
There are a couple more pieces currently approaching completion. One of them as yet untitled just needs an ending. It starts off quietly and builds to a crescendo and I'm not quite sure how to end it. It could ease down slowly to a quiet end or just keep building and end with a crashing full chord that continues to ring as it fades.
The other one (titled Tiddlywinks because it reminds me of the sound that tiddlywinks make on a hard surface) still needs a little bit more to flesh it out and then it's ready. Once the new music is finished, I'll pop up to the studio and record them and add them to the new samples page.
So here's wishing you and yours the happiest of whatever holiday season you celebrate - Christmas, Hannukah, Winter Solstice, none of the above (check one). As one photo I saw on Facebook said: "Dear Santa, I don't want much for Christmas. I only want the person reading this to be happy."
Hope you enjoy the new music and have a peaceful and Happy New Year.
