Creativity

Well? How do you like it?

I spent a good long time this afternoon redesigning Treble Clef, and I must say, I am very pleased with the results. 

I was most pleased with the header. It was very fun to make and I love the way it turned out.

Please vote on the poll on the side to say what you think. I hope you like it as much I do. :)

On other creative topics, I've finished the first verse of Hallelujah for trumpet, piano, cello, and violin (recording to come soon) and have made a significant start in my Trumpet Sonata No. 1 (Prelude). I can tell that it will be great.

I also took some lovely moon pictures last night at a flashlight September 11th memorial. It was stunning, all the lights and the full moon rising above. It is time for light- we've been in darkness for too long.

What have YOU done that's

creative?

On Recent Compositions

{Out of curiosity, is anyone out there a composer like me? If you are, make sure to comment or email, I'd love to be able to swap tips for good composition!}

I've been in the mood for composition recently.

A little while back I finished my arrangement of Bring Him Home, from Les Misérables,

I did a bunch of basic trumpet hymn transpositions,

I did an arrangement of the hymn Let There Be Peace On Earth for trumpet and trombone,

During my trip to Paris, I had a spark of inspiration, and as soon as I got home I began work on a composition for full concert band in the fantasy style, Fantasy on a Theme from Les Misérables. (Inspiration for this was kinda funny. I was listening to the musical on the plane ride home and got to the end of the show, which holds a very pretty musical phrase and this phrase combines with some of the most beautiful lyrics in the show: 'take my hand, and lead me to salvation / take my love, for love is everlasting / and remember the truth that once was spoken / to love another person is to see the face of god.' I was really listening to it that one time and I was immediately like 'I have to write a song based on this.')

And then, over the weekend I felt like doing a bit of composition so I sat down and thought 'A horn piece would be nice'. Thus, I wrote a short piece entitled Etude for French Horn.

As you can see, it's a rather short piece, only a little under thirty measures, but that's an etude for you. Rather short, plus the beginning parts are medium tempo, the middle is fast and the end is REEEEALLY slow, so it's a good small group piece. As you can see, it is written for three horn parts unaccompanied, and each part should really only be played by one person. The third part isn't too difficult, there's just one 16th note run, the second part is moderate and shouldn't be played by a beginner. The first part is fairly hard as it does go up quite high for a lot of the song and also has some really technical parts. Here's the recording...please comment with your thoughts!

I showed this to my friend who plays french horn today and he immediately took it and wanted to play it :)

Bagels + Music. Who Knew?

Who doesn't love a warm, freshly baked, toasted bagel, topped with you favorite cream cheese? I think my favorite two bagels are a sea salt bagel from Scratch Bakery, served cold with just plain bagel, or a toasted everything bagel from Mister Bagel with yummy veggie cream cheese. Ooh. I'm really starting to crave bagels just writing about them! I must remedy that.

*Runs downstairs*

Darn. No bagels in the kitchen...oh well. I've got a couple slices of pizza from dinner last night, that will make a good snack once I'm done with this post.

Anyway, if bagels themselves are so awesome, what happens when you combine bagels with my favorite thing EVER- music?

Ahh, the result would be interesting, wouldn't you think?

Well, this is a story of music and bagels.

Yesterday, we had a sub in band, so we all just sat around and treated it like a study hall. I was sitting with my friends Hannah, Cara, and Isabella and we were talking a bunch, but I was also bored. They all had had homework assigned in their previous class but I had none, and 85 minutes is a long time to sit around doing nothing, plus I had forgotten my Harry Potter book at home which made me sad. So. 

First I was like 'Oh, I should do some practicing.' But all the practice rooms were taken. 

Then I thought 'I'll work on the coda of 'Bring Him Home'. But my chord changes and basic outline of the song were...at home. So basically I ended up right back where I started. And I'm not sure how it started but either Hannah or Cara was like 'Write us a song, Sally! About bagels!' And they went on to explain how it needed to have noises that went 'whoop! whoop! whoop!' and it needed to start out really chill, and then be all attack like and then slow and pretty and happy. Oh, and there had to be chanting of 'Bagels, bagels, oh my soul.' included. 

So yesterday, I wrote them a song about bagels. And it was probably the most fun I have ever had arranging or composing and I was laughing throughout the whole process. But the song came out quite nice actually, and I have the computer recording in this video for you to listen to. However, please be warned that this recording is simply AWFUL. It pays no attention to dynamics, tempos, balance, articulations, fermatas, etc. Plus the slide whistle doesn't, uh, slide and make the 'whoop! whoop!' sound it's supposed to and the clarinet sounds like a 5th grader is playing it. Quite annoying actually. Soon, hopefully, we will have a much better recording that we play. But now I present you with my composition of:

Bagels, Bagels (Oh My Soul)