Post One-Hundred: Tunes 101 Through 105

Tune 101 - I Don't Believe In Monsters
For this tune I was going for a springtime feel. Kind of a Brown Eyed Women / Eyes of the World hybrid for the first part, paired with a melody inspired by Gillian Welch's Winter's Come and Gone for the B-part. It's a pretty loose tune with room for improvisation. It didn't take long to write...just a few minutes on the evening of 3/9/19. Recorded on 3/12/19 playing xylophone over a C# Aeolian backing track.

Tune 102 - Pineapple Bang Bang
I wrote and recorded Pineapple Bang Bang on the morning of Saturday, March 16, 2019. It is the unique result of trying to be creative on that particularly day. The melody in the A-part was derived from the long forgotten but fondly remembered String Cheese Incident instrumental called Lester Had A Coconut which I just happened to hear that morning. The B-part sounds like it comes from the vocal melody line to the song Alright by the band Supergrass which I heard while watching Derry Girls earlier in the week and had to look up to find out what it was. For good measure I tacked on a bridge-like 3rd part reminiscent of the bridge to the song Sea of Heartbreak which I gained familiarity with because it is covered on the new Meat Puppets album Dusty Notes. That's me playing my Ome tenor banjo over a sped up Improvise For Real backing track.

Tune 103 - The Sixth Noon of Midnight
You could call this a tribute to the band IE (album Pome) from Minneapolis that I saw play in Knoxville on 3/22/19. This melody incorporates a motif from their song Moon Shot along with a B-part drawn somewhat from the vocal line of that song. Pieced together 3/26/19. Recorded 3/30/19.

Tune 104 - Rapture of the Deep
This melody came to be after seeing the Canadian band The Sadies live. It is borrowed from sounds they make. I messed around with it for a few days, then finished it up 4/4/19. Recorded last night 4/5/19 on the K-board. A one take and done kind of thing.

Tune 105 - Catch That Hare 'Fore It Jump O'er the Fence
A couple days ago I sung a melody similar to this into my phone. At the time I just called it "bluegrass song". Then later that day when I tried to play it on an instrument the notes seemed too simple or unoriginal. The next day I tried to add nuance to it but just made it more boring. So I went back to the original idea. Written 4/4/19. Recorded late in the evening 4/5/19 on K-Board because why not?

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Big Ears 2019: Performances Seen over the Four Days

I finally made it to the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN this year!  Here's a list of every musical performance I saw over the four days.

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Bill Frisell and Thomas Morgan - The Standard

Kukangendai - The Mill and Mine

Very Very Hot Evil - The Pilot Light

Altered Statesman - The Pilot Light

Friday, March 22, 2019

Bela Fleck and Edmar Castaneda - St. John's Episcopal Cathedral

Joep Beving - Knoxville Museum of Art

Mary Halvorson's Code Girl - The Mill and Mine

***late afternoon dog-walk break***

Mary Halvorson, Tomeka Reid and Larry Grenadier - Knoxville Museum of Art (Nate Chinen: Playing Changes)

Spiritualized - The Mill and Mine

Uncle Earl and Friends - Boyd's Jig and Reel

IE - The Pilot Light

Saturday, March 23, 2019

Columbia Icefield - The Standard

Kristin Anna Valtysdottir - St. John's Episcopal Cathedral

Thumbscrew - The Standard

***late afternoon dog-walk break***

International Contemporary Ensemble and Carla Kihlstedt - Bijou Theatre

Makaya McCraven - The Mill and Mine

Sunday, March 24, 2019

Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn - Tennessee Theatre

Bluegrass Jam - Boyd's Jig and Reel

Hawktail - The Standard

Bill Frisell's Harmony - The Mill and Mine

Brooklyn Rider with Kayhan Kalhor - Bijou Theatre

Uncle Earl - The Mill and Mine

IE at The Pilot Light

Thumbscrew at The Standard

Hawktail at The Standard

Bill Frisell's Harmony at The Mill and Mine

Uncle Earl at The Mill and Mine

Tunes 98, 99 and 100 - I made it to one-hundred.

This is a painting my mom did

In June of 2017 when I gave myself a goal to write 50 melodies in a year I didn't think I would actually write 100 melodies in less than two years.  But that's what happened.

 #98 - Swedish Walking Tunes
Here are a pair of what I hope are fairly original variations on what could pass for traditional Scandinavian melodies. I don't know what a Swedish walking tune is but I went for a walk immediately after composing these. The first tune is called Happily Äver Efter. The second tune is called Merrily Efter Äver. Each is played two times through. Written 3/2/19. Recorded 3/9/19 with Romero tenor banjo.

#99 - Strange Whip-poor-will

I believe it was Leonard Cohen who said that each day you get a gift. It might be something a waitress says or it might be a road sign. Two days ago my gift was learning about the theme song to the 1986 Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason movie Nothing In Common. The song is called Loving Strangers by Christopher Cross and the sound of its chorus was the inspiration I needed to help create tune number 99. To add more to this piece I included the musical notes of a whip-woor-will's call (F, C, higher C) as transcribed in the Field Guide of Wild Birds and Their Music. I made this recording as I was writing the melody. I'm playing it on a McMillen K-Board via the SampleTank app - a wind instrument sound - over a mixiolydian backing track.

#100 - Buffalo Bullfinch

Now that I have 100 tunes is that a complete body of work? I was hesitant to count this as number 100 but I kept playing it and liking its pensive nature. It's basically the head melody to the song Buffalo Bird Woman from a Scott Amendola CD. Hopefully it's different enough. If it's not then hey I successfully transcribed something by ear. But if I got it wrong then that's even better because in that case I have something even more original. Recorded 3/9/19 with Romero tenor banjo.

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Tunes 92 through 97 - Stuart Cleveland, Flambeau, Tiny Tone, Habi Gabi, Plenty Here For Everyone, and Flubtitle

Catching up on the four, five, no SIX tunes written this week. (updated 2/23/19).


Stuart Cleveland
The A-part comes from a Skatalites melody. For the B-part I was getting sort of a Willie Nelson vibe. I'm calling it Stuart Cleveland - named after a street corner where I once lived. Conceived 2/16/19. Recorded 2/22/19 in a hotel room while playing my Tin Guitar travel mandolin.

Flambeau
This was written between 2/16 and 2/17/19. Recorded 2/22/19 while playing Tin Guitar 4-string travel mandolin. The A-part comes from The Skatalites' Burning Torch. The B-part was lifted from the glockenspiel melody on the Jefferson Airlplane song Come Up the Years. The little riff after the B-part comes from the St. Elsewhere theme song. Maybe so. Maybe not.

Tiny Tone
This was written on 2/19/19. It's a fairly original jazzy melody possibly inspired by listening to the Jethro Burns and Tiny Moore album Back To Back. Recorded 2/22/19 in hotel room with Tin Guitar travel mandolin. The melody is played over a Lydian scale Improvise For Real jazz backing track (The Fourth Harmonic Environment).

Habi Gabi
I wrote (and recorded) this exotic sounding piece just before going to bed on 2/20/19 when it was just forming. Played on xylophone over a meditative Improvise For Real backing track (The 6th Harmonic Environment - tonal center of A in the key of C). I think this is going to be one of my favorites!

Plenty Here For Everyone
After posting this morning, I came up with another melody!  While deep into a random search on Spotify I came across an album called Samba For Sale by Danish guitarist Jorgen Ingmann. This melody here is based on the track That's A Plenty from that album. I hear a little bit of the sound of Phish Vultures in the B-part (as in "My guess is that I'll never name this ghost well"). Unexpectedly conceived and recorded this song on 2/22/19. I'm still in a hotel room playing the Tin Guitar travel mandolin. I have this mandolin pitched a half-step flat. I'm using F fingerings but the sound coming out is in E.

Flubtitle
Figured out and recorded on 2/23/19.  The A-part is pretty close to a copy of the melody to The Little Man From Mars by Perry and Kingsley.  The B-part is a transcription of the celesta solo in the Death Cab For Cutie song Title And Registration. These work well together.  Played on 4-string Tin Guitar travel mandolin.

  

Glad I got this posted.

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Tune Numbers 87.5 through 91 - starting with Clown College

I've been discovering some new music lately and that has been having an influence on these new melodies I am coming up with...and/or copying directly from these influences.  The A Very British Scandal theme music, Better Oblivion Community Center and William Tyler have all been influences.  Without hearing those first some of these tunes wouldn't exist.

Number 87.5 is Clown College.  I'm considering it half a tune because it mainly is just a couple of riffs I was playing on my new xylophone.  I wrote it so quickly and it's so simple that it doesn't seem like it should count as a whole tune.  So it's just half of one!

Number 88 is The Seance Needs.  Week before last I was listening to the audio book version of Jerry On Jerry and in one of the interviews it sounds like Jerry says "Finally, a lady with the seance needs as us!".  He doesn't say that but that's what I heard and so the title of this comes from that misquote.  I heard the theme music to the Netflix show A Very British Scandal and really liked it.  It seemed very easy to transcribe and I really dug the slightly unusual scale it was using so I took that scale and made a different melody out of it.

Number 89 is Swansea.  When the Better Oblivion Community Center album was released on 1/31 Spotify added it to my release radar playlist which caused me to hear it and learn about it.  Luckily I gave it a chance (after recognizing Conor Oberst's voice) and I instantly loved the album, having now listened to it over and over again.  I don't know if Swansea is the melody to their song Dylan Thomas...it sounds like it probably is but hopefully this is different enough to make it worth counting.

Number 90 is Lagom.  I keep a playlist going of songs that I hear which I want to mine melodies from and when an Augustus Pablo/Lee "Scratch" Perry track came up it just had to be added to that playlist.  Then yesterday morning I put some notes together based on that.  It's Lagom.  Just the right amount.

Number 91 is Sun of the Golden West.  Inspirations were coming at me left and right this past week.  I had never heard of the guitarist William Tyler before but I was enticed by the track Our Lady of the Desert enough to view the whole album and it's one of those that really grows on you.  This melody would not exist without having heard of him.

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Tunes 86 and 87 - The High-C Roll and Don't Forget the Well

Last week I was listening to the Mongolian band AnDa Union and thought that I would try and write a melody like one of theirs.  Out comes The High Sea Roll or The High-C Roll.  That was my intent when this was written on January 18, 2019 but it came out sounding more like a sea shanty.  So it's a sea shanty.  Here's a phone recording I had made while playing it on banjo.  It's as good as any.

Then this week I was messing around with a minor sounding folk melody that I was calling Don't Forget the Well.  (I often add my  own nonsense words to serve as "lyrics" to the instrumental tunes I write.  The syllables in these words correspond to the notes in the melody and help me remember how it sounds).  Independent from that folk melody I happened upon a little new-classical sounding sequence of notes using just the black keys of a piano.  I didn't give that much thought at first, but when I realized that this little modal sounding folk melody could be shifted over a few semitones so that it lined up with the black key scale of that other little melody, then voila I had something complete enough to be considered a new tune. 

The scale being used here in Don't Forget the Well contains the notes in D-flat major:  Db, Eb, F, Gb, Ab, Bb, C, Db.  Also known as Bb minor.  Note the use of all five "black key" notes on a keyboard.  I wrote it that way on purpose so that it would focus on those notes.  When I got my new Sound Percussion Labs xylophone yesterday, this was the first thing I played on it.  Here's a recording of this tune in Db on my new xylophone, recorded the same day that I got it after taking it out of the box and getting it onto the stand.

I feel like I have more ideas brewing, steeping, simmering inside so hopefully there's more to come soon.

Review: Sound Percussion Labs 2-2/3 Octave Xylophone

My new xylophone

One week ago I had an introductory lesson with a local mallet percussion instructor.  In his studio the teacher had a 4.3 octave marimba and a 3.5 octave xylophone.  My main purpose for this initial meeting was to get to see, hear and play a marimba in person.  But while there I also struck a few bars on the xylophone.  It then struck me that xylophone ain't so bad and that it might be an excellent practice instrument to tide me over until I can get a marimba.

So after the lesson I did some research on xylophones and came across this one under the Sound Percussion Labs brand:  https://www.musicarts.com/sound-percussion-labs-2-23-octave-xylophone-main0139105

It has 2.6 octaves, padauk wood bars and resonators, and comes with its own stand and a set of mallets.  It's priced at $499.99 - which is not too bad for this style of instrument - but I bet with some internet sleuthing of promo codes you could at least get the price down to $425 (15% off).  I also ran across this Korogi desktop xylophone at $315 but it doesn't come with resonators, mallets or a stand.

There's not much information out there about this Sound Percussion Labs 2-2/3 Octave Xylophone but I did find this video of someone playing one.  It sounds pretty good in this video so I took the plunge:

I ordered online but had it shipped to a local store to save on shipping costs.  Four business days after ordering the store called me to say that it was in, so yesterday I drove down and picked it up.  The box it was shipped in easily fit in the back seat of my car and it was light enough for me to pick up and carry into the house without assistance.

Unboxing/Setup
The instrument was packaged well.  After taking everything out of the box I noticed that there were no setup instructions.  This initially concerned me but five minutes later I had it fully setup and was already playing.  I am the absolute worst with setup/assembly, so if I could have it set up within five minutes of unboxing then it must be something that anyone could figure out.

The xylophone portion comes ready to play out of the box.  You could take it out of the box, put it on a table top and begin playing right away.  The padauk bars are already in position with no assembly required.

The stand required assembly but that was super easy and feels stable once assembled.  You just insert the middle bar, line it up where a screw could go through, and then quickly screw in the included part.  Once the stand is assembled you will see that there are little nobs on top of the stands that line up with little holes or indendations on bottom of the xylophone frame, allowing it to sit securely on the stand.  On the xylophone frame there's a place where the resonators are supposed to hang from and sitting the resonators on those notches is pretty intuitive once you notice them.

Dimensions
35 inches long or wide.
23 inches deep at the low end.
30.25 inches high when sitting on stand (first row of bars).
Bars are a static width of about 1.25 inches.

How Does It Sound?
You can already tell from the video that I shared above that it sounds pretty good.  I am even more impressed by its sound in person.  I feel like xylophone is one of those instruments that doesn't always come across well in YouTube videos or sound samples, but in-person the sound of this instrument is quite pleasant.  It's a BIG step up from a bells glockenspiel, for sure.

For a student or beginner-level instrument made in China I'm about as happy as can be with this instrument.  I haven't done much testing of the sound with our without the resonators to see what difference they make.  The mallets that it comes with do seem to be cheaply made when compared to the quality of the rest of the instrument.  They are fine to begin with but that is something you might want to upgrade eventually.

I made this little recording yesterday after getting the xylophone onto its stand.  Here's how I sound on my first day of playing this new instrument and here's how it sounds on its first day in my living room.  I used the mallets it came with.  This is a tune I had written the day before getting the xylophone.  I wrote it in Db in anticipation of getting the xylophone, knowing that the notes in that scale primarily reside on the back row.  Just to make it more fun.

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