FYI: New URL's for Fileshare and Download Pages

I had been having a lot of problems accessing my old fileshare page (The one with the MIDI and PDF files of my stuff). The problem I began to encounter was an illegal operation error, and I finally figured out that if you modify the page a lot and have it linked to a ton of files that you've updated a lot, it accumulates errors in the HTML code that leads to this problem. So, I deleted the page entirely and rebuilt it from scratch. All of the PDF's and MIDI's should be available through the Fileshare link in the sidebar, or just click here.

Since the same thing happens to the MP3 Downloads page if you modify it a lot, I tore that one down and rebuilt it as well. The final version of the Axial Fugue in E Minor for solo guitar - which will be the subject of the next post - is now there if you would like to hear an MP3 of it. This is v9.0, by the way!!! I used my top-drawer Real Nylon Guitar sound font for it, and it really does sound quite nice for an MIDI to MP3 conversion.

OK. Now it's time to start taking some screen shots of the score and uploading them to prepare for the next post.




Then again, I haven't ordered any fresh DVD's for a while...

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Returning to Normal

I finally felt good enough today to play my first gig in a week. It went much better than I expected considering how few times I've actually picked up a guitar since I got sick. I chickened out on the final third of my set (Where a lot of the most difficult pieces are), but playing the first third a second time was productive enough. After tomorrow's gig i should be fully back in the groove.

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I have rhythmacised the Axial fugue, and it really has a different kind of a character to it now. I'm going to give it a few days for some minor polishing and then I believe I'll be presenting the final final version.

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Cool! King Arthur is on Encore. I read about the Roman General take on the Arturian legend a few years ago and thought it would make for a good movie re-make in that version. It's not a perfect movie, but it's pretty darned good.

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Anyhoo, I want to take it easy tonight and get ready for tomorrow's gig, and then I should be ready to start presenting my new rhythm thechnique, which I'm quite pleased with.




Certainly a unique take on the Guinevere character. I like it.

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Who Cares About Rhythm?

In order of importance to me, the basic musical elements:

1) Counterpoint

2) Harmony

3) Melody

4) Rhythm

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Rhythm has never been particularly important to me. Or rather, it has always ranked as least important on my list of the musical elements, and it is the last musical element that I usually address in any given composition. I'm really not sure exactly why this is, but it is: I could write pieces with surface rhythms of constant eighth-notes or constant sixteenth-notes for the rest of my days and I'd be OK with it. Well, that's an exaggeration, but it's nearly true and you get the point.

Being a guitarist - i.e. playing an instrument on which music is not delimited by the human need to breathe - probably has something to do with my attitudes about rhythm, but another aspect would have to be my love of trance-inducing textures. I happen to love motoric perpetuo motu pieces, whether they be polyphonic or homophonic in conception, because of the introspective states of consciousness they lead me into. Pieces with broad ranges of rhythmic elements usually don't take me to places that I enjoy as much. Especially if the rhythms lead to semi-voluntary reactions like toe-tapping. Strange, but true.

Examples of great perpetual motion pieces that I love would include any one of the dozens of solo instrumental preludes that J.S. Bach composed which fall into this category. Literally any one of them, because they all take me to sublime places of deep introspective joy: The Cello Prelude BWV 1007, The Lute Prelude in C Minor (Usually played in D minor on the guitar), the list goes on. I love those kinds of pieces. Tons of prestos, doubles of dances, and similar pieces of his also fall into this category.

Back when I was a pop, rock, and jazz music writer, I didn't worry about rhythm either because it was already there: If I was writing a bossa nova, I instinctively knew what the rhythmic parameters of a bossa were. It was like that for everything: Swing standards, rumbas, sambas, whatever: The rhythmic parameters were like given elements.

When I started to become interested in more traditional forms of music writing, I wanted to come up with my own unique approach to rhythm just as I had previously with harmony and then counterpoint. At first all of my efforts in this area were failures because they all lead to one of only two places: Back to jazz or to Baroque dance paradigms (Which is really only one thing, when you think about it). I wasn't satisfied with these results because I wanted the rhythmic elements to be as unique as the contrapuntal, harmonic, melodic, and formal elements were. In short, I wanted to avoid all types of stylistic paradigms and given elements.

Since I couldn't figure out how to do this at first, I just used the obvious solution: Forget about rhythm as entirely as possible. There. That was easy, wasn't it? Didn't hurt at all, and it wasn't the least bit scary. And, so long as I was writing only solo guitar miniatures, it worked out perfectly well.

When I started writing fugue subjects I came up with one type of solution: By composing them as canons, the demands of the counterpoint would create rhythmic variety which was perfectly natural and entirely organic. This example of the final two versions of a fugue subject I developed in canon demonstrates this approach (From one of last year's posts):



This obviously works out quite well, but I was still looking for some other kind of an approach to rhythm that would be just as organic but would be generated by the counterpoint or harmony directly. Now, I had been introduced to Schillinger's "resultants of interference" decades before, and as I came to understand their connection to intervallic ratios in the overtone series they increased in my estimation, but applying them directly always seemed arbitrary and lead to less-than-satisfying results.

Well, a new approach I have come up with allows for the harmonic and contrapuntal "desires" of the piece to generate the rhythmic elements. Basically, I look for "cracks" (Or opportunities) in the piece that will allow for harmonic completions or contrapuntal devices to be introduced with rhythmic variations. Then, I allow those "germs" to infect the rest of the piece. I've experimented with this approach a few times before, but now I've developed the technique to the point where I have a proceedure developed. I'm currently applying it to the guitar fugue I'm writing, and initial results are encouraging.

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I have a friend named Bill Pettaway (Now a hugely successful pop music writer/producer) who is the most rhythmically oriented guitarist I ever met. Back in the late 70's when we were at the Guitar Institute SW together he was playing all of this thumb-slapping awesomeness on the guitar the likes of which I had never heard before, and have never heard since. I was the guy who was into harmonic theory: The polar opposite of Bill.

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I could so love her. LOL!

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The Long and Short (and Strange) of Turning MIDI Files into MP3's

One of the things I noticed emerging in the 90's that I thought would end up a much bigger deal than it has was sound font technology. I mean, what's not to like about the idea? You get to ditch all of those pieces of outboard gear and have all of your sound modules reside inside the computer, even a laptop! I thought it would be revolutionary, so of course I did ditch my E-MU Virtuoso 2000 and my MOTU MIDI Timepiece and all of that other crap. And I have no regrets about it either. Some point to bandwidth limitations inherent in sf2 files, but for composing and sketching I think they are perfect. But, I'm in a minority, as soundfonts are still not nearly as popular as I thought they'd be. Whatever. I love 'em, and I have a fairly decent collection of them now.

Problem is, soundfonts don't port out with MIDI files, so if I share MIDI files I know that whoever gets them will probably have the insufferably crappy standard GM garbage that QuickTime and/or Windows Media Player comes with (Probably a big reason soundfonts aren't more popular is because the standard fare is so lame, and so not many recognize the potential there). The obvious solution would be the ability to convert MIDI files into MP3's, thereby "freezing" the soundfont in place. Sure, the resulting MP3 is going to be a huge file compared to the original MIDI (A 15K MIDI file often ends up an MP3 of over 5MB), but if you want to share sketches you've created with a notation program and speciffic soundfonts, that's a pretty cool way to do it, no? Well, yes, it would be, if it were only possible to do so.

On my Mac, MIDI files can be played back either by my notation program's sequencer, or by the QuickTime Player. I usually use the notation program so I can follow along with the score, obviously. In both cases, the MIDI file is playing back using whatever soundfont bank I happen to have loaded at the time. I've always thought it would be cool if QuickTime Pro would allow for a "save as MP3" conversion option, but it doesn't (Which is - of course - simply assinine). As a result, I've never bothered to upgrade to QuickTime Pro (There isn't anything else I'd use it for). I thought QT was the only hope for ever doing a MIDI to MP3 conversion, but I was ignorantly and ridiculously wrong about that.

While looking at the various QuickTime threads on the Apple Discussion boards that addressed this issue, one of the posters asked why you couldn't just use iTunes to do that. It was a major forehead-slapping moment for me, that's for sure! I mean, of course! iTunes converts MIDI files into QuickTime audio files (Still using whatever sounfont bank you have loaded "live") to play back under the iTunes player, and then you can convert to MP3 if you want to burn a CD or upload them to your iPod. I knew that! But, for some reason I never made the connection.

There was only one slight problem. Just a little thing. An itty-bitty thing: Apple had just broken that particular feature with it's latest upgrade to iTunes v6.0.2, and I had just installed that upgrade... last week. $#!*&%@!!!

Well, after cursing my way through some of the iTunes discussion threads, I found a guy who had posted the earlier v6.0.1 version on his downloads page, and I was in bee's-wax once I snagged it and trashed the later version.

So now, if you would like to hear an MP3 of the Axial Fugue in E Minor - which I have converted from a MIDI file with my Symphony Hall nylon guitar font - you can just go here and download it.

How freaking cool is that?!




OK. Cool, but not that cool.

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A Sure Sign that I'm Starting to Feel Better

I saw this photo of Kiera Knightley arriving for the Academy Awards...



... and suddenly realized that - red hair or no red hair - I think she is far and away the most beautiful human female currently inhabiting the planet that we happen to call "Earth."

I believe it was Pirates of the Caribbean where I first became aware of her, and then I saw her in Arthur, and it was a done deal: Just my type of girl.

After spending the better part of the last 48 hours in bed, this is a good sign. I'll probably actually think about doing a music entry tomorrow.

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I Feel Awful

This is the worst thing I've come down with since I got a really bad flue bug about ten years back: Ridiculously runny nose, sore throat, chills. It's amazingly bad. I barely survived tonight's gig, and now I can't sleep because when I lay down I start hacking my lungs up. Arg. Don't see how I'll make tomorrow's gig at this point.

Blogging will be, uh, light... for a while.

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Axial Fugue in E Minor for Solo Guitar: "Final"

I put the word "final" in scare-quotes because this is as far as I can take the piece without actually learning to play it, and I want to get on with that phase now. Though I've been playing the guitar for over thirty-five years, I still need to actually learn to play a piece before I consider it finished, as the process of actually getting a piece under my fingers invariably leads to many new ideas and revisions of existing ones.

There are just so many places this piece could go beyond where it is now: As I've been drifting off to sleep the past few weeks playing the piece in my head it has taken me on some fantastic voyages. Learning to play it will allow me to explore those of which the guitar will be comfortable with.


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Yes, I feel like crap today, but I'm so pumped about getting this fugue out of the way (I'm tired of blogging about it, truth be told) that I believe I'll get through this epic post OK. It's 5:00PM now, so we'll see just how long this takes.

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For this final post on this piece for the time being, I have included formal and thematic analyses in the score which will make it easier to see what's going on. It's a little cramped since I put six systems on each page, but I didn't want to end up with any more than ten pages if I could help it, and I just managed to cram it all in. For the guitar score with fingerings, I'll go back to five systems per page and let it sprawl out to twelve pages.


An overview of the form listing the thematic statements by key region and axial orientation along with the chromatic episode placements displays the orginization of the fugue:



Sonata Exposition: Two-Vioce; 61 mm

E minor (Ax=5), A minor (Ax=5), A minor (Ax=5), C major (Ax=3), C minor (Ax=5)


Varied Exposition Repeat: Three-Voice; 105 mm

E minor (Ax=5), A minor (Ax=5), A major (Ax=5), C-sharp minor (Ax=3), (Ch. Ep. 1), C major (Ax=5),

A major (Ax=5), A major (Ax=1)


Sonata Development: 141 mm

E minor (Ax=5), A minor (Ax=5), G major (Ax=3), (Ch. Ep. 2), E minor (Ax=3)

E major (Ax=5), A major (Ax=5), G-sharp minor (Ax=3), (Ch. Ep. 3), E-flat major (Ax=3)


Recapitulation: Four-Voice; 18 mm

E major (Ax=5), A major (Ax=5)


Coda: 76 mm

E minor (Ax=1), E minor (Ax=1)

E major (Ax=1), E major (Ax=1), (Ch. Ep. 4)


As you can see, in the original sixty-one measure exposition the axes are all functioning as the fifth of the momentary tonic triads (Ax= 5) with the exception of the C major statement, where it is functioning as the third (Ax= 3). This pattern is repeated exactly with the modes exchanged after the three-voice fugal exposition of the 105 measure varied repeat, and then it is extended with a bit of development and the exposition areas end with the zero axis functioning as the root for the very first time.

The 141 measures of development are set up in two parts as well: The first starting on the tonic minor and the second on the tonic major. The i/I and iv/IV statements both use the fifths of their respective triads as the zero axes, and then the following two statements use the thirds as the axes.

In the recapitulation we get the four voice statements, and here the fugal exposition is in the major modes for the first time. The concluding coda has everything resolved with the zero axes functioning as the root throughout. The only bit of unfinished business concerns the mode, and the major eventually wins out, of course.

I really like this structural plan: It's highly organized and presents a lot of contrast.




These pages are now pretty much self-explanitory, so I'll keep commentary to a minimum. The sonata sections are labeled in a bold 24 point font, whereas the fugal elements are labeled in a bold 18 point font. The thematic elements are labeled in a bold 14 point font, and the key regions are labeled in a bold underlined 14 point font. Finally, the axial functions in the thematic statements are in parenthesises: I didn't label all of them because there wasn't room for some, but I did manage to label all of the ones where the axis is functioning as something other than the fifth, which are the more unusual and interesting statements anyway.




All of the episodes are labeled in relation to their appearance in the exposition areas, and where they are varied in any way other than by key that is indicated as well. Therefore, the unique episodes just get sequentially increasing numbers.




Episode four is the first of the chromatic episodes, and I have labeled all of those as well.




I didn't label all of the complex contrapuntal derivatives - figuring those instances where the subject was varied over or under countersubject one would be obvious (Though this is a slightly different type of complex counterpoint than the Tanievian type) - but I did label the instances where CS 1 is doubled in thirds. Though episode five is a melodic inversion of episode three, it is unique within the piece, so I gave it its own number.




For the climactic statements in the development I have given each statement its own truncated version of episode one, the second of which allows for modulations due to its open-ended nature.




In the last version of this piece, there were two versions of episode six. Now it is unique.




The final new element for the piece is episode seven, which has the chromatic elements in the lead, and which leads up to the melodic high point of the piece. I set this up over an E pedal point with a descending diatonic minor do-sol tetrachord repeating above. The third repeat the decending tetrachord is chromaticised, so you have chromatic against chromatic. Many CP books frown on this, but if it's set up properly - as I've done here - it's quite effective.

The interval progression between the two chromatic lines starting in measure 275 is quite interesting: P5, d7, M7, m9, and A9. In measure 278 this finally resolves out to a P11 and a i6/4 chord. It's a nifty little contrapuntal passage. After the decending augmented arpeggio in 280, the second phrase of the episode begins with lengthened runs.




The second run of the new phrase also has chromatic against chromatic in 286 and 287. After the P8, M9 progression in 285 it proceeds (In octave reduced form): d4, A4, m6, A6, and then P8 into 288. I love augmented sixths! Then the melodic peak of the piece occurs in 289 on the A that is only a whole step below the highest note on the standard classical guitar. This is actually pretty easy to play since it's over an open A in the bass and an open B axis in the midfield. This section could be expanded ad infinitum, and so I look at it right now as just a place holder until I learn the piece to this point, which - as I say - will involve many revisions during that process.




Nothing has changed in the coda, but the labels ought to make it more immediately understandable.




One thing I'd like to point out here is that in the concluding episode there is a decending chromatic line in the middle ground. This almost universally implies a minor mode. However, in measures 390, 394, and 398 the bass has a major third which contradicts this. It's a really cool little bit of cognitive dissonance that isn't resolved until the final phrase changes to a diatonic line harmonized in thirds that is completely in the major mode. I like the effect a lot.

At 403 measures of 2/4 at 172 BPM the piece runs about 4:40. The melodic peak is at the 72% point, which is pretty near the ideal mean, but I expect this to change some as I revise the piece during the memorization process. In any event, at least I won't have to blog about it again for a while.

7:00 PM: Two hour post.




Don't get any ideas.

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