Category: MY MUSIC

Big News!

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I apologize for the lack of activity here. I have a lot going on, between working on several writing projects (fiction and scripts alike) and trying to get some stuff done around the house. In the process, I’ve let the Blogging Ezra Pound’s Cantos project slide a bit, though I do have a post about a couple of Cantos that is almost ready to post. But in the meantime, I’ll say a bit about the busy weekend. The biggest news is that over the weekend, “The Music of Jo Hyeja” got its World Premiere at the Los Angeles H.P. Lovecraft …

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The Music of Jo Hyeja: Audio Work Done

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This entry is part 10 of 15 in the series Making "The Music of Jo Hyeja"

I mentioned recently that I had “finished” working on the music for “The Music of Jo Hyeja.” Well, last night we well-and-truly finished work on the audio, except perhaps for swapping in one musical track. We went over to Mediact, an organization that exists to help develop and promote the independent film industry in Korea,m teach people who to make films, and help people complete projects without having to sell everything they own. The sound engineers we hired work there, and helped us master the audio for “The Music of Jo Hyeja” for what is probably a lot less money …

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Saxophonic Memories

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The other day, I posted about memories of being teased because my name had been used for the alien in the TV Alf, whom I remembered as a sax player, like myself. My hunt for the saxophone version of the theme song led me to this website, where many examples of the “sax solo” that became a trend in 80s popular music are available for your listening pleasure (or pain, as the case may be). I now must say, it was not only because of that scene where a weirdly bejewelled Tim Capello plays saxophone in the vampire film Lost …

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Six Strings…

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Hey. So, I’m teaching myself guitar. I figure, if millions of other people can do it, so can I. When my friends Mike and Gwen moved away (with little Brian!) Mike sold me (at a very cut rate) his acoustic guitar, a Yamaha that I’m sure is good enough to learn on, whatever a pro guitarist might say. In the last week or so, I’ve been fiddling with it and teaching myself a few tricks. So far I only really know a couple of chords, but I’ve been fiddling around and have started to get a few patterns I can …

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Expatriates and Creative Bitching

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I’ve often got this song on a loop in my MP3 these days when I ride the subways: Before you read the following, seriously, listen to this song, check out the lyrics, of which the following passage grabbbed me (hard, by wrist) when I first heard it: I understand the culture’s Of a different kind, But here [the] word celebration Just doesn’t come to mind! This resonates with me in the context of the story the song tells: a band that describes itself, in its early days, as “a bunch of immigrants jamming” who met at “a Russian wedding in …

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Wanna CD?

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See that new block in the sidebar? Yep, I’m flogging CDs for a now long-disbanded rock group. I figure, what the hell, someone might actually want a copy. Better than all that plastic and paper and time and music gone to waste. Not that anyone in the band has seen a red cent for it — though to be fair I don’t know if it ever earned back the studio costs, but then again we’ve never seen numbers either to the best of my knowledge — but there are still CDs of Dabang Band’s Product album available through YesAsia.com. (For …

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Torke

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Michael Torke, that is. I usually review music in my horrible, pages-long bimonthly (or less often) catalogues of everything I’ve been reading, watching (films, TV) and listening to. But I just got my Michael Torke boxed set, Ecstatic Collection, and I have to say, it’s pretty damned wonderful. Michael Torke is a composer who was first mentioned to me by David R. Scott, a Canadian composer who was my instructor during my first year of studying composition. I followed up, and really liked what I heard — a strange blend of occasional snatches of pop music, Stravinsky, and good old-fashioned …

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Listen to My Compositions (If You Dare)

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I’ve added some more recordings to the archive of all music I’ve participated in. The recordings that just became available to me are all from the period of 1995-96, which was my most prolific year of composing music during undergraduate music studies. There are five pieces: a bass clarinet duet, a piece for solo piano, a piece for electric guitar and harpsichord (with a title referring to the work of H.P. Lovecraft), and a couple of pieces for large ensemble. I’ll be working on getting more recordings of my work in the next year, but it’s come to my attention …

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Gordon Sellar: This is Your Life! & A Rock Song About Max Planck

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Long ago in a noosphere far, far away, I actually played the double bass in a kids’ orchestra, which was slightly humiliating since the lead violinists were 7 and 8 years old and I was in middle school. Anyway, I played double bass pretty good for someone who never quite learned to read the bass clef properly until later. (I knew that this dot on the staff meant that position on the fingerboard, or that alternate position, or even this third one, but I didn’t know what the name of the note was.) Maybe it was rebellion that led me …

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Me?

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Sometimes I google my on name to see what other people (say, students) will see when they google my name. It kills me that in Korea, on one of the major music sites, I’m listed under “Indie Rock/Modern Rock”. It’s not surprising, since that’s the only kind of band I’ve played with here long, but I’d have never expected that. Would be nice to get “jazz” or “avant garde” added to that sometime while I still live here…

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