Merry Christmas, all :)

There's many things to think about over the festive season and for most of us, they are quiet thoughts as we contemplate the year gone by and the year ahead...

I wish everyone a very merry Christmas :)

http://2minutes13seconds.com/merrychristmasfromelaine

A Picture of You

Each new day with new promises
Remembering the old,
I see you now.
And here we stand.
A couple of seasons passed
Flickering moments gone by
Dreams lost, they come and go
And at the end of the day, here we stand.
I’ve seen you before
And I see you now.
Today we live
The future calls
A picture of beauty
I see in you.

No need to run

No need to hide
I’ve seen you before
And I see you now.

Guitar Chords
A A D E
A A D E
D E D E
D E D E
(repeat)

Be comforted

Music is honest. It is anonymous. It makes you vulnerable and comes from a place of sincere intentions. Finding beauty and solace in the keys of my piano is a blessing.

A simple melody over a few chord progressions can say a lot…. It can mean one thing to me. It can mean something else to you. A song lasts just for a moment, fleeting in the scheme of things, then it ends. Played once, it can never be played exactly the same way again.

…

For all the people who’ve left a comment, said something to me directly and/or taken the time to listen. Thank you. You are very kind.

Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach

In my search for Bach’s Minuet in G major, I came across its story… and it is a beautiful one so I would like to share :)

Minuet in G major. Google it. When you hear it, I’m sure you’ll recognize it instantly. It’s a well-known and much-loved piece of
music, especially for early grade piano students… ;)

This minuet features in Bach’s 1725 Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach. Bach wrote two notebooks, both for his second wife, Anna Magdalena Bach, a talented singer who Bach met after being widowed by his first wife. She regularly helped Bach transcribe his music and there’s a theory going around that she too was a possible composer…

French suites, minuets, rondeaux, chorales, sonatas, preludes, musettes, marches, gavottes and polonaises, songs and arias make up most of the notebooks. The 1722 notebook consists of pieces composed by Bach himself. The 1725 notebook comprises works by Bach and other composers of the Baroque era.

Minuet in G major was not written in Bach’s or Anna’s handwriting and it has been since accepted that the piece was composed by and now attributed to Christian Petzold.

This playful tune also has a friend… Minuet in G minor.

Baby Classical CD

Last night I spent some time compiling a baby classical CD for the new mums and mums-to-be in my group of friends.

There are quite a few of them ;)

I enjoyed this process very much. The only problem was that at times I knew the melody but I didn’t know the title of it or who composed it. It got a little frustrating at times :)

Thank goodness for YouTube ;)

I listen to these classical pieces and smile…. I have a long way to go in this composing journey of mine but it is something to look forward to.

In the end, here’s what I’ve chosen for the CD:

1. Canon in D maj (Pachelbel)
2. Minuet in G maj (Bach/Petzold)
3. Minuet in G maj (Beethoven)
4. Minuet in G min (Bach/Petzold)
5. Waltz in G# minor (Brahms)
6. Piano Sonata in C maj (Mozart)
7. Moonlight Sonata – Beethoven
8. Clementine

Epilogue

This blog is quite strange. There’s no fluidity in its entries. It starts. It stops. It starts and then it stops again.

And isn’t life like that? It starts. It stops. It starts and stops again… and all the while you are living.

It’s an early Saturday morning and I can hear the birds chirping. It’s looking like we’re going to have a nice, sunny Saturday morning. I’ve just finished writing a piece of music and I’m just getting it uploaded now. Last night I improvised a new theme and further developed it this morning. It is the latter version I am uploading. I have a recording of it as it was last night too – imperfect, uneven notes, wobbly timing, raw … but I don’t care. It’s important to have that version as I played it last night recorded somewhere… So I can always remember how I felt last night.

I’ve named the theme ‘Epilogue’.

I think I might go cycling with some old friends later today.

My Music

I still remember the first time I penned my first crooked treble clef on manuscript paper. And it’s dawned upon me that I’ve been on a bit of a journey since. Let me explain :)

I am a grassroots composer. I taught myself. I compose what I think is ‘nice music’. It’s ‘nice music’ because it sounds nice to my ear. When it comes to classical scores, chamber music, choral works, this type of refined music is foreign to me. I don’t know much about the proper way to listen to an orchestral work or the proper way to appreciate it. If it sounds nice to my ear, I like it!

Up until 18 months ago, I’d never shared my music with anyone. I didn’t really feel the need to. I don’t earn a living from it and I don’t write for an intended audience. I love composing because of the process of composing. The outcome, well, it really only serves me.

Last year, however, saw me use my skill of composing in many different lights. I started to write music for other people as a form of expression when words were hard or words weren’t appropriate, or simply there were no words.

I’ve also written many tunes with and for children. When writing tunes with children, I really want these tunes to be inspired by the child – so whether they are fairy-tale inspired or situation-driven, the child becomes a composer in his/her own right. This is something they can always be proud of.

I also wrote a couple of tunes for children and found this very hard to do. Children are unpredictable and live in the moment. They play and get dirty. There is little else in this world that is more endearing than a kid with dirt smeared across his/her face. And I wanted my music, my music for children, to be reflective of this. Instead, my music is always characterised by sweetness and dream-like. My tutor at the con told me that I have a particular style, a bittersweet style, the type of music that makes your head tilt to the side and let out a sweet and sad smile, the type of music that makes you feel nostalgic. This concerned me a great deal – that I couldn’t compose outside this style and, in particular, I couldn’t compose ‘children music’.

November 2006 was the saddest month of my life. One of the things contributing to this was my friend’s baby daughter passing away. I still remember taking that call. I still remember the funeral. And I still remember how it felt being there. In a situation as tragic as this, there are no words. About half a year after the tragedy I wrote a small tune for my friend. I call it Olivia’s Lullaby. I discarded any perceptions I had about what the tune should sound like and abandoned all the rules I knew about composing. I don’t know what it’s like to be a mother who loses a child. But I do know what it’s like to suffer loss because I myself, like everyone else, have lost. And this is the place from where I composed Olivia’s Lullaby.

I listened to this lullaby this weekend that just passed…. And now Olivia’s Lullaby is going to take me on another journey. [Details to come.]

Lesson learned? I’m not going to worry anymore about refined music or not refined music, or worry about what it should sound like for children or any audience. I will just keep composing ‘nice music’.

A new way of composing

This long weekend that just passed, I spent some time cycling. About 75km up and down the M7. A quiet, harmless hum broke into an unmistakable song…. and I don’t think I have ever cycled as fast as I did when I turned around and saw that a fellow cyclist had crept up behind me.

I have to say I enjoyed myself immensely.

Heroes

Do they really exist? I’m not so sure….

I believe in heroic acts, that there are moments in life when we rise above our mere mortal status and achieve moments of greatness… and these are not just moments of saving a princess or slaying a dragon or even throwing yourself in front of a train for a loved one. These are moments of truth, when you let yourself be vulnerable, when you cry, when you confess, when you realize.

I recently read two Lance Armstrong biographies – a man of many heroic moments. Many things in his bios have stuck to mind but in particular his will to ‘get’ a mountain climb and his want to go back, attack it and own it. It’s amazing to contemplate and I think of my moments of laziness when all I really have to do is go to my piano and run my fingers up and down a keyboard (i.e. scale practice) vs him attacking a hill.

I admire the heroic acts of many people (Lance Armstrong included) but I cannot say these people are my heroes… because I do not know them. My heroes are my family members and a little known music teacher who teaches at St George Girls High.

There’s also a friend I know who rides a bus everyday to work and sits at his desk diligently working the day away. He achieves but is quiet about it. He gives but does not want anything in return. He believes in others but has a long way to go for himself. He is the stuff a legend is made of but he doesn’t recognize this. He inspires but doesn’t admit to it…

As I mentioned earlier, there are heroic moments when you let yourself be vulnerable, when you let yourself be brave.

So in this way, I feel we can all be heroes.

... and here we are

It’s been a while, in fact 6 months and 2 days to be exact, so it’s hard to know how to start this entry.

So for the last few months, I’ve been sailing….(more on this later) But recent discoveries and events have made me feel restless and I’ve come up with a purpose and now a plan….

So, if you care, pls watch this space. There’s a wind of change about.

The Last 36 Hours

The last 36 hours has been emotionally draining. I’ve had about 5 hours of sleep in total and gone through an array of emotions. I’m pretty tired now... :)

Week Seven - The Test

This week we were asked to prepare compositions for performance and recording.

We had 2 hours to get through 4 compositions. This worked out to be about 20 minutes for each composer to work with the musicians. This includes rehearsal time (the musicians are sight reading the pieces – amazing!), performance and recording.

I prepared a piece for an ensemble consisting of a flute, violin and cello. This week we were moved into a recital hall *gulp* (to get better acoustics for recording I think….). Sadly, because of this change in venue, there seemed to be a bit of a mix up and not all the musicians found their way to the venue. Sadly for me, the flautist, violinist and cellist were the ones who did not find their way there.

So there I was in the middle of a grand recital hall scrambling like anything trying to re-arrange my piece for a bassoon, marimba and piano.

My classmates were very gracious and let me go last but I found myself getting pretty nervous as the night wore on. By the time it was my turn to step onto the performance forestage, I was trembling. The experience of working with live musicians and having them play your creation and gauging their plus everyone else’s reaction is completely and overwhelmingly daunting. It was very scary. But I loved it. It felt like falling and soaring all in the same instance.

When the bassoonist came up to me and asked me whether I’d like her part to be played slurred or tongued, I was pretty much dying. (Note:- Differences in articulation produce different effects. For example, legato playing produced by slurring sounds much smoother than the short, staccato effect produced by tonguing.)

As daunting as the experience was, it is one I dearly cherish. The musicians are currently studying year 12 at the Conservatorium High School. They are masters of their instruments but at the same time they are really just kids who love playing music. They are quick-witted, daring, honest and generous at heart. I know one of them wants to study composition in Paris and another wants to study voice in New York. As I stood back and listened to them play my piece, I found myself smiling. At the end of the night, I went up to them and thanked them. I wanted them to know I will remember them for always.

The original concept I had in mind for my composition was 2 instruments (the flute and the violin) having a conversation under the moonlight. But I think I’ll talk more about my composition next week when we are given our recordings. I hope to find a way to upload, at the very least, an excerpt of it on my website (yes, despite my misfortune, I will keep to my promise. I always do.).

‘Please stand by.’