new music
Here is the second entry in the Baconworks Tune-smithing Contest!
The tune is called The Insult. Here is the MIDI file that was included with the submission. You can see the whole piece of music here.
new music
I’m excited to post the first entry in the Baconworks Tune-smithing Contest!
The tune is called Misty Morning. Here is the MIDI file that was included with the submission. You can see the whole piece of music here.
Also, FYI, a link has been added to the above menu for the contest and all the music that gets submitted.
announce
There is nothing like competition to draw out the best in humans. The first nonstop flight from New York to Paris, for example, was achieved through the spurring of a competition called the Orteig Prize, which was won by Charles Lindbergh. The $25,000 dollar prize could not cover the true expenses that all incurred, including the lives of six men. The prize did serve, however, as a carrot that helped galvanize a fledgling aviation community into striving towards a common goal.
One goal that I have is to develop a stronger sense of community between musicians that are interested in writing music. In the spirit of that goal, I would like to present the Baconworks Tune-smithing Contest. Unfortunately there is no $25,000 prize and I expect that the risk to life and limb is substantially smaller than flying over the ocean for the first time. In any case, I am hoping that you will join the fun.
Here are the details:
The contest is for the authoring of an original tune that can be played on a traditional instrument (i.e. fife, fiddle, banjo, bouzouki, hurdy gurdy). It can include harmony. You may submit more than one tune.
The Grand Prize:
The winning piece of music, along with an author profile, will be published in the next edition of The Ancient Times, which is a quarterly newspaper that is created for the fife and drum community.
Plus, you’ll get a great sense of self satisfaction, which we all know you can’t truly put a price on.
The Ground Rules:
All submissions must be emailed to contest@baconworks.com by noon on January 1st, 2008.
Each submission must include the following:
The Process:
I encourage anyone that has even thought about writing a tune to participate. This contest is ultimately about getting involved with the community of tune writers. And, as you may know, if you had fun, you won.
friend music
In December of 1999 there was a tragic accident that took the lives of six Worcester fireman. It is quite possible that the number might have been seven had Eamon Marshall, a fellow fireman, not been in the hospital for some planned surgery. Instead of being on the scene with his unit, he heard the crushing news as he was recuperating at his home. As any good firefighter, he regrets not being there to help his men and, as evidence, their pictures still hang on his refrigerator as a reminder of all that was lost.
I met Eamon a couple years ago, long after the fire. Selfishly, I am glad he had a medical issue that kept him from the heat of that day. I am glad because I have had the great pleasure of playing some wonderful music with him and, consequently, my life has been enriched.
Eamon and his brother Jimmie both started playing the button accordion when they were young boys. I can only imagine that the sibling rivalry to out-tune each other is one of the things that shaped Eamon into the fine craftsman of his instrument that he is. But, instead of taking my word for it you can judge for yourself.
A few evenings ago I went to Eamon’s home, set up a couple of microphones and the two of us just played. We did not worry too much about getting the perfect take. In fact, most things we played only once. And while there my be a few missed notes and disjointed endings, the overall feeling was quite nice.
It makes me wonder how many people around the world are sitting in their living room with friends making great music. Music that will never be heard. Fortunately, this is one evening that did not slip into the ether without being captured.
Below are a couple of highlights. The first recording is of a lovely waltz that I learned from Eamon. He tells me it is called Matthew’s Waltz.
The Maltese Cross is the first tune of the second set. It is a tune that Eamon wrote. The Maltese Cross is the insignia that Eamon’s unit wore on their uniforms. We could not remember the name of the second tune in the set. If anyone knows, please leave a comment and let me know.
If you want to hear Eamon play live he is often found at the sessions at John Stone’s in Ashland, MA on Tuesday evenings.
friend music
In my recent post, LP – On the Mend, I talked about how the low cost of digital recording equipment brings high quality recordings into the hands of everyday musicians. An exciting idea, which I intentionally skimmed past in that post, is that the marriage of digital recording and the big pipes of the internet also makes collaborative recording ridiculously easy.
Imagine this hypothetical scenario. John Lennon is sitting at his white grand piano in his big white room at Tittenhurst. Has a brilliant thought and flips on the eight track recorder. “This song needs a string section”, he thinks to himself. He then takes the one-inch open-reel tape that he has just recorded on, packages it up in a big box and ships it off to New York. A week later, when it arrives, Phil Spector adds the string section. Phil then calls John on the phone and says, “Hey man, you gotta hop on the next plane to New York so you can hear the final results…”
Now image how things would be different if they could have emailed the recorded tracks back and forth. In fact, since we are no longer talking about physical tape, John could have emailed the recorded tracks to ten or a hundred different studios in virtually no time at all. I can just imagine the email.
Engineers around the world…
I just recorded the basic tracks for a song called ‘Imagine’. I have sent this track to a hundred recording studios with the hopes that each will bring in some session musicians and lay down a string section for me. Once your recording is complete, email it back to me and I will make a grand selection to be included on my next album. -John.
Our technology makes this sort of collaborative recording very easy. So easy, in fact, that no coordination between you and the studios of the world needs to take place at all. Simply post your music on the internet and wait for the emails to roll in with remixed versions of your tune.
Think I’m crazy? Well, I have proof. I posted an mp3 of On the Mend to baconworks.com on Monday. Less than a week later a friend sent me the following email:
…finally got my recording crap working again. So……I noodled around with your great tune. It’s got shades of Longnancy’s Jig to it. Anyway , hope you didn’t mind me Pluc’n with it.
:-{ Mustachio
That just made my week.
Below is Mustachio’s new version of On the Mend with a new bouzouki track mixed in. Hearing this makes me want to go change my guitar parts to give the bouzouki more room. Imagine all the possibilities!
announce
About a year ago a new book of fife and drum music was published by the Company of Fifers and Drummers. I am excited about the book because it includes a variety of fresh tunes written by modern day composers that have an interest in perpetuating music for the fife and the drum, such as John Benoit, Dominick Cuccia, Greg Rice, Jason Malli, Brendan Mason, Dan Moylan and the late, great Roy Watrous, to name just a few. Also, it recently underwent a face lift and will include the image above on its cover. Lastly, I am happy that a handful of my own tunes, such as Hazards of Hatteras, Cape Horn (yet to be published here), Drummelhund and Gloriana, were recognized and included in the collection along with accompanying drum parts.
These new tunes are coupled with some fun traditional jam tunes that everyone should be excited to add to their repertoire. As you peruse through the book I hope it will become apparent that the new tunes were really written ‘In the Ancient Spirit’ and realize how wonderful it is to see the Company of Fifers and Drummers support this new music.
announce
I finally got around to providing a mechanism for pulling mp3 files, posted on baconworks.com, onto your iPod . Simply click on the following button to have iTunes subscribe to my podcast.
Your iTunes will be updated with any new mp3 files as I post them and from there you can quickly sync them to your iPod. Life is good.
announce
I’m trying out a new service for podcasting my music on this site. It is called Podcast Alley.
Here is a link to My Podcast Alley feed!
new music
For quite some time now I’ve wanted to record and album. The problem used to be that the cost for studio time was so high that I could only afford it in small doses. With the advent of low cost, high quality digital recording equipment, however, that problem has been virtually nullified. In addition, the distribution of music once required the pressing of an album. However, as we are well aware, the internet has also change that paradigm. So, here is the question I wrestle with; Is there any value in recording an album? Is the concept of an LP dead? After all, the lag time between recording a track and publishing is now trivial. Why stamp out any CD’s at all? The record industry, of course, is feeling the affects of this seismic shift first hand.
On one hand the album, a product of commercialism, feels out of place in todays vast digital world. On the other hand, I am compelled by the idea of sequencing a set of tunes in a way that carries the listener along as if on a meandering summertime ride on a wooded country road. I am well aware, however, that once the tunes make their way onto your iPod and in shuffle mode, the concept behind the sequencing is lost.
While I don’t have a good answer to my own questions, and while there are plenty of good reasons to move past the traditional album format, I am not willing to entirely abandon the notion just yet.
I guess that is a long winded way of saying that I’m gonna give it a go. I don’t know what the end result will look like but I have made one important decision already. As my ideas take shape and the music evolves I am going to blog about my creative and technical process of creating the album. The thing that I find both exciting and a bit daunting is the notion that the public critiquing process can happen as the recording takes shape instead of after it is complete. I am hoping that your critical feedback will help shape a better result. I am, therefore, urging you to offer your thoughts on what you hear or would like to hear.
As a first offering, I am including a recording of a jig I wrote last week. This is a test track that I intend on re-recording for a variety of reasons, the first being that I really did not know how to play it cleanly at the time of the recording since it was authored only minutes before. Also, I have been having trouble with some buzzing on my guitar, which affected the bass notes. Going forward, I am considering coupling the banjo with a mandolin in addition to centering the banjo, which is currently off to one side. I would also like to write another tune to go along with it but am finding that I just can’t force it.
The tune is entitled ‘On the Mend’ and was named for my friend Eddie Marshall, who was recently under the weather and unable to play music for a good month or so. I was happy to finally hear him say that he was ‘On the Mend’.
announce
I noticed, oddly enough, that I was getting traffic from facebook.com, even though I had not set up a profile there.
Well, I figured, if it is going to send me traffic…why not set a real profile up. So, without further ado, you can now check out my new facebook profile and become my friend.
While I was at it, I set up a profile at reverbnation.com, where I can promote myself as a “band”. Cool. Watch out Rolling Stones.
