Wednesday, January 1, 2025

2025 Musical Projects

Here are my musical projects for 2025.

Currently, I'm somewhat limited with what I can do in terms of audio recording and video editing.  In late October/early November last year, I started having some computer issues and had to go back to using my old computer, which I'd phased out of regular use in spring 2019.  I got a new computer in early December, but so far I've been unable to find the installation discs for the programs I need, and I'm not sure they would work on such a new computer anyway.  For now, I'm doing only simple and infrequent recordings.

Continuing Projects

Scales

When I sit down at or with an instrument, I play a scale, provided I know the instrument well enough that I can play a scale on it.  I go in the order of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and move on to the next one on Sundays.  For the first full week of 2025, I'll be practicing A minor.  When I practice organ every day, I improvise to a backing track in the same key (or the relative major if I'm practicing a minor key that week).

For now, I plan to continue what I started last year and record my nightly improvisation for every time one of my cousin's bands has a show.  I'm leaving the videos unlisted (with some exceptions), but the playlist is public.

This is my blog for hymns and (occasionally) classical sacred music.  I had been recording a hymn tune from The Lutheran Hymnal every week (here's a playlist), but I took a break in November last year when I started having computer issues.  For now, this break will continue.

Provided I get my software working, I want to record some of my own arrangements of hymn tunes, using the pipe organ sounds on my Hammond SKX.

On Wednesday, I have a post tracing the Biblical sources of a hymn in The Lutheran Service Book, and on most Fridays, I have a short post about a musical feature in a hymn (at some points last year, I'd run out of comments that weren't about seasonally specific hymns).  On rare occasions, I post about classical sacred music on Monday.

Last year, I got pretty far ahead in writing posts about hymns' Biblical sources, and I'm going to try to finish those this year.  I have eighty-one posts left to write.

Cover Projects

Initially, the goal for most of these was to learn every part to every song, and while I'm still working on that, the focus now has shifted more to writing about various features I notice.  Here's a list of the projects and what bands they cover:

I've been reading the updated edition of Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story, and I listen to the albums and watch the episodes when I read about their original releases and broadcasts.  I'm doing the same sort of thing with The Beach Boys, which I plan to finish reading this year.

For every time that old high school classmates (a sometime singer-songwriter and a self-styled author) post about their projects, I figure out a part from a song by one of these bands and listen to an album (cycling through the projects and in a roughly chronological order within each project).

As sort of a sub-project to Verulam Cover Project, I plan to continue transcribing interviews with the Zombies for my blog where I collect their interviews and performances.  My process, which I think I'll try to maintain, is to transcribe about a minute of audio for every Beatles reference I run across (because my initial idea for this project was a sort of response to the Get Back book, which contains transcriptions of the Beatles' conversations).  I'll probably finish transcribing The Story of the Zombies by the end of January, after which I'll get back to the Rock Solid podcast, which I temporarily abandoned in the fall last year.  The Zombies' panel at the Strand Book Store is an-other one on my list.

I'm going to re-read The "Odessey": The Zombies in Words and Images, which I read only once before, in 2017 shortly after it came out.

I plan to maintain my tradition and watch the Zombies' Live from Studio Two on its anniversary on 18 September, but I also want to watch or listen to some other Zombies and Argent concerts on or around their anniversaries, particularly Live from Metropolis Studios in January, Odessey and Oracle {Revisited} in early March, Set of Six on 29 May, and Live at the Palace Theatre on 7 November.

I didn't get around to it last year, but I might try to figure out the trombone parts in the Zombies' "This Will Be Our Year" by carefully studying the slide positions in videos of live performances.  If I get my software set up, I'm going to make a video demonstrating the organ part in the Beach Boys' "Be Still," which was an-other goal from last year that I never really got started on.

One of my Christmas gifts was The Monkees: Smoke-Filled Dreams, and I plan to start reading this, too.

FAWM and 50/90

These are also dependent on whether I get my software working, but I might attempt FAWM and 50/90 again.

Bach Cantatas

On Sunday, I listen to a Bach cantata, going in order by BWV number.  Occasionally, I follow along in the notation and jot down some notes.

This year, I'll be listening to BWV 167 to BWV 200 (although the box set I have omits a handful in this range) then starting over in the cycle and going from BWV 1 to BWV 24 (missing only two:  BWV 11 and BWV 15).

Mandolin Monday

Every Monday, I post a video of a mandolin piece on Instagram and Twitter, and I upload a slightly edited re-run on YouTube.  Since March last year, I've (roughly) been alternating between Francis O'Neill's Dance Music of Ireland and A Collection of Welsh, Irish, & Scotch Tunes Arranged by J. B. Malchair, which I found via the Royal College of Music's page on Internet Archive.  Here are links to the playlists on YouTube:  Dance Music of Ireland and A Collection of Welsh, Irish, & Scotch Tunes.  Occasionally, I do something else, usually pieces from flutetunes.

Hohner Pianet

In 2019, I started a blog where I write about the Hohner Pianet, a German electric piano from the 1960s.  As a continuation of the original demonstration disc, I've also recorded a number of pieces using Pianet samples on my Nord Electro 5D.

Near the end of last year, I started taking advantage of the split function on my Electro and playing Vox Continental on one half and Pianet on the other, which is the closest I can get to what Manfred Mann and Rod Argent did by stacking one keyboard on top of the other.  I did a version of "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" this way.  I'd like to do some more tunes in this manner, provided I can get my software working.  My main goal for this project, though, is finally to finish off a post on Electric Light Orchestra's use of the Hohner Clavinet.  Initially, I'd intended to do this in 2023 but forgot, and when I did start last year, I found that I needed to do more research than I expected, so I'm still working on it.

Telemann Lieder-Buch

In March 2021, I started working through Telemann's Fast allgemeines Evangelisch-Musicalisches Lieder-Buch, a collection of some 400 hymn tunes.  Along with learning to play the pieces, I'm modernizing the notation.  I post a tune every Thursday.  I want to maintain my lead (I'm more than a year ahead in recording the tunes) and ideally increase it.

Aside from actually learning to play the pieces, the two aspects of this project that take the longest are creating digital copies of the notation and editing videos, and they've been hampered even further because I have to use my old computer to do them, but I'm going to try to stick to my schedule.

Mellotron

In 2023, I started recording selections from Telemann's ouvertures (TWV 55) and Corelli's trio sonatas (Opp. 1-4) using only Mellotron sounds, posting one piece from each collection every month:  the Telemann on the Friday on or after the 14th and the Corelli on the following Friday.  I'd recorded enough pieces before having computer issues to maintain this schedule until March this year, but I don't know if I'll be able to continue it.

If I get my software working, I also want to record a movement from a Telemann sonata for two flutes I've been working on.

Parroting the Bird

I've become increasingly frustrated that my cousin's band is getting more popular (and frankly more absurd) while I'm working hard on my musical projects and seemingly getting nowhere, so I started copying (to some degree) what he does.  Usually, though, this just means that I listen to the albums he mentions and try to figure out parts to the songs he posts and alludes to (provided it's music that I'm interested in; I'm not going out of my way for this).  His band is named after a sort of bird, so I felt that "parroting" was a good term to use, although it's not entirely accurate.  I've been doing this for at least a year or two already, so I might as well make it an official project.

In February last year, he gained something like 6,000 Instagram followers after posting a video where he put one of his own songs over a clip from some cult classic cartoon (which I don't think is exactly legal), and I have something specific I want to do in response to this.


Projects Specific to 2025

BBC Albums

Sometime around late 2021 or early 2022, I had to idea to cycle through what live-at-the-BBC albums (and other recordings) I have.  If I remember correctly, I delayed doing this for a while because in 2019, I did this with just the Beatles' BBC albums and wanted to take a break from listening to them.  I'm going to listen to a disc on Saturday (because one of the shows was called Saturday Club), going roughly chronologically though:
  • The Zombies - The BBC Radio Sessions
  • The Beatles - Live at the BBC
  • Manfred Mann - Live at the BBC 64-66
  • The Rolling Stones - On Air
  • The Beatles - On Air - Live at the BBC, Vol. 2
  • Manfred Mann - Live at the BBC 66-69
  • The Who - BBC Sessions
  • Manfred Mann Chapter III - Live Sessions & Studio Rarities
  • Led Zeppelin - BBC Sessions
  • Manfred Mann's Earth Band - Live at the BBC 70-73
  • Argent - John Peel's Sunday Concert, 14 February 1971, which was available on Russ Ballard's website a number of years ago
  • Badfinger - In Concert at the BBC, 1972-3
  • Argent - Live at the Paris Theatre, 14 December 1972
  • Electric Light Orchestra - Live at the Guildhall, 1976

I also have Roy Orbison's Live at the BBC, which I might listen to a couple times, but I'm not including it in the rotation because - unlike all of these other bands - Orbison wasn't British.

Mozart Symphonies

A number of years ago, I got a box set of the complete Mozart symphonies performed by the Mozart Akademie Amsterdam.  I plan on listening to it again in January to mark Mozart's birthday (on the 27th).

Bob Dylan and the Band

For Christmas, I received The 1974 Live Recordings box set by Bob Dylan and the Band.  For my first time through it, I plan to listen to the concerts on their original dates (3 January to 14 February).  Some days have two shows, though, so I'll probably listen to one a day early or a day late.

Carl Perkins

Four years ago, I got a Carl Perkins compilation album in the Absolutely Essential 3 CD Collection series.  For some reason (maybe the mastering or just the song selection), I liked this much better than the two-disc set I'd already had for years.  I listened to it a couple times last year (once, just by coincidence, on Perkins' birthday) and still really like it, and I want to figure out at least one of the guitar solos on the album.

Duke Ellington

In September 2023, I started reading a biography of Ellington (Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington by Terry Teachout).  I had been reading it fairly consistently, albeit slowly, since late April last year but lost some momentum in late summer/early fall when I was sick, never really got back to it, and then set it aside for all of December when I was focusing on other books I wanted to finish by the end of the year.  I want to finish it this year and also listen to two box sets I have, a two-disc set in the Classic Jazz Archive series and a ten-disc set titled just Duke Ellington.  I plan to listen to the ten-disc set in April, since Ellington's birthday is 29 April.

Carl Nielsen

In 2023, I'd found a piece that Nielsen wrote for two recorders, and I'd intended to do this as a sort of bonus to my project of recording his chorales on my Moog last year, but then I had computer issues.  I'm going to do it this year, even if I have to record it on my old computer.  I also want to listen to a ten-disc set titled The Danish Symphonist, probably in June since Nielsen's birthday is 9 June.

Tuesday, December 31, 2024

2024 Musical Projects Review

Here's how I did on my 2024 musical projects.  In late October/early November, I started having some computer issues, and these seriously affected some of my progress.  I was able to hobble along using my old computer, but I'm still limited in what I can do.

Continuing Projects

Scales

When I sit down at or with an instrument, I play a scale, provided I know the instrument well enough that I can play a scale on it.  I go in the order of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and move on to the next one on Sundays.  For the first week of 2024, I'll be practicing G major.  When I practice organ every day, I improvise to a backing track in the same key (or the relative major if I'm practicing a minor key that week).
Early in January, I decided that for every time one of my cousin's bands has a live show, I'm going to record my nightly improvisation and post it.  I'm leaving the videos unlisted (with some exceptions), but the playlist is public.

This is my blog for hymns and (occasionally) classical sacred music.  On Sunday, I post a recording of a hymn tune (I've been making my way through The Lutheran Hymnal), playing (usually) the four-part arrangement with mandolin (soprano and alto), guitar (tenor), and electric bass (bass).  On Wednesday, I have a post tracing the Biblical sources of a hymn in The Lutheran Service Book, and on Friday, I have a short post about a musical feature in a hymn.  On rare occasions, I post about classical sacred music on Monday.

For writing the posts on the Biblical sources for a hymn, I'm going to follow the system I devised last year and (try to) write a post every Sunday and for every time the hymn is included in the recording of the daily chapel service from the university I want to attend.

Because I've been consistently writing about musical features in hymns, I've almost run out of new things to post.  Most of what I have left are features in hymns that are for specific seasons, and I plan to wait until they're seasonally appropriate to write about.
In late April/early May, I temporarily ran out of small features to note in hymns (aside from seasonally specific hymns), so instead, I started recording and posting my own arrangements of hymn tunes, in the same sort of style as James Bastien's Great Hymns Arranged for Organ, which I'd gone through last year.  So far, I've done "Westminster Abbey," "Beach Spring," and "Jesus ist kommen, Grund ewiger Freude."  I've come up with arrangements for "Wo Gott zum Haus," "Freu dich sehr," and "Southwell," too, but I haven't gotten around to recording them yet.

By early October, I'd reached a point in writing about the Biblical sources for hymn texts that I had posts scheduled for about two years in advance (when I didn't have any features to write about for Friday, I wrote a sources post instead), so I adjusted my schedule and started writing a sources post only every Sunday (sometimes more if I saw that the next hymn would be easy to write about).  My hope was that this would free me up some to work on other projects with tighter deadlines.

When I started having computer issues, I took a break from recording the tunes from The Lutheran Hymnal.  I'd done one every week since July 2019.

Cover Projects

Initially, the goal for most of these was to learn every part to every song, and while I'm still working on that, the focus now has shifted more to writing about various features I notice.  Here's a list of the projects and what bands they cover:
Byrd Dimension hadn't had the same sort of status as the other projects, but last year, I decided to make it a full-fledged project (partially because my cousin's band is named after a bird, and I feel I have to work at least as hard as he does).  In the last month or so of 2023, I listened to all of the Byrds albums from Fifth Dimension to (Untitled) plus The Byrds Play Dylan, and I have a slew of notes that I want to flesh out into posts this year.

I've been reading the updated edition of Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story, and I listen to the albums and watch the episodes when I read about their original releases and broadcasts.

For every time that old high school classmates (a sometime singer-songwriter and a self-styled author) post about their projects, I figure out a part from a song by one of these bands and listen to an album (cycling through the projects and in a roughly chronological order within each project).

I also have a few specific sub-projects for this year:
  1. I don't know if I'll be able to do this, but I want at least to try to figure out the trombone parts in the Zombies' "This Will Be Our Year" by carefully studying the slide positions in videos of live performances (as far as I know, there are only two:  the 2008 Odessey and Oracle concert DVD and the 2019 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony).
  2. I want to make videos demonstrating the organ part in the Beach Boys' "Be Still" (with notation) and the piano solo in the Moody Blues' "Please Think about It."
My posts on Byrds songs were published one a week from the beginning of the year until the beginning of April, although I'd finished writing them by the middle of February.

I guess I forgot to mention this at the beginning of the year, but as a part of my Monkees project, I read Micky Dolenz's I'm Told I Had a Good Time: The Micky Dolenz Archives, Volume One.  I started on 1 January and finished on 17 October.

I didn't get around to any of my sub-projects.  I never even tried to figure out the trombone parts in "This Will Be Our Year"; I intended to begin work on a video about the organ part in "Be Still" in November, but then I started having computer problems, which prevented me; and the more I thought about a video on the piano solo in "Please Think about It," the more I thought it wouldn't be worth it.

I got The Beach Boys (the first official book by the band) in April, and like I'm doing with The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story, I've been listening to the albums after I read about their release, although I've been procrastinating on Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) because it feels out of season to listen to it in winter.  I'm up to Smiley Smile in the book now, so I have some catching up to do.

I maintained my tradition of watching the Zombies' Live from Studio Two on its anniversary on 18 September, and I think I started a new one with Argent's appearance on Set of Six, which is dated 29 May 1972.

I made a few recordings to demonstrate what parts I've learned
I reached a point where I now know at least a bit of every song on the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour and the Alan Parsons Project's Vulture Culture.

FAWM and 50/90

Like I said last year, I'm still more interesting in playing other people's music than in writing my own, but I guess I'll attempt FAWM and 50/90 again.
I wrote two songs for FAWM:  "Pairs Generate a Quaternity" (my attempt at a sort of eighteenth-century country dance) and "Under My Eyes" (played with the same types of instruments from the Zombies' Decca period).  I wrote only one song for 50/90:  "Diluculum saluberrimum" (something like a small-scale version of Bob Dylan's "Nashville Skyline Rag").

Bach Cantatas

On Sunday, I listen to a Bach cantata, going in order by BWV number.  Occasionally, I follow along in the notation and jot down some notes.

This year, I'll be listening to BWV 111 through BWV 166, but the box set I have omits a handful between those numbers.
As usual, I don't have much to say about this, but I did do it.  

Mandolin Monday

Every Monday, I post a recording of a mandolin piece on Instagram and Twitter, and I upload a slightly edited re-run on YouTube.  I plan to continue doing selections from Francis O'Neill's Dance Music of Ireland, although I may do something different every now and then.
In December last year, I'd found a 1795 manuscript of traditional Welsh, Irish, and Scottish tunes on the Royal College of Music's Internet Archive account, and in mid-March, I started alternating between these tunes (for which I'm also modernizing the notation) and the tunes from The Dance Music of Ireland, with the occasional tune from flutetunes thrown in.

Hohner Pianet

In 2019, I started a blog where I write about the Hohner Pianet, a German electric piano from the 1960s, and, as a continuation of the original demonstration disc, record pieces using Pianet samples on my Nord Electro 5D.

I plan to post a few pieces from Telemann's 168 Keyboard Pieces that I recorded last year, but currently I have no plans to do any more recordings for this project (aside from one of the Telemann pieces that I want to re-do).

I also plan to write a post about Electric Light Orchestra's use of the Hohner Clavinet, which I'd intended to do last year but didn't get around to.
I ended up re-recording a piece from the 168 Keyboard Pieces after discovering that I'd misunderstood the notation and unknowingly played a wrong note.  I went into more detail here.  I also did two Haydn pieces using Nord's String Melody II samples along with the Pianet N sample (Divertimento in C major, Hob XIV:3: II. Menuetto and Trio and O Let Me in This Ae Night, Hob. XXXIa:61, an arrangement of a Scottish folk song), the chorale from Schumann's Album für die Jugend (with a tremolo effect), and my own (Zombies-influenced) arrangement of "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" (with Nord's Vox Continental sound for accompaniment).

I've been working on a post on ELO's Clavinet, but research is taking longer than I expected, so I haven't finished it yet.  I should have it done by the end of January, though.

Telemann Lieder-Buch

In March 2021, I started working through Telemann's Fast allgemeines Evangelisch-Musicalisches Lieder-Buch, a collection of some 400 hymn tunes.  Along with learning to play the pieces, I'm modernizing the notation.  I post a tune every Thursday.  I want to maintain my lead (I'm a year ahead in recording the tunes) and ideally increase it.
I tried to record a tune a week on average.  I exceeded this goal most months but merely met it in March and didn't even get close in November (because of my computer issues, I recorded only one tune).  Making videos for the tunes takes up considerably more time (especially now that I have to use my old computer), and I'm only about a month ahead in that process.  I think I'm a bit over halfway through in recording the tunes, though.  There are 433, and I'm in the 220s, but some numbers have more than one tune (which I've been marking as A and B).

Mellotron

Last year, I started recording selections from Telemann's ouvertures (TWV 55) and Corelli's trio sonatas (Opp. 1-4) using only Mellotron sounds.  I plan to continue this, posting one piece from each collection every month:  the Telemann on the Friday on or after the 14th and the Corelli on the following Friday.  Occasionally, I do other pieces entirely with Mellotron sounds, but currently, I don't have plans for anything other than the Telemann ouvertures and Corelli trio sonatas.
I tried to record at least one piece from each of these collections every month (and was successful until I started having computer problems), and I workt ahead until March next year.


Projects Specific to 2024

Nielsen: Salmer og aandelige Sange

In July last year, I had the idea to record chorales from Bach's cantatas by multitracking my Moog.  In the notation I have, though, each vocal part is in a different clef, and I didn't think it would be worth the effort to transpose each part to a clef I can read more easily.  In September, though, I remembered some chorales by Carl Nielsen that I'd run across years earlier, and I started recording those instead.  I held off on posting them so I could build up a reserve and so that I could post all of the pieces in the same calendar year.  I plan to start posting (on Tuesdays) what I've already recorded and to finish recording the rest of them.  Currently, I have five pieces ready to post and five I need to mix and edit videos for.
I finished recording these near the beginning of November and posted the last one at the beginning of December.  Here's a link to the playlist.

Zombie Media

A number of years ago, I started a blog to collect performances by and interviews with the Zombies.  It had lain dormant for a while, but I started doing some more work on it last year.  This year, I want to work consistently on transcribing some of the interviews so that specific topics are easier to find, either for me or for anyone else doing research on the band.  I got the idea partly from the Beatles' Get Back book (which I got for Christmas in 2022 and which I started reading to-day).  The book is basically transcriptions of conversations that the Beatles had during the recording of Let It Be, and I felt that if there's a book of conversations that the Beatles had during the sessions for just one album, there should be transcriptions of interviews that the Zombies have done over the course of many years.  My plan is to transcribe a minute or so of audio for every Beatles reference I run across.  I've been working on transcribing a 2017 interview from the Grammy Museum (I started with that one because the video is no longer publicly available, but I'd downloaded it years ago), and after I finish that, I'll prioritize the interviews that are oldest or feature the most band members and work my way forward.
I didn't really get started on this until the middle of March.  I finished transcribing the Grammy Museum interview near the end of March.  Next, I did the BBC Mastertapes programs, which I'd actually started transcribing in October 2022, about a year before starting the Grammy Museum interview.  I finished that near the end of May.  Then, I did the appearance on the Summit, which I finished in mid-July.  I did some work on the Rock Solid podcast but took a break for most of August and instead transcribed some articles that the Argent Facebook page posted.  Doing text-to-text was faster than audio-to-text, and I hoped that this would help me catch up some (I'm not sure if it did).  Instead of a minute of audio, I did about a column for every Beatles reference I came across.  Around October or November, I sort of temporarily abandoned the Rock Solid podcast, transcribed a short appearance for radio.com, and then started on The Story of the Zombies from 2015.  I have only about ten minutes left.  Despite working on this project fairly consistently, I'm still about seven months behind.

Get Back

Along with reading the book Get Back, I'm going to watch the documentary again.  So far, I've seen it only once.  My plan is to watch a day's worth at a time, on the day it happened.
Although I have the movie on Bluray, I watched it on Disney+.  Since my internet was out one day (14 January), I had to double up on the next day.  I finished reading Get Back on 24 May.  I also read Paul McCartney's 1964: Eyes of the Storm (from 1 January to 28 July).


Other Things to Note

Like I've done some other years, I listened to a thirteen-disc box set of Chopin's piano works (daily starting 1 March, Chopin's birthday), and starting on the anniversary of Bach's death (28 July), I listened to a seventeen-disc box set of his complete organ works, followed by the complete organ works of Buxtehude (six discs), both at the rate of a disc a week.

I maintained my three specific days of listening to particular vinyl records:  one from my grandfather's collection on his birthday (I took a break from Lawrence Welk this year and listened to the Ink Spots instead), the Apples in Stereo's Fun Trick Noisemaker on 12 October, and the Bill Evans Trio's Portrait in Jazz on 28 December.


I figured out 179 parts, but I never wrote down some of them and might have forgotten them by now (only twelve, some of which I filmed videos of, so I do have some record).  Like I did last year, I made an effort to figure out parts to songs that were posted or alluded to by various bands my cousin is in.  Here's a list:
  • The Beatles - "Your Mother Should Know" - piano phrase first at ~0:47
  • The Beatles - "Your Mother Should Know" - chords
  • The Beatles - "Drive My Car" - piano (but very roughly and because I didn't write it down, I've since forgotten it)
  • The Beatles - "Drive My Car" - chords (which I also never wrote down and have probably forgotten by now)
  • Simon & Garfunkel - "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" - vocal melody for the first verse
  • Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Born on the Bayou" - chords
  • Buffalo Springfield - "For What It's Worth" - chords
  • Electric Light Orchestra - "Mr. Blue Sky" - guitar solo, although I later discovered I have it an octave too low
  • Cab Calloway - "Minnie the Moocher" - trumpet (?) in the introduction
Because he mentioned Paul & Linda McCartney's Ram as a favorite album, I listened to it again and learned some guitar phrases in "Smile Away."  For similar reasons, I listened to all of the Who albums I have (and bought My Generation) and learned some parts:  the French horn in "Overture" from Tommy, some guitar phrases in "Pure and Easy," the recurring guitar phrase and chords in "A Legal Matter," and the bass in the choruses of "Who Are You."

Monday, January 1, 2024

2024 Musical Projects

Here are my musical projects for 2024, starting with those that I'm continuing from previous years.

Continuing Projects

Scales

When I sit down at or with an instrument, I play a scale, provided I know the instrument well enough that I can play a scale on it.  I go in the order of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and move on to the next one on Sundays.  For the first week of 2024, I'll be practicing G major.  When I practice organ every day, I improvise to a backing track in the same key (or the relative major if I'm practicing a minor key that week).

This is my blog for hymns and (occasionally) classical sacred music.  On Sunday, I post a recording of a hymn tune (I've been making my way through The Lutheran Hymnal), playing (usually) the four-part arrangement with mandolin (soprano and alto), guitar (tenor), and electric bass (bass).  On Wednesday, I have a post tracing the Biblical sources of a hymn in The Lutheran Service Book, and on Friday, I have a short post about a musical feature in a hymn.  On rare occasions, I post about classical sacred music on Monday.

For writing the posts on the Biblical sources for a hymn, I'm going to follow the system I devised last year and (try to) write a post every Sunday and for every time the hymn is included in the recording of the daily chapel service from the university I want to attend.

Because I've been consistently writing about musical features in hymns, I've almost run out of new things to post.  Most of what I have left are features in hymns that are for specific seasons, and I plan to wait until they're seasonally appropriate to write about.

Cover Projects

Initially, the goal for most of these was to learn every part to every song, and while I'm still working on that, the focus now has shifted more to writing about various features I notice.  Here's a list of the projects and what bands they cover:
Byrd Dimension hadn't had the same sort of status as the other projects, but last year, I decided to make it a full-fledged project (partially because my cousin's band is named after a bird, and I feel I have to work at least as hard as he does).  In the last month or so of 2023, I listened to all of the Byrds albums from Fifth Dimension to (Untitled) plus The Byrds Play Dylan, and I have a slew of notes that I want to flesh out into posts this year.

I've been reading the updated edition of Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story, and I listen to the albums and watch the episodes when I read about their original releases and broadcasts.

For every time that old high school classmates (a sometime singer-songwriter and a self-styled author) post about their projects, I figure out a part from a song by one of these bands and listen to an album (cycling through the projects and in a roughly chronological order within each project).

I also have a few specific sub-projects for this year:
  1. I don't know if I'll be able to do this, but I want at least to try to figure out the trombone parts in the Zombies' "This Will Be Our Year" by carefully studying the slide positions in videos of live performances (as far as I know, there are only two:  the 2008 Odessey and Oracle concert DVD and the 2019 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony).
  2. I want to make videos demonstrating the organ part in the Beach Boys' "Be Still" (with notation) and the piano solo in the Moody Blues' "Please Think about It."  

FAWM and 50/90

Like I said last year, I'm still more interesting in playing other people's music than in writing my own, but I guess I'll attempt FAWM and 50/90 again.

Bach Cantatas

On Sunday, I listen to a Bach cantata, going in order by BWV number.  Occasionally, I follow along in the notation and jot down some notes.

This year, I'll be listening to BWV 111 through BWV 166, but the box set I have omits a handful between those numbers.

Mandolin Monday

Every Monday, I post a recording of a mandolin piece on Instagram and Twitter, and I upload a slightly edited re-run on YouTube.  I plan to continue doing selections from Francis O'Neill's Dance Music of Ireland, although I may do something different every now and then.

Hohner Pianet

In 2019, I started a blog where I write about the Hohner Pianet, a German electric piano from the 1960s, and, as a continuation of the original demonstration disc, record pieces using Pianet samples on my Nord Electro 5D.

I plan to post a few pieces from Telemann's 168 Keyboard Pieces that I recorded last year, but currently I have no plans to do any more recordings for this project (aside from one of the Telemann pieces that I want to re-do).

I also plan to write a post about Electric Light Orchestra's use of the Hohner Clavinet, which I'd intended to do last year but didn't get around to.

Telemann Lieder-Buch

In March 2021, I started working through Telemann's Fast allgemeines Evangelisch-Musicalisches Lieder-Buch, a collection of some 400 hymn tunes.  Along with learning to play the pieces, I'm modernizing the notation.  I post a tune every Thursday.  I want to maintain my lead (I'm a year ahead in recording the tunes) and ideally increase it.

Mellotron

Last year, I started recording selections from Telemann's ouvertures (TWV 55) and Corelli's trio sonatas (Opp. 1-4) using only Mellotron sounds.  I plan to continue this, posting one piece from each collection every month:  the Telemann on the Friday on or after the 14th and the Corelli on the following Friday.  Occasionally, I do other pieces entirely with Mellotron sounds, but currently, I don't have plans for anything other than the Telemann ouvertures and Corelli trio sonatas.


Projects Specific to 2024

Nielsen: Salmer og aandelige Sange

In July last year, I had the idea to record chorales from Bach's cantatas by multitracking my Moog.  In the notation I have, though, each vocal part is in a different clef, and I didn't think it would be worth the effort to transpose each part to a clef I can read more easily.  In September, though, I remembered some chorales by Carl Nielsen that I'd run across years earlier, and I started recording those instead.  I held off on posting them so I could build up a reserve and so that I could post all of the pieces in the same calendar year.  I plan to start posting (on Tuesdays) what I've already recorded and to finish recording the rest of them.  Currently, I have five pieces ready to post and five I need to mix and edit videos for.

Zombie Media

A number of years ago, I started a blog to collect performances by and interviews with the Zombies.  It had lain dormant for a while, but I started doing some more work on it last year.  This year, I want to work consistently on transcribing some of the interviews so that specific topics are easier to find, either for me or for anyone else doing research on the band.  I got the idea partly from the Beatles' Get Back book (which I got for Christmas in 2022 and which I started reading to-day).  The book is basically transcriptions of conversations that the Beatles had during the recording of Let It Be, and I felt that if there's a book of conversations that the Beatles had during the sessions for just one album, there should be transcriptions of interviews that the Zombies have done over the course of many years.  My plan is to transcribe a minute or so of audio for every Beatles reference I run across.  I've been working on transcribing a 2017 interview from the Grammy Museum (I started with that one because the video is no longer publicly available, but I'd downloaded it years ago), and after I finish that, I'll prioritize the interviews that are oldest or feature the most band members and work my way forward.

Get Back

Along with reading the book Get Back, I'm going to watch the documentary again.  So far, I've seen it only once.  My plan is to watch a day's worth at a time, on the day it happened.

Sunday, December 31, 2023

2023 Musical Projects Review

Here's my annual review of projects.

Continuing Projects

Scales

When I sit down at or with an instrument, I play a scale, provided I know the instrument well enough that I can play a scale on it.  I go in the order of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and move on to the next one on Sundays.  For the first week of 2023, I'll be practicing F major.  When I practice organ every day, I improvise to a backing track in the same key (or the relative major if I'm practicing a minor key that week).
I have nothing extra to say about this, but I did it.
This is my blog for hymns and (occasionally) classical sacred music.  On Sunday, I post a recording of a hymn tune (I've been making my way through The Lutheran Hymnal), playing (usually) the four-part arrangement with mandolin (soprano and alto), guitar (tenor), and electric bass (bass).  On Wednesday, I have a post tracing the Biblical sources of a hymn in The Lutheran Service Book, and on Friday, I have a short post about a musical feature in a hymn.  On rare occasions, I post about classical sacred music on Monday.

This year, I'm also going to work my way through James Bastien's Great Hymns Arranged for Organ.  I'd intended to do this last year but had some complications and wasn't able to start.
I finished going through Great Hymns Arranged for Organ near the end of June, and posting the pieces at the rate of one a week, I completed the project in October.  Here's a playlist.

Last year, I wrote (or tried to write) two posts per week about the Biblical sources for a hymn.  Since I publish only one a week, I got pretty far ahead.  I gave up that schedule at the beginning of this year, though (to focus on other things), and it took me a while to develop a new one.  In February, I decided to write a sources post for every time the hymn is included in the recordings of the chapel services I watch from the university I want to attend, and near the end of June, I decided to write one every Sunday so that (ideally) I can maintain my lead.  Sometimes, I don't get around to writing a post when I should (currently, I have a handful I need to make up), but otherwise, it's a fairly effective system.

Cover Projects

Initially, the goal for most of these was to learn every part to every song, and while I'm still working on that, the focus now has shifted more to writing about various features I notice.  Here's a list of the projects and what bands they cover:
In October last year, I started posting a part from a Zombies song on my Instagram account every week (usually on Thursday and, for now, mostly following the track listing on The Decca Stereo Anthology), and I intend to continue this, partially to prove that I'm a "superfan" and partially because it forces me to review some songs I've forgotten how to play.

I have a handful of notes about the Monkees' album The Birds, The Bees, & the Monkees that I'd like to flesh out into posts.  I'd intended to do this in December last year, but I was sick for most of the month and didn't get around to it.
After the songs on The Decca Stereo Anthology, I did the demos on Zombie Heaven and then Odessey and Oracle.  Currently, I'm working through the songs for the "lost album," but there are only two left.

I wrote about some songs on The Birds, The Bees, & the Monkees in August.

Partially because David Crosby died in January, I decided to listen to all of the Byrds albums I have.  I got through The Preflyte Sessions, Mr. Tambourine Man, and Turn! Turn! Turn! pretty easily, but it took me a long time to continue on with Fifth Dimension.  Part of the reason is that I thought I would be overwhelmed with taking notes on new features I discovered because it had been so long since I last listened to it.  In the last month or so of 2023, I listened to all of the Byrds albums from Fifth Dimension to (Untitled), plus The Byrds Play Dylan.  I do have a handful of notes now, and I plan to write about them next year.

In September, I watched the Zombies' Live from Studio Two DVD on its anniversary.  I'd attended the virtual concert in 2021 and got the CD/DVD release when it came out, but I hadn't watched the DVD yet.  I plan to watch it every year now.

I made a few recordings to demonstrate some parts I learned:
I intended to record a few parts from the middle section of the Alan Parsons Project's "Secret Garden," but I didn't get around to it.

FAWM and 50/90

The last few years have been pretty unproductive (I think I wrote less music last year than any other year since I started writing), but I guess I'll give FAWM and 50/90 an-other try.  Lately, I've just been more interesting in playing other people's music.
I was equally unproductive this year.  I wrote two songs for FAWM and only one for 50/90.

Bach Cantatas

On Sunday, I listen to a Bach cantata, going in order by BWV number.  Occasionally, I follow along in the notation and jot down some notes.

This year, I'll be listening to BWV 58 through BWV 110.  The box set I have contains all of the cantatas in that range.
I didn't follow along in the notation for any, but I did write down some notes.

Mandolin Monday

Every Monday, I post a recording of a mandolin piece on Instagram and Twitter, and I upload a slightly edited re-run on YouTube.  I plan to continue doing selections from Francis O'Neill's Dance Music of Ireland, although I may do something different every now and then.  Christmas is on a Monday this year, and I'll probably do something special for that.
In early November, one of the strings on my mandolin broke.  I'd been using the same strings since I got my mandolin thirteen years ago, and I'd been dreading a broken string for months or maybe even longer.  I missed a week of #mandolinmonday while I was waiting for the strings to be replaced at the local music store; instead, I played the melody for "Allerschönste aller Frauen," a German swing song from the 1940s, on guitar.

I didn't do anything particularly special for Christmas because it would have been out of season by the time I post the re-run to YouTube.

Hohner Pianet

In 2019, I started a blog where I write about the Hohner Pianet, a German electric piano from the 1960s, and, as a continuation of the original demonstration disc, record pieces using Pianet samples on my Nord Electro 5D (uploaded on Wednesdays).

My main goal for 2023 is to finish recording the first volume of Bartók's Mikrokosmos.  I have five pieces left, and I'd like to have them recorded by the end of March, which is when I started the Mikrokosmos last year.  Aside from that, I'll probably focus on Telemann's 168 Keyboard Pieces, recording the pieces and modernizing the notation.  Like I've done for the last two years, I'll probably also do at least one piece from Bastien's Great Christmas Carols Arranged for Organ (using my Hammond XPK-130G for the pedal part).

I also plan to write a post about Electric Light Orchestra's use of the Hohner Clavinet.
I did finish the first volume of Bartók's Mikrokosmos (here's a link to the playlist), but it took me until July.  I didn't feel very motivated early in the year (partially because it was so cold), and in the first three months, I recorded only three tunes for this project, of which only one was from the Mikrokosmos.

For about two months (mid-August to mid-October), I took a break from posting pieces, and when I resumed, I adopted a new schedule.  Previously, I'd posted a piece every Wednesday, but now I'm posting on the first and third Wednesdays of the month.  I'll keep posting pieces for a month or two, but currently, I don't have any plans to record any more (aside from one piece from Telemann's 168 Keyboard Pieces that I want to re-do).

I did record a piece from Bastien's Great Christmas Carols Arranged for Organ ("O Christmas Tree"), but I used the Hohner String Melody II sound instead of one of the Pianet samples.

I'd forgotten about writing a post on ELO's use of the Clavinet, and when I remembered, I didn't think I would have enough time left in the year to listen to all of the albums carefully enough to write a well researched post.

Telemann Lieder-Buch

In March 2021, I started working through Telemann's Fast allgemeines Evangelisch-Musicalisches Lieder-Buch, a collection of some 400 hymn tunes.  Along with learning to play the pieces, I'm modernizing the notation.

Last year (especially in the second half of the year), I started getting pretty far ahead in terms of recording the pieces.  I'd like at least to maintain that lead (which means recording four or five pieces every month) and, ideally, get even further ahead.
Near the end of August, I got to a point where I'd workt a whole year ahead in recording the tunes.  I exceeded my monthly goal every month except for May, when I merely met my goal.

Parts

For every time that a couple of old high school classmates (a sometime singer-songwriter and a self-styled author) post about their creative endeavors, I figure out a part for one of my cover projects because I feel that I have to work harder than they do.  Sometimes, I also figure out a part as a toll for listening to an album or if I hear a particular song mentioned somewhere, but I don't always follow this very strictly.

I have two specific parts I want to figure out this year:  the guitar at the beginning of the Lemon Pipers' "Wine and Violet" (which I've unsuccessfully tried to figure it out a couple times before) and the guitar in Johnny Cash's "Tennessee Flat-Top Box."
I learned the guitar part in "Wine and Violet" in early January:

 
And the guitar in "Tennessee Flat-Top Box" in early February:



In late March, I added an-other element to my trigger for working on my cover projects.  For every time former classmates posted, I also listened to an album from one of the bands whose music I'm trying to learn (although I didn't include the Byrds).  I cycled from project to project and in a rough chronological order within each project.  This way, I'm listening to the music with more frequency than I would be otherwise, and I notice new features to write about or find parts that sound easy to figure out.

I figured out 179 parts, although some of these were parts I simply re-learned after having forgotten them and not writing them down.  I also started transcribing the lyrics to songs for which I figured out parts, provided I hadn't started transcribing them already.  There are a few I didn't get around to, though.  I sort of ran out of energy or motivation to figure out parts to songs I heard mentioned, and I think there were a few in December I didn't even write down to remind myself to learn.

Songs posted or referenced by various bands my cousin is in provided a greater impetus for figuring out parts than did "tolls" for listening to albums.  For the record, here are the parts I figured out that fall into this category:

Projects Specific to 2023

Benny Goodman

In April last year, the music department of the university I desperately want to attend posted a clip of an ensemble practicing Benny Goodman's "Stompin' at the Savoy."  Consequently, about a week later, I started reading a biography of Goodman (Benny Goodman and the Swing Era by James Lincoln Collier).  At the time, it was a lower priority among the books I was reading, so I didn't make much progress in it, but I'd like to finish it this year.  I also plan on listening to The Absolutely Essential 3-CD Collection album every month, one disc on each of the first three Fridays of the month.  In months that have five Fridays, I'll use the last two to listen to two other two-disc albums; in March and September, I'll listen to The Complete Recordings 1941-1947 (a collection of Goodman's recordings with Peggy Lee), and in June and December, I'll listen to Trio and Quartet Showcase.

Ideally, this sort of immersion in Goodman will motivate me to practice clarinet more.  I got a clarinet in October 2020, but I rarely play it.  I recorded a lot of pieces on recorder last year partially in an effort to work my way up to clarinet.  In the biography on his website, Mike Vickers describes something like this.  After Benny Goodman's clarinet "seemed to be calling to me to have a go myself," he played various sorts of recorders, "so I'd been there and done that, recorder-wise.  A clarinet was next."
In May, roughly coinciding with Goodman's birthday, I watched The Benny Goodman Story for the first time.  I'd received it for my birthday a couple months before.

I finished Benny Goodman and the Swing Era in September.  Duke Ellington was mentioned in the book quite a lot, and I felt I should become more familiar with him, so the day after I finished the Goodman biography, I started reading Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington by Terry Teachout.

I practiced clarinet every month, although usually only once a month.  I know this doesn't count for very much, but once a month is better than not at all.

The Association

I have matching box sets in the "original album series" by three bands:  the Hollies, the Association, and Booker T. & the MGs.  Since I listened to Booker T. & the MGs every week (on Friday) in 2021 and the Hollies every week (on Monday) in 2022, I felt I should complete the set and listen to the Association every week (on Wednesday) in 2023.  I'm also going to include Greatest Hits! in the cycle because it contains a different recording of "Enter the Young" compared to what's on And Then... Along Comes the Association and "Six Man Band," which isn't on any of the albums in the box set, which - for the record - are:
  • And Then... Along Comes the Association
  • Renaissance
  • Insight Out
  • Birthday
  • The Association
My other goal is to learn the recorder solo in "No Fair at All."  I'd learned a simplified version of it in 2017, but I never wrote it down.
I learned the recorder solo in August:



I doubled the note values in the notation because I felt it would be easier to read that way.


Usually, I didn't figure out other parts as "tolls" for listening to the albums, but I did figure out the solo (some kind of zither, I think) in "Message of Our Love" and the bass part in the verses of "Everything That Touches You."

I also listened to a 45 of "Windy" b/w "Sometime."  I've had the record for years, but this was the first time I'd listened to it.

Beethoven Symphonies

I've been reading The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II.  In a letter to his friend Arthur Greeves, dated 5 November 1933, Lewis mentions that his brother has records of all of the Beethoven symphonies and that they were listening to one every Sunday evening.  I thought this sounded like a nice idea, so I'm going to do it, too.  I don't have recordings of all of the Beethoven symphonies, but they're all available on the Frankfurt Radio Symphony's YouTube channel.  I'm going to watch them there (on Sundays, but probably not in the evenings).  For what it's worth, I'm fairly familiar with the third, fifth, and sixth symphonies, and the sixth is my favorite.
I think it was in June that I started just listening to them while doing other things and not actually watching them.

At some point, I realized that since Dvořák also wrote nine symphonies, I could easily pair the two collections, so for the fourth cycle through the Beethoven symphonies (9 July to 3 September), I listened to the correspondingly numbered Dvořák symphony on the following Tuesday.  I have a box set of them, but I think I'd listened to it only twice before.

The schedule didn't work out evenly, and I ended up listening to the ninth symphony one fewer time than the others, but I'm not too concerned about it.

Corelli: Concerti grossi

I'd intended to do this in 2022, but I forgot about it until last month.  In the 2021 Christmas concert at the university I want to attend, one of the ensembles played a movement from one of Corelli's Concerti grossi, Op. 6.  There are twelve concerti in the set, which nicely works out to one a month, and so to familiarize myself with the pieces, I'm going to listen to one every Tuesday.  I want to keep things even, though, so if there's a fifth Tuesday in the month, I'll skip that week.
I'm not sure if I really became very familiar with the pieces, but I did do this.  As something of a continuation, in October, I started going through Corelli's trio sonatas and recording some movements using Mellotron sounds.  Here's a playlist, although I've posted only two so far.

YouTube Watch Later List

In spring last year, I started paring down my YouTube watch later list, which is mostly videos of classical pieces.  I'd like to make further progress in this.  I'm going to continue the strategy I developed near the end of last year and try to focus on one composer every month.  I think January will be Brahms.  Currently, there are 404 videos on the list.
I made only some progress in this.  Often, when I would watch one video from my list, YouTube would recommend me others that I wanted to watch, so I would add those and end up with a longer list than when I started.  Currently, the list has 299 videos.


Other Things to Note

The first thing I listened to in 2023 was the first disc of Telemann's Tafelmusik, which started a project I hadn't intended to do:  every month, I listened to the complete Tafelmusik.

In March, I started reading Sideman, the book by and about Jim Rodford, and I finished it in June.  Also in June, I started reading The New Bach Reader, a collection of documents relating to Johann Sebastian Bach.

Early in April, I started reading a digitized book about Haydn (I'd mistakenly thought it was a collection of letters that Haydn wrote, but I'm reading it anyway).  I like the description (in a footnote starting on page 98) of what characteristics certain keys have.  Here are some of my favorites:
  • A major - "Golden, warm, and sunny"
  • Bb major - "The least interesting of any"
  • G minor - "Replete with melancholy"
  • Ab major - "The most lovely of the tribe"

In May, I listened to a two-disc set of some of Telemann's suites and ouvertures (for only the third time), and I had the idea to record some of these using Mellotron sounds, like I'd previously done with a few classical pieces.  Along with my own limitations (because I have very little formal musical training), I'm a bit constrained by the character of the Mellotron sounds, so I've skipt quite a lot.  I find that the slower movements work better.  I've been posting one movement a month (on the Friday on or after the 14th), and I intend to continue this.  Here's a playlist.

Along with movements from Telemann's ouvertures and Corelli's trio sonatas, I recorded some other pieces using only Mellotron sounds:

In May, I recorded selections from a Telemann partita (TWV 41:e1) on mandolin and electric bass.  Here's a playlist.
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)