Friday, December 31, 2021

2021 Musical Projects Review

I don't know whether I did a lot more in 2021 than I usually do or whether I was just more comprehensive in reviewing it (probably both).  Either way, this post ended up being pretty long, so I'm going to detail my 2022 projects in a separate post.

Here's how I did on my 2021 projects.
Scales
When I start playing an instrument, I start with a scale, provided it's an instrument I can play well enough to play scales on.  I change scales every week and go in the order of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier.  Continuing on in my cycle, I'm on C major for the first full week of 2021, which nicely coincides with the fresh start of a new year.
I don't have anything to say about this, but I did it.
On Sundays, I post a recording of a hymn tune.  For the last few years, I've been going through The Lutheran Hymnal.  Usually, I record all four voice parts (on mandolin, guitar, and bass).  Since I entered the Easter section, there are a number of hymns with "Alleluia"s, and I want to double these on recorder as often as I'm able.

On Wednesdays, I publish a post tracing the Biblical sources of a hymn in The Lutheran Service Book.  In the last few months, I've been diligently working on setting up future posts, and by the time the year is over, I want to have transcribed all of the hymns in The Lutheran Service Book.  I have 120 or so left.

On Fridays, I publish a short musicological post about a hymn.  Usually, it's a minor feature along the lines of "this text about going down is sung to a descending melody."
From mid-February to the end of March, I went back to record some of the tunes I initially skipt; it would have felt wrong to continue on and record tunes for Easter hymns while it was Lent.  I did this again from late July to mid-October, at which point I caught up to where I had been.

On 5 March, I finished transcribing all of the hymn texts in The Lutheran Service Book.

In October, I started a sub-project in which I record (with three recorders [soprano, alto, and tenor] and electric bass) the tunes named after saints.
Cover Projects
Here's an updated list with links and what groups the projects cover
Ostensibly, the goal of these projects is to figure out every part to every song, but over the last few years, I've done more writing than recording.  Last year, I recorded only four audio examples.  Still, I plan to continue these explorations.

Since I started Byrd Dimension only in November, I still have a lot of old notes I need to post.  I think most of them are about Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which is my favorite Byrds album.

Last year, I got a box set of the first seven Manfred Mann EPs, and for the first few months of this year, I plan on posting notes I made while listening to those over the course of the last seven or eight months.  After that, I might turn my attention to Mighty Garvey!, which I got even before the EPs but which I haven't listened to as much (simply because it's longer).
My posts on the Manfred Mann EPs lasted from January to the end of March.  I started posts on Mighty Garvey! in May (because I first listened to it in May of the previous year), and these went until August.

From March to May, I re-watched (almost all of) season two of The Monkees and made a list of what songs they performed in "the rainbow room" and what episodes these songs appeared in.

I don't remember the specific dates now, but sometime in the summer, I pre-ordered the new, re-written version of Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story.  There was a big fiasco in the shipping.  Some blockhead in the post office assumed that since it was a book, it should go to the office of a book publisher, and after it arrived there, it got lost.  This publishing company eventually sent the book back to Beatland Books in California, and it had to be shipped to me again.  All this resulted in a two-month delay before I got the book.  Eventually, I got it on 9 December, and sadly, Mike Nesmith died the following day.

Starting on Brian Wilson's birthday, I listened to all of the Beach Boys albums and Brian Wilson solo albums I have in my collection.

In early fall, I wrote a series of posts about songs on albums that I got last year (Jeff Lynne's ELO's From out of Nowhere and the Beach Boys' 15 Big Ones and Love You).  I wanted to give myself time to become familiar with them before writing about them.

I recorded more excerpts of songs than I did last year:  ELO's "Waterfall," the Alan Parsons Project's "The Gold Bug," the Beatles' "The Fool on the Hill" and "Piggies," the Moody Blues' "House of Four Doors (Part 1)" and "Are You Sitting Comfortably," and Argent's "The Coming of Kohoutek."  Plus a few others detailed below.
FAWM and 50/90
I haven't been very productive for FAWM or 50/90 for the last few years, so I have no great hope for these, but as long as I write a couple decent songs for each challenge, I'll be satisfied.
I wrote ten songs for FAWM.  At the beginning of the month, I had a notion to use clarinet, Clavinet, and claves in all of my songs, but I ended up doing this for only three.  The first is probably the best (of all of my FAWM songs for the year):


I had my worst showing ever in 50/90.  I wrote only one song:

Bach Cantatas
I plan on continuing my cycle of listening to the Bach cantatas (going by BWV number), one every Saturday.  In early November, I'll reach the end (of what I have, anyway), but I'll probably end up restarting the sequence with BWV 1.  Many of the CMQ pieces (see below) are Bach cantatas, and I'm going to make more of an effort to follow along in the notation than I have been.  Occasionally, I make notes on these, and I plan to post them on Lyres, Harps, and Cymbals in the distant future.
By accident, I listened to BWV 199 when I should have listened to BWV 198, so I ended up listening to those two out of order.  I finished this project on 6 November.  I'd thought I started on 21 March 2018, but I'd actually started on the 31st.  I think there's some discrepancy about when Bach's birthday is according to different calendar systems, and the 21st and the 31st are both given, resulting in my confusion.  After the cantatas, I listened to six motets (BWV 225-230), which I think I'd listened to only twice before.  At this point, I also shifted the schedule from Saturday to Sunday.  On 19 December, I started the cycle of cantatas again (still going by BWV number).
I plan on continuing to learn and record pieces with the Hohner Pianet N sample on my Nord Electro 5.  For now, I'm going to continue my schedule of posting pieces on Wednesdays, but since I already have a handful of pieces I recorded last year (which will reach through most of February), I might change this later.  I'm going to continue in the Czerny 100 and in Bartók's First Term at the Piano (which I might finish by the end of the year).  I'd also like to record at least one piece by Mozart and one by Beethoven.

I might write some more posts about specific groups or songs that used the Pianet, but for now I have no definite plans for these.
Near the end of March, I reached a point in the Czerny 100 where they were just too difficult for me.  I simply couldn't play #22, so I gave up.  I finished Bartók's First Term at the Piano near the end of October, and just days before that, I started Diabelli's Die ersten 12 Lectionen am Pianoforte.

I recorded a Mozart minuet (using the Pianet T sample) on his birthday, but I didn't post it until April:


And in February, I recorded a Beethoven ecossaise (in Eb major and 2/4 - two things I usually try to avoid!), but I didn't post it until May:


In March, I found a Hohner catalogue from April 1973, and in June, I started translating some of the entries for the keyboard instruments.

In late August, I finally found some more information about one of the pieces on the Hohner Pianet demonstration record.  All I knew was that it's a menuet in C major by Michel Corrette.  While poking around on IMSLP, I found the work it comes from:  Pièces pour la Musette, Op. 5.  I started learning it immediately and posted it a couple weeks later:


Over the next few months, I learned a handful of other pieces from Pièces pour la Musette too:  a tambourin in C major (the first piece I've ever seen in 2/8), an-other menuet in C major, a fanfare in C major (the hundredth piece I recorded for this project), a menuet in C minor, and a canon in C major (the last two yet to be posted).

Near the end of September, I made a video about how to play the Pianet part in the Beatles' "Savoy Truffle."  I posted it in mid-October:

Cembalet Records
In August, I acquired five EPs by the Mag'net Quartet that feature the Hohner Cembalet.  I plan on listening to one of these every week day in February.
  • Cembalet Party, Vol. 1 on Mondays
  • Cembalet Party, Vol. 2 on Tuesdays
  • Boom sur le Cembalet! on Wednesdays 
  • Chansons immortelles de Marguerite Monnot on Thursdays
  • Cembalet variétés on Fridays
Nothing much to say about this, but I did do it.
CMQ
I skipt it last time (I used to do it every other year), but I'm going to attempt doing the Classical Music Queue again this year.  Every time I hear a classical piece mentioned, I add it to a list (provided I have it in my collection), and then I listen to them one a day.  I severely underestimated the number of pieces I would hear mentioned, and/so I'll start the year by making my way through pieces I added back in July 2015.  At the time, I was reading a book about Bach, so - like I mentioned above - many of the CMQ pieces are Bach cantatas.
A few times, I considered taking a break from this project, but I did listen to a piece every day.  Admittedly, sometimes I listened to excerpts rather than a whole piece (especially for Beethoven's Leonore and Wagner's Ring Cycle).  I made it through the pieces I'd heard mentioned from July to the beginning of October 2015, so I still have a long way to go before I'm caught up.
I got the multi-track stems for Fleet Foxes' Shore in December (even before I'd heard the album), and I reasoned that since I'd made so much progress in my cover projects (where I'm trying to figure out parts by listening to a finished mix), learning parts from isolated tracks should be fairly straight forward.  I'm going to wait until July to start that part of this project (so I can simply enjoy listening to the album first), and in the meantime, I'll be posting old notes I made about the first three Fleet Foxes albums (but mostly Helplessness Blues, which is my favorite).  I plan on listening to Shore on the 21st of every month, at least from January to June; I don't know if I'll continue this into July and beyond.
I did listen to Shore on 21 July.  In fact, this was the first time I listened to it on vinyl.  I was supposed to have gotten it for my birthday in March, but there were delays.

I started figuring out parts in July, and I knew at least a bit of each song by early October.  (I might have done this sooner, but somehow I'd accidentally skipt over "Featherweight.")  Shortly after this, however, I sort of abandoned this project.  It seems that a lot of the songs have odd rhythms or guitar tunings, and/so it was frustrating trying to figure out not only the parts but also how to write them down.
Booker T. & the MGs
During my family's virtual Thanksgiving party, my cousin mentioned Booker T. & the MG's, specifically how he was trying to learn to play organ like that.  Consequently, I listened to the sole Booker T. & the MG's album I have every week for the remainder of 2020.  For Christmas, I got a box set of the first five albums, and I plan on listening to one every Friday (but because fifty-three Fridays don't divide equally by five albums, I'll also listen to The Best of Booker T. & the MG's a few times).
In March, I got a copy of McLemore Avenue, which is basically a cover album of the Beatles' Abbey Road (a few songs are left out), and I added this to the cycle in April.  This evened out the schedule, and I ended up having to listen to The Best of Booker T. & the MG's only once.
Learning Parts
As in previous years, I aim to figure out a part (cycling through my cover projects) for every time I see posts that old classmates make about their creative endeavors.  Starting in July, I'm going to figure out two:  one for a cover project and one for Vulpine Vox.

Sometimes, I figure out a part as a "toll" for listening to an album.  Although I don't hold myself to this very strictly (especially for live albums and certainly for albums I'm not very familiar with yet), I'd like to continue doing it.  The same goes for figuring out a part to songs I hear mentioned (although I usually pass if it's a song I've already figured out a part to).
Figuring out two parts for each of these "creative catalysts" proved to be too much.  By September, I was consistently a month behind, and/so in mid-October, I got rid of that requirement.

According to my spreadsheet, I figured out 263 parts, although in reality, this may not be an accurate count (for example, I know I figured out sections of the vocal melody of the Monkees' "I Wanna Be Free" on two different occasions, but I don't remember if I counted these as separate instances; I'm sure there are also parts I figured out but didn't write down and have since forgotten).  I didn't hold too strictly to figuring out parts as tolls or because I'd heard the song mentioned somewhere, although I did do this occasionally (much more for the former than the latter).

I added five albums to my list of albums for which I know at least a bit of every song:  a compilation of Hank Williams titled Icon (for which I figured out the chord progressions for every song), Manfred Mann's As Was EP, Fleet Foxes' Shore, Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline, and Peter & Gordon's Hurtin' 'n' Lovin'.  Before the year started, I already knew parts for some of these, but everything I learned from As Was and Shore I figured out this year.
Organ and Moog
I'm going to continue to save for a Hammond SKX and a Moog Subsequent 37.  I'd like to get both at the same time (in order to avoid a second trip to the music store, which is a few hours away), but - going by the combined total of what I have saved for each - I'd like to have enough to afford the Moog alone by 2 July (the mid-point of the year) and enough to afford the organ alone by the end of the year.  The first of these goals seems much more realistic than the second, however.

In the extremely unlikely event that I'm able to afford both instruments by the time the year is over, saving for college will become my new priority, but I'll also start saving for a digital Mellotron, which is the next instrument on my list.
I got all three installments of the coronavirus stimulus money, but I'm not sure whether I really should have (I may not qualify for it).  Before this doubt arose, however, my dad ordered both of the instruments for me (he has an account with the music store).

The organ was ordered in May, but because of shipping delays, it still hasn't arrived.  The organ itself is in the warehouse now, but apparently, the stand is lost somewhere.  The current estimate of arrival is mid-January, but I'm not that optimistic about it.

I got the Moog (through the mail, so I avoided having to go to the music store!) in late November, and the first thing I did was try to replicate a little tune that Mike Vickers played on the BBC in September 1969:


Because I may not be able to keep the coronavirus stimulus money (which I would use to pay for these instruments), I'm unsure about what to do about my finance situation.  For now, as I was before, I'm just trying to save as much as I can.  The Moog, at least, is on a payment plan, so paying for that is a bit more manageable.

I also made a couple smaller purchases.  In January, I got a volume pedal for my guitar (mostly so I could play the solo in the Moody Blues' "And My Baby's Gone"), and in July, I got a güiro (mostly because there's one in the Beatles' "Tell Me What You See").

Other Things to Note

The Everly Brothers

I must not have had the idea to do this until after I wrote my post of 2021 projects (otherwise, I would have mentioned it), but I listened to the Everly Brothers regularly every month.  Near the end of 2020, my cousin had posted that he'd listened to a lot of Everly Brothers, so I felt I should become more familiar with them.  From January to August, I listened to The Essential Everly Brothers (disc 1 on the 10th, disc 2 on the 20th, although I shifted this to the 5th and 15th just for July in order to accommodate a trip to Kansas that lasted from the 8th to the 12th).  After Don Everly died in August, I felt I should be doing more, so I started listening to a four-disc set titled Cathy's Clown: The Best of the Everly Brothers.  I also changed my schedule and listened on Thursdays rather than on a specific day of the month.  I skipt the first Thursday in September and the last Thursday in December, though, because those two months had five Thursdays each and wouldn't easily accommodate listening to a four-CD set.  I didn't always figure out a part as a toll for listening to these albums, but I did figure out quite a few parts.  Here are the bass parts (with the chords written in) for "Cathy's Clown" and "Take a Message to Mary" (with the disclaimer - as always - that I may have something wrong).



Mandolin Monday

In mid-January, I discovered the #mandolinmonday hashtag on Instagram.  I'd already been learning some Irish reels and other traditional pieces on mandolin (I get a lot from flutetunes.com), and I would occasionally post some on YouTube.  I'd recorded those with my DSLR, but doing them on my phone proved to be much easier, if a bit less professional.

Letters

In late winter and spring, I read two e-books of composers' letters.  Years ago, I'd gotten an e-book of Mendelssohn's letters for free on Amazon, and I read this from 2 February to 22 May.  I found a digitized book of Schumann's letters on Internet Archive, and I read this from 6 February to 1 April.

Telemann

In March, I started two projects focusing on Georg Philipp Telemann.  The previous summer, I'd gotten Telemann for Mandolin by John Goodin, a collection of Telemann's pieces that are suitable for (but not originally written for) mandolin.  I made it a goal to record one a week for six months (mid-March to mid-September).  At first, I posted these on Instagram (these were what I did for #mandolinmonday), and in June, I started uploading them to YouTube too.  (I did a bit of editing so that the sound is a bit more centered, although for some reason, this lowered the video quality.)

The other project will take considerably longer.  I explained it more fully in my introductory post, but basically, I'm going through Telemann's Fast allgemeines Evangelisch-Musicalisches Lieder-Buch.  I'm modernizing the notation (apparently, it exists only in Telemann's autograph in which the melodies are in soprano clef) and recording the tunes.  Here's the first one:


Holst: Brook Green Suite

In February, the music department of the university I want to attend posted that one of the ensembles was practicing Holst's Brook Green Suite.  I'd never even heard of this, but with the irrational notion that learning this would somehow help me get back to college (where studying music isn't even my aim), I found a copy of the score and spent almost all of March working on just the first movement (I even learned alto clef!).  Aside from the bass, I learned every instrument part on my keyboard and used Mellotron sounds wherever possible.  I don't know if recording a classical piece using Mellotron sounds has ever been done before.


Currently, I have no plans to do the other movements.  It seems like they would be more work even than this was.

In December, using the same idea but on a far simpler level, I recorded an English madrigal:


"Theme from a Filleted Place"

In January, I learned the bass part and most of the guitar parts for the Shadows' "Theme from a Filleted Place" (I got the rest of the lead guitar in April), and in May, I did a cover of it.  I did it with acoustic guitars, though, partially because I was interested to hear what it would sound like and partially because I was having tuning problems with my electric guitar.


Twelve Country Dances for the Year 1779

I recorded a couple movements from Ignatius Sancho's Twelve Country Dances for the Year 1779 (which I found on flutetunes.com):  Ruffs and Rhees, All of One Mind (which I recorded the day after flutetunes posted the notation), and Lady Mary Montagu's Reel.

Bach Organ Works

Like I did last year, starting on the anniversary of Bach's death (28 July), I listened to the seventeen-disc box set of Peter Hurford's recordings of Bach's organ works at the rate of a disc a week (on Wednesdays).  For the remaining six Wednesdays of the year, I listened to a six-disc set of Buxtehude's organ works.

Corrette: Pièces pour la Musette, Op. 5

As I mentioned above, I recorded a menuet from Corrette's Pièces pour la Musette for my Hohner Pianet project.  Most of the pieces, however, are two parts in treble clef.  In September, I started learning and recording some of these.  Normally, I probably would have used mandolin, but after my Telemann for Mandolin project, I wanted a break from it, so I used guitar instead.

Here's the first piece I did, an-other menuet:



After these, I started learning pieces from Corrette's Divertissements.  I have a handful yet to be posted, but I don't plan on recording any more.

"The Holly and the Ivy"

As with the Holst piece above, because the university music department had (back in December of 2020) posted a video of "The Holly and the Ivy" arranged for two oboes, I felt I should learn this too.  I found a two-part arrangement on flutetunes.com, recorded it (on alto recorder) near the end of September, and posted it in December:


Keyboard Videos

I didn't have any particular plans for this at the beginning of the year, but I made a number of videos where I demonstrated keyboard parts, showing both the notation and my hands playing the part.  All of these were for songs by bands in my cover projects.

Harpsichord in the Moody Blues' "Procession"


Organ solo in Manfred Mann's "I Can't Believe What You Say"


Electric piano solo in the Monkees' "I'm a Believer"


Ultimately unused Mellotron in the Zombies' "A Rose for Emily"


With a slightly different format, I also made a video about the Mellotron part in Manfred Mann's "Everyday Another Hair Turns Grey":


---&---

Overall, I think I workt on musical projects with more diligence and intensity than I have any other year so far.  Since March, I've recorded at least four tunes a week.  And yet for all of this work, it seems like I'm not making much progress.
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