Saturday, January 1, 2022

2022 Musical Projects

Here are my musical projects for 2022.  Many of these are simply continuations of projects I've already been doing for a while.

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 2022, I'll be practicing D major.

Lyres, Harps, and Cymbals

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 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.

Last year, I started recording (using recorders) the hymn tunes named after saints.  I have no set schedule for recording these, but I post them on Tuesdays.  I'd like to make it at least half way through these tunes by the end of the year.

I've been waiting (since May!) for my Hammond SKX to arrive, but once I finally get it, I'm going to start making my way through James Bastien's Great Hymns Arranged for Organ.

I've been working ahead on my Wednesday posts by putting the hymn text (if it's public domain) and the Biblical passages that the hymnal cites into a draft.  I'm about two and a half years ahead at this point, and I'd like to have all of these posts framed by the end of the year.

Cover Projects

Most of these were started with the goal 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:
I don't have any specific plans for these projects, but I'm sure I'll write about various features and probably even record a few songs to demonstrate what parts I've learned.

August will mark the tenth year of the Verulam Cover Project.  I feel like I should do something special for the occasion, but I haven't thought of anything suitable.

At the end of 2019, I started a blog about the Byrds, but I really haven't done very much with that.  It was never intended to be on the same level as the above projects, and I'm considering abandoning it.

FAWM and 50/90

I participate in FAWM and 50/90 every year, although for the last three years or so, my productivity has steadily declined.  I have no great plans for these, but I'm going to participate, at least.

Bach Cantatas

At the end of last year, I started listening (on Sundays) to the Bach cantatas I have in order by BWV number.  Occasionally, I follow along in the notation and jot down some notes.

Mandolin Monday

About a year ago, I discovered the mandolinmonday hashtag on Instagram and have recorded a piece for it every week since.  (Eventually, I started uploading these to YouTube too.)  I'm going to continue this in 2022.  Most of the pieces I do will probably be traditional tunes (last year, I found three massive collections of Irish and Scottish tunes on IMSLP, so I doubt I'll run out any time soon), but I'd also like to do a few pieces from Elgar's Very Easy Melodious Exercises in the First Position, Op. 22.  These were written for violin, but they won't all translate easily to mandolin.

Hohner Pianet

A couple years ago, 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).  In 2022, I'd like to finish recording Diabelli's 12 ersten Lectionen am Pianoforte (I've recorded the first seven, although I haven't posted them all yet).  Aside from that, I'm going to focus on Handel.  A few months ago, I scoured IMSLP and downloaded a bunch of his minuets.  Eventually, I'd like to take a break from this project, but I don't know if I'll do that this year.

Telemann Lieder-Buch

In March last year, 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 also modernizing the notation, which - apparently - exists only in soprano clef.  I try to post one tune a week (on Thursday), and so far, I've been successful, but it's constantly a struggle not to fall behind.

Django Reinhardt

In April, Denny Laine's Instagram account posted that he regularly listens to Django Reinhardt and credits him as an influence.  I felt that I should listen to Reinhardt more, so I'm going to listen to a disc a week.  I have four different box sets:  The Absolutely Essential 3-CD Collection, Classic Jazz Archive (two discs), Swing Guitars (ten discs), and The Classic Early Recordings (five discs).  I'm most familiar with The Absolutely Essential 3-CD Collection, which I think I've had for over ten years now.  I listen to Swing Guitars every now and then, but Classic Jazz Archive only rarely.  I haven't listened to The Classic Early Recordings before.

British Invasion

Last year, my cousin started a British Invasion cover band, and when I saw him during a trip to Kansas, he specifically mentioned the Hollies, the Kinks, and the Spencer Davis Group.  I felt that I should become (even) more familiar with these bands, so I'm going to listen to them regularly.

The Hollies (on Mondays), cycling through:
  • 30th Anniversary Collection (three discs)
  • Stay with the Hollies
  • In the Hollies Style
  • Hollies
  • Would You Believe?
  • For Certain Because...
An-other goal I have is to figure out the second guitar part in the middle of "Bus Stop."  I learned one of the parts years ago, and/so I feel I need to learn the other one too.

I've figured out the bass part for "Stop, Stop, Stop" twice, but I never wrote it down (which is why I had to re-learn it).  The liner notes in the 30th Anniversary Collection explain that the version on that compilation has a longer instrumental break compared to the one on For Certain Because....  I'll have to write out the part and compare the two.

If I can find a suitable sound on the Hammond SKX, I'm going to make a video demonstrating the reed organ part at the beginning and end of "Dear Eloise."  The reed organ sounds I've found for my Nord Electro 5D don't have the right tonal character.

The Kinks (on Tuesdays), cycling through:
  • The Kinks
  • Kinda Kinks [Deluxe Edition]
  • Kink Kontroversy [Deluxe Edition]
  • Face to Face [Deluxe Edition]
  • Something Else
  • Village Green Preservation Society [Deluxe Edition]
  • Arthur or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire [Deluxe Edition]
Originally, I was going to limit my Kinks albums to those by the original line-up (up to Village Green Preservation Society).  I got Arthur for Christmas though, and my cousin had also mentioned this album specifically, so I'm including that one too.

The Spencer Davis Group

I have only two Spencer Davis Group albums:  The Best of the Spencer Davis Group and Eight Gigs a Week: The Steve Winwood Years.  Eight Gigs a Week is a two-CD set and contains all of the tracks on The Best of the Spencer Davis Group (although, curiously, there's a different take of "Gimme Some Lovin'").  The liner notes explain that the collection "includes every studio recording the band made with lil' Stevie for Fontana Records" with the exception of a German-only track.  I'm going to listen to this once a month, one disc on each of the first two Thursdays.

Cab Calloway

At Christmas 2018, my cousin had mentioned Cab Calloway in such a way that made me feel a bit ignorant for not being very familiar with him.  I knew he was in The Blue Brothers, but I didn't know much more than that.  In July last year, I'd found a compilation album of his music (in the Absolutely Essential 3-CD Collection) at Half Price Books in Kansas.  In order to redress my ignorance, then, I'm going to listen to this every month:  one disc on each of the first three Wednesdays.

Mellotron

Last year, I recorded a couple pieces using all (or mostly all) Mellotron sounds (a movement from Holst's Brook Green Suite and "It Was a Lover and His Lass," an English madrigal).  I'd like to do more recordings like these, but for now, I have only two planned.  I won't reveal them now, but one is a Scottish tune I found on flutetunes.com, and the other is a classical piece for a string ensemble.

Books

More years ago than I care to reveal, I started reading Peter Guralnick's Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock'n'Roll.  I set it aside a few times (because I was busy with other things), but I've been slowly making progress in it over the last year.  I'd like to finish it this year.  I also plan on finishing a book I started reading in November about ABBA:  ABBA: The Treasures by Ingmarie Halling.

To-day, I started three more music books:  The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story by Andrew Sandoval (the new, re-written version from 2021), Infinite Tuesday by Michael Nesmith, and Man on the Run: Paul McCartney in the 1970s by Tom Doyle.  The Monkees is a massive tome, and I doubt I'll get through even all of 1966.  I don't read as quickly as I used to, so I don't know if it's an achievable goal to have finished Infinite Tuesday and Man on the Run by the end of the year, but I'd like to be at least half done with both.

I'm also going to start working through William Lovelock's First Year Harmony, which I found on Internet Archive, although this may become too advanced for me rather quickly.  I'll see what happens.

Recorders

I've had a soprano recorder since 1997 or so.  I got a tenor in 2017 and an alto in 2019, but it was only in the last year or two that I started multi-tracking these to make recordings of recorder ensembles.  I started doing the four-part arrangements of hymn tunes (using electric bass for the fourth part), and I did a two-part arrangement of "The Holly and the Ivy," but I'd like to do some other tunes with recorders too.  So far, however, I have only one planned, which I'll do in May.

Parts

As always, I'll be learning parts this year.  For each time that old high school classmates 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 figure out a part as a toll for listening to an album, but I don't always observe this very strictly.