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This month…
• new free piece
• new publication
• new album update
• recommendations
Free Piece
Lately, I've been writing a lot of short pieces that explore unpredictable melodies and harmonies, focusing only on mood, color, and expression. It's an exercise in not following a formula or what's expected in order to allow things to be slightly capricious and surprising. It's liberating…a sort of a wabi-sabi mindset. I plan on using many of these pieces for a new solo project later this year.
“2AM” is a very short piece that explores some colorful harmonies and melodic twists. It should be played very freely, never really sticking to a tempo. It has a very dark and quiet vibe. I hope you give it a try or just a listen.
I have some new pieces being published by Guitar Chamber Music Press. The first is a trio I wrote for one of my Bayonne High School guitar ensembles called “Tangoish”.
I often like to write pieces that target specific technical and musical needs for my students. “Tangoish” helped my students learn some typical tango syncopations, rhythmic tutti, various articulations, playing in upper positions, and controlling frequently changing dynamics.
The piece will be available soon via my artist page at GCMP.
Other compositions in the works for GCMP… an additional guitar trio, a collection of about 25 pieces (ensemble and solo) for beginner guitar classrooms and school ensembles, and a book of some of my favorite newsletter pieces from 2022 - 2026 which will be available in standard notation & TABs. Stay tuned…
New Album Update
My upcoming duo record with Tom Eaton, “Until the Light Was Gone”, has been mixed and is getting closer to being released. We are currently looking through lots of incredible photos taken by Anthony Saint James for the CD layout and website.
This is one of my favorite parts of the process of making an album. As I listen to the final mixes, I think about how these fully formed pieces started from scribbles in my journal, or from Tom and I improvising and writing in real time. I don't think either of us had any idea where this music was headed during those first few days of recording (it was originally planned to be a solo electric guitar album). It has taken on a life of its own and has become a project that we are both extremely excited about.
As the music enters the final stage of being mastered, we'll focus on how the music will be translated visually for the album art and for a new website, where this album…and hopefully many more from us…will live.
We're getting close now. Stay tuned!
Recommendations
Here's what I've been listening to and reading…
That's it for February…
Spring training has begun, the Pirates are actually looking like contenders this year (be still my heart), and I won our Strat-O-Matic baseball World Series. We'll have our player draft for the new Strat season in a couple weeks. Kian has been doing some intense studying and mathematical calculations of last year's player stats, so Jason and I may be in trouble.
I hope we all get a little early spring weather soon. It has been an awful winter. Until March…
