Hello all-- It feels good to finally get back to composing and recording a little. I've been working on an old piece I never finished. The draft audio files are here: Blues in C 1 OGG http://www.xscd.com/pub/music/audio/ogg/stephen-doonan_blues-in-c-1.ogg MP3 http://www.xscd.com/pub/music/audio/mp3/stephen-doonan_blues-in-c-1.mp3 Usually I record the audio directly into Ardour or Audacity, but this time I recorded the MIDI performance instead, into Rosegarden (I also like Muse very much), then played back the slightly cleaned up MIDI file and recorded the audio produced by the tone generator (a rack-mounted Roland Fantom XR) that was being "played" by the MIDI file, which is here: Blues in C 1, MIDI (standard MIDI file type 1) http://www.xscd.com/pub/music/midi/stephen-doonan_blues-in-c-1_version-2.mid A much older version of Blues in C 1, MIDI file: http://www.xscd.com/pub/music/midi/stephen-doonan_blues-in-c-1_version-1.mid My Blues in C 2, a more recent composition that I finished and recorded before finishing Blues in C 1: http://www.xscd.com/pub/music/audio/ogg/stephen-doonan_blues-in-c-2.ogg http://www.xscd.com/pub/music/audio/mp3/stephen-doonan_blues-in-c-2.mp3 Both of these "blues in C major" were created with one original idea: to take a standard, bare-bones, dirt-simple blues progression in C (tonic/subdominant/dominant "1, 4, 5" song) and try to do something "interesting" with it, but retaining the essential skeleton of the blues in C major. In Blues in C 1, I aimed for putting in a different "passing chord" for every beat of every bar, only briefly landing on C, F and G at their mandatory times. For Blues in C 2, the more recent composition but the first to be completed and recorded, the idea and intent remained the same, but the technique I used was to have a bass line that shifted all around the C, F and G which formed the piece's structure, and that technique allowed for some interesting melodic composition. Anyway, I hope everybody's doing well-- Steve Doonan New Mexico US -- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one. -Charles Mackay ----------------------------------------------------------------
