Update

Hi folks,

I obviously haven't been blogging recently, because I've very busy getting back into my regular schedule of life. I'm back at weekly piano and flute lessons, but not voice lessons yet because my teacher is busy being a new father. :) But I've started something new: Musical Theatre! Twice a week, for 3 hours. On Mondays, we alternate between dance and acting for the first half, and then have choral for the second half. And then on Thursdays, we have vocal masterclasses. It's fantastic, and I'm learning loads!

And of course, I have "school work" too. I'm also taking an online writing class, so that's good.

The theatre company I'm with is doing A Midsummer Night's Dream this November, so I'm just starting to get pretty busy with that too, directing, music writing, and lots of rehearsal scheduling! It's going to be fabulous.

Also, in case you didn't know, I went on a big backpacking trip to the mountains with my Venturer company, this past August. I'm working on a big series of blog posts on that, which I will post periodically.

Anyway, just thought I'd post a quick blog to let you know what I've been up to!

Take care,
Daniel

Prelude

Hi everyone, this is just a little piece that I wrote for solo piano. It's also the one that I am submitting to the Kiwanis Music Festival for composition. Here's the short blurb I had to write about it:

"Prelude is a short piece for solo piano. The theme is introduced in the opening bar, modified and developed, and then finally recapitulated near the end. It is largely inspired by the works of Scriabin and Rachmaninoff and should be taken at a moderate, very free tempo, using lots of rubato to convey the dark, mysterious feel."

Hope you enjoy it. By the way, if you can think of a more creative title for it, I would be forever grateful! Post them in the comments. :)

Finished the score for The Tempest!

Hey everyone, I just wanted to share with you that I finished writing a score of incidental music for Shakespeare's play, The Tempest. It will be performed live accompanying Celsius Youth Theatre's production of The Tempest, this November. It took me almost all summer to write, but I am very happy with the outcome. It's the longest thing I've written (10.5 minutes), and I actually like it, which is saying quite a lot, seeing as I am quite the perfectionist when it comes to my music. Anyway, I just thought that I'd let you know! Maybe I'll find a way to post some of it here or something.

School, and my musical lack of happiness

Hey everybody,

Well, "school" has started for me! Kind of. Being a homeschooler, who's to say when school really begins? But for me, since some of my weekly lessons have begun, and I'm back to practicing piano and flute for hours, and doing math etc, I think it's started for me. I have to admit, I'm pretty happy to be back at it!

Right now, I'm still writing music for my youth theatre's production of The Tempest. It's coming along pretty well (I've written 8.5 minutes!), but I'm finding that I have trouble writing really happy music. Maybe it's because I like really dark music and stuff in minor keys. That's all good when I'm writing whatever I want, but in this show, there's a couple of spots where it's actually gotta to be joyful. It's funny, because if you know me at all, you'll know that I'm a very happy person. I'm not a dark souled, troubled, sad person. Quite the contrary! But when it comes to music, I just like...dark music. So I'm trying to listen to happy, joyful tonal music, as opposed to my regular music (Sweeney Todd, Wicked, RENT, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev...)

So, that's a little update into my life. :)

An experiment...that is neat.

So I was doing a bit of recording today, and I was playing with different effects on my software. I improvised some flute and recorded it, and then put the "echo" on. And it sounds really cool! So I uploaded it to my youtube. Here it is. Bear in mind, that like I said, I just did it off the fly, so it doesn't "go" anywhere, and my intonation is pretty blah (to my ears), but I hope you enjoy it!

What have I been up to lately?

Well, for starters, I'm writing a whole bunch of music for a youth production of The Tempest with Celsius Youth Theatre which is the theatre company that I co-founded. I'm writing a fair amount of music, in a relatively short time, so it's rather challenging, but hey, deadlines are good. We're having some live musicians that will be playing the live music on stage with the production, so I think it will be really great. We have 1 bass guitarist, 1 classical guitarist, 1 violinist and 1 recorder. Funky combo, huh?

I'm also doing some reading. At Kelsey's suggestion via the comments section, I'm reading How Doctors think by Jerome Groopman. I'm finding it really interesting, and I'll be sure to post a review once I'm finished. I'm also reading Richard II by Billy Shakespeare. I've only just started reading it, but again I'll post a review when I'm done.

Done!

Done! I have finished my longest, best piece that I have composed. The second movement of my piano concerto, officially titled Piano Concerto no. 1 in G Sharp Minor-Andante. Ooh, doesn't that sound spiffy? Now, mind you, I say that I am done it, but in three months from now, or so, I will likely scoff at it and rewrite a lot of it. Oh well, I am pretty happy with it at the moment. On to movements 1 and 3!

Woot!

I am almost finished the second movement from the piano concerto that I am writing. Its always nice to finish a piece that you don't completely hate. And no, I haven't written the first or third movements. I wrote the second movement first because the theme just strolled into my head and I knew that it would make decent second movement