Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Best of the Rest: 7-29-09

1. Roger Bourland: Our favorite UCLA chairman has started a new project, music for a short film. He might get a REAL trumpeter! And read on how to compose good melodies when using a keyboard.

2. Adventures of Wang: Our favorite "quirky alien" has plans for how to recharge her batteries as a graduate student in music.

3. A View from the Podium: Our favorite conductor who divides time between Britain and Eastern Oregon and is named Kenneth Woods writes about the best CD store in Madison, WI.

4. Matt Van Brink: Our favorite composer/pianist/accordionist shares two new songs - "The Old Switcheroo" and "Lost".

5. The Gathering Note: Our favorite lawyer/freelance arts journalist named Zach Carstensen gives the history of his 2-year-old blog.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

This sounds very weird out of context. A film with a small budget usually is all electronic -- as is this one. So I am the whole orchestra. It is common for low budget films to at LEAST feature one real instrument to make it sound more REAL.

The thing about playing with one finger comes from keyboard players using piano technique to emulate, say, an oboe. With legato, notes overlap and you have a brief INTERVAL which doesn't happen in reality. One way to avoid that is to play with one finger at a time, which works surprisingly well. Especially with portato passages.

Scott said...

Roger, I understood what you meant, I just couldn't resist the line. Your advice makes sense, especially if the composer comes from a keyboard background.