A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

This is a work in progress.

Play it:

Subscribe here:

Martin Luther is credited with this hymn in 1529. Today i present a simple statement of the opening few notes. Familiar? I can't decide if the penultimate chord, on the word "Our" should be
D 10/9 - F# 25/18 - A 5/3
or
D 9/8 - F# 45/32 - A 27/16.
Decisions, decisions. Here it is as the latter.

Play it:

I just noticed this video of a 60x60 concert in NYC with my short piece for
bassoon, bent wire spring, and percussion board.



60x60 Dance (2008 International Mix) performed at the World Financial Center Winter Garden in New York City on Friday, November 14, 2008. Music: Prent Rodgers Dance: Elana B Cohen

The rules stipulate that all compositions be no more than 60 seconds in length, which are assembled into concerts of 60 at a time. The whole operation is run by Robert Voisey. More information here: http://www.VoxNovus.com

For this 2008 performance, Robert enlisted a group of very talented dancers. More here.


He has also worked with Aaron Krister Johnson on a microtonal 60x60, which I think has been assembled for a concert in Chicago that Aaron is organizing for April 27th MCA Chicago 60x60/UnTwelve mix.

Prent Rodgers

Update: Here is a picture of the "Bent Wire Spring", an instrument I built back in the 70's. It is a block of birch, about 3/4" by 4" by 10", with a groove cut out for an angle iron fabrication with mid-gauge piano wires coming out. In the middle of the angle iron is a hand wound magnetic pickup that goes to an amplifier. The piano wires are bent into random shapes. You pluck the wires and each makes its own enharmonic spectrum with deep bass tones and an assortment of harmonics. Click the photo to enlarge.

The Music of the Hoh River Valley CD now up on iTunes

I worked with CDBaby (and paid them $45) to put my last CD up on iTunes. It took a few weeks, but you can find it now on iTunes. It's an experiment.

O Sacred Head, Now Wounded - take 12

This is a final version of this piece

Play it:

Subscribe here:

O Sacred Head, Now Wounded is one of my favorite hymns. It started life in the 11th century as a poem, later set to music. Bach harmonized it around 1734.

This version is scored for mallet instruments and woodwinds, specifically marimba, vibraphone, finger piano, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and sine waves. The basic idea is to keep the marvelous Bach harmonies but stretch it out a bit. Each chord is repeated or held and arpeggiated before moving to the next one.

The tuning is low integer just, approximated in 72 EDO. You can see the specific ratios used in the chart above. Click on the image to make it bigger.

O Sacred Head, Now Wounded - take 1

This is a work in progress.

Play it:

Subscribe here:

I've finished the first run through of the piece. It's not quite ready, but I've run out of time to create the CD, so it's what gets burned there.

O Sacred Head, Now Wounded - deconstruction begins

This is a work in progress.

Play it:

Subscribe here:

This still needs a lot of work, but the basic outline is done. This piece has 63 chords, compared the the previous one with only 37. The specific deconstruction technique I'm using doesn't scale very well: it takes lots of keystrokes to do each manipulation. The basic idea is allowing a chord to arpeggiate for as long as it wants to before moving to the next one. Scored for woodwind quartet and mallet instruments for now.

O Sacred Head, Now Wounded

This is a work in progress.

Play it:

Subscribe here:

O Sacred Head, Now Wounded

This is a work in progress.

Play it:

Subscribe here:

This is a famous Bach harmonization of an 11th century song attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153).

Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming - #15

This is a work in progress.

Play it:

Subscribe here:

Revised to increase the variability of the attack time. There's a variable in each note that adds a few random milliseconds on to the start times of notes. I had it in place for the marimba, and now it's in place for the vibe, finger piano, and harp as well.

Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming

This is a work in progress. Take 13.

Play it:

Subscribe here:

The piece is pretty much complete now. I'm running several iterations and picking the one that sounds the most interesting now.

I'm calling these pieces "Transformed Hymns", since they are derived from traditional protestant hymns. This is the first, based on a 15th century German carol. Each note is allowed to stretch out for one to five notes, at varying tempos and volume.

This version is scored for finger piano, harp, marimba, vibraphone, and balloon drum. The tuning is 72 equal divisions of the octave using these notes:

• C 1/1


• D 10/9


• D 9/8


• E 5/4


• F 4/3


• F 25/18


• G 3/2


• A 5/3


• A 27/16


• B 16/9


• B 9/5


• B 15/8

First Stanza

This is a work in progress. This is the first stanza of the hymn with some deconstruction. Each chord is repeated an indeterminate number of times, playing faster or slower, with different types of arpeggiated alternatives.

Play it:

Subscribe here:

The rest of the bridge

This is a work in progress.

Play it:

Subscribe here:

The Bridge

This is a work in progress. Or most of it...

Play it:

Subscribe here:

Lo rambles on

This is a work in progress. I sped it up a bit and you can almost hear the melody now. I still have a lot of work to do before I finish. Did this on the train from Portland to Seattle tonight. Uploaded in Olympia!

Play it:

Subscribe here:

A few more measures of the hymn

This is a work in progress.

Play it:

Subscribe here:

Slowing it down a bit - Lo

This is a work in progress. Based on a hymn.

Play it:

Subscribe here:

More work on Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming

This is a work in progress.

Play it:

Subscribe here:

Hymn Transformations - Lo How a Rose

This is a work in progress.

Play it:

Subscribe here:

The idea is to take a while to work my way through one stanza of a hymn. This is the first chord of Lo How A Rose E're Blooming.

RPM Challenge 2010

It's time again for the RPM Challenge. It's an annual call for all musicians to get off the couch and make a CD of 10 songs or 35 minutes of music in one month. I've done it for the past two years, and it really does help focus the mind on getting it down on paper (or computer) and getting it done.

From the web site:

2010 RPM Challenge Sign-ups are NOW OPEN!

New bands: please REGISTER HERE!

Past participants: just log-in, go to your 'Edit' menu, select 'Update your Details' and there you will see the 2010 sign-up checkbox in the 'About' tab! Check that puppy and save your changes! :)

2010 is the 5th anniversary of RPM. Celebrate with us by making music!

Join our Facebook Page - Follow us on Twitter - Become a friend on MySpace or for the really good stuff - Hang out in our Forums!

Not clear on what this is all about?? This is the challenge: record an album in 28 days, just because you can.

That’s 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material recorded during the month of February. Go ahead… put it to tape.

Don't wait for inspiration - taking action puts you in a position to get inspired. You'll stumble across ideas you would have never come up with otherwise, and maybe only because you were trying to meet a day’s quota of (song)writing. Show up and get something done, and invest in yourself and each other.

Anyone can come up with an excuse to say “no,” so don’t. You have your orders - now let's get this party started!!

Want to get involed?? We are always looking for help! Promotion (online and print), web design/development (PHP, Joomla, MySQL, CSS, etc) and grass-roots regional organizers!! Email Mosfet - lotim@yahoo.com

Music of the Hoh River Valley

I've completed the CD for the Music of the Hoh River Valley. I'm working to put it up on iTunes via CD Baby. Today I've posted some liner notes. All the pieces are available on my web site, but I'm not sure where at this point. I really do need to organize them better.



Subscribe here: