6 Degrees of Separation: Can your network help someone in Tampa Bay make their day much more exciting?
So I’m wondering just what kind of impact you and I have in the world. Are our efforts truly worth something in a stranger’s life, or do we slog away for our own misguided satisfaction?
Let’s find out.
I’m going to write a short statement below and see how far your followers, friends and email list actually reach. Please participate! It doesn’t take long and you may be interested to see if the six degrees of separation are true – someone you know may know someone who knows someone… …who lives in the Tampa Bay area.
There are three easy steps to take:
Use the colorful ‘generous’ buttons below to share this post, including via email.
If you use Twitter, click here to tweet the statement below.
Simply copy and paste the statement below into your social media outlets and in emails – someone in your extended circles surely knows someone in Tampa Bay!
Share this post (#6degrees): Over 19? STEP UP and SING! @Stephen_P_Brown conducts #ClearwaterChorus Tues Sept 24 6:30pm @RuthEckerdHall
If we do this together, we might actually end up with 100 people attending on Tuesday night, double our current projection. Wouldn’t that be AWESOME?! Try it. Work with me in this experiment. Together, let’s see how connected our circles and networks really are…
The fifth piece in my composition quest was quite an adventure. Definitely surprising.
“Rescue Me, Recover Me” is based on Psalm 130, and the title stems from the term “redeem” which this psalm seems to be all about. It has a simple ABAB structure, so knowing that I wanted to write a choral work I began playing with the translated poem (I don’t read Hebraic) and converting the meaningful words into my own poem with rhyme and meter.
Wonderful!
Except that it looked a lot like the verses and chorus of a song.
Never mind. Onwards.
Well, the piece began and I created a simple progression of chords. I had intended the style to be along the lines of a nice scrunchy choral work similar to those of the contemporary American School such as Eric Whitacre and Randall Thompson, so I spent a lot of time studying 9th & 13th chords which made their way into the third verse and chorus.
As the piece developed, a vocal soloist took the opening verse and by the time I was done, I had written a verse-chorus song for vocalist, 3-part choir (soprano, alto and baritone), piano and bass. In addition, the verses and each time the chorus appeared the harmonies were slightly expanded and therefore the melodies slightly altered, too.
So much for my traditional English Choral work!
I don’t have a choir living in my basement, so the audio recording is actually a computer generated “AH” that represents the vocal parts. Of course, if you happen to have access to a choir and a digital recorder, please feel free to have a go and send me the results!
Please pass this blog post around so that others can access the music this week – not only might they enjoy the music, but they may be able to get a choir to record it, too. Thank you. You can use the social media buttons below, or just copy and paste the link above. Emails work just as well.
Add a comment below letting me know what you think of this piece – it will help me determine whether or not to stick with the verse-chorus format or have a go at the more traditional style.
There was recently an unscientific poll taken amongst office workers in the USA. Whilst a myriad of issues, concerns, quirks and considerations could be used to undermine the results, I’m not really caring. Instead, I’m choosing to see that classical music not only made it onto the list, but is way, way up there in third place.
My favorite relaxation technique is…
Walking or jogging – 47%
Meditating or deep breathing – 19%
Gardening – 12%
Doing yoga – 6%
Listening to classical music – 15%
Total votes: 1147
Apart from the momentary joy, doesn’t this bear thinking about?
We have lots of Garden Centers and garden sections of superstores, and many small yoga clubs and sports stores that sell yoga equipment (& CDs). Some of the superstores even have music/ entertainment sections. So I wonder why the range of classical music CDs is shrinking so much? According to this survey, we should be seeing more concerts and more options available for purchase! One of the problems (in my humble opinion) is that the classical music recordings available all seem to be the same.
Not to the trained ear, perhaps, but to the vast majority of people who might enjoy classical music, they only need one CD of Beethoven or Mozart, yet the industry DROWNS us with the same material over and over. Not sure there are many other genres that do that… perhaps Opera. One young professional was recently asked why they didn’t attend classical music concerts, to which his reply was “they’re all the same. There’s nothing new I like.”
Woah!
The first family car I remember – a Ford Cortina (UK)
And ‘new’ doesn’t necessarily have to mean unpalatable Stockhausen or Birtwhistle (warning: link to audio dissonance), either. Think about it: Pop music primarily uses the same chord sequences over and over and over, yet there is still a ton of new music being produced on a daily basis, both by the commercial heavyweights (labels) as well as grass roots. To some of my non-Western friends who don’t get to hear much music at all, they thought Gaga could have been a breakaway soloist from Abba (warning: link to endless audio pleasure). Nice! Lyrics may change, but stories & topics don’t much. Tunes may alter slightly, but the beat and chord patterns don’t much.
So why does the classical music industry not encourage more ‘palatable’ new works, even if they sound similar to previous compositions? Even the experimental, advanced, high-tech, forward-thinking, slightly differing Formula 1 race cars still have four wheels, a couple of mirrors and the need for speed, just like my dad’s old family Ford Cortina of the 1970s.
I’m gonna change that… I’m going to join the rest of the composers who feel no shame in writing music that is ‘likable’ and ‘listenable’ and see what happens – see who attends my concerts and buys my CDs (when I get to make one). Hey, if one of my pieces can attract some 23,000 YouTube views………..!
The fifth piece in my 