Gav Brown's Blog (28)

The great and prolific composer, known mostly for Animal House (remember all that academic-sounding music?). A wonderful composer who could write in any style. Here's a sample from "Stripes," a Bill Murray comedy from the 80s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmjE3QEZJNs

What other great EB sounds are worth posting? Pile on!

There's nothing funner than ragtime. The Maple Leaf Rag, which was written in 1899 by Scott Joplin launched the ragtime era of music, which spanned about 16 years. It also set a record: it was the first piece of sheetmusic ever to sell one million copies. I started playing piano so I could play ragtime (this is not me playing) >…

Hello all - if you post a link to something offsite which is not your own music, (music or videos or anything else) please consider saying something about it in your post. I am much more likely to follow a link if you describe what it's about than I am if all you do is post the link with no comments or generic comments like "this is great"

Hello everyone, I was so gratified to see that we had a record number of composers (19) participate in the last composition contest (Short shorts), a record number of site members (27) participate in the voting, and also some of the composers have posted their pieces in the Music Dissection forum and gotten a lot of responses, which is just great! I enjoy running contests and am working on a unique idea for the next one. Hope we will continue to see an increased level of participation, and…

It is hard to find anything more beautiful than the music of the 19th century Polish composer Fredric Chopin, who was called "the poet of the piano" because of his lyrical and memorable melodies. I think he's like the Beatles of classical composers. Like them, everything he wrote was memorable and accessible - and short. Here is an example of one of my favorite works by him. The melody is utterly simple, and in the bass, accompanied by divine arpeggios in the right hand. It requires a…

I was going through the recently posted videos today. Some of them look quite slick, but I can't tell if they are the work of the poster or if they are just putting up a video they like, because they did not comment. I like both types of video, but react completely differently depending on whether it is someone's composition or not. Please clearly indicate when you post a video if it's your own composition or not. Thanks -

One guy does all the singing, all the instruments - Wow!

http://cheezburger.com/48142337

http://youtu.be/lAEXH9DAH98

The single most challenging thing to me as a composer and what I hope to improve the most in my compositions is 'return.' Some of the best music I have heard begins and ends the same way, and often repeats initial themes throughout. Return coheses a piece like nothing else and seems to me to be a key element of  compositional mastery.

At the time I composed this, in 2004, Scott Joplin, the greatest ragtime composer of all time, and a great influence on me, would have been 137 years old if he was still alive. I've taken inspiration from him to compose this piece, which is in a progressive rock style, but with lots of syncopation and motifs inspired by this wonderful American composer. Hope you enjoy!

http://youtu.be/PNUZwc4SGZE

I was a composition major for a year (1982) at Illinois State University. The teacher was a guy named Roque Cordero, a Panamanian composer of some note amongst composers of note (I guess). His music was atonal and sounded to me like demented ragtime. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roque_Cordero

He wrote many fine pieces in traditional time signatures, but of course is best known for his compositions in unusual time signatures. I was listening to Rush Permanent Waves (their best, I think) today and realized that they too use all sorts of odd time signatures, and often change time multiple times throughout a piece. There are really only a small number of artists who work outside of the confines of 3/4 or 4/4 time.

I wanted to compose a piece in the Locrian mode, which is IMO is the hardest of all to work in (it is based on the white key scale on the piano beginning with "B," which means the tonic is B-D-F, so hard to resolve to). Since handbells harmonize on a minor third, it kind of works out. Here's a piece in A-Locrian:…

This is a theme song I wrote 2 decades ago for a TV show called "Just Sisters." The show was to be about identical twins who got into shenanigans. It never happened. I enjoyed writing it and to represent the idea of identical twins would repeat small musical motifs throughout the piece. Hope you enjoy it -…

This music is intended to loop in the background of a web application/game:

60s Celebration.pdf

60s Celebration on Youtube

The music is intended to repeat in the background of a web application/game:

Adventure.pdf

Adventure on Youtube

Here is part 3.

Trilogy-III.pdf

Trilogy Part III on Youtube

One other note. In parts one and three, I use, in an informal way, a technique called "change ringing," which is taking a sequence of bells and slightly varying it during a series of…

See earlier post for part 1.

Trilogy-II.pdf

Trilogy Part II on Youtube

Hello - this is the first part of a trilogy I wrote for a Handbell choir director friend of mine. Hope you like it -

Trilogy-I.pdf

Trilogy I on Youtube

I wrote this 20 years ago for a young composer named Allan, who was having trouble figuring out how to develop a style. I joked with him that "any piece can be in any style" and so wrote this work which changes style multiple times in a piece lasting less than a minute.

30-Second-Symphony.pdf…