Space Sonata rough recordings

Here are rough recordings of the three-movement piece I have been working on for cello and piano. As I mentioned in a previous blog, this music will eventually be performed alongside projected drawings and prose to depict a sci-fi story. I apologize ahead of time for the sloppy cello playing.

Mvt. I: Upon Awakening from a 65 Year Sleep, or The Rebirth

Mvt. II: The Solitude and the Space

Mvt. III: The Descent, the Devastation, and the Decision

songs available for download

the mp3's for all 15 songs are now available to download for free if anyone wants them.

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B2OFxeQfOLCNMmRjZTlhMDctMjcwOC00NjViLTlhNGUtNTFlNmNhMzMxMGMx&hl=en_US

thanks to everyone who has been following, it was a fun project! i am planning on starting a new blog where i can post recordings or videos or artwork or whatever but it probably won't have a crazy schedule like this one. i will post a link to it when that happens. dan

Days 29 & 30 (and 31-38)

video! leave a comment if you feel like it! dan

Last song is already late but still not finished!

i know i already missed the deadline for the final recording, but i'm still working on the video! i was going to finish yesterday, but i think i got some kind of minor heat exhaustion and felt all dizzy and weak when i tried to do anything. i will try to post hopefully by thursday at the latest. dan

Days 27 & 28: Banjo Jam (featuring Troy Crowley, Kari Clifton, and Schuyler Falkena)

i came up with this tune on the banjo. i convinced Troy and Schuyler to add some guitar. i convinced Kari to add some plucked cello. we wanted to film it outside for a cool setting. we brought all the recording gear outside. we started recording with the camera rolling. the camera decided to corrupt the video files. the video files decided to be unusable. i almost posted the song without a video. me and Troy shot some random footage at work today. we put that with the song. we inadvertently created an advertisement for Sojourner's Coffee. dan

Days 25 & 26: Yah! Feel it!

another late post haha. I had this one done last night, just didn't have a chance to upload until now. it's kind of a cheesy techno song me and my brother Jacob used to jam out. i threw in some 80's video effects for good measure. i had some serious creative block for this post. i think the robot video was just a tough act to follow.

Days 23 & 24: I am the Robot

i know it's late, but the video was finished last night. i just ran out of time to upload it. i kind of put a lot of effort into this one.

Days 21 & 22: An Ending

decided to do a solo piano song cause i hadn't yet. this tune is actually about five years old but i never really made a recording of it i was happy with. i decided to do this one because people seem to like it and it's one of my easiest songs to play haha. dan

Days 19 & 20: Lost in a Sea

hi everyone! this might be a little reminiscent of the post for days 9 & 10 (Space Sonata Mvt. II). that's because i took some of the alternate ideas i had for that piece and reworked them for trumpet instead of cello. lets just say my trumpet playing chops are out of shape. dan

Days 17 & 18: To Arms! (featuring Kari Clifton!)

so i know the song is kind of rough... but let me explain the process that led up to it.

i had a cello quartet piece that i had been sort of composing since January but never quite finished. i had never tried to play the piece. i asked Kari if she would like to be featured in a recording. she wanted to. we decided to record today. i finished a rough draft of the sheet music today at 12:30. we met and played through the parts for the first time for a couple hours. i was a jerk and gave Kari the harder melody line to play. smiley face. i knew she could do a lot better with it than i could. sorry Kari! we took an ice cream break. we recorded the parts. we had fun. our playing was rough. i am ok with it.

thanks Kari for being a part of this and i have to say awesome job taking on the super-high melody line!

(perhaps sometime in the future we will rerecord this piece and do better with it.) dan

Days 15 & 16: Floatin' on the clouds

i came up with a beat i liked the other day and decided to form a song around it. dan

Days 13 & 14: a conversation and a dirge

kind of upped the ridiculous factor with this one i guess. dan

Days 11 & 12: The Utah Experience

got back from utah. decided to throw in some random clips i shot while i was there. song is kind of meh. some video editing issues. dan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F43_ZeY4YrU

Blog to be postponed for two weeks

I am going to Utah for a couple weeks to help do some fixin' up at my cousin's new farm, so I will be postponing the recording challenge for a bit. Since I kind of dropped the ball on yesterday's song, I decided the 10th day was a good one-third-of-the-way stopping point for now anyway.

Might try and record a song or two while I am out there with just my laptop and USB keyboard, but I am not going to count these as part of the challenge. I will pick up with days 11 & 12 when I get back.

Thanks to everyone who has been checking this out and following! It has been real fun so far. Feel free to share this page with your friends and family, cause I want to get as many people as possible to see it. 

I made a short video that will hopefully clarify the situation (actually I don't think it will haha). 

Days 9 & 10: Space Sonata Mvt. II: The Solitude and the Space

A few months ago, my cello teacher, Karen Terbeek (who is an amazing cellist), asked me to write her a piece for cello and piano for her to perform at a recital she is playing in October of 2011. I was honored to have been asked, but I knew it would be hard to write something unless I had some inspiration. After thinking about it, I came up with a vague sci-fi story that the music would depict. As the story started to come together, I thought it would be awesome to have images and words go along with the music, so I asked my cousin Jonathan Wiley (who is an artist) and my friend Aaron Plasek (who is a poet)  if they would be interested in doing a series of drawings and poetry to be projected on a screen alongside the live music performance. They were both down, so we talked about it and came up with a full story based on my initial idea.

Without going into too much detail, it is going to be a three movement work, and today's song happens to be a rough draft of the second movement. In the video, I split the cello part into two parts, but she will be playing it as one (I just couldn't play the double notes in tune well enough together). If you like what you hear and happen to be in Denver in October, you should come see the performance of the complete work. It is going to be epic.

Days 7 & 8: Dinosaurs and Lollipops

So for this one I started with a ragtimey piano song I have been working on and then added the drums. My friend Troy Crowley came up with the words and melody for the chorus, but I didn't have any vocals for the rest of the song. So, I decided to make up some random stuff and then just go for it haha. Not much else to say I guess. dan

Days 5 & 6: The Ebb and Flow

First off, sorry for the late-ish post, but technically I'm only 5 minutes late haha. I had the recording done on time but the video took forever to render and upload. I had some issues today--a headphone cord that started shorting out, a camera battery that died and took forever to recharge, and a computer that decided to stop recording when I was in the middle of the song (multiple times). But I got through it and I'm pretty happy with the result. I decided to record a piano song I had written a couple years ago but never really made a recording of. It's a bit more complicated compositionally than the last song since I didn't compose it the day of haha. I used to play this piece with my friend Simon Larson on drums, so I want to give him credit cause I'm pretty sure I used or was inspired by the beats he came up with. I pretty much improvised the cello part (which you will probably notice). I think it works for the most part but there are definitely some rough spots. enjoy! dan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB1VI-nECqg

Days 3 & 4: Penn Street Prattle

Song number two! I had a lot of fun with this one. Not sure about the name but it's all I could think of haha. My computer didn't want to render the final video cause there was so much going on, but I sweet-talked it into cooperating. If you like it, become a follower and link it to your wall so your friends can check it out! (just trying to get as much exposure as I can haha). dan

Days 1 & 2: It Begins.

Finished my first recording yesterday. It turns out trying to make up and record a song in one day is kind of a bitch. But here it is, and I am mostly happy with it. The cello part is kind of wonky but in my defense the take I was happiest with somehow glitched out during recording so I went with this one. I name this piece "It Begins." Now that I have started, expect a new song every two days (if I succeed haha).

Dolcelli videos!

Just posted a couple of videos from the school cello group I play in called Dolcelli. One is a Beatles tune I arranged (from a year ago) and one is an original (from this year). Still haven't started any recordings yet because I am lazy. SMILEY FACES!!!

Countdown to day 1

Hey ya'll, dan here. Decided to challenge myself to recording a song every two days for a month. I think I finally have my recording gear all set up so stay tuned for the first posting soon! I recorded my good friend schuyler dean the other day as a practice run, so check out the video! Also, I recently performed one of my piano pieces, which you can check out as well. <3. SMILEY FACE!