Joshua Glenn Wilson

New Tune – Lo’ Bop

joshuaglennwilson — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 01:28:36 +0000

So in the continued vein of exploration into synesthesia, I’m releasing to you, Dear Readers, the lead sheet to a tune that’s in the recording process that was created based on 12-tone transliteration of the name “Lauren” into chromatic pitches. …That was needlessly verbose.

Let’s take a quick preview peek to explain the process. First, get the file here:

Lo’ Bop – PDF

Now the melody is based on the recurring melodic line of (pardon my potential enharmonic spelling) B-C-Ab-F-E-C#. If you start at middle C and consider that to be the letter A and count your way up in half-steps, working your way through the alphabet, you should get to the note B for the letter L. The next letter in the name, A, has already been established to correspond with the pitch value C. Does this make sense a bit? Now, for letters way down the line, like U, we can bring down an octave to be in the same range as the rest of the melody. I’m no terribly concerned with octave values–for instance, the C# alternates between two octaves as the melody progresses.

And that’s about all I had as far as content to work with. The rest of the project was to capture the personality of a dear friend of mine, Lauren Elise, and make it into a decent and memorable musical portrait that doubles as a bop tune.

The chord changes and the bridge were written at whim with no real boundaries, and I do confess a certain influence from John Coltrane’s “Syeeda’s Song Flute” on the chromatically undulating 7th chords for the A section. The bridge is a slight alteration of Rhythm changes. Sort of. Also, trivia for the non-cat: “Rhythm changes” always refers to the chord changes associated with the Gershwin tune “I Got Rhythm”. They’re so catchy that they’ve been used for dozens of tunes across jazz history, like “Straighten Up and Fly Right”, “Anthropology”, & “Cottontail”.

So anyway. No anticipated deadline date for the recording of “Lo’ Bop” to be finished, but…soon?

And on a completely unrelated note, Chick Corea‘s “Return to Forever IV” collaboration with bass masta’ Stanley Clarke and monster drummer Lenny White is absoluuutely delightful. Below is a personal favorite, “Armando’s Rhumba”, an old classic and a personal favorite.

Piano Crossover Edition

joshuaglennwilson — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 04:36:08 +0000

Since high school, Jason Robert Brown has been a tremendous influence on me. Even though I’ve yet to fully digest and absorb his musical styles and voicings, the driving pulse and percussive attack to a good chunk of his tunes form the basis for a lot of my vamps. And that doesn’t touch his lyrics—no artist from any genre has written so many stories that speak to me so personally, or have moved me so deeply or poignantly. And there’s not much to elaborate on there—JRB’s story-telling has sort of a “you get it or you don’t” effect, but I doubt I have many comrades that haven’t at some point heard me squeal and giggle over something from the man.

So that’s JRB. And today I was blessed to attend a Master Class hosted by JRB (joined by professional performers Laura Hodos, Juan Cantu and Michelle Knight; college-age performers Alex Ferguson and Sage Starkey; and Trinity Prep high-school performers Kathryn Kilger and Dana Kruger) and an evening concert put on by JRB and his guitarist from the Caucasian Rhythm Kings, Gary Sieger. And I wish my mind were not so hazed by the lovely tortilla soup and lavender tea I’m enjoying now, for I cannot for the life of me conjure the words that expressed the reanimation of the fantasies and dreams I feel I let slip too often.

Permit this bleary-eyed writer, then, to submit for your delight JRB’s latest endeavor to woo young pianists everywhere. You see, recently Mister Brown decided to take on Billy Joel‘s “The Stranger” album, track by track, with original and rather characteristic arrangements for each. At time of writing, Brown’s worked his way through four of the album’s nine tracks, and they’re sort of hit-and-miss, more-or-less amazing.

And if you were unaware that Mr. Joshua Glenn Wilson is a rather avid, devoted, and fanatical follower of Mr. Billy Joel, well…

You may perhaps be at the wrong page. But suffice to say, he’s the reason I’m playing today.

Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song) (Billy Joel) by MrJasonRBrown

The Stranger (Billy Joel) by MrJasonRBrown

Just The Way You Are (Billy Joel) by MrJasonRBrown

Scenes From An Italian Restaurant (Billy Joel) by MrJasonRBrown

“If you are not doing what you love, you are wasting your time.”
- Billy Joel

“If it sucks, throw it out and do it again.”
- Jason Robert Brown

Dream to Be Love(d)

joshuaglennwilson — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:50:55 +0000

When I was young(er), I was very repulsed by the idea of becoming a grown-up. Grown-ups were a perpetual absence of energy and passion, and the lot of them couldn’t scrape together a contentment in their career at all. I was absolutely horrified at the prospect of settling into a dead-end job, giving up on passions and fun, and aspiring to static stagnancy. As any tot, I imagined marriage, daddy-hood, rockstar status, and general world-changing pursuits.

Every one finds a dying dream someday, and with that wound may come many messages that ingrain themselves at our very core. And the worst message that we take home with the death of a dream is that you are not alone… and while this seems at first glance to be a comforting thought, it’s often pushed upon the dreamer with some chilly austerity. We all have problems. I’m not a rockstar either. Stop crying, or life will give you something to really cry about. And perhaps the worst budding thought that bubbles to the top of our minds: What if I’m not really special? We’ve all felt the message, even if it’s been that silent, stealthy, wordless strike to our souls, felt and not spoken, but as long-lasting as a message etched into granite.

And that is how grown-ups are born, Dear Reader. When you wake up and you realize you’re not special, and your dreams and aspirations aren’t nearly as important as the report you have to finish by five o’clock, and the only spare time you can scrape together is muddled by the dulled, sludgy mind you bring home from the long hours spent at a job you loathe.

Let’s change that.

This week, let me encourage something quite contrary to what is pressed on children by schools, churches, and generic society alike. I want you to come up with a list of things you like about yourself. Unique qualities that you are unabashedly delighted about when you remember them. Maybe it’s the freckles over your nose when you blush. Perhaps it’s simply that your hair flips just the way you like it. You could have a certain knack at typing quickly, or a great eye for fashion.

This isn’t a resume or curriculum vitæ. This is reprogramming your mirror—a small step towards starting to see once more all the fascinating facets that make up who you are, and that it’s okay for you to have some semblance of self-love. Pride, vanity, and narcissism are entirely separate from self-love, and one may be confident without being arrogant. I want you to unabashedly love your crystalline eyes. I want you to love your hands. The way the corner of your lips crinkles up just a smidge when you’re trying not to laugh. Even familiar Scripture presupposes some degree of self-love:

²⁸One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

²⁹ “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. ³⁰ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” [Mark 12.29—31]

All the small things that you might see in an infatuation, in a love, in an old friend—take some time and find those aspects of your physical self, your personality, your blessings, your talents. And know that it’s okay to love them. After all, your wife’s eyes or laugh may not be the foundation of your marriage… But they are alluring and captivating. And sometimes, Dear Reader, you yourself may doubt how captivating you truly are.

After that, perhaps we can start to dream again. But for now, learn to be a dreamer.

And me? Well… when I speak loudly across a hall or a courtyard, I love how the sonorous baritone that punches across so broadly and boldly. It makes me feel like my whole body is an instrument to hold a very hot liquid metal, and upon opening my mouth, the air interacts with the bold molten silver within, and the writings on my heart explode into the air with a potent wallop.

I also like my hands very much. I imagine having grandchildren someday that will sit on their Pappy’s lap, and play with his large, leathery paws, weathered like a beloved baseball glove whose history is written across every line and crinkle, the compendium signature of dozens of dives and venues and atmospheres and sounds.

So dream. And dream boldly. Or dream in Italics. But either way, the dream is only important if the dreamer believes his or her dreams come from a place of validity.

And please! Share your list of things you like about yourself. I’d love to know!

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

- Langston Hughes

Symphonic Synesthetes

joshuaglennwilson — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:49:33 +0000

I’ve been doing a bit of work on some ideas of synchronicity across various mediums of art & expression, and I’m rather interested in your thoughts.

Synchronicity may not entirely be the right word, but bear with me for a bit.

For a time I’ve been fascinated with the interplay between the senses. It’s not entirely uncommon for me to describe a wine as “tasting like a Gil Evans arrangement with a punch of Miles Davis’ muted trumpet stabbing through”, or thinking of a sunrise as bearing a particular scent or sound to it.

We have the idea of synesthesia -

syn·es·the·sia, n.

1. A condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color.

2. A sensation felt in one part of the body as a result of stimulus applied to another, as in referred pain.

3. The description of one kind of sense impression by using words that normally describe another.

It’s the third definition that got me thinking about all this, but I came to appreciate the truth and validity of the first, as well. For instance, I’ve always thought of the key of D as being distinctly yellow, a good bit more than C, while F was more of a lime green. But oddly, adding extensions of D or E to make an F major triad into an Fmaj7 or F6 chord made it more of a yellow-green. And the F-minor sound always sounded like Eb or Ab do — very red. And Db is rather purply.

Alright. Put that idea on the corkboard; we’ll come back to it.

It’s no new concept to use names as a basis for generating melodies. It’s easy enough… start at middle C, perhaps, and go through the alphabet until you get to the first letter of someone’s name. Then start over, and go until you reach the second letter, and so on. By this, you come up with a melody all over the keyboard. Take that, and smush it into a single octave. As the image to the right will suggest, as you continue counting up through the letters and through the pitches, you keep coming back to the same notes, but at varying pitches. For our purposes, we may simplify them to make them more manageable: a C6 can be interchanged with a C4 at whim. They’re both a C, and it’s really the letter-name I’m interested in, anyway. Once you’ve got the notes, placement of them is what makes the art.

Put that on the corkboard, too.

We’ve got a twelve-tone equal temperament system in Western music — and that simply means that an octave is divided into twelve distinct tones, as visually evidenced on our average keyboard. C to C will yield twelve individual and unique notes.

Curiously, the color wheel available to the average artist utilizes a twelve-tone system as well, comprised of your Primary colors (red, yellow, & blue), their Complementaries (green, violet, & orange), and then the intermediary shades between those six.

For lazy purposes, I generally start at C with red. I know this goes rather against what I particularly imagine C to sound like, but it works itself out so that starting this way leaves F a nice kelly green.

Let’s pull down those corkboard items at last.

So take someone’s name, like “Lauren”. With this you have B-C-Ab-F-E-Db, yes? Here’s where the art of the process comes in and far surpasses the math. Here I’ve toiled to use this melody as a small boundary in a piece intended to capture the subject’s personality or character. It’s rather like an auditory portrait.

And what I’d like to do is utilize an artist to paint an abstract rendering of the subject’s likeness using only those colors pertaining to the subjects tone-order — for Lauren, B-C-Ab-F-E-Db would give the artist Red-Violet, Red, Blue, Yellow-Green, Yellow, and Red-Orange. But this is something to go up on the Projects Page, for sure.

Next post will be an exploration of what I came up with for “Lauren”. It’s called “Lo’ Bop”… and it’s quite a perky little bit of chromatic bebop, if I may say so myself.

Ciao! And listen to some Coeur de Pirate today.

[for more reading & listening on color-influenced music, check out the works of Alexander Scriabin. He crafted a sort of artificial synesthetic approach to composition.]