Each geography has its own sky. Florida’s skies are unique and amazing. There are many roadside artist paintings for tourists with purple skies. There’s a reason for that. The purple you often see at dusk is real. People want to take a little of that home with them. Sometimes, at dawn, there’s a border of lavender against the soft rose sky. It’s fleeting. Like the colors of the ocean or the Gulf, the color of the sky is constantly changing. At my age, I don’t see dusk all that often, but I see many a dawn. A lavender sky is one of my favorites.
Category: music video
Hilton, play us some tunes…something Irish
I’m kind of feeling my way right now. All I know is I feel the urge to make music as folks might have done it in my grandparents’ day, as a informal playing of music on the home piano and while folks sat around and kind of humed along. Or…maybe if i could be a busker I would. This is an assemblage of a bunch of Irish tunes, with almost no editing, just paying one after another, all under 90 seonds (except the very last one would is 120 seconds I think). I might peel these apart and make them seperate Instagram posts, or YouTube Shorts, or not…I really don’t know. Maybe I’m feeling the need to have a gig like Eric Satie did, playing in a bar, and Debussy and Ravel (separately) would come and listen to him. So, anyway, there’s the above video which is only by means of an experiment, that I don’t quite know where it leads.
Nebula Waltz (solo piano)
Newest piece. Not a perfect performance, but the best of 6+ takes. As a video, that’s as good as I’m going to get it. But, I like this piece and I wanted it as a video. People don’t seem to like recorded music as much as they do videos. I don’t quite understand, I accept that that seems to be true. I’m SO HAPPY with my new music stand light! I have to increase my music to 150% enlargementany more and I need LOTS of light on the score. Much better conditions now. 🙂
#music
#piano
Twilight Peal
My old faithful music notation software will no longer work on new OS so having to convert, literally, hundreds of pieces to the new software. I don’t dare listen to any of them or I’ll never get done (there’s hours and hours of my music). But, I made the mistake of listening to this one. Couldn’t resist throwing this video together. I dressed up like this a number of years back to play the organ for a Halloween concert at the Palladium (I don’t even know if that organ there still exists). #halloween #pipeorgan #music
The Geography of Dreams (complete in 6 movements)
Composed: 2014-2015
These are all real dreams that have stuck with me over the years and that take place in a world that reoccurs very often in my dreams, ever since I was a kid. This dream world has a complete geography that is quite consistent and which I’ve explored over the decades. It’s a peculiar feeling to know that this other world exists. It seems to exist outside of this time stream…but it is very real.
Score available at hiltonkeanjones.com/music.
This is first time I’ve assembled them all in one video. I’d done some, but not all of the movements in spearate movements. It was kind of fun watching this complete video on the living room TV via the Roku YouTube app. Here’s the YouTube link: https://youtu.be/lQubEagvM3s. There’s a bit of compression applied by YouTube itself, but it’s not nearly as bad as Apple Music or some of the other streaming services apply. To my ear, the streaming service which has the least offensive compression is Amazon Music.
Compression is electronic treatment of the sound that basically makes louder spots in the music a bit softer and softer spots a bit louder so you can listen to the music over the roar of the traffic when you’re driving. I’m being a bit facetious…that’s not the real reason. The real reason is that the sound coming through speakers doesn’t deal with the complete dynamic range as well as live music in a room and the human ear. The difference between acoustic music in the flesh and recorded sound is so vast that when you a hear a piece like Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, live for the first time after having heard it only in recordings you blown away by all the things happening in the music you were completely unaware of.
Come, O Spirit, with Your Sound (for organ without pedals)
I was stumbling through my files looking for a prelude for this coming Sunday’s service (it’s Pentecost Sunday), and I found this that I’d arranged during the early days of the pandemic. We weren’t having services in person because of the lockdown. Instead, we had videos of Rev. Wells preaching and lots of music tracks created by me! I wouldn’t go back to those days, of course, but it was, beyond all doubt, one of the very most productive times in my life as a musician. From what I’ve read, productive in earlier pandemics, historically, skyrockets.
Cervantes – Andante & Allegretto (for solo piano)
This is a two movement piece. Both movements, Andante & Allegretto, are in this video. I’ve been working on this piece for a veeeeerrry long time (couple decades). There’s pieces like that that seem to take forever to fully materialize as you’d like. I think it’s done.
I’m an octogenarian. Not having achieved great fame and fortune as a classical composer, and probably never will, I continue to write and make these videos. I know why actually: composing is an activity that makes me completely lose track to time. I forget to eat. I don’t notice it’s way past my normal bedtime.
Activities that do that mustn’t be ignored. That’s something that matters to one. That’s why I continue to do this. I’m not tilting at windmills (sorry, not sorry), I’m doing this because I have a great, great, marvelously great time doing it.
The videos are just a marker for myself, that the pieces are as finished as they’re going to get. Same with publishing them on sheetmusidirect and sheetmusicplus. It’s a way of putting a pin in them.
Solicitude
This is another of my arrangements of a tune from Southern Harmony, and Musical Companioncompiled by William Walker and published in 1835. It’s a compendium of marvelous, mostly anonymous hymn tunes from American folk musicians.
My original settings of these arrangements featured solo piano but with the participation of two string instruments (a high and a low) and a treble woodwind which were written in such a way that they could be performed live by separate instrumentalists or covered by a second keyboardist performing on two, stacked synthesizers.
After I’d done two albums of folk tunes like this (the second one was mainly Irish tunes), I gave up on the idea of ever doing them live and began the task–only partially complete…many more to go–of rewriting them as solo piano pieces with no orchestral accompaniment.
As sometimes happens, you go back to things. I finally decided the practicalities of sheet music publication “aren’t the boss of me,” and I’m video taping them in their original form. I’m also publishing their sheet music as “keyboard duos” in case there’s some keyboardists out there who want to do them. I love concert grand piano, but I also love a good electric keyboard and these days I’ll bet there’s a least as many of those in homes as acoustic pianos.
One last tidbit: I love the string countermelody I wrote for this arrangement. (The Southern Music tune is the right-hand of the piano, NOT the string line…that’s mine!) I’m going to steal my own countermelody (from myself) and make it the main tune in a song of my own!
Resignation (original arrangement)
Yesterday was Maundy Thursday and at the evening’s tenebrae service, I played this tune. I never posted a video of the original orchestrated version, but I did post a video of the piano solo I made of the same tune (see https://hiltonkeanjones.com/2023/05/19/resignation-2/). I really like this orchestrated version. I actually like all my orchestrated folk tune arrangements but there’s no sheet music market for that. Ah well…hope you enjoy “watching paint dry” while you listen. The second verse is my own compositional contribution (a restatement of the tune but in the the relative minor for you theory buffs).
As a Doe Longs (solo piano)
This is one of my transcriptions of one of my own choral pieces. You can hear the original choral version at https://soundcloud.com/hilton-kean-jones/as-a-doe-longs. Interesting how one’s feelings about what’s the “right” tempo change over the years. You’ll notice I currently like a MUCH more leisurely tempo. When I was a kid, I thought Albert Schweitzer’s J.S.Bach tempos were woefully far too slow. Now, at 80, I understand: as the future gets shorter and shorter, one wishes to savor each note.
#piano
#pianomusic