- Cadence and Form in Hindemith's "Lilacs" Requiem. (64 pp. 544 Kb PDF)
The research part of my Ph.D. thesis (University of Rochester, 1996) is available as a PDF from the University of Rochester library system. - First Symphony The full score (in C) for the composition part of my Ph.D. thesis. (107 pp. 1.3 MB PDF).
- Free Blank Music Paper: 8.5x11" Vert. (28.6 KB PDF) - 12 Staves, ruled edges help align straight, even stem, bar, & ledger lines.
- More Free Blank Music Paper: 11x17" Horiz. (49.8 KB PDF) - Ruled edges, but DOUBLE-WIDE 11x17" version of vertical letter above.
- Composers: are you STUCK? Try one of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies (52.8 KB PDF).
- Department of Tumbling Dice, Part 1:
Make a Musical Dodecahedron (174.6 KB PDF). Print, cut out, fold and glue - have fun with a purpose! On the Musical Dodecahedron, the twelve chromatic tones are scattered across the pentagonals using an all-interval twelve-tone series:
< C C# E D A F B Eb Ab Bb G F# >
You can decorate it yourself, too (best done before assembly). For best results, print on card stock. - Department of Tumbling Dice, Part 2:
Here's another custom design, the Boy Scout Law Dodecahedron (460.7 KB PDF). The classic tenets of Scouting (trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent) are laid out on sequentially-adjoined faces, with spirited scout graphics. - All-Interval Twelve-Tone Series Catalog (794.3 KB PDF) - Notated catalog of twelve-tone rows having all (eleven) intervals between pairs. A musical realization of the work of Bob Morris & Dan Starr at Yale in the early 1970s.
- Text of a presentation to the 1994 Rochester FORTH Conference on using set theory operations on chromatic sets using the computer languages FORTH and HMSL.
- Sonate, Que Me Veux-Tu? Sonata Form - Sonata Style - 8.5x11 Template
- Blues, Que Me Veux-Tu? Blues Form - Blues Style - Blues Progressions
- Saxophone in the Orchestra - A Study of Composers' Usage, coming soon.
- Varése: Density 21.5 - Famed work for solo flute provides a look at the composer's melodic leanings.
- List of 20th-Century Favorites: Official web sites of three 20th-century musicians who have greatly influenced, inspired, and informed my own music: Stevie Wonder - John Coltrane - Frank Zappa - List of Favorites
- Family, Community, Interests, Hobbies, More.
- Easy • Guide to the Twelve Musical Intervals and Nineteen Trichord Types — Expanded Syllabus The essay on this page elaborates on the fundamentals of Paul Hindemith's theory of music, closely following the syllabus on the cover of my Easy • Guide pamphlet. (Musical examples and text corrections are coming soon.)
- The Nineteen Possible Trichords - Compose with just three notes! This page introduces a set of downloadable worksheets for composing with any three chromatic tones. Select and hear trichords with MIDI playback. Also useful in studying Paul Hindemith's ideas about interval roots.
- Easy • Guide to the Twelve Musical Intervals and Nineteen Trichord Types (261.7 KB PDF) - Make yourself this pamphlet as a handy reference to the interval-root structure of every two- and three-tone group, plus an outline of my interpretation of Paul Hindemith's theory (interval roots).
- Nineteen Trichords worksheet for composing (61.3 KB PDF) includes nineteen grand staves for composing with every possible trichord.
- Tonality Diamond - designed by California composer Harry Partch, this page explores his microtonal world of tiny musical intervals. Play a virtual toy marimba (with MP3 audio samples). For more on the Tonality Diamond, the 43-Tone Scale, the One-Footed Bride, and even his opinions on Paul Hindemith, see Partch's book, Genesis of a Music.
- Unitarian Universalist Worship Music
A complete chronology of my from 1991-present, based on listings from Don Wilder's ongoing database of service music at First Unitarian Church (Rochester, NY). At the invitation of choir director Ed Schell, in the Fall of 1996 I began providing music for the 9:00 AM Sunday service, about once a month. After considering minister Dick Gilbert's choice of hymns, readings and sermons, my music programming included many songs taken from popular styles for their reverential value as well as musical dignity. I judiciously included a few originals specifically for these Sunday services, carved from my own personal faith.- The Unitarian Universalist Scouters Organization promotes and recognizes reverential attitudes in UU youth and adults with this hopefully inspirational web page.
r=.5Θ/-2π
Exponential curve shows relationship between
pitch and pitch-class,
graphed for three octaves
on a TI-83 Plus.
Exponential curve shows relationship between pitch and pitch-class, graphed for three octaves on a TI-83 Plus.
- The Economy of Scale
- The diatonic scale, that is ( 7/8 ||:B-C-D-G-F#-E-A:|| ). This is a MIDI arrangement of the expository material from my 1988 score for new music ensemble (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, percussion).
- Variations on a Mozart Theme
- One way for me to try to understand the Classical style was to write a set of variations on the first twelve bars of the Mozart piano concerto in C-minor, K.491. The theme, a ritornello progression in the bass, contains each of the twelve chromatic degrees. Solo parts for Flute (651.6 KB PDF); Violin and Clarinet are being prepared.
- Re: Joyce
- My half-serious country music setting of the last sentence of the James Joyce short story, The Dead, on a single page (110.5 KB PDF).
- All Broken Into Pieces
- A simple compositional algorithm in Forth (HMSL) generated this ridiculously huge midifile (438.6 KB), which lasts an hour while subjecting each and every one of the 4095 pitch-class sets to one of twelve possible phrase patterns depending on how many tones each set contains. The score can be studied in Example 6 of this page.
- Beethoven: Appassionata Slow Movement
- Using original lyrics, I have made this tune by Beethoven, as complete and timeless as any modern song, into a 3-verse vocal anthem, titled Be a Friend (80.5 KB PDF).
- Beethoven: Moonlight Slow Movement
- Slow jam in the serious moonlight. To consider how the great German musician posthumously intoxicated French intellectuals through the 19th-Century into World War I, look up Leo Schrade's Beethoven in France (Yale Press, 1942).
- Beethoven: Ode to Joy
- This MP3 file (3.2 MB) was recorded at First Unitarian Church, and features my synthesizer and live flute. Beethoven's melody is set as a slow jam in 5/4 meter with chord progression borrowed from Earth, Wind and Fire's 1970s hit, That's the Way of the World.
- Debussy: Clair d'lune
- Timeless keyboard lunacy from the influential French Impressionist.
- Wagner: Tristan Prelude
- Iconic modernist-precursor from the 19th-century German opera master. Here is a notated solo part for Viola (45.9 KB PDF).
- Binchois: L'homme arme
- Widely-covered Medieval warrior anthem. Here is the four-page voice and piano score (494.8 KB PDF).
- Liber Usualis: Kyrie
- This Gregorian chant melody in Dorian mode is one of the oldest known openings, and the only part with Greek text, a plea for mercy from God, of the Roman Catholic Mass. My soprano saxophone can be heard on this live recording from a service at First Unitarian Church, Rochester, NY.
The music on this page includes Standard MIDI Files (SMFs) and audio files (MP3), as well as a few music notation files (PDF).