Symmetry

by alan on March 6, 2013 at 3:13 am
Posted In: Music

The title for this tune is kind of an inside joke.

It’s called “symmetry”, but the time is in “7″. The groove splits the bar on the “+” of 3, meaning: the pulse of the tune splits each bar evenly in half, though the pulse of the beats are asymmetric.

I think I just achieved major music geek status.

 

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Form

by alan on March 5, 2013 at 3:11 am
Posted In: Music

I’m putting 4 tracks from my 2008 release, “Gestures” up on Soundcloud.

I went through a long bought of hating music. Thankfully, I have finally gotten on the other side of that funk.

As I write this, I’m finishing my wife’s first release, and I’m writing/arranging material for my next couple albums. I’m planning to push a lot of the ideas I began with “Revisionist History”. I look forward to sharing some of it soon.

For those interested, I’m attaching a score for this big band piece, “Form”.

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80% finished with Kim’s new disk!

by alan on March 4, 2013 at 2:46 am
Posted In: News

My wife Kim is a very talented Irish musician. I recorded her playing some tunes with a guitarist and bodhran drummer a couple years ago. School prevented me from finishing the disk till now. We finished the album with an arrangement I wrote of “Will the Circle be Unbroken”, and a couple modern Irish vocal tunes.

Anyway, I’m cutting a few extra guitar parts with Scotty Reeves, as well as re-recording a couple fiddle parts. It should be finished and released by May.

In the meantime: I’ve been experimenting with some photography/graphic design ideas for the disk, which will be called “the Circle”.

This image is my favorite for the back cover.

It’s exactly what it looks like: a snail shell I shot with a long lens. I textured it with some old paper.

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Faces

by alan on March 1, 2013 at 5:11 pm
Posted In: Music

This is a tune I wrote a really long time ago. I was inspired to do it by a John Patitucci tune, but by the time I felt good enough as a player to record it, my interests had diverged from straight “jazz fusion” and I wanted to play music with folk instruments; thus the harmonica and mandolin.

You can hear more tunes like this on my CD, Gestures.

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Big in Japan Book Cover

by alan on February 16, 2013 at 2:05 am
Posted In: Illustration and Design

So I was trying to draw like old school Barron Storey, use textures like Alex Maleev, Design like Bill Sienkiewicz, and digitally paint like Dave McKean.

Probably a bit too ambitious, especially considering the amazing laundry list of stuff I was supposed to get into the image for the client.

But hey; you never know what you can/can’t do till you try, right?

 

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