Your bit of education for the day! ^_^
Made this as part of my lecture videos I’m putting together for the school summer session (see History of Technology in Music for more info); this is part of my lecture on opera and the cultural/technological changes it provoked in music…
Tag: technology
The 1946 Musicwriter
In the course of teaching my “History of Technology in Music” class at Cal Poly Pomona, I was alerted to the fact that the music department actually has an old Musicwriter typewriter lying around!! Many thanks to our department technician who retrieved it for me!
Now enjoy a small walk down History Lane and check out this cool bit of mid-20th century music tech!
(PS: if you like the background music, it’s track #3 on this album.)
New Single Available
Now available on all your favorite platforms is the single, “La Partita Electronica”!
J.S. Bach gets groovy!
Based on an unaccompanied violin partita variation from the eighteenth century by Bach, layers of electronic elements breathe new life into this classic. Also appearing on this release is “Sonata Moderna (Remastered)” from 2010. “Sonata Moderna” is based on a piece from the seventeenth century (“Sonata sopra la Monica” by Biagio Marini). It was the May 2016 Akademia Winner for Best Ambient/Instrumental Song. Featuring two violins and cello with rock rhythm and chords, the past is united with the present in this driving work.
Enjoy this little amuse-bouche of mashed-up music! 🙂
“Shady Oaks Takedown” Now Released!
Shady Oaks Takedown, the film created in 48 hours, is now available to stream and share on Vimeo.
The year old film, was produced for the LA 48 Hour Film Project to write, produce and finish a film in only 48 hours. In addition, several parameters were given: A character named Austin or Ashley Cheevers who is a winemaker, a wallet for a prop, and the line of dialog “We only have a few minutes” must be included. The genres were drawn at random from a hat, the team drew “Martial Arts/Buddy Film” and we could combine them or use one or the other. (Source)
This adorable short film, a frequent Audience Favorite at screenings, was a crazy, fun project I was brought in to create the music for… in only 6 or so hours…!!! Read more about the experience here.
You can also check out my interview with Bella Composers here…
While the full soundtrack is currently available on my store and everywhere else you stream music, you can now watch it in context of the entire film!
Enjoy below, and share it around if you like! 🙂
“Shady Oaks Takedown” – The Trailer
UPDATE: We were selected by the audience to go on to the second round of screenings for the Audience Award!!!! Check out the details here!
Presenting the trailer for “Shady Oaks Takedown”, the super fun, collaborative bonding experience that comes from creating a short film from scratch in 48 hours!! I had the immense honor of being asked to create the music for our buddy-comedy, martial arts genre film… That is, 5 minutes of 
music, created on the fly in only about 8 straight hours, watching the film for the first time and composing music for each scene and hit at the same time, all starting in the wee hours of the morning before dawn, haha!
Want to join us for the screening of our 48 hour film? Get your tickets for Screening Group G here, and join us for the event TOMORROW at 5pm in L.A.!!
And, as a special treat, you can listen to all my “Shady Oaks” film clips at the Novel Soundtrax Audio Page for a limited time!
New Retro Game Soundtrack Music — Novel Soundtrax
I had so much fun putting together some music for a retro video game project — I love being able to bring the “bleeps and bloops” from my childhood into the present “literature”… ^_^ Enjoy taking a listen!
New Leviathan Tees!
Share your enthusiasm for “Leviathan” with this beautiful, custom tee or sticker! This lovely t-shirt (courtesy of Teespring) features an artistic rendering of Sarah Wallin-Huff’s own 6-string, dragon-shaped, electric violin, on which she has performed her Leviathan Concerto, and lots of other music and styles! Click to view slideshow. All funds raised go directly toward the recording…
Complete the Leviathan Experience with this Art-Book!
Now, the beautiful art-book and epic poem that completes the Leviathan Experience is available on Amazon! It’s an imaginative way to get a deeper understanding of the music’s story, and to make a solid connection between the changes in the Concerto and the scenes of the story they represent.
via “The Music’s Story” Now Available on Amazon! — i Support New Music
Making Music Come to Life
This season is bringing with it a most amazing opportunity to record some of my more challenging pieces with live musicians. I have always said that I would rather hear my work done by even mediocre live players than by a computer. To be fair, of course I want to present my work accurately, too. 😉 But there’s something raw, visceral, and alivethat human players bring to the mix that a computer just cannot equal.
A couple Saturdays ago, I and four of my talented friends got together in a gorgeous, echoey church sanctuary to record the live performance of my “tarot quintet,” The Oracle.
It was a most wonderful session! There’s something about the colors and nuances of each unique instrument in the player’s hands, when it melds and mixes and (sometimes) clashes with the others, that just can’t be duplicated by a computer.
A central lesson of acoustics is that, the more instruments you have, the less the lack-of-human-nuance is noticeable in digital playback. Take my “Madrigal, for Orchestra,” for example. This recording was made with my own digital playback, with the few solo lines in the middle and at the end recorded live by myself. When a piece is written for full orchestra, the individual player’s nuance disappears into the mass of sound. So a computer can recreate this wash of sound better than it can for any kind of a chamber group, where there is only one player per part. With chamber music, everything is so open and exposed that our ears can tell when it’s not a live player on the recording.
And, wouldn’t you know it, my most favorite forces to write for are various chamber groups!! Good thing I have wonderful friends I can call upon to play my music! 🙂
Coming up next in this adventure toward a new Summer 2017 album is the April recording of my neo-Romantic work, “Of Roses and Lilies.” It calls for full string orchestra, soprano recorder, english horn, piano, small women’s choir, and soprano soloist. It’s pretty epic–it’ll be so wonderful to have an official recording of this work done! Then in May, we’ll record three final chamber works…
Lots to look forward to! Whenever you get the chance to support live musicians, please consider doing so. We do what we do because we couldn’t imagine not making music. 😉
Check out this awesome commercial for Apple, featuring Esa-Pekka Salonen composing on none other than my most FAVORITE notation software to date, Notion!
