Voluntary in G Major - Fun with sevenths

Here's a PDF!

It's a beautiful morning, I'm up early, and I just sent my partner to Toronto because she wants to learn to make more documentaries.

This is one that bugged me for a while. I've been living with this melodic idea for a couple weeks, wondering how to make it work. So this is an experimental effort - which, in reality, is the point of this project, not just to write more of the same, but to try on some different ideas.

I've long been fascinated by the major seventh as a piece of a melodic and/or harmonic language, looking for ways to make use of it. This piece is a little... heavy handed with it - the main motif outlines the major seventh chord, it cadences on the major seventh in several places (including finally), the harmonies make use of it - but even so, I like the sound of it. Maybe because it's a blissfully short voluntary.

Next week is my final "voluntary!" Then I'm on to the next project.

I would be happy once more to point to the tip jar below...

Voluntary in G Major by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Hymn-A-Week 47

Shamelessly modeled on the meter of Jesu, Meine Freude.

There's a downside to a ninth-floor apartment, and you notice it immediately when the elevators are out.

Stuff!

This Hymn by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Voluntary in B Minor - Harmonic games and twelve-tone rows

PDF behind this link!

So I'm reasonably sure this won't be as popular as last week's offering, but that's fine, I'm not doing this project for anything but my own edification, and this was rather edifying. Kind of fun, too!

The concept on this voluntary is very simple. There's a harmonic progression happening below, above, or around a constant note, and at cadential points there's a quick melodic turn through all twelve chromatic notes to land on the new pedal point. This voluntary is more about effect, something like a dramatic (hammy?) entrance, than it is about the notes themselves - not that the notes should be ignored, of course.

The processes in getting recordings set up are underway. Soon!

Legal stuff and a reminder: I'm almost done the second set of weekly pieces, which means I'm almost starting on the third set! If you want to throw me a little tip to make that process simpler, it would be highly appreciated.

{This} by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Your donations can help me keep writing these! Click to feed a composer!

Hymn-A-Week 46

So hey, here's a complete PDF of the hymn tunes from 2016, updated regularly.

I went a little bit viral last Friday. I doubt I'll have such success again for a while, but that's alright. Still, it's neat to see over 1,000 hits within a week. (pedal exercises are apparently good for business)

I asked a friend for a favourite hymn, she suggested "The Ash Grove." So here's The Ash Grove's meter, with a non-Welsh tune.

Legal things and standard end credits:

{This} by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Your donations can help me keep writing these! Click to feed a composer!

Voluntary in D Major - Pedal exercises?

We have PDF!

My forty-fifth weekly organ piece, and finally I get to a piece of pedalwork. I've tried it - it works. And by and large, it works with alternating toes. This was fun to hammer out, since I don't write at the organ; there was a lot of rewriting and testing, and making sure that it was possible. And it is!

It seems that I've only been able to write one sort of single-line piece for the organ to date, the moto perpetuo. I need to expand my repertoire in that direction a little bit, I think. I've written several pieces for the flute alone and they're interesting and varied (in my own not-at-all humble opinion). However, one of the more interesting things to do on the organ is to mess with textures, and when writing pieces that naturally limit textural options there's only so much that one can do.

I think to Dénis Bédard's Trois esquisses pour le pédale seul, which are three lovely and varied works, and I wonder if maybe I shouldn't be doing something like that. Another idea to file away for another time...

At any rate. Here's the Voluntary in D. Three more "voluntaries" to go, and then my next 24-piece project begins!

Legalities and handout button:

Voluntary in D Major by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Your donations can help me keep writing these! Click to feed a composer!

Hymn-A-Week 45

Every so often I start to wonder: is this the week?

Is it this week that this toiling in obscurity, pumping out tune after tune, week after week, finally gets to me? Do I lose my mind and start doing some very strange things?

I think this might have been the week.

I guess that as I approach the end of this project, or at least this particular incarnation of it, I'm starting to get a little squirrelly with the melodies. And the harmonies. And just about everything about it.

But it's interesting! So... there's that.

This hymn tune by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Voluntary in F-sharp Minor - Fantasy on the Hexachord

Fantasy on a PDF!

So I decided that I would use the hexachord, kind of, for a voluntary. The hexachord is usually a reference to ut (or do) - re - mi - fa - sol - la, a six-note scalar pattern. I'm following on the centuries-old heels of my Renaissance-era predecessors, writing on a simple repeated pattern - although the pattern is transposed, stepping up with every repetition, and isn't really found in it's "natural" form except once, near the end.

We have here a four-voice work, with the bass (pedals) and the soprano reiterating this hexachord pattern up and down, and the alto and tenor getting slowly more and more agitated heading towards its final conclusion.

And speaking of final conclusions: Four more voluntaries to go, and I'll be done a second set of 24! D major, B minor, G major, and finally, E minor are all that's left to cover. I'm kind of excited!

The stuff at the end of every post is at the end of this one, too:

Voluntary in F-sharp Minor by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Hymn-A-Week 44

I'll just leave this here and be on my way before anyone murders me.

Cheers!

This hymn by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Your donations can help me keep writing these! Click to feed a composer!

Voluntary in A Major - Dance!

If you want a PDF, here it is!

No April Fool's joke here. Because this post is going to exist tomorrow and the next day and for years after that. And because I'm half-deaf and grouchy and my ear hurts.

So this is a minuet. And why not? It's written almost entirely in hemiola - and, again, why not? - to enhance the fun, dancing character as much as possible. The harmonies are fairly conventional and consonant; I wasn't feeling all that experimental this week, what with the ear infection. Just like it's hard for me to think about what I want to write here.

It's time for some painkillers. Also some end-of-post stuff. I'm going back to bed.

Voluntary in A Major by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Your donations can help me keep writing these! Click to feed a composer!