Ragtime

Hello M.G.,

I enjoyed hearing your Derring-do rag a few days ago. I'm not able to re-download it again now, for some reason. Are you able to?

I recall that this rag innovates in the area rhythmic details, using pairs or triplets of 16ths or 32nds.

Cheers
-- Mark

Hi Mark,

I just tried clicking the link, above, Win Media Player opens and plays it. If I do save as, the file downloads. It is a bit interesting that if I open the midi download in Composer, a message says there is no auto channel available and only the right hand played until I assigned the left hand to a channel.

About the rhythmic detail, I'm not sure what you refer to. There are measures with a grace note on the first beat followed by 8th note triplets. The section with the tempo changes uses 8th note om phas, rather than the quarter notes which were the case in every rag I can remember ever playing.

Oddly enough, after days of work on an orchestral piece for coloratura, piano, flute and orchestra, I had just opened a raggish piece based on tunes from My Fair Lady to work on.

I tried downloading the file in both Opera and Firefox, and it worked both times. So I guess the link is alive.

all best,
mgj

Hi Sherry,

Sousa, when asked what made a good march, answered that it was music that made the toes twinkle. Glad this one had some effect on the kids' toes.

I never thought that I could have posted the .not version. That way you could have seen everything. I'll be more aware of file size next time.

all best,
mgj

Hello M.G.,

I'm interested in hearing about what aspect of this composition is experimental. The piece is clearly a ragtime. The harmony, however, is not traditional ragtime. The harmony is "off-balance", intentionally, I presume. I suspect that harmony is where you've experimented. What specific harmony experiments does this piece employ? I haven't been able to analyze to my intellectual satisfaction what this piece does harmonically.

Cheers
-- Mark

Hello Mark,

Sorry not to have had a cerebral agenda to discuss when I started this. That "after several days with a composition that was...experimental" referred to the whole-tone piece.

Interestingly, this piece game me an occasion to listen to all of Joplin. I opened the midi file of each rag in Composer, split the hands, and watched as I listened. (I was listening because, after a year since I sketched it out, "Reveries" seemed AWFULLY familiar--as if I had heard it, the whole piece, before and had maybe let my sub-conscious employ Mozart's gift as a curse and I re-wrote a Joplin piece). But ragtime harmony seems pretty much I, IV, V, with frequent excursions into the diminished sound, though I can't pretend to have analyzed it, even in one piece. I was just after the kind of sound that I imagined. Maybe the fact that I just wanted to get the idea in mind down, and I worried about nothing else, was why it was so much fun to do????

all best,
mgj

Hello Sherry,

Nice description, and I guess it fits. I chose the title because it was hot and sticky when I sketched it. Once that was done, the right hand seemed a sort of fickle but cool breeze and the sections with the thrumming left hand like the heat. But the title was one of those things that just happens; I didn't spend any time agonizing over the choice. If it had been winter, it would probably be called something else.

I don't have anything to improvise on. But a couple of ideas popped up in my head and before I forgot them, I sketched them out. It seemed it would work as a rag-like piece, so I made it 2/4 and added the left hand. Since it needed something else, I chipped away at ideas until I had added what seemed, later, to be the "heat" sections. So I guess it was improvised in my head and finished intentionally.

Glad it was fun.

best,
mgj

Howdy guys,

Fascinating discussion about a neat piece. In reading over the "Composer's Datebook" for today, I found a phrase that I think describes this piece nicely: "mercurial continuity."

ttfn,
Sherry

ps If you want to see the entire "Datebook" for today, email me off list and I can forward it to you. It's about composer Steven Mackey.

Hi mark,

Quote: Did you improvise this with recording turned on?

No, I clicked the enlarge button three or four times and used the track ball mouse, changing note duration with the numbers at the top of the keyboard, as usual.

Quote: You're not into Wagner?

There is much about Wagner that is a bore, from his apparent inability to condense a story to get at its dramatic essence to his obsession with myth. His music, however, perhaps makes him the fourth "B."

best,
mgj