Free Stuff!! Bartolozzi Score For 'Collage'

Page one of the book. Not included, unfortunately.

While the publisher has no plans to reprint this rather excellent book I thought as a companion to the pieces I posted previously I'd post the scores too (including the guide on the back page). Not the world's greatest scan but it's legible I think.

'DL' as a .pdf from Dropio here. If the link is dead please let me know in the comments and I'll re-upload it.

Enjoy, presumably.

Perhaps it will be reprinted at some point, why not a digital download? Lame, really.

UPDATE: Thanks to John for posting a comment about Dropio being down (it's now a discontinued service apparently). I've uploaded this score to Mediafire here. Also I'll reupload the Bartolozzi audio files from a previous post when I get time (the files are quite large).

Please post comments about any other dead links and I'll reupload those too. Thanks. Ed.

Free Stuff: Sketch Scores On Your Smartphone!

A mobile phone, and some manuscript paper, amongst other things.

Yes that's right. Unfortunately I can't claim to have programmed some natty 'app' I've actually included here a very simple, almost stupid solution to something that arguably wasn't a problem in the first place.

Ever been out of the house and had a musical idea you wanted to jot down but didn't have a pen or any paper? (I did at a birthday party last night as it happens, hence my 'invention' this morning).

Well, now there's no need to worry as by using a touchscreen smartphone, a free paint package and the blank manuscript .jpg I've included a link to here you can sketch away at your leisure. You can even pretend to be Stravinsky and use different colours, and you know, stuff.

I've got a Nokia phone which uses the Symbian OS and I've been using the Paint Pad 'app' which allows you to 'paint' over a still image. I edited some blank manuscript paper to a convenient size (4 staves, didn't bother with clefs or systems etc for reasons that should be obvious) and now use that to sketch notes on top of (if you wanted to you could of course give yourself more staves or extra details, easy to do in photoshop).

Obviously it's a bit fiddly to use and sometimes accidentals and grace notes etc can be a bit tricky to draw but it does work quite well for basic sketches while you're sitting on the bus and so on.

One day perhaps your phone will play your sketches back to you (any programmers out there?)

The iPhone has a scoring 'app' available, not sure about Android or other platforms but this Paint Pad way of doing things is A: Free, B: Simple, C: Means I actually have a use for the stylus that came with my phone (this was my primary motivation obviously).

So there you go, get to it (or not).

Here's an early attempt at a sketch I did today, not exactly neat but I think you can work out what's going on. Extra brownie points for anyone who can tell me what 'piece' this is a fragment from.



TinyURL for this post: http://tinyurl.com/33evqj8

Earle Brown Documentary, yes....Free Stuff!!!

Earle Brown: Is that a tan or has he just been up a chimney?.

This may not be news to some, but if you go to Earle Brown's site you can watch a 25 minute documentary about him (you have to hand over some email details first though.)

It features the great man himself explaining some of his ideas and the history behind them, plus a little conducting footage is thrown in for good measure.

Oh, and also you get to watch him feed some swans in slow motion and hose down his black Porsche 911 (which he drives later on, wearing a black baseball cap, black leather jacket, blue jeans and white hi-top sneakers, nice, it looks like late 90s early noughties too, even better.)

Here is the now routine tinyurl for this post for feeds/blogs/water cooler conversations and so on.. http://tinyurl.com/kuyuf6

Quotation For Late May, and, Free Stuff!!.

Xenakis: Possibly taking a break from doing a spot of painting and decorating (just out of shot is a large mug of strong tea and a king size Lambert and Butler alight in an ashtray)

Xenakis: ...'I was amazed by the fact that with so few notes you can produce that comprehension of things. I felt like a child because I write many notes.'

Feldman: 'I felt like a child because I write so few notes. Half of the alphabet is not there. . .'

Xenakis: 'It also was a kind of lesson: I thought about a piece that I should write with very few notes. . .'

Morton Feldman and Iannis Xenakis In conversation 1988. You can download the full text here (via Evergreen State College.)

Let me know if the link goes dead and I'll upload it again, also please link back to this post if you want to spread the freeness on your twitter feeds or blogs etc (don't just go 'hey guys, look what I found!.'), here is a tinyURL link especially for you.... http://tinyurl.com/poa2x7

Free Stuff!!!: A Sheet Music Utility and a Firefox Mp3 Plugin.

A couple of useful free things I have found recently on teh internets are Blanksheetmusic.net, a site which unsurprisingly offers various types of blank manuscript paper (you can customise the page to your liking, like Sibelius or Finale but faster and browser based.). Good if you want to print some blank sheets to write on with that antiquated technology, the hand.

The other is the Foxytunes/Yahoo Firefox plugin. It works really well for those sites that have mp3 links but don't feature a browser player (you know the ones, where you click on the mp3 link and it loads a whole new page, not ideal.).

An example (and this isn't a criticism btw) is the Clarinet of The 21st Century site which has lots of mp3 examples (click the images on the page) of the listed techniques/fingerings, now you can play them all from the same page with ease, you'll see a little play arrow underneath each example. Nice :-)

Yet More Free Stuff!: Access to Gramophone Magazine's Archive

Yes indeedy, Gramophone Magazine have a beta version of an archive of their magazine online, i'll let them explain it...

The Gramophone Archive is a searchable database containing every issue of Gramophone from April 1923 to the latest issue. Despite the complexities of producing a magazine during wartime, Gramophone has never missed an issue and in 1995 added an extra, 13th, issue each year to coincide with the annual Gramophone Awards.

Looks like a great resource for all sorts of reasons.

More Free Stuff!: Berio Recordings To DL

Berio, after a hard night on the pop.

Yes, that's right, not sure why I didn't include this link with my 'analysis' of Berio's piece Nones as that piece is included in this DL (it's an early, rare piece I think, now out of print so it seems).

Anyway, it's all on the excellent Avant Garde project site, number 27 (not sure why the AGP isn't in my side bar of links either, I shall include it now). It features out of print recordings so don't whine about copyright etc, worth having a hunt around on the site if you haven't come across it before.

Check the recordings archive (loads of stuff, Takemitsu, Wolpe, Foss, Xenakis, Maderna, Partch, Brown, Wolff, and much more).

You'll find more Berio for one thing, vocal works (AGP26) and Berio Conducts Berio (AGP83).