Satie - Le fils des étoiles

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thanks.

A very high percentage of the piano part is straight; I altered the second, romantic type section, noticably. the louder section that goes into doesn't have that martial melodic line, that's mine.

the first section originally is just the chords so I'm writing the lines over it. the solo piano part is all Satie. I was tempted to go for drums and bass there but I decided not to.

I'm doing the second part of this now...

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jancivil wrote:
polyslax wrote:a bagpipe move you make occasionally on the guitar that I love... in here at :24.
I do it all the time. it's just a quality of a strong hammer/pull, typically such as 'tapping' provides. especially with a pick, which Zappa did and in fact called his Bulgarian Bagpipes approach.
Fascinating, I didn't realize the FZ connection to that move.
jancivil wrote:
polyslax wrote: Your fractured jazz opera never fails to intrigue, but I still want to hear you cut loose on a groove some day. :)
Stranger 'n' - #5
gets into stretches of 4/4 with a consistent backbeat... there is lead guitar from start to finish.
I'm pretty mad that you snuck that link in there without at least PMing me! ;)

Thank you! This just confirms what I suspected... you can cook an awesome groove based piece. I'm going to listen to that guitar many more times. There are things happening rhythmically that make my brain smile, and there are moments of magic, similar to that piano chord, that are very emotional for me. I keep going back...
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glad you are enjoying that.

after I switched from drums, I was trying to become a rock drummer, to go into electric lead guitar, I did not pay any attention really to time-keeping. rhythm guitar is still something I'll delegate today. So my time became fluid and expansive. when I got back into composing music this century one of the thrusts was to learn to build support for the melodic thing which is primary for me, a lead player. so I have spent quite some time on thinking as a bass player and drummer with a DAW.

the drumming I do is very tied to the expansive time thing and I'm hearing Vinnie Colaiuta's support of Zappa.
however even when I wasn't active as a drummer I have filled in as the time keeping type of drummer in rock which is a coordination I was able to keep.

I'm 'busy' mentally and a backbeat is not foremost in my mind. additionally I always create every hit in the drums writing from scratch, so an extended groove is as much work as something more interesting. I'm a frustrated jazz drummer - it's an example of my broken path in life - and my so-called avant tendencies lead me into intricacies that aren't suited for the dance floor; so it seems as though I'm re-rehearsing the history, the old tension in jazz, the intellectual side that led it away from popular music over time.

this has the jazz drumming sliding all over the time while a rhythm guitar that isn't provided by me kept the backbeat where I didn't:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taHFdy8W ... CBdP5drhF-

and some somewhat abstruse guitar in violation of Satie's nice line
Last edited by jancivil on Sun Feb 10, 2013 7:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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This is truelly a great piece. I love it. Are you planning on making this into a full play?

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I would love it if someone would, if you mean will I stage a play, I have no means to do that. I do have a vague idea that these arrangements would suit this play if done today. I may even read it all.

I'm likely to continue on with these arrangements, anyway. the music for the second act is if anything more fascinating. I'm taking a lot more liberty with it.

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jancivil wrote:
polyslax wrote:a bagpipe move you make occasionally on the guitar that I love... in here at :24.
I do it all the time. it's just a quality of a strong hammer/pull, typically such as 'tapping' provides. especially with a pick, which Zappa did and in fact called his Bulgarian Bagpipes approach.
:lol: :lol:

Wow, I love this. And the era this is coming out of astonishes me as well.
I always forget that in the academic neverneverland that parallel movement is considered gauche or something.

This is amazing. I'd love to be informed when you finish it and string it together so I can properly hear it all of a piece, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it in this snatchy was, too. Been too long since one of your mess'o'potamian tracks came my way.

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well by the time this happened Debussy had tossed a lot of the old ways out the window. there was an Oriental music exposition around this time. and Satie, Debussy represent the avant garde of the time. this particular usage is not like Debussy however. the first time I heard it, and I am a sort of cognoscenti of the period, I was STUNNED by the sound of it.

then it normals out. the section following that is bit drier in the original than my Hollywood effect.

EDIT: sections 1-3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWvoJTwEqr8

One thing that was good for me was to connect these disparate styles via my arrangement and adaptation, force things that didn't really work for me to work by my ways of thinking. One old friend said when I showed him this, 'sounds like McCoy Tyner running out of ideas in an improv'. Satie would move freely from these unusual chords to plainer things all the time, I'm finding.
Last edited by jancivil on Mon Jul 16, 2018 5:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Very cool. Even apart from the "bulgarian bagpipe" I was occasionally reminded of Zappa.

Fascinating piece.

Victor.

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Hi, thanks Victor.

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runagate wrote:
jancivil wrote:
polyslax wrote:a bagpipe move you make occasionally on the guitar that I love... in here at :24.
I do it all the time. it's just a quality of a strong hammer/pull, typically such as 'tapping' provides. especially with a pick, which Zappa did and in fact called his Bulgarian Bagpipes approach.
:lol:

Wow, I love this. And the era this is coming out of astonishes me as well.

This is amazing. I'd love to be informed when you finish it and string it together so I can properly hear it all of a piece, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it in this snatchy way, too. Been too long since one of your mess'o'potamian tracks came my way.
I have this vague recall of trying to find the runner of gates behind this but no luck.

Anyway, I was replacing some broken links, because I re-rendered something I found rather harsh today, needing to d/l the old file from Soundcloud. Youtube used to deal differently, the thing is probably improved just by some cuts but It's hard to have perspective hearing something repeatedly. I prob. had different ears for it this day.

"sounds like McCoy Tyner running out of ideas in an improv" was probably due to some pianist who didn't quite get it. Neither I nor SB had heard the thing before.

That sec., around 1:18, works for me now!
It takes some time with it for this compo to make real sense.

EG: The piano solo in section 2, the theme of Act I, uses the same intervals as the beginning for the theme! Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

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Yes, great thread.
Satie, one of the most strange character in the music history, has belonged to my house gods since late 80's, when I first heard piano compositions by him.

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I did not know Satie, much, before around 2011. I'd heard the Gymnopedies which is the most commonly heard Satie, iirc #2, from the eponymous Blood, Sweat and Tears album when I was 13 or 14. And that's about it until I came across Gnossienne #1 somewhere. Which I immediately decided to do with the reggae backing. It was that #4, C Eb E C B that captivated me. And then I started looking for more.

A couple of things I couldn't do anything with at the time. I did do this (the revisited post is the prelude and theme of Act I of Le fils, and the prelude to Act II*. And as such comes across as self-contained with a finality) and 4 others.

Theme from Act II appears in my oeuvre later as "Fantasia" but doesn't follow this at all. That's more than half me, easily. Harmonically that one is passing strange. It starts off with a simple tune but then has these parallelisms which go nowhere. I went jazz with that no doubt. It's a one-off, I dis-included it for a time. So the full Le fils was not to be.

*: I did an alternate version of the Act II Prelude I call by its subtitle, l'initiation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FK-RZWgwJk

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Satie is a musical impressionist for me. Or minimalist or naivist. Many people, not in his own time, nor today, don't value him at all as a composer/musician. He is widely considered as a "self-made man", who was hiding behind the mystique and bizarre quasi art philosophy.

And yet, his music is one of the most affective mood-creators, ever written.

P.s. An interesting potential case connected to the thread discourse "good/bad music".
Last edited by Harry_HH on Mon Jul 16, 2018 6:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

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double
Last edited by Harry_HH on Mon Jul 16, 2018 6:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

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double

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