How to Be Creative

Off Book is a bi-weekly video series by PBS Digital Studios. Subjects range from technology to art to pop culture. While it isn't specifically about music, this video, "How to Be Creative," has some great insights to the creative process.

Creativity has always been essential for our cultural growth, but there are still many misconceptions about this elusive process. Not the left-brain/right-brain binary that we've come to believe, being creative is considerably more complex, and requires a nuanced understanding of ourself and others. Being a powerful creative person involves letting go of preconceived notions of what an artist is, and discovering and inventing new processes that yield great ideas. Most importantly, creators must push forward, whether the light bulb illuminates or not.

via PBS Arts

Moonlight Sonata

I love this because many people get the chance to participate in playing Beethoven's well-loved work.

via Bus Station Sonata - Neatorama.

For Me and My Gal

Here's a little tin pan alley tune I recorded a few weeks ago. It's "For Me and My Gal" Music by George W. Meyer, words by Edgar Leslie and E. Ray Goetz, written in 1917. I hope you enjoy it! For more ukulele tunes see my Youtube channel.

French Airs: L'aimable Iris est de retour

This post combines two projects - my public domain project and my French airs project. I've realized the figured bass for "L'aimable Iris est de retour" by Joseph Chabanceau de la Barre. It would have originally been accompanied by theorbo, lute or harpsichord, but I've arranged it for piano which is much more common in a modern voice studio. I'm singing just the first verse; the second verse (called a double) is highly ornamented. Performance of just the first verse was standard practice for voice students in mid-seventeenth-century French airs and makes the piece very useful for lessons today. This way students can work on the French language while singing simpler vocal lines and they can also master the small ornaments that are expected on repetitions. As they master the language and technical skills required they can begin to work on the double.

Here's an idiomatic translation:

The lovely Iris has returned, but she has not changed. She is as indifferent as always, Just as I am enamored as always.

Toot, Toot Tootsie

This is the latest video in my public domain video project. "Toot, Toot Tootsie" by Gus Kahn, Erie Erdman and Dan Russo was published in 1922. Any later and it wouldn't be in the public domain! The original publication has the highly apropos subtitle, "A Cute Fox-Trot Song."

The song is quite well known, but most performers have sung only the chorus. I've included the first verse, which puts the chorus in the third person rather than in the first person. Instead of the singer telling a girlfriend good-bye in a ridiculously happy way, it becomes a story about a silly man saying goodbye at the train station that the singer tells to friends. Hope you enjoy it!

Check out my Youtube channel for more videos.