In celebration of Halloween past — I post my 1:17 minute rendition of the “Addams Family Theme.”
I had intended to perform/record my three-trombone arrangement using three of my four trombones. But, as so often happens with me, I ran myself out of time. So, rather than wait until next Halloween, I performed my written-out trombone parts on keyboard and will wait for a later time to re-debut recording of my currently-being-updated trombone-playing.
My arrangement uses three keyboards: Yamaha Montage for harpsichord, Kurzweil PC3K for low-double-reeds and three trombone parts, and Alesis Ion for finger-snaps. I made this arrangement in recognition of having my very own real-life, too-nearby Uncle Fester and assorted OTHER Addams family members living in the SAME house.
Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart; naught be all else to me, save that thou art. Thou my best thought, by day or by night, waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.
Be thou my wisdom, and thou my true word; I ever with thee and thou with me, Lord; thou and thou only, first in my heart, great God of heaven, my treasure thou art.
Great God of heaven, my victory won, may I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s Sun! Heart of my own heart, whatever befall, still be my vision, O Ruler of all.
Ancient Irish lyrics translated by Mary E. Byrne, 1905; versed by Elanor H. Hull. Traditional Irish melody, harmonized by Carlton R. Young, 1963.
I was saddened by the recent sudden, unexpected death of my near-lifelong friend, Paul Dozier. Several of his friends, who remained close to Paul during the last years, spoke at his Memorial Service. The hymn, “Be Thou My Vision” and its lyrics were featured during the service because of Paul’s reported fondness for the hymn. I have also loved this hymn for years and played it many times for congregational singing while serving as organist of various churches. Since Paul’s funeral, I have been working on this arrangement of the piece. Additionally, I recently was made aware of a very nice history of the piece with commentary on its authorship and underlying textual meaning. The article also publishes an additional verse of the hymn, that is not commonly known or sung.
My arrangement utilizes all three verses of the hymn as presented in an old United Methodist hymnal in my library. The hymn is marked to be sung unison, without vocal harmonization. Harmony during the verses remains faithful to the Carlton Young harmonization from the hymnal. However, I used chromatic harmonies during the intro and interludes between the second and third stanzas. Instrumentation includes recorder melody, a soprano saxophone playing an alternate version of the melody, an oboe playing a duet part (primarily with the recorder), two different string ensembles (one used for the intro and interludes and the other during verses), a dark brass-like synthesizer instrument playing lower-than-the-melody harmony parts and avoiding melody notes, and bass. I used music-paper, pencil and lots of eraser to compose several of the parts. This is contrasted to when I play a part I am concocting over and over before finally settling on what I am going to play, and then recording it without ever committing it to paper. More and more I am finding the tried and true pencil and paper method to be a reliable way of working.
All instruments and sounds except piano are made by my Yamaha Montage8 synthesizer. The piano sound is being made by my Kurzweil PC3K8 and is a piano program I used extensively years ago.
The video was created using ProjectMilkSyphon to generate the video that is synchronized to the music. I recorded the generated video using Syphon Recorder.
I then used the command ffmpeg to trim a little empty video from the beginning of the video, combine the video with the audio, and transcode the video to h264 and audio to aac. I then used Fotomagico to create titles, credits and the ending screen, and finally generate the video for this to be uploaded to YouTube. This workflow is still not automatic for me; but, it is getting easier.
I hope that you enjoy my arrangement of Be Thou My Vision.
For years, I planned to eventually record the trumpet-fanfare theme of the CBS Sunday Morning television series (“CBSSM,” hence) using synthesizer. I believed the fanfare was either a Vivaldi or Bach composition. When CBSSM aired their story about “Abblasen” on January 27, 2019, I learned that the piece was composed by the German trumpeter and composer, Elias Gottfried Reich (1667-1734). Reich was a contemporary of J.S. Bach and performed trumpet parts in Bach performances that are said to have been written specially for Reich by Bach.
Abblasen is known today because it is pictured in the oil portrait of Reich, painted by court-painter, Elias Gottlob Haussmann (1695–1774). Haussman also painted Bach and many other courtesans of the day. The musical notation for Abblasen has been transcribed from the included painting. As pictured, the fanfare is written in the key of C major. I originally performed Abblasen in the key of C. Because the prevalence of the D-trumpet during the Baroqué period, the piece is normally performed in D major. I performed it in C major and transposed it to D major using the magic of computers. The included notation is mine and was transcribed from an online source, needing notation for practice, and not currently having a working printer; so, I transcribed the notation by-hand. During practice, I developed keyboard fingering (included) that may seem odd to some players (and, even to me in an occasion or two, in retrospect).
Over the years, CBSSM featured three different trumpeter’s versions of the piece. The current CBSSM rendition was performed and recorded by Wynton Marsalis in 2004. Doc Severinsen performed the previous version. My arrangement of Abblasen features my Alesis Ion Synthesizer. In the first iteration of the theme, the 1st trumpet is accompanied by a lower harmony part and a 2nd trumpet playing down an octave from the 1st. In the second iteration of the theme, two additional accompanying parts are added to impart a defined harmony to the originally monophonic line.
Notation for “Abblasen” with SMOjr fingering.
The video uses a hodge-podge of audio and video technologies. I used ProjectMilkSyphon to generate the music-visualizer-video that is (approximately) synchronized to the audio. This project provides a way to utilize thousands of existing and author new “presets” for the Milkdrop visualizer that was a component of the Winamp media-player in the past. Milkdrop source code became open-source and the mProject project made this code available to other developers — including the developers who produced ProjectMilkSyphon. The .milk visualizer “preset” I used was one of the thousands that are publicly available. I selected the one that I used for this project by experimentation. I used Syphon Recorder to recorded the video from the visualization generated by ProjectMilkSyphon. Then, I used FotoMagico to generate the final video that I uploaded to YouTube with video titles, credits, and ending and to include the other visualizer video. Whew!
I hope that you enjoy my arrangement of Abblasen and the accompanying video.
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