The Heat Death of the Universe for solo bass clarinet And String Quartet No. 1

[Ed Sharpe]

The Heat Death of the Universe

For Solo Bass Clarinet (and effects). Only a limited number of pitch classes are use in the piece.


Score and MP3:

http://www.sibeliusmusic.com/index.p...&scoreID=72071

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--4Fs9ZEkaE


Streaming MP3:
http://www.amaze.fm/artist/Ed_Sharpe...-universe-the/


(Garritan CAMB Solo Bass Clarinet)

==
(Yuki) -- String Quartet #1


This is a short five movement piece for string quartet. It is a String Quartet arrangement of my Woodwind Quartet "Yuki". Each movement is only about one minute each. And each movement is one line of a tanka that I wrote about Snow (Yuki). I wrote the second movement first and all of the material in the other four movements appears in or is derived from the second movement. Given this, one can think of the first movement as a prelude with the second movement being the main movement. The fifth movement re-states the main motifs of the first four movements, combining them into one large polyphonic mass.


The Tanka:

Unable to sleep
I listen throughout the night
to the silent song
of falling snow in my yard.
With the soft dawn, satori.


The Movements:


•The first movement is built around the pentatonic scale F# G B C# D.


•The second movement is built around the pentatonic scale C# D F# G# A.


•The third movement is built around the pentatonic scale D Eb G A Bb.


•The fourth movement is built around the pentatonic scale C Dd F G Ab, but does not strictly adhere to the scale in places.


•The fifth movement is built around the pentatonic scale C# D F# G# A, but does not strictly adhere to the scale in places.


Score and MP3 at:

http://www.sibeliusmusic.com/index.p...&scoreID=45934

(Solo String from GPO)

[etLux]

A powerful double-header, Ed.

I found Heat Death highly impactful, especially with the
accompanying graphics in the video version. There's
an entrancing aspect to this, which the spatial effects
serve to enhance.

Yuki is quite lovely in its somber undercurrents... very
well balanced movements that work perfectly to create
a measured and lasting impression on the listener.

Both cases, first chair writing, my friend. Bravo!

Always my best,



David
-----
David Sosnowski
www.DavidSosnowski.com

[FLWrd]

Just listened to "Heat Death", and I quite liked it. It's interesting how you keep the piece going to by applying "extra-tonal" changes, if I can call them that: the changes in volume, timbre, pan, slight distortion, reverbs and delays, they add a layer of tension to the piece, that's also very well rendered: the notes are very precise, but never feel synthetic. Good work.

[sd cisco]

Ed, this is very cool!
Nice work with effects and creates the perfect setting and ambiance for that lonely Bass Clarinet! Very good!
I watched the You Tube video and noted the graphics looked as if some could have been done using a plug-in for Adobe After Effects called AE Flames. Did you create the graphics yourself, or were they 3rd party?
The software had all these adjustments you could make to a multitude of parameters, and then, by changing the settings over time and rendering it, you got these swirling particles and great colours, which themselves can be animated over time in AAE. YouTube - spacetime

Best regards,
sd cisco

[fabiolcati]

I wish to bring to your attention an earlier Ed's composition
coming with as much charming video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1169A2YeIiI

Anyway, congratulations for both incoming works.
Sadly I can only listen to String Quartet with Scorch via internal
device, losing all the Garritan sound nuance of it.
But this allowed me to be more focused in listening to musical content.
Not least the fine poetic setting.
Bravo.

[Peter Jeffrey Gale]

The remarkable thing about both these skillfully crafted pieces are that I should expect to be completely fazed (or do I mean 'phased'?) by the sometimes frenetic bustle of musical/sonic activity.

Yet that wasn't at all the case.

Despite [or possibly because of] that, both can induce a surprising feeling of mental peace while still being quite evocative in an impressionistic way, if one wants to listen in a more traditional and purely musical way, for which they are both highly commendable.

Bravo, Ed!

[Ed Sharpe]

Ed, this is very cool!
Nice work with effects and creates the perfect setting and ambiance for that lonely Bass Clarinet! Very good!
I watched the You Tube video and noted the graphics looked as if some could have been done using a plug-in for Adobe After Effects called AE Flames. Did you create the graphics yourself, or were they 3rd party?
The software had all these adjustments you could make to a multitude of parameters, and then, by changing the settings over time and rendering it, you got these swirling particles and great colours, which themselves can be animated over time in AAE. YouTube - spacetime

Best regards,
sd cisco

Thank you for taking time to listen and the nice comments.

For the video I create random images using a program called Apophysis. I then just did a simple fade out and fade in between successive images in my video editing software, nothing too fancy.

Ed

[Ed Sharpe]

And a thank you to all who took time to listen. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Ed

[sd cisco]

Thank you for taking time to listen and the nice comments.

For the video I create random images using a program called Apophysis. I then just did a simple fade out and fade in between successive images in my video editing software, nothing too fancy.

Ed

Ed;
Thank you for your reply and info. I also have now watched the 22,000 songs fall silent piece - again, just excellent concept and execution on your part! Hate to bug you with questions, but, if I may.......what did you use to create the video for that one?

Thanks again for your original posting and I look forward to more of your forward looking work!

Best regards,
sd cisco

[Ed Sharpe]

Ed;
Thank you for your reply and info. I also have now watched the 22,000 songs fall silent piece - again, just excellent concept and execution on your part! Hate to bug you with questions, but, if I may.......what did you use to create the video for that one?

Thanks again for your original posting and I look forward to more of your forward looking work!

Best regards,
sd cisco

Years ago I came across a program that you feed it a midi file and it would play the midi file and display some sort of graph showing the notes (as you saw in the videos).

The Music Animation Machine
http://www.musanim.com/

Does not look like it has been updated in several years.

So all I did was take a midi export of my piece and ran it through.

To capture the video I used and program called CamStudio. CamStudio records your screen. Mostly is seems to be used as a training tool. Note it has options to capture audio in addtion to the video, but in my setup I did not want to capture the audio since what comes out of The Music Animation Machine is plain midi.


I used Sibelius to create an audio file of the piece. I then used a movie make software that came with Windows XP to create the titles and sync the music with the video.


PS: I am in no way connect with CamStudio, but have used it both for personal and professional tasks.

Ed

PSS: Searching the web for "midi visualizer" brings up some interesting possibilities.