Mark Walsen - Two Piano Apple Pie

[Mark W]

P.S. I have now re-recorded Apple Pie, first replacing the 10-year old MIDI recording on my Disklavier. Then I recorded the audio. There are still problems with out-of-sync playing at the first part, where the first part had rests for several beats and didn't know when exactly when it should rejoin the first part. After a couple seconds of counting, I'm already off 50 msecs. I'm going to start following Sherry's rhythm exercises. Also, I hope to start using Celemony's Melodyne to fix up performance errors.

By the way, this piece is entirely in a 7:4 meter, from beginning to end. You'd probably never notice that. A good musician/composer friend of mine (Ernie) said that the piece is really in 1:4, which is a very good description of its beat. However, if you really bother to count the beats, you find that the same phrases always start on the same relative 7 quarter note beat. I wasn't going out of my way to write in 7:4; it's just that this is how the piece keeps momentum, by stealing way a quarter note from each otherwise natural pair of 4:4 meters. It almost works to hold the 7th quarter note in each measure an extra beat to create 2 x 4:4. The structure holds together if you do that, and you might even starting finding yourself tapping your foot to 4:4 meters instead of my friend's suggested 1:4 meter; but the momentum then is completely sacrificed.

Cheers
-- Mark