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  #1  
Old 12-06-2009, 06:24 AM
Mark W Mark W is offline
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Default Mark Walsen - Two Piano Apple Pie

Hello Music Friends,

There's a recording of another piece I wrote, this one around 1985 for two pianos, named Apple Pie. You can hear it here:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page...?bandID=512028

Here's the description I wrote for it at Soundclick:

Thick, heavy beat sound of two pianos in a high spirited, somewhat urban American folk style. It's not quite as down-home American as the Apple Pie name suggests.

This is the first piece I wrote (n 1985) with the aid of a computer as an accompanist, ever willing to play one of the parts while I was sketching the other part.

This recording is of me playing both parts live. No, I don't have four hands. I did a MIDI, not audio, recording of the first piano part on my 6'11'' Yamaha grand Disklavier, which plays back the MIDI recording as a live acoustic performance. (You've seen these pianos playing themselves in malls or hotel lobbies.) Then, while the Disklavier was playing back the first part, I played the second part on my only slightly mismatched second 7'4'' Yamaha grand.

It's really fun to play two pianos with oneself this way, but not nearly as much fun as playing with live pianist with whom you can musically talk back and forth better during the performance.

Cheers
-- Mark
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  #2  
Old 12-07-2009, 12:07 AM
Mark W Mark W is offline
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Default Re: Mark Walsen - Two Piano Apple Pie

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
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  #3  
Old 12-07-2009, 09:30 PM
adrianallan adrianallan is offline
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Default Re: Mark Walsen - Two Piano Apple Pie

I liked the drive and momentum in this piece.

I imagine to get the maximum rhythmic effect both parts need to be spot on the beat, and as you confess, this is the only thing that is holding back the realization.

With a really good piano sample and an ironed-out (mainly quantised not rubato) performance I imagine this could be an effective piece.
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  #4  
Old 12-09-2009, 06:37 AM
mgj32 mgj32 is offline
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Default Re: Mark Walsen - Two Piano Apple Pie

Hi Mark,

Here's one that didn't particularly grab me the first time I listened, but something in it obviously struck a spark of awareness, because I came back and listened again, then again a couple of times--all on three successive days. I find it rather fun to hear now, the concerto like co-operation moving to a sense of competition between the pianos over the theme. I still find myself musing over the ending because it still surprises me, seems more like a semi colon than a period, as if the pianists winked at each other and stopped playing. I downloaded it and will try it on continuous play. An abrupt ending doesn't diminish the enjoyment of the piece, but I am curious to find out if/when it starts to sound final. The title strikes me as entirely appropriate.

all best,
mgj
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  #5  
Old 12-11-2009, 01:51 AM
Mark W Mark W is offline
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Default Re: Mark Walsen - Two Piano Apple Pie

Hello Adrian and MG,

Quote:
I imagine to get the maximum rhythmic effect both parts need to be spot on the beat, and as you confess, this is the only thing that is holding back the realization.
Yes, this recording is severely lacking in rhythmic cripsness. I'll try recording it again soon. I might even use a metronome light when recording the first page of the first part, which has some long rests that are very difficult for me to count perfectly without reference to the second piano playing.

Also, I'm going to place the mics close to the piano sounding board as I did for the other recordings (Parallel Intervals and Children's Suite). This Apple Pie recording is way too wet, by my taste.

MG, it's quite understandable to me that for a given listener, some of my pieces will have radically different appeal (and lack thereof) from others. I mess around with different music styles, some of which are not even familiar to me. I don't even know where the style of Apple Pie comes from. I don't know what piece by another composer might be similar to it. It happens to be one of my 19 year old son David's favorite pieces I've written. I even caught him sitting down, listening outside my piano room as I was doing takes.

It's definitely true, this piece ends very abrubtly. The piece tries to offer clues that it is preparing to end, especially with the several repetitions of motives in the last several bars, almost like a repetitive fade out at the end of a piece, but without a decrescendo. The abrupt end is sort a slap in the face, and a final concise statement of the whole piece's main motive, which is a just a bar of 8th notes:

ApplePieLastMeasure.JPG

Cheers
--Mark
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  #6  
Old 12-16-2009, 07:16 AM
mgj32 mgj32 is offline
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Default Re: Mark Walsen - Two Piano Apple Pie

Hi Mark,

Quote: "I don't even know where the style of Apple Pie comes from."

Joplin and Prokofiev, perhaps.

With reference to my earlier remark that there has to be an awareness on first hearing to make one keep returning, I have come to like this quite a bit now. The abrupt ending doesn't bother me any more; in fact it is a kind of shock that sounds natural because it is expected (if that makes any sense), though to say that it is prepared for seems a bit of a rationalization, which is fine. A listener has the right to wonder about anything in a composition, but the composer should also have the right to say anything from, "oh, oh, that note got moved somehow" to "that's the way I wanted it." The explanation may even be extra-musical--Haydn has a symphony where the orchestra gets up, one by one, and leaves the stage.

Anyhow, in Two Piano Apple Pie, I think I relate to the thematic material and enjoy what is done with it, as well as the comments by the other piano.

all best,
mgj
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  #7  
Old 12-18-2009, 03:12 AM
Mark W Mark W is offline
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Default Re: Mark Walsen - Two Piano Apple Pie

Hi MG,

Quote:
Haydn has a symphony where the orchestra gets up, one by one, and leaves the stage.
That's quite "hip". What "statement" on Haydn's part has been attributed to this?

Quote:
The abrupt ending doesn't bother me any more; in fact it is a kind of shock that sounds natural because it is expected (if that makes any sense), though to say that it is prepared for seems a bit of a rationalization.
Really, this wasn't a rationalized explanation of what I was doing with the ending. The overall piece moves very slowly harmonically. At about the 80% mark, though, the piece finally turns to harmonic motion to create the feeling of "a lot more is happening now-- we must be getting towards the end." Increasing the harmonic motion, is one of many dimensions of music that one might use-- sometimes several at a time-- to create excitement, especially towards the end of a piece.

After that very brief period of harmonic motion takes place, the harmony comes to a complete stand-still. It stays for measure after measure in D major. It's a complete release of tension in the dimension of harmony. Yet, all the other dimensions-- volume level, texture, rhythm-- keep going on as usual, like there's no end, like we're just in the middle of the piece. The abrupt ending is indeed abrupt. To understand the ending, one must understand that the harmony is over and done-- it has come to a keep halt for the entire last half page of the score, going nowhere. What was to be said has been said and has been completed. We're just coasting to the end at this point. It's a different type of ending. But it has a lot in common with the somewhat dreaded fade-out ending of rock & roll pieces, where nothing changes, except that the DJ (or sound studio producer) keeps turning down the volume level until zero is reached.

I'm not claiming this ending is good or bad. I'm just describing what I was consciously doing when I wrote this ending. Endings with predictable finality are satisfying. Endings with abrupt finality, intentionally or carelessly, leave one wondering; that's so for music, movies, and other types of stories. The listener tends to write out at least few more measures in his head, to compensate for the lack of finality in the ending. It's way of engaging the listener even after the last note... but, admittedly, at the risk of annoying some listeners.

Cheers
-- Mark
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  #8  
Old 12-18-2009, 07:30 AM
mgj32 mgj32 is offline
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Default Re: Mark Walsen - Two Piano Apple Pie

Hi Mark,

You have probably explained why the ending of "...Apple Pie" has come to seem natural. I'm not sure I remember the fade to nothing effect of the Rock and Roll I recall as a teenager, much of which I liked during those years, at least not on juke boxes. But I have heard it enough in later years to think of it as good, bad or ugly, and it's not the first. That may say yours is good. I can intellectually accept the analogy of your ending to the ubiquitous fade in pop music. But the fact is yours doesn't fade. In fact, even though the second chord is unaccented, the final two together sound cadential.

RE the Haydn symphony, the "Farewell" Symphony. I guess the ending was intended to suggest that he and the orchestra should have some time off. That is extra-musical. "Finlandia," could be said to be as it is for extra-musical reasons, as could film music. I am not saying, in any way, that musical thought and instinct are not present during its making. Just that there are many reasons a composition may be started and worked on, some of them purely musical and some not. There is something--I'm not entirely sure what--that has made me want to cull and re-arrange the Fitzgerald translations of the quatrains of Omar Khayyam into a symphony, for many years, because music seems the appropriate medium. Really, the only one.

How many time have I heard in a theater or living room after the show ends, phrases like, "that ended funny," or "what the heck is that ending supposed to mean," or "that just leaves you hanging." In a poem, a story or a novel, the unexpected, sometimes seemingly unrelated ending, should cause the reader to wonder, as you said--to think back and put words and scenes and character traits, etc. together, and he/she will probably find a key insight. Perhaps one won't find so many such endings in music because such a process of wondering is more difficult? But at the same time if music causes the listener to wonder (I suppose "it" should be expanded to mean anything in the music), it could well compel him/her to listen multiple times, whereas a novel, which takes many hours to read, would likely not be re-read--at least not immediately, let alone often. Many poems stand somewhere between, and tend to present some of the same kind of problems as the unexpected in music.

I guess that after the first paragraph, this should have been continued in The Philosophy of Music section. Apple pie smothered in Cool Whip: / The universe scrumptious / And explained.

all best,
mgj
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  #9  
Old 12-19-2009, 04:54 AM
Mark W Mark W is offline
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Default Re: Mark Walsen - Two Piano Apple Pie

Hi MG,

Quote:
I guess that after the first paragraph, this should have been continued in The Philosophy of Music section.
Ok, I'll jump over to that new section of the forum that Sherry set up for us.

Cheers
-- Mark
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