The Santa Claus Sweater

[mgj32]

This may sound strange with MS Wavetable. I have that disabled, so can't really tell. I've used the Merlin soundfont collection for Creative sound cards, with the Hagi flute and a legato violin soundfont from a demo collection.

This is a melody broken into four sections, each section with a number of variations. Then there are three sections with the variations used, in order, to make three melodies. The true melody is never revealed.

[Sherry C]

Howdy MG,

I was able to listen to this fairly closely to what you intended. I used Merllin Creative, with the Haigi Flute, but I'm not sure which legato violin you used, so I substituted one I had from some string quartet font I'd picked up. Good stuff

This piece has a great feeling of nostalgia to me. I'm wondering if perhaps the psychology of that is related to your use of the split up melody line.

Is there a story that goes with the title of this piece? I enjoyed it, and it's now in my "MG Jacobs" collection

ttfn,
Sherry

[mgj32]

Hi Sherry,
Where your feeling of nostalgia comes from, I couldn't even guess. Mine comes from the story of the title. I was putting something of Sara's into a memorabilia case when I spied the "Santa Claus" sweater I gave her for Christmas once and she wore every Christmas Eve since. I had been thinking, also, about the discussion in the Philosophy of Music section about the construction of melody. Further, I had been thinking of writing something I knew she would enjoy to commemorate what would have been our 48th anniversary, but had not yet had an idea. So the coincidence of the sweater, a desire to write something particular, and the discussion about melody construction is most of the story. The rest is the idea of building a melody, breaking it up into several (4 as it turned out) sections and doing a series of variations on each section; then putting them together to make several different, but obviously related, melodies (sections 5-7). Since it's all variations on a melody that is never stated, the true melody is never revealed. As far as I know, this is a new form, just as "The Search for Nelly Gray" is a different sort of oratorio.

I could send you that violin soundfont via gmail, if you'd like. It is about 1.3 MB. Working with the volume of notes individually can produce some very sweet sounds with this font. I have looked and looked for strings that don't sound as if every note is initiated with a new bow stroke, and this is the closest I've found. Before I do another violin sonata or concerto or string quartet, I am going to look into buying the collection that it comes from (I got it from a demo).

The piece has changed some (mostly with the addition of some additional piano accompaniment) since I posted it. I may have to reduce the master volume in Composer on some instruments and raise it on the clarinet before making a recording, which I intend to do on the first night I don't have to sweep up snow a couple of times. Hopefully, I'll get the "final" version on SClick within a week. Did I send you a facebook invitation? I'll put the direct link there right away, then go through my mailing list to make sure there aren't duplications.

BTW, "Birth" is still getting some play, though it has fallen from #11. I suppose I should take the Christmas things down until next December, by which time I may be able to upload re-recordings in higher quality sound. (I always save a raw wav, just in case).

My last concern about "Sweater" concerns the accoustic bass (which is the one instrument I've transposed, so far) which sounds an octave below written. I guess there is a tuning that would allow the highest note but it would take another to do the final note--the C1. Djim's advice: let the bass player worry about that. Have you tried the bass part and if so, what do you think?

Let me know about the violin font. Nothing else needs to be opened to assign a bank and preset ID.

Happy Spring,
Marv