Dear family, friends, and fellow travelers,
The song this cycle is Crossing Over, an improvised piano piece from the last couple of weeks - you'll see a few hesitations in the playing and so on, but the tune seemed to me to capture something of this season as we pass the winter solstice and find, hopefully, some quiet and reflective time before heading into the new year and the return of the light.
I've added a couple of new things to the site. I've been slowly curating the endless hours of improvs on piano and guitar that I have and am adding them to an Improv playlist, on the menu tab. As improvs they often capture the moment in ways unique to them. They certainly have flaws and hesitations. The piano ones are recorded digitally directly on the keyboard which gives them a full sound quality. The guitar ones were recorded on my phone, often in the night, quietly, and have a much lower audio quality. I'm including a few that I really like, but you'll see, on the Improv page, that you can filter the list to be all , just piano, or just guitar. I'll be adding more recordings regularly - both new ones and ones from my archive.
I've also added a Favorites feature so that, as the playlists grow, you can mark those songs you particularly like and just listen to those, again from using the drop down filter at the top of the playlist. Right now it's a two-step process. You have to click on the song you want to mark on the playlist and then go to the side bar (bottom on phone) and click the gray heart so select; click again to deselect.
On the technical side, the favorites function relies on you not clearing your cookies, often the default setting. Favorites will be lost if cookies are cleared. I hope to add a login feature that would allow you to keep your selections without cookies.
Finally, realizing that many people no longer have a CD player, Leonore and I made our three albums available for free here on the site in playlists. There's a new tab, Albums, on the top menu. Select the album you want to hear from the dropdown and enjoy. Songs are free to download as well. We will make some CDs for those who may want that medium - if that is your desire, feel free to contact me.
Here's the filterable playlist of all the songs from all the newsletters.
I'm sending you a monthly offering from original music I've been writing over many years. I've been so bold as to add your email to my newsletter list. You can unsubscribe at any time (link at the bottom of the email).
Many songs are recorded solo, some are from different musical twinings from over the years - all are original tunes, with some occasional collaborations.
My best to each,
Brian
