…but first, enjoy some music!

Playing piano in my new home.

I’m currently staying with a nice family in who have a lovely music room with an old Blüthner grand piano! So, I’m taking advantage of this by practicing constantly and making a few recordings. I need to get a new microphone for better audio quality, but in the meantime, I’ve taken four improvizations and bundled them into a suite for your enjoyment (yes, you specifically). Have a listen! Note: I cheated and sped up a few of the tempos because it sounded better. Oops!

Download the full suite by clicking here, or listen to the audio posted below.

Berlin comes in many flavors

Beautiful countryside,
Solid grey buildings,
Bustling city streets,
Graffiti-soaked gateways
to the netherworld.

Perhaps the Winter weather is at fault, but after living here for two months, it’s still difficult to describe Berlin in a nutshell. Each area of Berlin has its own personality, and depending on where you go, this city may be either cold, grey, and decorated solely in graffiti, or full of activity with people hurrying from place to place, the streets lined with brightly-colored marketplaces and Döner Kebab vendors. If you go to the outskirts of the city, you may find yourself near a lake or surrounded by lush, green forest. All of Berlin is easily accessible by train, and if you’ve purchased a Monatskarte (monthly ticket) for travel on the S-Bahn, U-Bahn, tram, and bus, every neighborhood feels local, even if it’s almost an hour away.

I’ve met so many people here from so many different countries. One night, we went out for drinks with a few friends: at our table were two Americans (me and my lovely girlfriend), a German man, a Serbian woman, an English man, and a man from Finland. Our common language was English, so naturally that’s what we spoke. This happens more often than you’d expect, and it makes it very difficult to learn German here! We celebrated Thanksgiving with the same folks plus an Austrian friend of ours and, apparently, the American Thanksgiving feast is somewhat of a legend here – this made devouring of a giant bird that much more special.

My Life in a German City

One WIP project – the
Synesthesia Color Keyboard

Speaking of mass transit, a lot of my time thus far has been spent travelling from place to place on the S-Bahn. I’d found an Anglican church near Westkreuz whose pastor was generous enough to let me practice piano there twice a week while I got my feet on the ground. Unfortunately, the trip was almost an hour each way. Fortunately, I had a workbook of German verb exercises to keep me company and teach me the various forms of the word “is”: sein, sind, ist, bist, seid, sei, seien, war, warst, waren, wart, wäre, gewesen – hopefully that’s all of them.

When I wasn’t travelling to practice, I was lugging my laptop to and from the city library to work on Visa paperwork, musical projects, job applications, research, and anything else that needs to be done without distraction from YouTube. Now that I’ve moved to Zehlendorf, my routine is completely different. I’ve finished my verb workbook, German classes begin soon, the library is only three stops away by train, and there’s a piano room upstairs that becomes my “office” when the kids here are at school during the morning. Not too shabby!

Looking ahead

look its nosferatu
omg imso scared

Other than rant about how delicious the jam is here and how difficult it is to find a wireless café, I can’t think of much more travel-related stuff at the moment.

I’m starting up a few recording projects, including silent movies, something involving synesthesia and color projections, and more shenanigans all over the interweb. I’m working on material for auditions for Masters exams, including Scriabin Sonata No. 5 and Beethoven Sonata in C Major, Op. 2, no. 3. Here’s a work-in-progress recording of the Scriabin, recorded here at home!

[Audio]

This will be the last big concert I do in Oregon before taking off, which will be as soon as I can save the necessary funds to make the transition overseas. Please come and donate what you can to make this happen! And if you have no money to donate, come anyway!

– Simon

The Color Wheel

The Color System

Colors are assigned in rainbow-order along the circle of fifths, with C as red, G as orange, D as yellow, etc. This pattern is almost identical to the scheme used by Scriabin’s color organ in Prometheus: Poem of Fire.

When playing chords, the each invidual note is placed on a color wheel (as shown on the right), and the average coordinates of the notes determine the final color. For example, C and F# are red and cyan respectively. Those colors are opposite of each other, and the average coordinates are in the middle of the color wheel – white. Db (Sky Blue) and Eb (Violet) are close to each other, so the average color is blue. However, the coordinates are slightly closer to the center, producing a lighter blue than a pure tone. The farther apart two simultaneous notes are on the circle of fifths, the whiter they will appear on the color wheel.

Chord colors sorted by hue

Composing by Color

[Audio]

To write music under this color system, I made a color chart of various chords in every key, sorted by hue or the root of the chord. Using this chart, it’s easy to plan a composition by color progression. For example, I could write a piece representing bouquet of roses of various colors. I’d like to use bright colors and interesting chords, so I’ll choose Cmin7 (Red), Bb7 (Pink), Gaug (White), and Amin7 (Yellow). The stems are a dark green, so I may use a single low E as a low bass note from time to time, making the stem act as a root (clever, huh?). Sonata No. 1 treats color in an abstract way, distributing each hue on the color wheel evenly throughout the entire work, with some sections separated by white chords (Aug, Dim7, Dom7b5).

You can download the color chart here.

Complicated programs are complicated

The Software

The program runs in software called Pure Data (or PD) using the Gem extension. This program reads MIDI input from your keyboard and mixes the colors onto a color wheel in real time. The color to project is shown by a large window which can be made full-screen by clicking the [fullscreen 1] box in the lower-left corner. The colors are brighter the louder the notes are played. When the software is receiving no or little MIDI input, the projection window is black.

Download the PD project here. Remember, it needs to be run with the Gem extension.

Preface

The first notes of Elegy were written during one of my darker times, and the final bars were completed during my happiest. Regardless of the dramatic mood-shifts, Elegy is very sombre and unsettled, never quite resolving, shifting from key to key through extreme chromaticism. The opening motif, very reminiscent of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, sets the thematic and dramatic tone for the rest of the work. Elegy is held together by dense counterpoint, with each part carefully woven between its neighbors, never giving one instrument dominance over another. This piece is dedicated to Jesse O’Neill, whose heroic arrival onto the scene saved this piece from development hell.

Usage of the opening motif

Thematic Usage

[Audio]

All of the material for this work is drawn from the opening four-note motif (A, B♭, D, C♯). This motif is passed around between every instrument, giving each performer a chance to be the dominant voice while others accompany them. The work is driven forward by presenting this motif in different keys and setting it into different time signatures. It is also inverted and used to form longer melodic lines.

Compressing the full score

Solo Piano Arrangement (Op. 6a)

[Audio]

As both a composer and pianist, I typically write for piano so I get the added fun of performing works myself. This piece, although short, is one of my favorites, but it just so happens that I don’t have a brass quintet in my pocket (eBay?). So, I made an arrangement for piano. Translating five-voice counterpoint into a solo piano work is difficult, so it took some adjusting to make it work. Some chords were far too large for two hands alone. Bringing out each voice individually is especially tricky, but it can be done with enough work. The result is a very sparse, intimate, but turbulent piece which works quite well in performance after a dazzling concert piece.