Firstly, hello.
Secondly, welcome to a brand new blog post, which on this unusual occasion makes no reference to Clarinet Marmalade whatsoever! Except that reference I’ve just made there… Oh dear.
Thirdly, I hope you like my new style of title. Apparently these days people only read something if it has a number in the title – don’t ask me why, it’s probably something to do with The Instagram. So I thought I’d try it out for a bit of a larf.
Fourthly, to business! I thought today I would share with you a range of creative exploits I’ve been working on in various capacities over recent months. A lot of these are things that don’t tend to get noticed because (unlike live performances) they happen behind closed doors and then sneakily make their way on to YouTube when nobody’s looking. This is my chance to address that injustice and give them their moment in the limelight…
1) It’s Not Really the Apocalypse – Terrible Previews
What self-respecting blog post would be complete without reference to my tremendous new musical, which is available at www.michaelgrantmusician.com/inrta ? The answer is: none. At the moment I’m constantly trying to come up with ways to promote this masterpiece without just giving it away for free (which for some reason seems to be the done thing these days).
The solution: Terrible Previews! This is a natural extension of the classic method of offering a lower-quality version of a product for free, but asking people to pay for the high-quality one. What I have done is take each song from It’s Not Really the Apocalypse (available here), convert it to mono, chop a few notes off the beginning and end, overlay myself saying “Buy the album!” every 15 seconds in a variety of silly voices, and export the whole thing in the lowest-quality .mp3 format available to me before uploading to YouTube. The result is a version that gives a good idea of what the music is like, but is far too irritating for people to just listen to without buying the high-quality recording! Pure genius.
If you’d like to listen to these Terrible Previews, there’s a convenient playlist right here.
On a related note, It’s Not Really the Apocalypse (available here) is now also available on BandCamp: michaelgrantmusician.bandcamp.com/releases
Most of you will presumably already have heard of the world’s local celebrity, James Ure – he’s quite a big deal, you know. What you may not be aware of, is that I have been privileged enough to be involved in several of his recent projects…
2.1) Egg on My Face (Official Music Video)
Egg on My Face is the third single from James’ upcoming album ‘Banquet’, and back in November I was tasked with assembling the song’s official music video. This mainly involved throwing a range of different foods onto the artist in question, in a single shot that lasts over 4 minutes. If you’d like some idea of what the setup looked like, here is a little behind-the-scenes photo:
And here, dear reader, is the work of art that resulted from these efforts:
2.2) You’re My Cadbury Flake
You’re My Cadbury Flake is, to the best of my knowledge, not going to be released as a single. It is, however, set to feature on Banquet, so you can look forward to that when the album is released! The song is in a trad.-jazz-meets-The-Kinks kind of style, and at the end of December I helped out by recording a slick smooth swingin’ clarinet part for it. Here’s a behind-the-scenes photo from that adventure:
2.3) I’m Having Trust Issues with Crispy Seaweed
This is yet another song that will feature on Banquet, and is due to be released as a single very soon. I’ll let you know when it is (or maybe six months later, knowing me). Once again I’ve managed to sneak a little bit of my clarinet playing into the track, which will be a treat for the world.
2.4) … Reads the Diaries of James Ure
Always keen to push the boundaries of modern art (and good taste), our old acquaintance Mister Ure has recently started a new podcast, in which he invites a guest speaker every month to read through his diaries. I was honoured to be asked to read the inaugural episode, and you can find the result by clicking here. It’s received lots of positive feedback so far. Honest!
Me in my special reading chair.
3) Morella
What can I say about Morella? Well, I suppose I could say the following…
Morella is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, about… well, it’s difficult to explain. In typical Poe fashion it’s pretty weird – perhaps Wikipedia can help me out in this department: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morella_(short_story)
Anyway, it has also recently been turned into a musical, with lyrics by Lesley Creasser Guymer and music by Jack Mitchell Smith. They are at present working on producing the entire thing as a concept album, and in January I was tasked with recording the flute parts for said album. No mean undertaking, when you consider that it contains over 2 hours of music and there are 2 flute parts (each of which I did 2 takes of)! Anyway, it was a jolly experience and the relevant people were very satisfied:
“Wow – what a wonderful job you’ve done! I didn’t know if I was going to get round to listening to all of them tonight but I just had to keep going and have now listened to the whole thing and honestly it was a pleasure. […] I do hope you’ve enjoyed the project and I (we) are so grateful for you having not only done it, but doing it so well and so quickly!”
Just sayin’.
It’ll be a while before the album itself is ready, but to tide you over in the meantime here’s a little clip of some of my fluting from the project, taken completely out of context:
4) Piano Miniatures
Since finishing work on It’s Not Really the Apocalypse (available here), I’ve been able to return to one or two old projects that have been languishing on the back burner for far too long. Long-term devotees of this blog may remember my series of miniatures for solo piano which I started in 2017, with the intention of composing 12 in total. Well, I’m glad to say that I have now completed the final piece in the series, so will soon start thinking about getting them recorded and maybe even performed! How exciting.
Below, you can listen to a rendition of the latest and last of these miniatures. I should point out that, over the years, I have come to realise the futility of trying to make computerised MIDI performances sound anything less than terrible. Therefore, for this piece I thought, “In for a penny, in for a pound,” and so have rendered the entire thing on tubular bells instead of piano. I hope you like it.
5) The Atwood Project
Many of you who read this blog, view my website, watch my videos etc., may find yourselves thinking “That’s all very well, but isn’t it a bit too ordinary?” After all, there are plenty of clarinettists out there, plenty of bassoonists, plenty of orchestrators. Well, to those people, I would like to introduce The Atwood Project.
The Atwood Project is a recently-formed ‘band’ of which I am a part. What we do is take suggestions for song titles from various people, pick our favourite, and then write and record a song with that name. Results so far have been artistically masterful yet emotionally quite disturbing, but I would encourage you to give them a listen because you won’t hear anything else like them anywhere ever.
Here we have song number 1, ‘If Only Your Legs Were On Your Head’:
And here, to celebrate US Banana Cream Pie Day, we have the (freshly released) song number 2, ‘Banana Juice?’
Conclusions
- I realise that there are probably not exactly 10 creative endeavours featured in this blog post, so for those who feel short- or long-changed by the title, I apologise. But I really can’t be bothered to count them and change it.
- This is quite a long blog post. Next time I’ll be taking you through all the fun and exciting gigs I’ve had over January and Feburary, so it should be a lot shorter.
- Conclusions are hard.
