1. Pencil Drawing "Doomsday Clock" influenced by Laurie Lipton's much more fabulous pencil drawings. Done in an art Zoom session with 11 year old grandson. 9"H x 12"W
2. Paper collage in my on going series of "Strange Journey" works 11"x14"
3. Small ink and watercolor "Apple Nose." Not sure what to draw, I picked an apple from the backyard and the rest just happened. 6"w x 9"H
4. Cradled paper collage on board: "Big and Little Fish" "9"H x 12" w x 1 1/2"
5. Small cradled paper collage on Stretched canvas "Little Fish" "4"H x 5"w x 1 1/2"
After years of playing piano, by reading the notes but not understanding any of the basics, I've gotten interested in learning about music theory and composition. Fortunately, I located two very old music publications that my late, great, mother had in her music library (she was a superb pianist and composer) which are quite useful: Modern Styles and Harmonic Construction for Popular Piano Playing by Marvin Kahn and The Majors and Their Relatives by Eula Ashworth Lindfors. I'm also trying to wade through the Idiot's Guide to Music Composition and Music Theory for Dummies.
This new music interest was generated initially by a desire to clean up the poor recordings of much of my mother's music, which led to trying to learn both Cubase and Adobe Audition software. Playing with the new software enabled me to add musical elements to my mother's compositions (sound efx, loops, bird songs, etc.), which has led to a desire to try my hand at making my own original music.
Recently, I noticed a similarity between The Color Wheel (a circular guide to mixing color) and The Chord Wheel (a circular tool for composing one's own music). So I associated a different color to 8 chord tracks in a very simple scale exercise, then sought to create a video using those same colors synced up with the underlying chords. My late, great father's photography has also been accessed with an old photo of me filling in for Mary, in the tune Mary had a Little Lamb which appears towards the end of the video's soundtrack.
This short 55 second video is perhaps a bit too mathematical, the music too elementary and the whole not very artistic. But the new learning effort is taking my mind off of negative Corona Virus news and bad behavior societal displays. Escaping from time to time into nature, music and art are essential for trying to maintain some form of sanity in these trying times.
