As I promised, the demo recording of my new piano composition, "Memories," is finally uploaded to Youtube! You can listen to it on my personal Youtube Channel, which can be found HERE. Since I have not completed writing the piece, I am still open to critique and feedback from all of you, so please, feel free to leave your comments here on my Blog or on Youtube. Thanks for listening! "Memories" was commissioned by the Hutchinson School District as background music for a series of community-based videos that will appear on their website. The next step for me now is to contact the school district, and once they are done with the videos, the project can be completed. Since I don't know how many videos there will be, nor how long they will all be, I am currently unable to truly finish composing this piano piece. The first two movements are performed in my demo, and they are entitled "Childhood" and "Maturity," respectively.
In other news, I'm still plugging away at my 3M factory job, which is actually going fairly well. I'm getting along with my coworkers quite well, and by bringing blank sheet music and pencils with me, I'm able to combat the extreme boredom of working in Extruding through composing music! Once again, thank you all for reading, whoever you may be. Have a great week!
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
New piano composition, "Memories," is nearly finished!
I am just about done composing my new piano solo, entitled "Memories!" I feel that I did a great job on this piece of work and I'm very excited for people to hear it. Broken into three movements dealing with all the the many memories of childhood, the project was comissioned to accompany the Hutchinson School District's new series of community slide shows, which will be completed soon and uploaded to their website. My friend Bryan has agreed to help me record and videotape the first and second movement, since the third movement is not quite finished. You can expect to see the demo recording on my Youtube Channel in a week or so!
Right now, I'm putting the finishing touches on the second movement of "Memories" and polishing up any errors I can find throughout the entire composition. Although I'm not positive about the titles of the individual sections of the piece, my working titles are as follows: Movement One is "Childhood," Movement Two is "Maturity," and Movement Three is "Departure." All three sections are separate of one another and can be played in any order, but there is a certain degree of musical unity and reference between them. I hope you all enjoy it as much as the head of the school district has so far! I'm somewhat bummed that I have to go back to work tomorrow night, but it is the night shift, so it's not all bad! Have a great day, everybody.
Right now, I'm putting the finishing touches on the second movement of "Memories" and polishing up any errors I can find throughout the entire composition. Although I'm not positive about the titles of the individual sections of the piece, my working titles are as follows: Movement One is "Childhood," Movement Two is "Maturity," and Movement Three is "Departure." All three sections are separate of one another and can be played in any order, but there is a certain degree of musical unity and reference between them. I hope you all enjoy it as much as the head of the school district has so far! I'm somewhat bummed that I have to go back to work tomorrow night, but it is the night shift, so it's not all bad! Have a great day, everybody.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
Music is infinitely better than 3M!
I don't know about all of you, but for me, composing original music is a far more fulfilling career path than blue collar 8-hour work days at Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, day in and day out. I just got off of work an hour ago and I am not particularly excited to go back tomorrow. I work in an area called Extruding, where the plastic film used for 3M's tape is produced, a process that does not utilize my personal abilities whatsoever. Why am I doing a job I take no pleasure in, you ask? Because I, like other college students my age, need money to pay for continued school. Working at 3M has inspired me to launch my career in music composition sooner rather than later.
But enough of my complaining and ranting! Today I am uploading two new videos to my Youtube Channel, bringing my total number of uploads to 21 videos of music. The first is an all-vocal song called "The Epic Song" that I wrote spontaneously several years ago, using Audacity to record and track my own voice. It's a simple, silly, and upbeat little tune with only two basic but memorable melodies and two chords. If you like comic music, The Epic Song is for you. The second video is a recording of me performing the piano solo "Mandarin Orange," which I did not write myself. It's fast, quiet, and sort of mesmerizing; a far different character than my first upload. If you enjoy my original piano work, you will probably enjoy this obscure gem, written by C. Michael Ehrhardt.
Also, I am trying to find more original composition recordings to upload onto my musician Myspace page, which can be found HERE. At this point, I don't have many recordings of my original works, but I'm considering uploading some MIDI recordings for the time being, at least until I can get some more performances of my orchestral and chamber composing recorded. Let me know what you think of all of this! I need all of the support I can get for these endeavors, so even something as simple as Youtube replies from you, my readers, goes a long way for me. Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you have a great day! Send me links to your blogs and I will check them out.
But enough of my complaining and ranting! Today I am uploading two new videos to my Youtube Channel, bringing my total number of uploads to 21 videos of music. The first is an all-vocal song called "The Epic Song" that I wrote spontaneously several years ago, using Audacity to record and track my own voice. It's a simple, silly, and upbeat little tune with only two basic but memorable melodies and two chords. If you like comic music, The Epic Song is for you. The second video is a recording of me performing the piano solo "Mandarin Orange," which I did not write myself. It's fast, quiet, and sort of mesmerizing; a far different character than my first upload. If you enjoy my original piano work, you will probably enjoy this obscure gem, written by C. Michael Ehrhardt.
Also, I am trying to find more original composition recordings to upload onto my musician Myspace page, which can be found HERE. At this point, I don't have many recordings of my original works, but I'm considering uploading some MIDI recordings for the time being, at least until I can get some more performances of my orchestral and chamber composing recorded. Let me know what you think of all of this! I need all of the support I can get for these endeavors, so even something as simple as Youtube replies from you, my readers, goes a long way for me. Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you have a great day! Send me links to your blogs and I will check them out.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Getting Started...
Hello again! Now that I've gotten my blog started up, I'm hoping to reach more people in an effort to begin my composing career. Aside from this site, I've been working on a Myspace page, a Twitter account, my Facebook page, and of course, my Youtube channel, and let me say, it's quite a bit of work! Again, if you like what you see and have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me. I can't tell you how much I would love to get out of my rotating shift work at 3M!
I have to be honest, I'm really bad with categories and genres. But I realize the importance of having a personal niche as a musician, so I'm placed in a bit of a conundrum. I suppose I should start with my musical interests; this is difficult since there isn't much of any music I dislike (except perhaps the dingier pop and rap music these days). However, what is clear in all of the music I write is the heavy inspiration I draw from New Age music and Progressive music. I'm very enamored with intelligent, creative, yet tasteful music that stirs the mind and emotions; I enjoy artists such as George Winston, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Frederick Chopin, George Crumb, and many others. However, I'm also a huge fan of heavy metal, particularly the progressive edge of it, which is once again quite carefully crafted. Groups I enjoy include Dream Theater (perhaps my favorite), Tool, Slipknot, Apocalyptica, Motoi Sakuraba, Porcupine Tree, and many more. For these reasons, I will label myself "Progressive/New Age" for the time being. Lastly, because of my proficiency at the keyboard, most people will remember me for my myriad piano compositions and performances, more so than my work for large ensembles and chamber groups.
I hope this is a helpful first step towards finding my place in the world of music, both in the physical world and online. I will continue to post my Youtube videos to this blog every so often, and I hope you enjoy what you hear! Here is a link to my channel, where you will find all of the videos I can get online: MERTx123 Jared Hoeft's Music Thank you so much for reading, and have a fantastic week!
I have to be honest, I'm really bad with categories and genres. But I realize the importance of having a personal niche as a musician, so I'm placed in a bit of a conundrum. I suppose I should start with my musical interests; this is difficult since there isn't much of any music I dislike (except perhaps the dingier pop and rap music these days). However, what is clear in all of the music I write is the heavy inspiration I draw from New Age music and Progressive music. I'm very enamored with intelligent, creative, yet tasteful music that stirs the mind and emotions; I enjoy artists such as George Winston, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Frederick Chopin, George Crumb, and many others. However, I'm also a huge fan of heavy metal, particularly the progressive edge of it, which is once again quite carefully crafted. Groups I enjoy include Dream Theater (perhaps my favorite), Tool, Slipknot, Apocalyptica, Motoi Sakuraba, Porcupine Tree, and many more. For these reasons, I will label myself "Progressive/New Age" for the time being. Lastly, because of my proficiency at the keyboard, most people will remember me for my myriad piano compositions and performances, more so than my work for large ensembles and chamber groups.
I hope this is a helpful first step towards finding my place in the world of music, both in the physical world and online. I will continue to post my Youtube videos to this blog every so often, and I hope you enjoy what you hear! Here is a link to my channel, where you will find all of the videos I can get online: MERTx123 Jared Hoeft's Music Thank you so much for reading, and have a fantastic week!
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