New pieces are up!!!

Check out jimscully.com and click on the 30/30 link at the bottom right of the home page. The most recent piece us pretty cool and sounds great because I used Logic Studio and the VSL.

Update:

No new pieces on Wednesday (7.22) or Thursday (7.23). After the budget meeting at CSUB on Wednesday I was pretty pissed and then I played at the Bakersfield Jazz Workshop that night, so I took the night off. As an extension of my pissed-off mood, the family went to the beach on Thursday to decompress. Nice day. Long day. Back at it on Friday. Thirty 30-second pieces in 40 days is still pretty bad-ass if I may say so myself.

30/30 Project Update!

So, another piece down and I am only 13 compositions away from my stated goal of writing 30 30-second compositions in 30 days. I have taken a few days off - a family vacation, a national holiday and one honest to goodness day where I just blew it. Not too shabby, methinks.

So, here is the piece for today:

Murkiness

To hear all the pieces go to the website for the project:

30/30 Composition Project

More news to follow - exciting stuff....

Signing off...

Jim

Great advice from a Colleague...

Kerry Marsh - director of vocal jazz studies at CSU Sacramento - gave me some killer feedback on my arrangement of Ellington's I'm Beginning to See the Light. My head arrangement was a submission for one day of my 30/30 Composition Project - a project that has me compose a 30-second composition each day for 30 days. I cheated a bit with that entry. I had that almost completely in the can and needed to post something that day. But, his feedback will cause me to alter it quite a bit and repost my new version. Kerry is astonishing - his groups have won the Downbeat award for best collegiate vocal jazz group for six straight years and his arrangement of Selfless, Cold and Composed (Ben Folds composition) was selected by Ben Folds to be featured on the A cappella University CD project that Ben produced. The CD contains 18 or so hand-picked performances of Ben Folds tunes as done by vocal groups affiliated with schools. It is a great project and the Sac State tune stands out on the CD as the most developed and most interesting adaptation on the disc - by a long shot.

Here is that video:

Anyway, for Kerry to take time out of his life to listen to and critique my head arrangement of Beginning to See the Light is very cool and I'm gonna work my tail off on it to show him that his time was not wasted.

30/30 Project Update!

So, I've been pretty darn consistent with this project - only 2 days missed. But, I need a few days off now for a family decompression event. I'll pick back up in a couple days right where I left off.

I am very happy with how this has gone so far, the pieces are really showing my voice and the writing is getting easier. I love the process. As a father of three and very busy professor I don't get to write too much. This has been a great chance to get back on the saddle as ole' Gene Autry - the original owner of my favorite MLB franchise - used to sing.

Gigs!!!

Anyway...I just agreed to play a featured set at the Bakersfield Jazz Workshop on 8/5/09 so the next few pieces will be written for small jazz groups. I want to feature at least three new tunes at the gig - so I gots to get writing. I have one for Freddie Hubbard I wrote last week, and I'll take a stab at a very guitaristic piece and maybe a modal tune. Something different.

30/30 Project Website

Hi all -

BTW, by all I mean three.

I decided to create a dedicated website for the 30/30 project. So, point your browser to:

30/30 Project Home

Hope this helps a bit...

30/30 Project

Tonight piece will be up a bit late. My wife and I are dealing with very fussy four year olds. It is done, but I wanted to do the audio in Logic and I don't have time to do that right now.

Hang in there.

Update: Piece is up. It is called "Quiet" for guitar and vibraphone. It is short, sweet, pretty and playable - I don't do many like this, but it is nice. Check it out here:

Jim's FB Page

or

Jim's Composition Site

Enjoy...

Woodwind Trio

Just finished the woodwind trio for today - did a lot of it early this morning and tied up loose ends this afternoon.

These are temporary links - I am at the office and can't upload to my personal site from here (iWeb has its limits) so here are links on my academic site:

Woodwind Trio

Woodwind Trio Score