Clockwork Piano

[Ogier Dudley]

Ihave an electronic metronome. You can see it has a speaker with volumecontrol (and a headphone jack as well), an easy to use analogue dialfor checking tempo with musical tempo terms, a flashing light and a built in tuner! As far as features go, there is no contest. If only you could just turn the dial to the tempo you wanted it would be perfect. However, it is still quick and easy to use and fits in my bag or instrument case easily. The only slight downside is making sure the battery doesn't go flat.

So, in terms of whether to buy an electronic or clockwork metronome, not totally helpful I know! The question you really need to ask yourself when deciding on electronic or clockwork is "How concerned am I about the aesthetic qualities of my metronome vs usefulness/portability?" And only you can answer that - or do what I did and get both!

If you are looking for information on specific models of metronome including the amazingly excellent Peterson Body Beat metronome that allows you to literally feel the beat, click here for some practical reviews of different models that musician friends and I have owned and used.

Frustrated with your practice? Read Practice Makes Perfect and hack the 10,000 hour rule. Cut your practice time by up to 25%! Make faster progress, learn pieces and scales faster, memorize more easily, and much more. "If you play an instrument you need this book!"

The website musicnotes.com has a very good array of Rush sheet music, most of which are scored for either piano/vocal/guitar, and some guitar tab transcriptions with lead/backing vocals (example here). It's been very helpful for me to find details about the songs, in particular the exact harmonies for Geddy's backing vocals in the Counterparts onward period.

However, for some reason, there is very little sheet music listed for the albums between Power Windows-Roll the Bones on the website, as well as none for Clockwork Angels. I've found some of it online on various websites, but they're nowhere near as detailed as the ones on musicnotes.com (for instance, no backing vocals are listed). Does anyone have a way to find detailed sheet music for those songs, with backing vocals and all listed?

It has been a long while since QOTSA have released an album, the last being Era Vulgaris. Possibly one of the most anticipated albums (the other being Daft Punk) of this year. The band became teasing the album back late 2012 and followed it up with cryptic art and messages to magazines and publishers.

The band confirmed the album title and release date and more info came. Earlier in May they began to release promotional videos with artwork by Boneface. They eventually formed a full 15 minute video that looped round and told the deaths of 4 nameless characters. You can view it at likeclockwork.com

What is disappointing is the album is mixed fairly well, but it is compressed a fair bit and thus suffers a lack of punch. However most QOTSA have this unfortunate side effect, and whilst at times I see the appeal as it can make tracks seem dangerously aggressive, it seems a tad lazy to not space it out a little. A small grievance.

By James Dever jamesdever Bandcamp tylerdever Bandcamp jamesdevermusic SoundCloud jamzdenver Twitter.

Cover art by Worthikids worthikids Bandcamp YouTube YouTube worthikids Tumblr worthikids SoundCloud.

Released 6/12/2012.

Duration: 2:28.

Throughout the last year I've been more active on Skype with fellow Homestuck readers and contributors, especially since February when I was added to the (in?)famous Stupid O' Clock chat. What I found out from a lot of them was that quite a lot more people enjoyed my first ever Homestuck track than I expected. Candles and Clockwork was actually pretty popular and multiple people came to me at different times saying I should work on it again with the better programs and talents I've acquired since.

The outcome was the remake I posted on my Tumblr a few days before the album came out. I posted this in the Volume 9 thread we had, and Albatross Soup offered to work on the track. The outcome is this final version of Candles and Clockwork!

I put a whole lot of subtle nuances into this piece. The biggest one being something that occurs throughout the piece and in almost every track of Sburb: hemiolas. For non-music folk, a hemiola is when a rhythm does not fit into the measure of music it is in. They are very similar and often function as polyrhythms, another favorite tactic of mine. In this track specifically, you can notice that the piano ostinato is clearly in 4/4. The clarinet and harp however, are in 3/4. Because of this, these lines only ever match up ever three measures for the piano and every four measures for the other instruments. Since the phrases don't fit that pattern either, the actual lines never quite sync back up and repeat themselves. The melody line above it is for the most part in 4/4 but kind of sways the line between the two time signatures. This is also how I was able to adapt the melody into straight 3/4 for Chronicles (from Sburb) since that version does not have the 4/4 ostinato until the second section!

For this version, Albatross reorchestrated the parts and added his own distinct flare to the piece. The original version had a dulcimer and harp generating the two ostinati in an attempt to generate a similar feel to the Kingdom of Zeal theme Corridors of Time from the video game Chrono Trigger. The remake I made changed the dulcimer for a harpsichord to change up the timbre slightly. The biggest change was moving the melodies first instance to cello. Albatross took this concept and took it further! The harpsichord became a piano line reminiscent of Chronicles and Candles and Merry Gentlemen (a bonus track from the Holiday album). The harp stays, but the lower voice doubling the part now became a clarinet. A flute is added at the vocal breakdown midway through the piece and then takes over the cello for the recap of the main melody! The ending also became a general diminuendo much like the original! I absolutely adore his take on the song.

The original song was written at first in an attempt to go along with Doctor and Endless Climb as a calm and atmospheric song aimed at being a land theme for Dave. At the time we knew him as a knight and WV's painting showed his planet with a large gear and fire. I figured from this that his land would involve something knightly/fire based and something involving gears. From that I guessed it'd be the Land of Candles and Clockwork. Little did I know that Andrew was going to break the chain and pick a vastly different song with Atomyk Ebonpyre.

Ever since I've considered the song to be a Strider anthem. Dave and Dirk have a whole lot of songs about them, but all of them are either derivatives of his instrument (inspiring hip hop beats etc) or just really intense. They both are actually really chill and collected for the most part, so I liked the idea of them having a calm song.

As for this name in particular, it should be obvious that it's the post scratch version of the song (so aimed more at Dirk and Alpha Dave). The working title was also Candles and Clockwork (with the a's replaced with lower case alpha symbols). Sadly, it doesn't really differentiate itself from the original. The symbols aren't separate enough to make it easy to tell the two versions apart.

The art was done by the fantastic Worthikids who I only just recently discovered! They actually made it a while ago for the original Volume 5 version. I messaged them about using it for this version. Go check them out!

There are two "HQ" versions of this track's artwork. The one used as the main cover art is the version posted on Tumblr, which is 800x800 (possibly source resolution), but has JPEG artefacting. Below is the 500x500 artwork used on Bandcamp, which is a clean PNG, but blurs some details (due to downscaling).

After the group wrapped the Time Machine tour last fall, they hunkered down with Raskulinecz in Toronto to wade through the various demos and jams that Lifeson and Lee had been amassing. Several weeks into the sessions, a storyline by Peart emerged, one based in a dystopian steampunk world and fusing sources such as Joseph Conrad, Voltaire and Daphne Du Maurier.

The Garden was one of the first songs we came up with for the record. Actually, Ged wrote most of it. He did some work one evening, and I came in the next day and heard that opening bass part and the verse. The idea was that we would keep it simple and heartfelt. The sentiment was very much about being at the end, of being retrospective, so there had to be a sweetness to it.

Nick was a little wary of it getting too sweet, however. The demo was very acoustic. The piano parts were there, as were the strings, but everything was kind of soft. Nick wanted us to toughen it up some.

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