For those of you who haven’t seen this yet, this is the latest creation from Your Basic Tune & Lube. It started off as a spur-of-the-moment project (one my favorite kinds of projects), took about 6 hours to shoot and about 30 to edit. The multi-talented and my odd-ball best friend, Brandon Mullan, gives a riveting performance throughout. For more information on the quirky songs I write with my friends, please visit www.yourbasictuneandlube.com. Enjoy~

This last week has been a pretty fantastic week that included making a pretty cool music video with my friend, Brandon, and wrapped up yesterday with a much-awaited trip to the dentist for my brand new dental abutment! How exciting!

But the highlight by far was an invitation to Arkansas where the US Air Force Band of Mid-America had programmed Instinctive Travels for a concert at the Arkansas Band Association’s annual convention for an audience of about 1,000. On top of that, I was invited to conduct my own work!

(Have I mentioned that I didn’t study music in college? For that matter, the only time I’ve ever conducted in a concert setting was in 9th grade when my band teacher let me rehearse and conduct Steven Reineke’s ”Into the Raging River.” Caution: dork alert.)

I immediately said “YES!!” to the opportunity, even though I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. (I’m actually starting to think that maybe it would be a good idea to start writing music that’s easier to conduct.) I’ve had a couple of opportunities to conduct the piece in rehearsals with Dobson High School, but other than that, my experience has been limited to late nights between my baton and the mirror on my wall. I did, however, spend a few very valuable hours with Jon Gomez and Frank Ticheli, both of whom helped shape some fundamental conducting techniques (oh, so that’s an ictus!). Technically, this would be my official conducting debut. And what a band to debut with!

Don’t worry, I didn’t actually conduct in shorts and sandals; this was just the dress rehearsal. For the actual concert that night, I was a little more formal.

Like a lot of my other “first times,” I was excited, but a little nervous, which led to a couple of awkward moves, but eventually the passion superseded my technique and the band and I rolled with it. It went by so fast — as this piece often does at a tempo of 176 — and by the end I was exhausted, drenched in sweat, and ready for a nap.

Thank you Lieutenant Dustin Doyle, Major Daniel Price, and every single one of the world class musicians in the US Air Force Band of Mid-America. Oh, and thank you, American Tax Payer!

Truly, an incredible honor and quite possibly the highlight of my life…

I’ve had some recently surprising interest in one of the first pieces I ever composed. My Clarinet Serenade was written way back in 2002, when I was just a lowly sophomore in high school. I remember going into the band room early in the mornings when everybody else was out on the field practicing that year’s marching show. One of the senior clarinet girls (who was crazy good, amazingly smart, beautiful, and also not in marching band… a quadruple threat in my book) was also there, warming up, getting in some extra practice time before 1st hour symphonic band. So one morning, having never talked to her before, I interrupted her practice and nervously asked if she would mind reading this piece for me. Come to think of it, this was the very first piece I had ever heard any live musicians play — a “first time” if you will — and that is certainly a special moment in a composer’s life.

The original version of the piece is in concert C# minor — which of course transposes to an unforgiving D# minor on the Bb Clarinet. So while I sick last week, I decided to renotate the work and, at the click of a button, transpose it down a half-step into good-ol’ concert C minor which looks a lot more friendly on clarinet.

I think I may end up self-publishing the piece for $20 a copy. I figure it might be a cool choice for solo & ensemble competitions or clarinet recitals if anybody else digs it. For now, you can listen to a recording (from 2002 in C# minor) and view the clarinet part (new PDf).

Oh, and if you like what you hear/see, contact me!

And no, I never sing any of these songs with my “actual” singing voice. These are all vague characterizations/mixed impersonations.

It’s Not Obsession, But

Hey Now

Wow. It’s been over seven years since me and my friends made Hobos in Space: A Musical Tragedy our junior year of high school.

“What is it?” you ask? Well, let me tell you! Hobos in Space is a 50-minute movie musical about a hobo who falls in love in a somewhat Shakespearean way (that is, they die). Somehow, we managed to reserve our high school auditorium on a Saturday night back in the simpler days of 2003, paid a tech friend under the table to let us in and turn some stuff on, and invited our entire student body to attend for free by running trailers on the school’s video announcements. Over 600 people attended the screening — that was more than any single band, orchestra, or choir concert.

It’s one of the projects that I’m most proud of, still to this day, because it was about some really good friends (3 of the 4 hobos who are still best friends) getting together and being creative without any outside influences. And by “outside influences” I don’t mean drugs; I mean that I’ve noticed lately that a lot of my creative friends, both in film and in music, are coming up with ideas based solely on desires to “get noticed” or make a movie that is “film festival material” or develop something that is going to “make money.” There’s not necessarily anything bad about wanting to make something that has high commercial value or a marketable appeal. However, it saddens me that these thoughts often cloud our creativity to the point that our creative voices get somewhat lost, or at least, trampled on. I’d rather be a broke and living on the streets than make something that I wasn’t passionate about.

Let’s go back to 2003. Let’s go back to when things were just “for fun.”

A few days ago, I was contacted by Second Lieutenant Dustin M. Doyle of the USAF Band of Mid-America. As it turns out, he recently took the Band of the Golden West (from Travis AFB in California) on a performance tour up in Idaho. Concluding the first act of the concert was none-other-than Turkey in the Straw. With the proper military permissions in place, I was granted approval to post a recording from one of those concerts. Enjoy~

TURKEY IN THE STRAW (MP3)
USAF Band of the Golden West;
Dustin M. Doyle, conductor

Per one of my graduation requirements for ASU, I had to produce a 8 - 10 minute documentary on a subject of my choice. Since I worked with my friend Dan (who recorded the concerts) and the Arizona Musicfest back in February, I asked them if I could do a piece on their composer in-residence for the week, Mason Bates. I could be boring and just type a bunch of information about him and his music, or I could invite you to watch the 9-minute piece on YouTube. I suggest YouTube.

The work is called “Shine,” runs about five and half minutes at quarter note = 152, has a 3.5-ish difficulty level, and is commissioned by the Rhodes Junior High School bands under a good friend of mine, Keith Kuczynski. Rhodes will premiere the piece on Tuesday, and after  that, I will finish engraving and proofing parts/score for publication by Manhattan Beach Music in the fall.

I was also lucky to be able to visit with Marc Dickey’s Symphonic Band at California State University-Fullerton for a short, 30-minute reading and recording session last Monday, their last day of class. You can listen to Marc’s wonderful group and/or check out the latest version of the score at the links below. If you like what you hear, drop me a line!

Shine Score
http://www.michaelmarkowski.com/music/shine-score-v2.pdf

Shine MP3
http://www.michaelmarkowski.com/music/shine-fullerton.mp3

Answer:

I Don’t Care About Your Boyfriend

Time Ain’t On My Side

All your questions can be answered at www.yourbasictuneandlube.com. More likely, however, is that you will have many more questions.