www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5xag6Oj7f8

This week, we’re bringing you two songs instead of just one.  Also, instead of doing original material, we chose to do arrangements of traditional holiday songs.  With the way that we approached them, I think they still sound like Duo Chronicles -- not a total departure from our usual sound into the some-old way that these songs are normally played.

My arrangement of “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” (video above) has the typical form of the old carol, but departs harmonically into dense chords.  The melody is kept pretty true to the original, though.  In the video, you’ll see footage from Portland, Oregon’s own Peacock Lane.  If you’re not from around here, I’ll explain:  Peacock Lane is a stretch of about four blocks in Southeast Portland where all of the houses get decked out in holiday decorations through the month of December.  People flock to the street to drive or walk through and admire the festivities each night, causing what I’m sure is a nightmare for the residents of the lane.  Clay and I were remarking as we drove past last week that it must be tough on the realtors on that street when they’re about to close the deal on a house and they have to explain that there’s just one more thing to mention -- they probably won’t be able to drive up to their house or get any quiet time in the evenings for 1/12th of each year.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=okZ0SeSP_UY

Clay’s arrangement of Silent Night is in a similar vein -- the basic form of the tune, but with new chords.  That is, until the end when we start trading.  This video has footage from the Heathman Hotel’s holiday decorations.

Happy holidays from Duo Chronicles.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqbAd47IQHM

I have a tendency to wax poetic when I talk about music. I don’t know, I can’t help it. Sure I like talking about technique and craft, but sound, how does one describe sound? How does it make you feel? Everyone feels something different. My default word is “vibe.” I think if something is true, if there is truth in there, it has a vibe. Kind of like the cliche, if it feels right, it is right, which also makes sense to me. I think this week’s song (and arrangement based on Ode To Joy, from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony) is going for that.

The melody to Ode to Joy is set to a poem by the German poet Friedrich Schiller. While the melody is simple (a beginning band can play it), it is also powerful and resounding. Kind of analogous to an architect building a skyscraper, Beethoven took musical motifs and built musical skyscrapers out of them. One aspect of Beethoven the composer that I like is that, he made lots of revisions and changes in the compositional/arranging process. Really struggled, whereas someone like Mozart, his music has that kind of flows from the pen vibe. Every note is right in place. Of course some of this might have had to do with Beethoven being in the Romantic era and Mozart in the Classical era. Stylistic differences.

Gospel music can be infectious. The sound is uplifting. So it seemed natural to me to combine the gospel tinge with the melody to Ode to Joy. I don’t really like musical genre descriptions, but here you go, gospel-jazz tinged Beethoven.