Sheet Music

Triple Shot of Espresso

Three views of a miraculous molecule, for the biochemistry-dodecaphony crowd.

                 CH3
                  |
                  N
                 / \
           N----C   C==O
          ||   ||   |
          ||   ||   | 
          CH    C   N--CH3
            \  / \ /
             N    C
             |   ||
            CH3   O 

Memories of Green

From the soundtrack by Vangelis to the movie Blade Runner.

Arranged by me for solo piano, without anybody's permission. Obviously his publisher has the copyright, so I won't claim copyright on this arrangement. But if they want to publish this too, fine by me!

Listen to the version on the CD. It swims in reverb and has various synth effects added, subtle and not so subtle. This version captures what he'd have done during a power failure. A few performance notes:

• Most of it is technically simple. If you've played a few Beethoven sonatas, you can play this. Really. Good ears, not fast fingers, are required. Don't rush the fast runs at the top of page 2, just memorize them until you can play them comfortably. And feel free to simplify.

• Don't rush the leaps. Taking time before aiming at a distant note produces much of the piece's rubato and improvisatory character.

• Use a piano with a long decay, like a Steinway B or bigger. If you have a smaller piano, try hooking up a reverb unit. If you have a synth, pick the grandest "grand". But use an acoustic sound, not a synth-pad sound: this transcription is accurate only for an acoustic-piano sound.

• Hold the bottom octave open as a resonator before starting to play, by silently pressing low A to the G sharp above and then grabbing it with the sostenuto pedal. Without this, when you release the damper pedal the sound will suddenly thin out or vanish. If you have a synth, try for something similar (or just crank up the reverb).

• Use much damper pedal throughout. Use "finger pedaling" to get legatississimo (as where it's indicated by a note tied to nothing, e.g. line 5 bar 6).

• Parenthesized notes in the score should have an inaudible attack. Seriously. This does not mean a silent depress. It means that because of previous or simultaneously struck notes, performer and listener can't hear that individual note come in. The effect is a brightening of a note, or a crossfade in a long broken chord as higher notes die away to expose previously inaudible low notes.

The Measure of My Days

Baritone solo parts in Brahms' German Requiem arranged for baritone and piano solo. "Liturgical length" so it works in church as easily as in concert.

Commissioned by Frank Knowles; first performed by him and me.

This isn't your grandfather's Schirmer orchestral reduction; it's honestly retextured in the style of his Op. 116-119 late piano pieces.