D. Lee Jackson

Words and Music

For Your GRAMMY® Consideration

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FYC_LadyTygressSuite_1:IntroThe official notice came via e-mail the other day: my work had qualified for first-round voting for the GRAMMY Awards®! Excitement filled me, followed by a brief feeling of panic: I’ve got work to do! I’ve got to start hitting the FYC (For Your Consideration) groups in an attempt to drum up votes for my work! I’ve got to network! I’ve got to send direct messages!

Oh, and while I’m at it, I might as well post some links on my website and publish the neat little FYC graphic I’ve cooked up, shouldn’t I? Well, let’s get started, then!

Fellow voting members of the Academy, please allow me to present For Your GRAMMY® Consideration my track, “Lady Tygress’ Suite: 1. Intro” in the Best Dance/Electronic Recording category. You can listen to the track as posted on SoundCloud in the player below:

You can also see a reduced-sized graphic of what I’ve been posting in the FYC groups here:

FYC Lady Tygress' Suite: 1. Intro (60 percent)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I appreciate you listening to my track! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to post them in the comments below. Or, if you have received one of my mailings or PMs and wish to be removed from future communications, please let me know by posting in the comments. Thank you very much!

Something Completely Different: Classical

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Anton BrucknerI hope you enjoyed that Heavy Metal interlude, because we’re going back to Classical for a bit.

I’ve been very busy with a program called Dorico Pro. It’s a music engraving program that lets you prepare professional-looking sheet music and scores. I’ve taken several of my much older pieces of music that I’ve meant to do something with one day and I’ve finally done something with them, inputting them into Dorico and getting scores and parts. One woodwind quintet is in the hands of an ensemble, who has played through it already! (They’ve got some work to do, so no, I won’t be releasing the recording.)

The most ambitious work I had on my back burner was an arrangement of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6, 1st Movement, for Concert Band / Wind Ensemble. Mr. Bruckner is the gentlemen in the portrait that comes with this post (said portrait in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons). I first bumped into his Sixth Symphony, 1st Movement in 1988, while waiting to get into one of the performances during Drum Corps International’s World Championships week in Kansas City, Missouri. My wife and I heard it on a classical radio station (she no longer remembers, but she urged me to arrange it). 

My first goal was indeed to arrange it for Drum and Bugle Corps, then for marching band (I may still do that one day). However, once I had Dorico, I decided to go the whole nine yards and do a fully-faithful arrangement of the piece for Concert Band / Wind Ensemble. I did not “simplify” anything about the original work: it’s still in the key of A, it’s still in its original meter, most of the original accidentals are retained, and very few other things have been changed aside from the fact that there are no strings in this arrangements (my apologies to the Saxophone section in advance).

I have rendered a recording through NotePerformer 4 and posted it on Soundcloud. Please go to the following link if you want to hear it:

https://tinyurl.com/y263tn6f

I would appreciate your feedback on this after you hear it. Please leave a comment below.

My next job, of course, is to get an ensemble to play it. I’ve got some ideas. If you’re reading this and you have ideas, contact me!

Thank you for reading!

“COME GET SOME” the Collaboration Single is Out!

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Come Get Some Cover ArtFINALLY! After all the wait, after all the hype, after all the cryptic lyrics posts, FINALLY! The collaboration single between San Antonio Nü-Metal band Agony and myself is out! COME GET SOME is finally available on major streaming outlets. Here are some links:

And finally, Come Get Some is available on Bandcamp!

This collaboration has been in the works (and subsequently, under wraps) for a long time now. I’ve been cryptically posting the lyrics to the song here on my web pages.  For your benefit, here are the complete lyrics once and for all:

Come Get Some (Lyrics by Richard Cooremans)

Come get some
Come get some
Come get some
COME GET SOME
YEAH!
Groovy…

You come into my town
And now it’s going down
You get up in my way
And now you gotta pay
You had to cross the line
You’re running out of time
The line of sight is clear
I’ll make you disappear
(repeat)

The song came about after I saw Agony band member Alan Wehrman (their bassist) mention on Doomworld that he was in a heavy metal band of sorts. I looked them up, checked out their songs, and contacted Alan with a friendly challenge: would he and Agony like to take on my song from E1L1 of Duke Nukem 3D, “Stalker,” and rework it in their own Nü-Metal style? He checked with his band, and the answer was a resounding yes.

A few weeks later, they sent me the first recording of their interpretation. I drew some inspiration from it and “spliced” in a synth solo. I sent this back to them, and they loved it. It was in the song officially. I even went down and had a rehearsal with them to see how it would fit. Later on, they sent me the stems for mixing and mastering. I added the synth solo plus a couple of other goodies (bells, horror synth), and that was that – the song was done.

Agony and I surely hope you’ll enjoy this single. Please let us know what you think of it in the comments. Thank you for your patience!