Category Archives: Music

Fatal Score Launched

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Jason and James made fine music

Fatal Score launched on November 18th.  It was wonderful experience that brought together people from so many strands of my life … old friends, new friends, writers, musicians … a marvelous mixture.  I took in 41 books and emerged with none … also marvelous.  Here are some pictures.

Most of the Minneapolis Writers Guild

Reading Chapter One

The Professor reading

Sisters’ Sludge allowed me to host the event.  The book itself is up on Amazon in trade paperback and e-book format.  The paperback is also printed through IngramSpark, which supplies booksellers and libraries.

Now to the job of editing the audio files I recorded almost two years ago at son Edward’s studio in Santa Monica, California (and some rewrites more recently at Brytespot Studios in Minneapolis).  That will take a while … I hope to have the audiobook out in February.

In any case, thanks to all who came, saw, and brought your good juju. It made the event hum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Music, cadence and writing

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My son Edward, a composer, sent me a cryptic note:

Great article about two of my favorite things…. music and Vin Scully.

The article is about the Dodgers’ legendary announcer. Professors at USC’s music school studied why Scully’s lines were so memorable, why so many people remember them verbatim. I’ll hope you watch the video embedded in the article and see why those lines work so well.  But, a spoiler: Screenshot 2016-04-04 23.40.10music.

Not surprising, really. A wordless tune is appealing to us in many ways, one of the most important being cadence. Songs lay words over melody and cadence, and a great prose passage pays attention to cadence.

I’ve always thought that great story tellers lean heavily on cadence … we almost hear the music as they speak. A good reason to read one’s work aloud.