I have always liked the tune ABERYSTWYTH (how do they get these names?!). I think it works much better for ‘Watchman, Tell Us of the Night’ than ‘Jesus Lover of My Soul’, although since this is an instrumental work, without knowing the title it makes little difference. I got the idea of weary travelers approaching their city and calling out to the guard on the watchtower. I used a Percussion ostinato and integrated touches of percussion color in various ways as it progresses. I do enjoy prepping music for the Christmas season
From a search engine (and true): The hymn tune Aberystwyth is named after the coastal town in Wales where the composer, Joseph Parry, was living and working when he wrote it. It follows the common tradition of naming a new hymn tune after the location of its creation or the composer’s residence. Nice arrangement.
Tell this to those who are already planning their winter concert.
Im always surprised by how late in the year some publishers will send out their newsletters promoting christmas music. Sorry, guys, my planning has been done months ago and we are already rehearsing…
I like your arrangements! I thought I might chime in a bit on AI generated images. Sometimes AI “borrows” others’ work so I would always ask the AI to make a completely unique image that no one (and no AI) has ever made. We lack a lot of guardrails for AI usage and results at the moment which is a little scary for any of us who hold intellectual property of any type that is “out there.” It may freak out the AI entity, though…
It would be interesting to see how an AI would evolve if it went through the same education and training that we have through childhood, young adulthood and later throughout life. I’m sure it could “learn” all of this quite quickly (minutes or hours compared to years or decades).
No, it wouldn’t. AI doesn’t work that way. (I also think these things are by definition unable to create art, but that would take us into a discussion on what art is so I won’t elaborate.)
I’ll instead suggest to pay an actual artist for the cover art. It’s probably much less expensive than you think.
And if your score is for private use only and not to be distributed, I’d argue that simply using someone’s art without permission is ethically much better than using AI.
Not on the topic of AI, I won’t. (Yes, I know about the image generators and I wish nobody would use them. Ever.) I will however try to not go on and on about it in this forum.
