Category: Classic Rock

S_V_H Your Song, final music rough cut

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

This is the third and last of my cover music rough cuts using the notation software, Notion. The sheet music will be the worksheet that will guide me through the building of this artwork.

My artwork musical covers are about the music and not so much about the lyrics. It is about creating a portrait of a song, melody first, not the lyrics, especially with these music boxes. My thinking was different for this project.

My cover of Your Song begins with the third verse. That start was chosen because of the lyrics “I sat on the roof and kicked off the moss….” When I hear those words, I flash back to a wonderful artwork I did in 2013, and sold, through the help of my cherished brother Roger Von Holzen. That artwork was, Up on the roof. Here is the search link to the artwork’s story. It was Lady Gag’s updated version of Your Song, and those words that reminded me of Up on the Roof, that convinced me to paint this music. It is hard to explain my connection to Up on the Roof, but it was then, and still today, it remains meaningful.

Up on the Roof 2013
Carole king wrote this song and a favorite artist of mine, James Taylor, made it a hit.

I built my cover music of Your Song by first connecting the original piano intro to the third verse. From there it was about capturing the character of the song while editing away everything that either got in the way or was repeating what my cover already covered. My editing can be harsh. I have to be to keep my music under the one minute thirty second limit. Of course, quality is a loss with my slash and burning off of a 4:04 minute Elton John’s song, down to less than 1:30 minutes. That is a price. The return is the challenge and teaching lessons with each of these portraits, and the growing connection between the visual and performance arts. This is an opportunity I am thankful to have. So it is.

Scott Von Holzen

This is my final rough cut version of the Music Box music for Your Song. The absolute final-final will be created after I import this music into Studio One for editing.

S_V_H Your Song Music rough cut

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

This song by Elton John goes way back to my college years. I probably would not have thought of painting it until it popped back into my head from the 2001 musical Moulin Rouge. Certainly Lady Gaga’s recent cover and live performance at the Grammies made me think that this music had legs. Finally, I am a fan of Elton John’s music and Your Song’s prominent use of the piano, gives me a foundation for the creation of the sheet music that is my music box production guide.

Every new artwork starts out with the music that I selected to portrait. I put together the cover sheet music using the notation software, Notion 5, and its instruments. That sheet music, which takes days to create, is not only is the visual guide for the artwork that I will sample to paint, it is also the musical arrangement for the music box.

My notation software follows rigid rules when creating the sheet music worksheet. I don’t when I put together the visual up and down flow of the song’s music. Changes often occur where needed. For example, I may combine notes to better fit the artwork.

This musical arrangement will also change once I import it into my digital production software, Studio One. This software offers the music tools and third party instruments that will eventually allow me to produce a professional sounding song. I am not there yet. But with this software, I have higher quality and control over the instruments than anything the notation software offers. Still, creating that cover sheet music is my critical starting guide to my project’s success. Changes will occur, but what will not change is the cover sheet music’s up and down flow and the timeline rule: less than one minute, thirty seconds.

Print out an example of the worksheet and arrangement. Changes have already happened.
This is the second draft version of the rough cut music and arrangement using the notation software Notion.

Scott Von Holzen

This is the first draft version of the rough cut music for Your Song’s Music Box.

S_V_H Martha my Dear take 2 final image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

This is a follow up video showing an actual finished artwork. I forgot to create the incidentals for the music box. Those add-ons include a sharp, a flat, a tie, a couple of flags, and four beams. They are there to give music box more of a musical look that is common in sheet music. Although not as much with this artwork, all those little additions add interest and are decorative. The video discusses this and the sampling process used for the visual part of this portrait of a song.

For many years, whatever musical phrase I picked for the subject, that is what I would paint. When I added sound, I continued with that idea, painting the entire length of the music. As my musical skill and interest increased, it became apparent that I had to either reduce the size of the music that I was portraying or increase the size of the artwork. The ever-increasing length and composition of the cover music was growing. For the viewer this also made it increasingly difficult to follow the music and the visual together. The problem was that the music had involved to be as important as the artwork that was portraying it.

To get hold of what I was creating, I set a one minute thirty second maximum time limit on the music. Then, from that cover music, I would select a piece, or a sample, to portray as the visual. Hopefully, this will keep these artworks to a length, and a construction timeline, that I can handle.

I see it this way: full-length paintings of portraits are few in numbers compared, for example, with portraits from the waist up. It is like the portrait painter is sampling the image of a person. My music paintings and now my music boxes are, and have always been portraits of a song.

In the video I give the viewer, awkwardly, an example of how the music is represented in the visual. I have nothing else to add to that except this entire process of combing the visual art with performance art is continuing to continue to be a continuing evolution. So it goes.

Scott Von Holzen

Here is the finished Music Box music for Martha My Dear