Tag: Music Box

S_V_H Final Images & cover for Yellow

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

The new project Yellow offered the opportunity to use up some of my many shades of acrylic yellow. Or at less I could use those yellows that I had not dried out over the years. I have not used a lot of yellow in this art until this year. I have two music boxes where yellow is the dominate color. The other 2023 yellow was an experimental vertical for a Bach piece in which the music drops quickly. I thought the color yellow would add emphasis to the music.

Back of Yellow showing all the disconnects needed to break down this artwork for travel.

I work long on these artworks that when I finish them, I truly feel finished and wish only to move on. Here are a couple of reflective thoughts on this work.

My original idea for this project was to make a shorter and smaller work around six feet. Unlike the previous project, Closer, I did not want to do another long horizontal. Although that did not happen, even though early, I chose 4inch 2way speakers with a 2 Watt stereo system instead of the 5×7 speakers and 20watt used in Closer.

I always chose for the visual part of the artwork an interesting part of the cover music. But since the visual part of the artwork only samples a small piece of the music box, that part has to portray a stand out part of the cover, and more so also presents an interesting visual.

For this music box, there was only one section of the cover music that I thought would work. The pre-chorus has the visual look along with a nice beginning and ending (seen below in the worksheet). This choice then required a large reduction in the notation’s size to fit all the music. Even doing that, the artwork horizontally would have stretched to 114 inches. Yellow would be longer than the artwork Closer. To resolve this, I divided Yellow into two parts (similar to Closer) to under the 6 foot travel length. Then, to reduce Yellow’s length, I overlap the two sections to bring the artwork under 8 feet.

Sample taken from 8 pages cover of Yellow
The visual sample of the pre-chorus (seen in the edited sheet music above) starts at 26 seconds and ends at 45 seconds.

My other comment about this artwork was because of its divided sections needed for traveling. It was a learning and challenging experience to wire, and to balance for hanging, the two different arms of this work.

The speaker and controls wiring for Yellow

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Final image Don’t Give Up

Published on by Scott Von Holzen
Don’t Give Up ≈ L168″xH48″xD4.75
The music box Don’t Give Up rambling, and somewhat entertaining discussion of the artwork by the artist.

I started this artwork on June 16th with the creation of the cover music. I completed the project enough to do a final image, on July 31st. That timeline is about right for a large, complicated artwork project in the busier summer. Because of the many complications, notably hanging this artwork and keeping it from sagging over time, my wife suggested in the future not to go so big. I agreed. This project was one-of-one. Big art teaches big lessons, which I will use to improve the performance of a more reasonable eight-foot art project soon. Many of the issues I had with this project began with the need to break it down for travel. That meant three large pieces, about 48 inches by 42 inches, with detachable speakers. Connecting three such size pieces together to be a perfect rectangle puts a lot of pressure on the middle section. It would have been wiser and easier to have gone with two six-foot sections and detachable speakers. Although, with a lot of second, third and fourth efforts, I have the artwork hanging decently on the studio wall. For the next three weeks and three days, I will hang it at The Art Garage in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Will this large artwork make a statement? I doubt it. Will returning to making smaller, less expensive artworks make a statement? I doubt it.

In the early years of this art I received my first rejection letter. It was from a submission I made to the Center for Visual Arts in Wausau, Wisconsin. The artwork was my classic and wonderful 2007 painting of Beethoven’s Für Elise. They told me this artwork’s market was too small and would only appeal to musicians.

Für Elise 2007

I thought differently. I believe this art would appeal to anyone who liked music. It actually sold on my Etsy stores because the buyers knew the music. This art might have succeeded early if I would have developed a simple and easy painting style and did all commission works of requested songs. But, I hated the idea of doing commission works for the money. Besides, I wanted to paint the music I loved. And in time, all those early Etsy buyers slowed to a trickle for my artworks and even my prints sales fell over the years. I let the artwork store go, as shipping costs rose, and my style changed. The original plan for my two Etsy stores and even my Amazon store was to get this art’s name out there. That never happened. Like my exhibitions, I do the work and pay the price to show, and the results have always been the same: nothing to talk about. So it goes.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Wildfire final image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

Photo 1: Wildfire final image on the easels. This artwork does not photograph well against the light background and the cloudy North light. ≈ L70.25xH37xD7.5

This is my final thoughts on the Wildfire video I uploaded to my YouTube. I have this account, to document through the years the progress of turning sheet music into art.

30 second preview of the music box cover music Wildfire

Going Deeper:

I did this video on January 6th thinking this artwork music box was done. It was not. Later in the day, I went about my studio, setting the goal of putting 100 items back in their proper space, before starting a new project. That was when I discovered I had forgotten to attach and make a number of other small musical items needed to complete the artwork. Sheet music designates, for example, some of them as a tie or a slur, or accidentals. I call all my additions to the artwork that are not notes incidentals. They now appear in the updated photo.

I am really impressed by the sound of this music. I built my music using a Bose system on my Windows 10 PC, and for the first time the sound difference between my Bose and my music box system is close to each other. In comparison the music box sound is lacking a small amount of bass, clarity, and depth of the sound. More effort on the music would bring the differences closer, but I need to move on.

For my next project I am already building the cover music for the 2016 music artwork, Under Pressure upgrade to a music box.

Scott Von Holzen