Tag: Music

S_V_H Your Song final follow up

Published on by Scott Von Holzen
Your song with the music in place.

The following video I had to do in two parts. While filming, I carelessly removed the music from the background. This resulted in a magnet falling and damaging the sound board part of the stereo system. The sound board holds the music file and enables me to connect a switch that, when pressed, plays the music. That accident required the soldering and putting together of a replacement sound board that was then rewired to the amplifier, which was not damaged.

The Peter Principal states that “what can go wrong, will go wrong,” What makes that logic even more obvious and true was that I knew well that easy access and a low profile made the stereo components vulnerable to accidents. For now, until I can come up with a better design, I added a simple cover of light bubble wrap over the entire stereo system to deflect and absorb contacting.

Here is a picture of the stereo system used for the music box of Your Song.

This artwork project could be a sign that I may revisit the use of stretched canvases. I like their strong support structure for the music, along with their ease of handling and cost savings. I also have a lot of canvas stock from previous purchases that I do not want to waste.

My custom combination of metal framing and free flowing canvases cut to size eliminated a frustration of the limited sizes of stretched canvas that comes with the benefit of cost, and time savings. over making my own frames and stretching the canvas. That means I will continue to use and take advantage of the freedom of this technique, to breakup, and counter the boxy closed look of traditional stretched canvas.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Your Song Final image & music

Published on by Scott Von Holzen
Your Song L102″xH31″xD3.5″
The background artwork L100.5xH24″

Your Song, which I started with composing the cover music on December 26th, is now finished.

The piano is the foundation that carries the cover music for Your Song. While the violin, viola, flute and the added clarinet are the voices of this music. I have decent four inch speakers, but with so many instruments competing to be heard, the music sounded a little muddy. It needed clarity. I found the issue probably was with a narrow band of the lower mid range. I improved what I could after first removing all my questionable equalizer settings. I then adjusted the master volume headroom, and finished with small volume tweaks here-and-there. That all helped enough to get to this final music version posted below.

This video is full of wandering opinions and my thoughts on this music box project and the cover music.
Slightly different from the video music here is the current final of the final music cover for the music box, Your Song.

I am a little amazed by how much the audio for this music boxes has continuously improved with each new project. As my understanding of music and this art has deepened over the years, I have also noticed a change in me. I am today hard wired to music and art that would have been beyond my dreams as a youngling when I started painting music in early 2006.

I feel blessed that my Guardian Angel saved me, which made possible the growth of my determination that sprang from a heritage starting with my Grandpa Casper first coming to America and his hard work to build a life in the cheese business, my father’s determination to create his own version of the great American business executive, and my Mothers sparkling, and enlightening personality. They laid out the foundation. They showed the way. I found the path.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Your Song image 4

Published on by Scott Von Holzen
The project Your Song layout laid out on the floor.

I ran into a problem of my creation by not calculating the project’s length. Until recently, I would count the number of notes and the spacing between each, and that total would give me an accurate project length. I would then put together the size of the background needed to support the music. Lately, instead of lining up my music in straight rows across the canvas, I have been stacking my music in an up and down zip-zag pattern. By doing this, I use more of the artwork’s vertical space. The benefit is I can then overlap the music. This can then reduce the require length of canvases. The trade off is the zip-zag method has variables a straight line does not. That then makes it difficult to estimate the final length of the project, and only a guess if the music will fit the background. That happened with this project. The music did not fit. It then took considerable time to find the solution. I finally had to calculate what my actual length of the music would be laid end to end. That turned out to be twelve and a-half feet. My four original prepped canvases had a combine length of six feet four inches. No wonder the music would not fit. The solution ended up being increasing the length of the background.

The original Your song canvases now with added bolted on black canvases. The last artwork that used bolts is When Doves Cry, in 2017.

This project now comprises three additional canvases that are bolted to the original design. The last project that use bolts was the 2017 artwork When Doves Cry. What also complicates the size of these artworks is that I need to make sure that any signal piece does not exceed the maximum length of seventy-two inches by twenty-four. That is the space I have in my car.

I have to say I actually knew I would be length poor and in trouble once I had the music in a rough draft. Since I had already finished, the background canvases I first considered attaching angled aluminum between the two center canvases, for a max length of 72 inches, and the speaker canvases to reach the length needed. The problem was the short length of my music sections. They fell into the space the aluminum created. I found no practical method to float the music. Finally, to attach the music, I went the easy way by adding canvases. Since I had already finished my background, I took another shortcut by painting the added canvases a shade of black with a lighter black glaze. To my surprise, I liked the contrast of the background canvases. I see more of this idea being used in future projects, and wondered if this logic is unique in the five-hundred years of canvas painting.

After years of trying to follow the worn artist path to victory, I am now going with Robert Frost and these lyrics by Ricky Nelson from the Song, Gardan Party:

“And it’s all right now, yeah
Learned my lesson well
You see, you can’t please everyone
So you got to please yourself”

I simplified the thought behind these words to four piano notes: A4, F4, A4 D4. My first song with these lyrics: My art, my rules.

So it is.
Scott Von Holzen