Alex Walker

MONDAY FEB 7

2011-02-03T15:29:00.000-08:00

GO.
new bangers, and a special improvised section based on the theme to "Barney Miller".

RECENT WORK

2011-01-27T23:44:00.000-08:00

New music in the works, pieces being written, recorded, obsessed over, looking forward to a different slant on things due to this 85 degree sustain that keeps me alert and mindful.

The video of "Rhapsody for a Drifter", for solo guitar, has been entered to receive a grant.
http://www.artistswanted.org/portfolioStory.php?preview=true&artist=alexwalker

1.3.2011 Bootleg Theater, Los Angeles.

December 2010 Bach Prelude XX

1.15.2011 Gallery 3209 Los Angeles

December 2010 Queensbridge, NY

2010-08-09T21:16:00.001-07:00

Last Tuesday brought the release of my new single, "Gotta Lose". Released on Lapdance Academy, it features Len Xiang and Kobie Powell both making amazing cameos, giving this jam a whole new dimension. A different take on production this time around, I felt compelled to get as layered as before, but with more space involved, and some 70's stylistic moments, in regards to harmony, as well as the horn arrangement. With this palette, such imagery was brought forth, and we were all able to get right inside this time capsule and stream line it right up to today relevancy. Got mucho plans for this jammie, and plan on fulfilling each and every one of them.
Get it free here

http://www.lapdanceacademy.com/gottaose/

song unsong

2010-04-03T08:16:00.000-07:00

Thank you Franz Schubert. Thank you John Dowland. Thank you Sam Cooke. Thank you Paul and John. Thank you Kurdt. Thank you Black Francis. Thank you Boss. Thank you Elvis Costello. Thank you Bobby Dylan. Thank you Baez. Thank you Joni Mitchell. Thank you Tin Pan Alley. For songs. For the development of that bold statement that, while so concise, is also a jump off to larger contexts, and even larger tangents that can be explored. But, can a song have multiple planes? Does it have to be a single statement or affect to get inside the listener and change their current sense of stasis? Why is simple considered "better"? Why is concise usually met with a higher regard than the longer, loping, sometimes meandering types of musical forms? Or, rather, forms in general? Written, choreographed, sung, orated, it seems to me that the general sensibility is to say more with less. One thing I've been accused of in the past, and, I usually got defensive about, is, saying less with more. I don't think there is a value difference in this aesthetic, rather, its the polar opposite with regards to display, but, in conceptual design, the same. For instance, the song "Wild Thing" is great. 3 chords, the lyrics, which have almost a kindergarten "wheels on the bus" kind of basic(ness) to them, is world reknowned. I've known the song all my life. Its part of the lexicon, in the oxford dictionary of pop music hooks, a pbj sandwich. But, what if that song was given to Wagner, or Bjork, or Hanz Werner Henze, and its arrangement stretched, its contour enlarged, its rhythmic sensibility complicated and exoticized, would it still make it on to the "Major League" soundtrack? Prolly not. Would the YES network use it as a bumper? Hell no. Would Jimi Hendrix have played it at Monterey? maybe. And that is the bar for todays accessibility standards. Can it be broadcast on television? Is it good for an acura ad? Never do you hear, "Will it stand up to Mahler's 7th?", If we programmed this at Summer Stage, would it start riots in the audience similar to Stravinsky's premiere of the Rite of Spring? I wish the iflip was invented then, I'd pay in personal organ currency to get a look at that concert hall during the premiere. Violence, shock and awe, all due to a new harmonic language that was being utilized by Igor. Is it because of our general, collective attention spans? Did the MTV style of quick cuts ruin our patience for longer form music? These questions keep floating around my brain partly due to my interest in writing music that gets away from the all mighty 3:30 mark, and can breathe more, and have moments of respite, as well as moments of fury and intoxicating condensement. All for the sake of relating it to life, and (hopefully) being able to portray time as we as humans experience it. Not everything in life happens in 3 minute 30 second cells, rather, it varies from the 2 second hand wave acknowledgement of a neighbor across the street, to the 6 minute email check middday, to the 45 minute sitting in traffic on the deagan, to the 3 hour dinner with friends, to the romance filled night with your love, to the 6-8 hour sleep you ritually get, to the 4 month duration of heart wrenching pain you go thru after a breakup. In short, it all varies. Also, in addition to the "length" of musical moments, the intended mood, or color, or attempted emotion that one tries to conjure, I feel, could be widened. So often, I listen with pointed curiosity, mainly to see if every element is really getting the point across. If it is a "sad song" what does that mean? Is the tones, the harmonies, the delivery, the lyrics, really evoking "sadness"? or, the composer's idea of sadness? Is the composer well versed in sadness? Is it a superficial sense of sadness or is this mother fucker really longing, and bent out? And undoubtedly, you find the answers in the sound of the end product. does this piece of music grab you? Are you left with a door in your soul slightly opened, spilling out a little bit of your sadness? Or is it merely a billboard for sadness? Flat, on the highway, sponsored by Viacom. I don't have answers, just raised questions, hopefully leading me to a truer sense of creating. What is so fun, dangerous, sexy, and daunting about the creative process is the fact that the finish line is unknown until you get there. There is no prescribed route to creating a work that speaks to people, and truly evokes what you as the creator is trying to say. Trial by fire, is my best way of describing it, but ultimately to leave no stone unturned. And to be sensitive to your findings and hone what works, and to hone what doesn't.

2010-03-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

oh yeah, this is one of the collages that i was working on during 2 14 hour driving days from Phoenix to Seattle. bout 1500 miles worth of cut n paste.

back in NY and grindin...

2010-03-29T10:29:00.000-07:00

Did a two week stint on the west coast with Andrew Strong of the Commitments. Played casinos, swanky jazz clubs, mexican bbq cafeterias, northern california dive bars where more weed was being consumed than liquor, and a 10000 sqft operation in phoenix where the prime rib was tasty, the martini was larger than life, and a half bottle of patron was consumed and hell was raged at the hotel.
being back in NY is weird, lots of irons in the fire, which is great for a foundry, but idle time is hell on me. hopefully move to the bx, new perspective, new train, new walls, and get paid.
Rumors of a tour with Nancy Sinatra are on the horizon as well as a solo electric guitar score to an indy feature film. Also, got some tracks in the works for a new Lapdance Academy release.
But, really, my main objective is to get a pickup truck. A freedom machine as my kind friend HR likes to refer to them as.

Music from part one of Documentary

2009-11-09T12:21:00.000-08:00

The link below is to the opening sequence of the documentary on To Kill A Mockingbird.
http://www.ubetoo.com/alexwalker/22173

Scoring a Documentary, Day One

2009-11-02T13:49:00.001-08:00

The first day of scoring proved fruitful, about 85 seconds of realized, through composed music that sets up the opening sequence. A hark back to Elmer Bernstein's overture from the film, using similar instrumentation, i.e. piano, flute, english horn and harp, but we took it one step further by extending the harmony a touch past the traditional americana, diatonic, add 2, 9 type of sonorities. Some pretty motifs emerged thru the writing process, and the possibility of using this extra material later in the score is definitely on the table. The trick thats quickly become apparent in this whole "long format" kind of project is how to pace yourself, and not give all the best stuff all at once. Easy tiger, you got another 58 minutes to go. The pacing and "breathing" in the pulse needs to be homed and refined, as to create slow, gradual increases in tension and equally slow cool downs and transitions into the next section. To remember that this is a documentary, and the dialogue is paramount, we need to be conscience and persistent in this slow dance of rise and fall.
One example of orchestrational architecture that has come into play has been when the string section, divided into 2 voices, outlines the ensemble. So, a vertical representation of this would be:
high strings (playing melodically in 6th's)
horn (playing counter melody, less motion then the hi strings)
bass clarinet (playing motifs in and out of the macro texture)
harp (traversing thru the diff registers with ostinato arpeggio)
low strings (playing macro beats, guiding root harmonies)

This particular pairing of instruments retains the lush string sound of both high and low strings,
and the woody, hollowness of the bass cl. creates body in the middle, with the brighter horn providing sustainal color through and thru.
I can imagine this particular orchestration will make its way into sight again sometime soon.

I hope to make this the first installment of what you could call a composition log. Daily reviews of the task at hand, pitfalls that were uncovered, how to avoid them, and musical discoveries that were found.

From famine to feast, at least.

2009-11-01T07:25:00.000-08:00

So all the hoping, praying and finger crossing worked out well, I'll begin scoring the Harper Lee To Kill A Mockingbird documentary tomorrow. It was quite a process, starting in June when Jake and I submitted some vignette sketches to the producer, giving a sense of what we could bring to the doc. Petite Americana themes, lush string sections and the like, we conjured up 3 different moods, and submitted them. Now, almost 6 months later, we begin. It's gonna be a great experience, working with non-back beat related music for a while. I'll post some scenes up as they are completed. In this game of freelancing, I really do believe that the ones who survive are the ones who can put the frustration of "whats the next gig" on freeze, and keep working thru it. Numerous times, when the phone don't ring, its easy to say, "fuck it, lets get that day job, a sense of security, and leave this music nonsense to the sheep." But, in actuality, that time is valuable, and when harnessed in a positive way, rather than over fretting about things, is when plateaus can be overcome, and up the mountain you continue to sojourn.

In addition to the documentary, there's been a music library disc in the making, in the vein of "garage rock". Whenever you attach style, genre, or "mood" to music, there is bound to be rhetoric and syntaxical arguments between what one's definition of a genre is compared to another's. Garage Rock, to me, is, the Kinks, Stooges, some 60's surf that starts to veer into the early punk sound, all of which I love, and would enjoy in "recreating" for a pittance and some royalties down the road from television broadcast. But, in the reality of things, its become more of a rehashing of a much more recent wave of "garage rock". Not that that's a problem, I take pleasure in seeing how close I can recreate existing music, different just enough to avoid copyright issues, and be able to get it on tv. All for a fee of course, this ain't my heart song, but I am a musician trying to pay bills, and this allows me to work with the guitar in my hands, and, in any event, there are ideas that come out thru this process that are "original" and "envelope pushing" that get used for other, more non commercial entities. Anyways, we got about 6 done, 4 to go, and a show that's already lined up that will use it exclusively. Plus, in these days of "the album is dead, if you wanna make any money, you gotta get your shit on television" this disc that we're doing is a great calling card for other music houses, supervisors and such, who might want a piece of this action, and commision us to create another disc in this same vein.

The Alturas Duo and October.

2009-10-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

The Alturas Duo, http://www.alturasduo.com gave a fuckin spectacular performance of my piece, "How I Long For" at La Guitarra California this past weekend. They brought out nuances in the music that I wasn't even aware of. It was great to be in the audience and to witness the simpatico of the ensemble playing between Scott and Carlos, and seeing them breathe as one while performing a program of folkloric music to baroque, to contemporary composers from both Americas. I felt enormously honored that they spendt that amount of attention to a piece of mine, to bring out as many different colors and shades of lyricism, and in the end, leaving all of us in the audience speechless. Video should come shortly.
On some ol' BK biz, got a new song simmering, its ready for the vocal treatment, hopefully be able to release it sometime early November thru Lapdance Academy. Trust the fire.

2009-09-21T10:14:00.000-07:00

I leave for California on thursday to go to La Guitarra California, http://laguitarracalifornia.com .
The Alturas Duo, an amazing viola/guitar duo is giving the west coast premiere of my piece, "How I Long For". The festival includes consummate performers, such as Manuel Barrueco and David Tannenbaum, two figures in the classical guitar world whom I admire for their musicality and promotion of the instrument. I've known the Alturas Duo for quite sometime, we used to have late night practice marathons together back in the school daze. You can check out their other music here, http://www.alturasduo.com . I look forward to hearing my piece performed, and meeting some kindred spirits out in the Californian sun. You can check out the original recording of "How I Long For" here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpb8_xuERsc&feature=channel

They approached me shortly after I had posted this video with much enthusiasm and hopes to have me arrange it for them. I was honored, arranged it for viola and guitar, sent it to them, and now it lives (quite regularly) as the first piece on the second half of their program. I look forward to writing for them more in the future.

Harper Lee Documentary

2009-09-14T22:12:00.000-07:00

So we might've snagged the composer duties for a documentary being made on the author of "To Kill A Mockingbird", Harper Lee. I'm real siked about this, because in the composer/producer world of music writing, a lot of the times for cats like me, the job at hand is 30 seconds long, or a minute, or wait, 2 minutes. I'm not knocking it, not at all, I'm super grateful for any opportunity that comes my way. But, its hard to sink your teeth into baby bites. A 30 second piece of music is only gonna take a certain amount of time to become polished and complete. But an hour long documentary? In the style of Elmer Bernstein? Shit, thats gonna rule my life for 2 months. And I love it. Orchestral vignettes, rhapsodic classical guitar passages, now we talkin. Bring it on. It might be bad luck to write about this before I've received final confirmation, but I'll take my chances. If this goes down, there will be so much to learn.

Sacrifice

2009-09-14T22:01:00.001-07:00

Today is the release of the single, "Sacrifice", released through Lapdanceacademy, an online record label founded by Brian Grosz. It started as a little solo guitar piece back in late June, and was performed at Corio NYC, in Danbury CT at a Sub Rosa Party, then at a brooklyn blowout at Tattoo Culture, part of a site launch party for Needlesandsins.com and Lapdanceacademy.com. It was also a photography exhibition by NY photographer Sean Toussaint. It went down real deep, people were feeling it like tea tree oil. With the overwhelming response I received for performing that song, I felt that it was only right to produce is asap and get it in the world. Produced by Jake Siegler, we banged it out in about 5 weeks, and with the vocal help of Brian Grosz, Emily Zuzik, Sue Cerreta, Michael Fortner, and Sean Toussaint, the recording sparkled way beyond compare. I'm thoroughly impressed by the mix, and the fact that it sounds good from shitty earbuds all the way up to 1000 dollar studio monitors. Props to Jake for givin the proper tlc that that track needed to shine.
You can download the track for free at
http://www.lapdanceacademy.com/sacrifice

I'm looking to get this song out far and wide. Daily meditations have been about how to give this thing the legs it needs to become viral or at least find its way into the stream. SEO tools? Whats that? I'm learning.

What are you up to?

2009-09-14T21:47:00.000-07:00

In an effort to organize the various "goings on" that I've been musically involved in as of late,
I decided to start documenting the musical process, from composing to performing and everywhere in between. Too many times I'm encountered with the question, "So what are you up to?", and to be honest, I can't properly answer that question in a properly humble amount of time. So, instead of going on at length about the 85,000,000 things I want to do, or are in the midst of doing, I resort to the scapegoat phrase, "uh, playing a lot of guitar." Its true, but a blanket statement, and probably a cop out. I hope to update this page regularly, revealing the process of what I'm up to, with minor details, quandries and revelations, in hopes to illuminate what it is to be a working musician in this day and age. Part of the reason for this blog is that I don't know. I'm trying to live it, but to see it written down is a completely different representation of the process, and one that I hope helps and questions readers in the months to come.

About

2008-10-14T14:39:00.000-07:00

Here you will find music contemporary and original, as well as classic and interpretive.
The Guitar is the tool I use to help me make sense of this world, and also to share with people the beauty I find.
Feel free to listen and comment if something strikes you.
Farewell,
Alex

A Nylon Menagerie.

2008-10-14T14:35:00.001-07:00