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Joel Roston Composer | Instrumentalist

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Feb

New Chamber Piece

in Actual News, Blog, Work

I'm super psyched to announce the world premier of my newest piece, You Will Never See Another Silver Fox! It's being performed by the group Boston Nonet at Harvard's Holden Chapel on Sunday, March 1st at 2pm. [...]

Oct

The Case for Adding Two Beats to the Alphabet Song

in Blog, Hard Bloggin', Just For Fun

You can also read this post on medium.com. Let’s talk about the first half of the American English version of "The Alphabet Song" for a minute. This is the iconic tune which, for many/most of us, was our first introduction to the foundational building-blocks of the English language. [...]

Aug

Giving Credit(s) to Chopin

in Actual News, Blog, Work tags: Chopin, McOmber, see you next tuesday, Tobia

For those of you keeping track at home, a few months ago I posted about an arrangement of a Chopin piece that I recorded* for a film. The film is Drew Tobia's [...]

Aug

Linking Sibelius and Digital Performer

in Blog

This week, I found myself wanting to link Sibelius (7.1.3) with Digital Performer (8.06) in such a way that each individual Sibelius instrument was connected to its own track in DP. This would allow me to compose in Sibelius, but use samples and processing effects from DP. Seeing as there isn’[...]

Jul

Beyond Assonance: Rhyme Attempts in Popular Music 1

in Blog, Just For Fun tags: Anthrax, Cat Stevens, Danzig, Flaming Lips, Lennon, NWA

Below are five of my favorite rhyme attempts in popular music. I did my best to list instances that give me the impression that the artist is sincerely and unambiguously attempting to make two words rhyme. For instance, I didn't include Danzig's "Not of this World" because I get the feeling he's[...]

May

NPR and, Tangentially, Prince

in Blog, Hard Bloggin', Just For Fun tags: Chant, Guitar, MBTA, NPR

A while back, I received a call to improvise a "Heartbreaker"-meets-"When-Doves-Cry" guitar solo for a PSA that the city of Boston was doing to promote safety on the T. As is often the case with these sorts of projects, though the production department loved it, whoever had the final say thought[...]

May

Defensible Lyrics 1

in Blog, Just For Fun tags: Bowie, Buggin', Lyrics, Truth

This is the first blog post in what will be a lazy series of blog posts cataloging lines from songs that I feel are mostly, if not utterly, defensible. NOTE: This blog post contains language that may not be suitable for people who don't enjoy reading the word "fucker." Here we go: Arti[...]

May

Nice, But Bummy

in Blog, Hard Bloggin', Just For Fun, Work tags: Chopin, Ferrara, Guitar, Scarborough Fair

I received a call from a film-composer friend a few weeks ago asking if I could record a classical guitar version of Chopin's [...]

Jan

How’s Carl This Time?

in Blog, Hard Bloggin', Just For Fun

There's good preliminary evidence to support this claim: As the excitement builds over the course of each hour-long Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! episode, Carl Kasell’s exclamation of the last two syllables of the word “Chicago,” commensurately, rises in pitch. -- The Backstory Perh[...]

Jan

A Coalition United for Awesome Music

in Actual News, Blog, Work

I'm psyched to have had the chance to work with composer John Kusiak on a short film for the Eisenhower Memorial website. The video, NATO: A Coalition United for Peace, details Eisenhower's role in the formation of NATO. Check it out!.[...]