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Welcome to Michael's Music Page |
Once upon a time, I was learning to play guitar from, among others, a fantastic guitarist Billy Roues. Unfortunately, I really didn't practice enough to gain a reasonable level of skill..
In 2005 my boys, Aaron and Joey, started taking piano lessons from Leslie Chen and I figured I might as well join them, seeing as the piano was sitting there and the teacher was coming by anyway. Even though I have to practice about 5 times as much as the boys to achieve somewhat similar results, I have finally made good progress on learning to read and notate music. With the help of fantastic (and even free) programs like Finale Notepad, I have finally been able to get the music that was in my head out where others can hear it.
So here are the early fruits of my labors. I'm letting the synthesizer from Finale Notepad play it since my piano playing is not very good (yet???).
All songs © Michael Didner 2006
Suite 1 'Day at the Park'
No. 1: Majestic Garden < New version played by Michael!!! (and not the computer)
No. 2: Carousel
No. 3: By The Fountain
May 2009: I went back and tidied up the last set of pieces I had nearly finished for the PCC ArtBeat Student Composition Competition. This won me an Honorable Mention prize for Solo Piano work. I was a little late to the presentation but I did get a Starbuck's gift card and letter for the win. I'm really glad it was appreciated! (And I'm fairly sure they didn't just find an award for every entrant.)
I used Finale Songwriter and then imported it into Logic Express. I exported that to the .wav files below.
This composition paints a picture of three phases in a person’s life. The first movement depicts the playfulness and carefree existence of the young. The second movement reflects the drive of the young adult striving for success. The final movement represents a person, later in life, wistfully remembering a romance in the past.
A Life in Three Movements
Also, here's the Chaconne I just wrote for the Music Composition class I'm taking. This one was also written in Finale Songwriter and then exported as a midi and saved using Quicktime (which is free here if you don't have it.)