| After Many years of futzing around with music, studying Alto Saxophone with Pete Branham,
and not being shy about embarrasing himself in front of family, friends, and neighbors, John Randall has decided to expose his efforts
at music making to a wider and unsuspecting audience. The following recordings are either John's attempts at playing other peoples music on the
Saxophone, some original compositions (mainly realized through software) and an original saxophone piece.
I recommend headphones for listening to these recordings for two reasons: |
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What'l I Do? Irving Berlin
I so love the Linda Ronstadt version of this. When I am brave enough I will try a Sax Duet version. |
Could It Be You Cole Porter
A little known Cole Porter tune. As far as I can tell this is an instrumental. If anyone knows differently please send me the lyrics.
Thats Me on the Alto Sax. |
Cheek to Cheek Irving Berlin
My Father used to sing this fairly regularly. When switching channels on TV a few years ago I came uopn the Fred Astaire and
Ginger Rogers Movie Top Hat just as this song was starting. I got Goosebumps! I found sheet music for a Sax duet and recorded
both parts in June of 2020. |
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Gymnopedie No2 Erik Satie
A particularly strange and beautiful piece by Erik Satie. I hope I have none this justice. That's me on the Sax with Cakewalk (music software)
providing the Piano and Bass. |
Nuages Django Reinhardt
My Favorite Django Reinhardt tune. |
Black Orpheus (Manha De Carnaval) - Luiz Bonfa
Music from an old Brazilian Film, Black Orpheous. On this track you get to hear me improvising with a Jamey Aebersold backing track. |
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Song for my Father Horace Silver
A Jazz Standard and a great one. This will subject you to more of my attempts at improvisation.
Once again I am playing with a Jamey Aebersold backing track. |
Misty Errol Garner
One of my favorite songs, which I have been playing form many years. I really like the tune and so have all of the Randall Dogs.
Max, and Wolfie our dearly departed Tervueren Shepards loved to Howl along wth this. Our new pup, Zephyr, an Australian Shepard,
has also taken a liking to it. He accompanies me on this recording. |
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In the Mourning John N. Randall
I have had the melody for this in my head for several decades. Something like 10 years ago, I conceived of the Break while running,
and shortly thereafter added the harmony. My Sax Instructor Pete, recorded the harmony part that I played along with for many years.
I finally got up the nerve to play both parts (asynchronously) in this recording.
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An Instrumrntal with a secret personal Title John N. Randall
I am sworn to secrecy on the details of this competition. The performance is strictly artificial using Cakewalk software.
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Pachelbel's Pistol John N. Randall
This piece started many years ago and has morphed into something I have the temerity to think is sort of Like Pachelbel's Canon. I am still fiddling with it.
As is the case of the previons piece, this is software produced music.
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727 John N. Randall
I am not sure how to describe this. Something just sort of made me compose this on Cakewalk a few years ago. The title is a result of this music being written
on July 27.
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Ian's Lament John N. Randall
Way back in the last century, when Ian was just an infant, Patrice, Ashley, Ian and I were driving to my parents lake house. Its more than 4 hours from Dallas to the
Lake house and Ian confined to baby car seat was not happy. He sort of whine/cryed this melody over and over as we got near the lake house. I had to write it
down to get it out of my head.
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Fibonacci sequence interpreted by a Sine Function on an IBM 360 John N. Randall
This is really old. In my mis-spent youth, greatly enjoyed music, but was mystified how anyone could come up with an original melody.
However, during my career as an undergraduate student at UH, I learned Fortran (using punch cards). It occured to me that
I could get the IBM 360 to compose a melody for me. I generated the Fimonacci number series (start off with 1, add that number
to the previous number (0 in this case) to generate the next number and repeat). I then took that value in radians and fed it to a sine funciton.
I then took the absloute value of the sine funciton output and split up the 0-1 range in to 8 evenly spaced ranges which would generate a note in the
C to C interval of the C major scale. I then took the phase of the sine angle 0-89 degrees was a 1/4 note, 90-179 a 1/2 note, 180-269 a dotted 1/2 note,
and 270-359 was a whole note. As the Fibonacci series expands exponentiallyeven with double precsion on the IBM 360, I could only get 90 notes before
there was a stack overflow. If you are actually willing to listen to this, the melody generated in this way shows up in the Bass part in the first three choruses.
I forced a 4/4 time signature with some percussion and added chords to go with the melody. Enjoy?
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