LinuxMusicians

Hi all!

After a very long period of silence (only partly broken by a couple of silly Christmas songs), I'm so happy to finally be able to introduce what is probably my most ambitious project so far: a 27 minutes long song on Cleopatra, that's basically a symphonic rock opera! This is an appetizer from my upcoming "Musae" album, of which Cleopatra will be one of the tracks (the longest one, of course). While on "Musae" it will be a single long song, I decided to also release it as a separate EP where the song is actually split in the 9 parts that make it and tell her story.

You can listen to it in different places:

• Bandcamp: https://lminiero.bandcamp.com/album/cleopatra

• Mirlo: https://mirlo.space/lminiero/release/cleopatra-(ep)

• My Faircamp instance: https://music.lminiero.it/cleopatra/

• Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music and co. (soon): https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/loren ... /cleopatra

I started working on this more than 20 years ago (that's when "Cleopatra's Fanfare" came to me), but I never sat down to actually work on it until now. As such, it contains themes that are both very old (again, more than 20 years) and fairly recent. This time, while guitars are of course very much present, they're an instrument just as any other in the orchestra, meaning it's meant to sound much more like a soundtrack or a rock opera than a generic song (even though it has many progressive rock parts, with tempo changes and rock instrumentation). Not a single solo in this, which made it easier for me to play for sure

As anticipated, in this EP the song is split in 9 parts, but it's actually meant to be listened to in a single sitting: unfortunately no streaming service supports gapless streaming, meaning there will be a short interruption between each "track", but there was no way around it. This will not be an issue once I release the song in its entirety as part of "Musae".

I'm really excited about this release, as working on this was quite draining and took longer than expected: not really to work ON it, but to DECIDE to sit down and work on it, considering the gargantuan effort it took. But I'm really happy with how it came out!

Please do let me know what you think of it, if it works as it is, and if there are parts you prefer (or strongly dislike ) over others. Of course, please feel free to ask me for details about any of the different parts. I added some notes for each track on Bandcamp, but I'm happy to go more in detail on whatever curiosity you have.

Hope you'll enjoy this!

I think the word is definitely Epic. First class work!

folderol wrote: ↑Fri Apr 12, 2024 4:19 pm

I think the word is definitely Epic. First class work!

Thanks, I couldn't ask for a better review!

Great piece of work! Indeed a shame, those gaps during playback. I look forward to listening to the single track version. And thanks for the history lesson!

Impostor wrote: ↑Fri Apr 12, 2024 6:07 pm

Great piece of work! Indeed a shame, those gaps during playback. I look forward to listening to the single track version. And thanks for the history lesson!

Thanks for listening, and glad you enjoyed it! On history, you may want to double check everything, as I may have gotten a bit creative with it

While listening, this seemed orchestral and cinematic. The rock elements worked well, and didn't seem out of place to me. I imagine the process of taking an idea to various concepts, to rough drafts, and on to finished works, Is a combo of hard work applied to giftedness, or at least strong passions taking charge as the years go by. Is there a local drama group who could get involved? I think there are ways to portray each section without having a massive cast and crew, perhaps by the actors portraying various responses to the characters and energies that played out historically.

I have two suggestions. The melodic guitar in the intro of 'Antony And Cleopatra' seemed out of place, and out of sync. I think it would be better as the conclusion of that piece, and a bit more technically involved, considering the gravity of the story. Along the lines one might expect from a slow Gipsy Kings ballad? The second thing is the 'harp glissands' being chromatic seemed at war with all the strong and careful orchestrations. If you could do them in the scales of the portions they cover, I think it would would be a better fit. Have a great week!
Cheers

glowrak guy wrote: ↑Sun Apr 14, 2024 9:12 am

While listening, this seemed orchestral and cinematic. The rock elements worked well, and didn't seem out of place to me. I imagine the process of taking an idea to various concepts, to rough drafts, and on to finished works, Is a combo of hard work applied to giftedness, or at least strong passions taking charge as the years go by. Is there a local drama group who could get involved? I think there are ways to portray each section without having a massive cast and crew, perhaps by the actors portraying various responses to the characters and energies that played out historically.

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it! I don't know if there's any drama group around, but as it is I don't think there's much anyone could do with it, as it's pretty much descriptive music, a bit like symphonic poems but in rock. Since I conceived it as some sort of rock opera, one thing that might be cool to do might be adding actual songs to it, and turn it into an actual rock opera: the overture's there, the epic finale too, other instrumental parts could be expanded, and their themes become vocal lines too. In that case, that would indeed be something that could be presented somehow. But that's something for a very far future

glowrak guy wrote: ↑Sun Apr 14, 2024 9:12 am

I have two suggestions. The melodic guitar in the intro of 'Antony And Cleopatra' seemed out of place, and out of sync. I think it would be better as the conclusion of that piece, and a bit more technically involved, considering the gravity of the story. Along the lines one might expect from a slow Gipsy Kings ballad? The second thing is the 'harp glissands' being chromatic seemed at war with all the strong and careful orchestrations. If you could do them in the scales of the portions they cover, I think it would would be a better fit. Have a great week!
Cheers

I actually wanted the somber guitar to be at the very beginning because it came right after the big fanfare in the streets. The idea was to give a picture of Antony and Cleopatra finally alone after the crowds cheering for them, with Antony's lower voice breaking the silence with a sweeter and more melancholic theme, and so I needed that contrast. Woodwinds join to represent Cleopatra (whose theme also appears briefly during the piece). The part ends softly because it represents the last moment of quiet intimacy, before "The Power of Rome" shows up as a menace.

On glissandos, I checked the score in MuseScore and I saw that for some I chose "diatonic" for rendering, while for others it's indeed "chromatic". This is an automatic setting you can specify when adding a glissando to the notation, since MuseScore needs to know what it means in terms of MIDI notes to play. I think I experimented with both until I got the result I wanted: I don't remember if you can specify the actual notes yourself (it may indeed be possible). Using diatonic wouldn't have always worked nicely, because the overwhelming majority of the track is not in any diatonic scale, and so there would have been notes out of place, which is probably why I used chromatic where I did. If I recall correctly, harps cannot play chromatically, since they have pedals you configure for each string to play in a certain scale, but glissandos were fast enough that I hoped it wouldn't be too much of an issue, since (pretty much as in solos) it's more important where you start from and where you're getting to, than how you get there.

Thanks again for listening and for the interesting discussion points!

I can't really add to what others have said, this is a very impressive piece and you should be very proud of what you've achieved with the tools at hand!

GMaq wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 4:15 pm

I can't really add to what others have said, this is a very impressive piece and you should be very proud of what you've achieved with the tools at hand!

Thanks, it's really appreciated!

Always amazed at how quickly you release new stuff, apart from how you had this EP planned for more than 20 years

I like the last two tracks of the EP the most. But I'm impressed at how you manage to make Virtual Playing Orchestra.

I hadn't heard of Faircamp before. It seems like an interesting project, provided you have the infrastructure to host it. The whole deal with webrings to find other Faircamp instances seems a bit similar to the fediverse.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing this again on the full album!

Tenaba wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2024 8:05 pm

Always amazed at how quickly you release new stuff, apart from how you had this EP planned for more than 20 years

Ahahah yes, that took a bit longer, on average!

Tenaba wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2024 8:05 pm

I like the last two tracks of the EP the most. But I'm impressed at how you manage to make Virtual Playing Orchestra.

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it! And I'm particularly glad you liked "The Asp", the one before the "big finale". I conceived those parallel guitars a very long time ago (they were part of the original sketch, 20 years ago), and I loved how they came out intersecting each other. I particularly love the transition from the previous track (Aftermath) to "The Asp", with the Shakespeare actress saying my favourite line from "Antony and Cleopatra" jumping in those guitars. But you're the first to actually tell me you liked that too

The big finale I like a lot too. It's very derivative of the finale of Symphony X's "The Odyssey", but I don't care: it's epic!

Tenaba wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2024 8:05 pm

I hadn't heard of Faircamp before. It seems like an interesting project, provided you have the infrastructure to host it. The whole deal with webrings to find other Faircamp instances seems a bit similar to the fediverse.

Yes, Faircamp is quite cool and it gives a nice web UI very easily, with knobs to customize the look & feel. You don't even need that big of an infrastructure, at least not when you're a nobody like me: I got a server on IONOS which costs me 1.22€ a month (pretty much nothing), and since I have ssh access to it, I put an nginx where I put a lot of stuff (my own landing page, a blog, the Faircamp instance, and a small service for Fantasy Football for my friends). The domain name has its own cost, of course, but since I can add subdomains for free I can add as many domains I want in nginx and it works great.

Tenaba wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2024 8:05 pm

Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing this again on the full album!

You and me both! I should really work on cleaning those old tracks All the other songs I published already on Soundcloud, at the time, but I'm remixing them and re-recording some parts, since a couple I posted when I started tinkering with music on Linux ages ago, and so are not that great to my ears of today.