Pam Marshall's notes about composing music, teaching, improvising, music software, nature


Author: PamelaM

  • Black Bear Dance, first horns, then clarinets

    A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece for horn ensemble and community drumming group called Black Bear Dance. The notes about the piece say: “In Black Bear Dance, I indulge my love of drumming, which really energizes the horn sound. The title comes from a line in the text for my choral piece…

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  • Online Auction for American Music Center

    There are a lot of unique items in this AMC fundraiser auction. Many have NO BIDS! Some are a bit pricey, if you don’t collect autographed scores or CDs. You can also bid on commissions and live recitals, even more expensive, but if you have the money, they’re a bargain over the actual value. I’m…

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  • Improv Class Experiences

    This fall I’ve been teaching a class in free improv to two adult students at Lexington Music School, both experienced musicians. We’ve had a lot of fun as we practiced crafting music in the moment. One student is continuing and we’d love to make the class a larger group. If you’re curious, and somewhere northwest…

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  • Get a Recording Education Online

    I’m impressed by how often Wikipedia has an article on any topic I want to know about. I was looking for information on microphone techniques and the topic Microphone Practice even had diagrams. I also discovered WikiRecording, which had really helpful articles. Check out their category page Microphone Techniques. They have manuals for a lot…

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  • Rebirth of Spindrift Commissioning Guild

    I don’t seem to be able to write blog entries regularly. Either I’m hard at work at something else, or I’ve finished that something, which I could write about, but I’ve moved on. I’m going to try harder to capture some of what’s going on in my composing life more often. I’ve got improv classes…

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