Doug Skinner: An Archive on Your Gizmo

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Entries from July 2011

Index Cards (11)

July 31st, 2011 · 1 Comment

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It All Went Pfft

July 31st, 2011 · Comments Off on It All Went Pfft

2006 was a bad year for me.  I commented on it in this piano piece, in which a melancholy theme deteriorates.

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Tags: *Music · I

Cupid

July 31st, 2011 · 1 Comment

I carried this strip in my head for years.  I finally drew it for a Valentine’s Day edition of R. Sikoryak’s “Carousel.”  

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Tags: *Cartoons · C

Music For Piano-Zither

July 30th, 2011 · 1 Comment

These are four brief pieces written for the piano-zither, a 3/15 diatonic chord zither with a simple keyboard mechanism — a sort of miniature table-top piano.  They can also be played on other keyboard instruments, of course.  Here’s a sample of the first piece.

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Tags: *Music · M

Dip

July 30th, 2011 · Comments Off on Dip

This little tune was written to accompany some business in Bill Irwin’s Clown Lecture; it was later revamped for use in the PBS show Bill Irwin: Clown Prince. Here’s a bit of it.  

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Tags: *Music · D

Index Cards (10)

July 29th, 2011 · Comments Off on Index Cards (10)

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Aretino In Solrésol

July 29th, 2011 · 1 Comment

I wanted to demonstrate the artificial musical language Solrésol for my show The Musical Underbelly.  I decided that one of the famously smutty sonnets of Pietro Aretino would make an interesting example.  I later expanded this for my third string quartet, which is based on several Solrésol translations of Aretino. Here’s the first part of […]

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Tags: *Music · A

How Unusual

July 29th, 2011 · 1 Comment

“How Unusual” appeared in Nickelodeon Magazine in 1993.  It was meant as an expansion of my Zuzu strip, “It’s Fortean,” but turned out to be a one-shot.

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Tags: *Cartoons · H

Alphabet

July 28th, 2011 · 1 Comment

This alphabet was devoted to interjections. ah boo caw duh eek feh gulp hey ick jeez kachoo la mmm nah oops pshaw quack rah sh tsk uh vroom whoa x!@*%! yikes zzz Here are some samples.  “Zzz,” by the way, was based on a photo of me taken the day I was born.  

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Tags: *Cartoons · A

On a Theme By Lewis Carroll

July 28th, 2011 · Comments Off on On a Theme By Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll inserted a tune into his novel Sylvie and Bruno, for the song “Ting Ting Ting.”  It’s a fine little tune; so I wrote a set of variations on it.  And this is how it opens.

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Tags: *Music · O