Audrey Budington on Violin and me on piano.  Entirely improvised.  She is damn good on that instrument!
Note: In this recording she was not playing the seven string electric violin you see in the picture.

Violin/Piano improvisation (Audrey and I)


I composed this for an orchestration course I am taking through Berklee School of Music. Our focus this week was on the Brass section of the orchestra and we were given a melody to compose around but of course I went wild and came up with some different themes. The main brass melody in the second section of the piece is what we were given.

Samples are from VSL Special Edition Complete. Sequenced in Cubase.


Mountains Above and Mountains Below

A piece I composed as the leaves turned gold outside my bedroom window.

In this newer version I changed some of the material and orchestration towards the end of the piece and switched the sample library to my new VSL instruments.

Autumn Fire (New)

This is a fun piece I whipped out last night ("whipped out" meaning four solid hours of work).  It still needs more work but I really like some of the ideas.  I am hoping to do a series of these spanning different moods and playing with different textures.

An Adventure For Strings (part 1)

I wrote and recorded this for a World Music Composition class through Berklee Online.  Enjoy!

Thanks to the musicians!
Fiddles: Elizabeth Anderson, Gabriel Dubreuil
Mandolin: Tom Krumm
Piano: Clayton Clemetson

The Thirty-Nine Bus (a Celtic-Inspired Reel)

I had the opportunity to work with the wonderful Turkish singer Burcu Gulec on this piece.  I drew from a couple of Rumi poems for the text and decided (for the sake of time) to keep the lyrics in English.  We recorded without a click track which meant it was difficult to match up the drum beats to the vocals and there are some rough patches where the drums fluctuate in tempo.  Before and after the vocals are sections of improvisation on the Ney flute and the Oud which I recorded using my electric piano and sampled instruments.

Lovers (Sufi-Inspired Song Using Rumi Text)

I did not realize I was going to have so much fun writing Cuban music until I started working on this piece and had no desire to stop.  But alas, I had to make the deadline for my Composition course and I could have spent the next year nitpicking minuscule details anyway.  Hope you enjoy!

City in the Waves (Cuban-Inspired)

Another piece from my World Music Composition course.  Enjoy a taste of West Africa!

West African Piece

I really enjoyed studying Japanese music in my course this week.  The pentatonic scales and flowing style (that seems improvisational but is thoroughly composed) are such beautiful and unique aspects of the genre.  I wish I had more time to expand on this particular piece but it will have to be something I return to later in my musical journey. 
P.S. The picture is of some awesome cloud-shaped lichen.  I found while attempting the Presidential Traverse in the White Mountains. I discovered a whole mountainside of it and someday I hope to edit the photos together into an entire lichen cloudscape.

Painter of Mountains (Japanese-Inspired)

I ended up reworking this before submitting it as the assignment for my World Music Composition course because it sounds a lot more "pop" than I intended.  The version you are listening to is the original because I like it better.


To Snow Another Day (Brazilian-Inspired)

A musical adventure through two ancient and deeply rooted traditions.  I did my best to walk the edge between the Japanese and Celtic genres, weaving together qualities from each into a piece that sways gently from one tradition to the next.  Melodic and rhythmic choices as well as the instrumentation contributed to the balance I strove to achieve.

I chose these two genres for the final project in my composition class (our assignment was to create a world music fusion piece) because I love both the beauty and flow of Japanese music and the energy and joy in Celtic and had a strong feeling that they would mix well.  I approached this piece as if I were a New England contra dance musician who had spent my childhood in Japan.  I used this perspective to intimately connect the two genres, writing a main melodic theme that, with some rhythmic variation could be from either genre.  Then I added in some orchestral and synth elements to enrich the arrangement.

Hope you enjoy!
Clayton

Two Islands - Japanese/Celtic Fusion

A choral piece I wrote to the beautiful lyrics of Ben Sachs-Hamilton being performed by a chorus of Village Harmony alum this past winter.

Every Season

I discovered this poem in a musty old book tucked in the corner at the top of a spiral staircase in my school library. The melody for the A-section came fairly quickly and the rest of the piece went through a dozen different variations and drafts before it became what you hear now. The piece is inspired by the shape note tradition with a text by Thomas Baily Aldrich from New Hampshire and the performance was recorded at Trinity church in Boston during a two month tour with Northern Harmony.

Pillared Arch (Choral)

This piece weaves intricately distorted echos of a piano with field recordings and electronically generated tones. It came into being during a class on electronic music at Marlboro College. My original concept was inspired by fractals and the idea that a piece could unfold from a single echo.

Attunement

Why does the college professor Amer Latif have his students hum together at the beginning of each class? In this podcast episode we explore how the ritual of humming helps students to find their voice, listen to each other, and nourishes the relationship between brain and body.

I produced this podcast episode as part of my self-designed degree in Holistic Education at Marlboro College. This is the second draft of the first podcast I have created. Looking forward to making more! Enjoy!

P.S. I am on a search for used audio gear so that I can make more podcasts! (And music!)

Podcast: Way Of Attunement

A song written by a fiddler friend.  We performed it together, along with another fiddler and a drummer.

Madeleine's Waltz

I am a song leader, pianist, accordionist, composer, and educator in self-directed and outdoor programs. I have toured half-a-dozen countries performing and teaching international choral polyphonies with Village Harmony, performed as a contra dance pianist, scored short films, written music for choirs, and produced a couple of albums. I do some other things too but this is my music spot! Enjoy!

Clayton Clemetson

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