Soon to be released Dying Stage album. Updated 9/24/2021

Dying Houses

2/21/2017

It's The Pain

The reflections of a man recognising the strength of the woman who has shouldered all of his failures.

YOUR TRUEST FAITH
(Paul Ariss)
Every time you look at me
I know just what you’re thinking
You wish that I would change my ways
And maybe stop this drinking
It’s too much to admit I know
But I’m not the man you married
I’m not the man you knew before
I’m just the man you’ve carried

Even when the child was born
I was somewhere else instead
You never even asked me why
When you should have wished me dead
I carry all the benefit as you
Suffer all the blame
I took from you the years of youth
And you took from me my name

And now as you see another line round your eyes
Do you think of the years passing by
Do you wish for that optimistic wind on your face
As I hang on to your truest faith								   As I hang on to your truest faith

A man as weak as this one before you
Will always find excuse
To seek a home for his easy anger
With occasional abuse
I still hide behind your charity,
But I know the price you pay,
Do you still believe in me
Or has hope just blown away

REPEAT CHORUS 

If you would only scream a little and let me see the pain
Would I carry on regardless and do it all again?
Or take another chance to show you the man I wished to be
Recall those years I stood beside you so strong and straight and free






Every time you look at me
I know just what you’re thinking
You wish that I would change my ways
And maybe stop this drinking
It’s too much to admit I know
But I’m not the man you married
I’m not the man you knew before 
I’m just the man you’ve carried

And now when you see another line round your eyes
Do you think of the years passing by
Do you wish for that optimistic wind on your face
As I hang on to your truest faith
As I hang on to your truest faith
As I hang on to your truest faith

Your Truest Faith

I produced this track for my clip "Passo San Marco": https://youtu.be/FUShfDl6xCQ

San Marco and giants

Playera

Spotify

Melon Coke - Make Your Joy Redux

Nina  Brainard's Album

The Waltz

A somewhat moody piano piece in harmonic major!

The Clocks Have Stopped

Snow

Eating Variations
for Baritone Voice and Chamber Quintet (Baritone Voice,  Flute, B-flat Clarinet, Violin, Cello, Percussion)
Duration: 9' 
Text by Ron Singer
Publisher: Bill Holab Music:
Performers: American Modern Ensemble; Robert Gardner, Baritone
Publisher: Bill Holab Music: http://www.billholabmusic.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1109
Online Perusal Score: https://issuu.com/robertpaterson/docs/eating_variations-fs-bound_perusal
For More Information: https://robertpaterson.com/eating-variations

PROGRAM NOTES
Eating Variations is based on a series of witty poems with the same title by Ron Singer. The work as a whole is essentially a satire on food faddism and depicts different aspects of eating. The way I chose to set these poems is light-hearted, perhaps lighter in spirit than Singer originally intended, but with a serious, dark side.

The first movement, My Body, a Temple, incorporates the sounds of Tibetan Singing Bowls (also called Temple Bowls or Cup Gongs) and is loosely, harmonically inspired by Khöömei, or Tuvan Throat Singing and David Hykes’s Harmonic Choir recordings; both of whom use a style in which the singer produces overtones on top of the fundamental notes. Perhaps mercifully, I do not require the baritone to use this technique, but instead, use the flute to produce false overtones in a couple of spots.

In the second movement, The Hog, the instruments mimic pig sounds with scratchy, grunting noises from the violin and cello and clarinet multiphonics. A round-sounding whole-tone scale is used and there is a Polka-like accompaniment in the percussion.

The third movement, Even the Dyspeptic Must Eat, uses upward and downward runs in the bass clarinet to impart a roller coaster-like sense of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease, a condition in which there is recurrent return of stomach contents back up the esophagus. This is reinforced with a slow, background groove in the drums.

The cello part in the fourth movement, The Dietary Moralist, is inspired by Dave Eggar, a cellist who can play his instrument like a guitar and sing at the same time. In this movement, I ask the cellist to play in a somewhat folksy style and sing out of tune back-up vocals—to me, reminiscent of a 1960s musical Hippie Sit-in. The main vocalist is backed by the well meaning but out of tune "band." To paraphrase an interesting email exchange with Singer, we agreed that in this context, the vocalist might represent a contemporary version of a certain species of 60's hippie—say, a particularly zealous fair trade coffee purveyor, and that this Malvolio type is singing along with a group of kindred spirits. This movement is not a literal portrayal of the text, which is quite serious in tone, and stretches the meaning more than the other movements. Perhaps my interpretation may instead be viewed more as commentary on the text.

In each passing decade, people are sure of their eating habits, and the carefree, assured, commercial America of the 1950s was no different. In the last movement, The Happy Medium, I envision a father-like doctor figure squarely explaining to a patient how to eat. The perky background music is meant to evoke a 1950s TV commercial, or perhaps a short, black and white educational grade school film.

Winter Songs

Eating Variations - I. My Body, A Temple

In The Space Of Lost

From third album - "TOO BLUE"
available where all digital music is sold

Too Blue

All The Best

Unapologetic musical calamity from around the world. The only way to support: https://gomjabbar.bandcamp.com

Melon Coke - Make Your Joy Redux

Gom Jabbar