Aug/103
Artist in Residence
Smells like victory.
Wow, I have some amazing news.
Every year, the Scott Joplin Foundation invites one musician to be their Artist in Residence for the year. This person is in Sedalia, MO for a week doing a Scott Joplin/Sedalia history outreach to local schools. The list of people who have done this reads like a who’s who in ragtime, including my mentor, friend, and all-around musical genius Tony Caramia.
And guess who is the Artist in Residence for 2011? THIS GUY. [points to self]
It basically breaks down to this: 11 schools, 5 days, 2 mini-concert/sessions each morning and afternoon for a total of 20 during the week, and then the week is capped off with a benefit concert of some sort on Friday night. I’m the youngest person they’ve ever asked to do it, which is awesome. The hope is that I’ll be able to connect with the kids, which shouldn’t be hard considering I’m already plotting how to turn Lady Gaga into ragtime.
I first went to Sedalia in 1998. I was 15, and I had to sneak onto a piano when my dad was in the bathroom in order to get a chance to play. Now I’m the Artist in Residence. Artist! With a capital “A”! That’s pretty awesome 
Jul/100
The Masters at Work
This picture can barely contain the power.
If the dusty corner of the musical world that is ragtime has rock stars, they would be Brian Holland and Jeff Barnhart.
I was 15 years old when I first heard them play together. They were then the age I am now, and had just discovered the kind of magic musical synergy — Brian, with his classical technique, control, and flourish; Jeff with his power and energy — that has made them legends in their own time.
To wit, with help from the epic Danny Coots:
I’m not ashamed to admit that the 5-minute mark to the end makes me twitch with glee.
Always fun to watch the masters at work
May/101
Anderson & Whoa
...because all pianists hang out in fields in their free time...
It’s hard to believe YouTube is just five years old. Like cellphones, the web, and barcodes, it’s hard to remember the world before it, even for those of us, like moi, who were around.
One of the best parts of YouTube, besides of course the abundance of piano playing cats, is finding other human pianists and musicians. Two of the best I’ve found are Anderson and Roe, a dynamic duo that is doing so many things right. Their videos have high production values, spunk, attitude, and best of all they’re damn fine piano players. They also do epic arrangements of Star Wars music, so they had me at hello.
Here’s there latest video, a dizzying version of Mozart’s “Rondo alla Turca.” Of course, this being my website, it’s an arrangement they’ve titled “Ragtime alla Turca.” Gotta love it below:
It’s great to see artists of this caliber experimenting with ragtime! And if the audience reaction at the end, which looks more like they just scored a touchdown to win a game than concluded a piano performance, is any indication, it looks like this music I love is in pretty good shape
Feb/100
Billy Mayerl Rocks
Had to share this epic video, courtesy of Scott N. Here is one of my heroes, Billy Mayerl, making all other pianists look like hacks and liars.
BILLY MAYERL AND HIS CLAVIERS
Fun fact: Flying across those keys on the right is a very young Marian McPartland, the famous host of Piano Jazz on NPR!
I play a number of Billy’s pieces, but no one alive can play them as well as he did. That said, I really, really want to try that play-two-pianos-at-a-time trick now
Jan/100
Martin and Luke’s Excellent Adventures
This about sums up our process...
One of my oldest and best friends, Luke, has begun chronicling a decade of our hilarious misadventures in Star Wars fan film-making over at his blog, the “Book of Luke.” You should check it out hither.
There are so many stories about our fan film days that, seriously, I could do one each day here for the next year and not run out.
Here’s one of my favorite quotes from Luke’s post:
Martin was in his Neo Maximus outfit. It was a dark grey trench coat with the sleeves and a majority of the lower half cut off. 7-inch-long vertical slits were cut 3 inches apart into what remained of the coat below the waist, creating the appearance of the garment that Maximus wore in the arena in Gladiator. If memory serves me correctly, there were washers dangling from the bottom of every strip, too.
No, he’s not exaggerating.
I realize that I may not have mentioned to anyone that I am a huge Star Wars nerd. If there is any doubt, I invite you to check out the website for my 40-minute Star Wars epic, “Hunt for the Holocron.” Warning: Following this link will filleth your Dorkimus Maximus cups for at least a week.
Jan/101
John “Fingers” Williams
My handwriting is not neat enough to compose like this
I started writing ragtime when I was 13. My first piece of music was called the “Starlight March,” and no you cannot hear it. All the Internet needs to know about Martin Spitznagel the composer is that he was an amazing supergenius who never wrote a bad tune ever. Why don’t you preserve that, Wayback Machine.
Since that fateful afternoon at Mom’s house on the Baldwin spinet 14 years ago, plunking my way through “Starlight,” I’ve written mainly for the piano. Okay, only for the piano (with some tiny exceptions). This past December, however, I had the opportunity to do a full-on orchestral score for my company’s holiday card, which you can watch/listen to/mock incessantly here.
Now, I didn’t have a live orchestra to work with, so I used a combination of virtual instruments, Logic Pro 7, and a 49-key midi keyboard pulled from the action-less depths of Piano Hell in order to score the card. Not that I would have known what to do with a real orchestra, seeing as I only know how to play the piano – it’d be like asking a person with a driver’s license to fly a fleet of airplanes, i.e., I sort of get what they do and I know what not flying looks like, but I’m not sure you’d want me running the show – but despite all that, and the ridiculously compressed schedule I had to work with, I’m really pleased with the way it turned out.
Nov/090
IKEA+Old Macs=Squee
In 1996, my mom bought our first modern PC. It was a Gateway 2000, back when Gateway was a cool company and the year “2000″ added an aura of excitement to everything. The computer had a 120Mhz Pentium processor and 16MB of RAM, which is roughly the same processing power as a rickety abacus, and ran the sleek new Windows 95. Pimp! For 10 years afterward I built my own computers and fixed other people’s computers and used PC’s exclusively.
Until, that is, I got my first Mac in 2006. The years since have been a kind of computing utopia, seated under the Bodhi Tree of Apple Enlightenment. I drank the Kool-Aid, took the red pill, signed on the dotted line, swallowed the lure, and have never, ever looked back.
Which is why this guy’s basement gets me wetter than a squeegee at a gas station.
This guy is single.
This Flickr album contains 40 pictures of the coolest Mac basement ever. This guy – anyone who buys a pallet of computers on eBay just to put in his basement is a hero in my book – found a way to display all of these old Macs into the penultimate nerdvana way. Look at the iMacs! You can’t imagine doing this with your old beige box, can you?
Just thought I’d share, since the world needs a little more color. Mmm…
Sep/091
Type “Y” for Yes
So I’ve discovered an awesome website at virtualapple.org. Using a handy Java applet, you can load up any number of old games from the Apple II and have yourself a nostalgia party. We never owned an Apple II, but my school did, and the other night I loaded up “The Oregon Trail,” which was a game I remember distinctly despite the haze of 22 years years since playing it.
If you recognize this screen, you are freaking old.
First, I’d like to point out that I was a gifted child. I must have been, because to navigate the menus in these old games takes a freaking computer science degree.
There is no “yes” button to click, no animated, glowing, shiny thing with arrows pointing at it.
No. We had to type the letter “y” for yes and “n” for no.
This may be one of the first and most shocking pieces of evidence that I am, in fact, older than dirt because what sounds older than “Back in my day, we had to type our commands! None of this mouse-click whizbangery!”
I was shocked also, upon playing Oregon Trail, at how horrific the sound is. At every fort you hear some different American patriotic theme, warbled out in a single line of beeps and boops… literal beeping and booping… rendered with about as much emotion as a napkin. Compared to “Mass Effect,” which is currently eating my life on my XBOX 360, Oregon Trail grinds like a wheel from the stone age.
And yet, there I was the other night, playing it again after two decades, and having fun.
Welcome
Welcome to the homepage of musician, writer, and filmmaker Martin Spitznagel!
Any questions, please e-mail me at martin@spitzfire.com.