This page is a workspace where early sketches of new pieces can be shared with those helping develop the "Razz." Your feedback is welcome.
RFP
Want to help? Send me a note and I'll forward the lead sheet so you can practice "Duncan's Song" and put your own vocal or instrument solo on it. Here's an mp3 file of the basic arrangement track.
You can participate. Don't just fancy yourself a performer. Put some spit on it, and get it out here. You'll be glad you did.
Characterization
Duncan is the universal soldier, having figuratively followed his knight in shining armor through the entire history of western civilization -- or at least the enactment of same through the multiplicity of his roles in everlasting wordplay. Duncan's lives and adventures have led him a boisterous, boorish and brutal way toward achieving everyman's dream of winning a woman of his own and at last becoming a king, if only in his own castle.
"Fin Demonium Razz"
Duncan's Song
copyright Cass von Braun, all rights reserved
Vocal by Cass von Braun
Brian De Lorenzo as Duncan
A wonderful performer and all around fine fellow, Brian brought things out of the character I hardly dared hope for, making me realize that Duncan is actually the central character in the "Razz," and he would need his own solo.
The arrangement isn't ready yet, but the music is written
and I'm pretty happy about the way it works with the rest of the piece.
This section of the "Razz" is also distinguished as having the first "sung through" section
I've included in a work: the first part emerges out of dialog as a duet with Tonion , followed by the waltz that is Duncan's solo.
Left right, left right
Birds gotta fly
We do or die
Ours is not to question why
There are things we do not know
We do not yet know we do not know
We are vibrating strings
Upon the cosmic bow
Somehow a grid of lines is finally defined
Now there's a network feed reassuring me
Somehow time squeezed 2000 years
From a mustard seed
They say Percival Sweet
Still rides on Wall Street
Questing for the Holy Grail
And the day that brings
The sweetest things
For free!
Soldier on, Duncan
Do not ask why
Yours is to do or to die
And if there is a vision in history
Spilling blood over poetry
Well, maybe it's true
And it's just too
Too late for me
You will soldier on, Duncan
For the day that brings
The sweetest things
For free!
Down cypher, null set, uncertainty
Yours is to do or to die
Fashioning fire in a passionate pyre
Yours is to do or to die
And if this is not what the good id would do
Still my heart listens to you
As I once was, so I am
And must ever be
My hope is for heaven but hell I believe
Ain't the heat, it's humanity
Still today it seems the sweetest things
Are free
Soldier on, Duncan
Do not ask why
If not to do, at least try
Waltzing at last back to Babylon
At the end of a long division
And if we're done, and if we won
And it's not too late, too late for me
You will soldier on, Duncan
For the day that brings
The sweetest things
For free
Smoke a cigarette
See a red Corvette
Just you
Alone
With me
I'd be happier living with you in the street
Than a king with the world at his feet
On the day that brings
The sweetest things
For free
Smoke a cigarette
See a red Corvette
Just you
Alone
With me
Might mean the world to me