Friday, October 3, 2014

Fall is in the air

Well, summer was wonderful, but it is over. The leaves on the trees here in south central Pennsylvania have started to turn beautiful colors of red, orange and brown. I have been putting the garden to bed, pulling up the spent tomato plants, mulching other plants to help them over winter and planting cool weather crops. We had a wonderful harvest of egg plant, butternut squash, tomatoes, zucchini, crookneck, okra, raspberries and strawberries, to name a few of the delicious vegetables we had. Today I even ate a Paw Paw fruit from our tree. It tasted like sweet banana custard, delicious! I have also been riding my mountain bike as much as I can. My friends and I had great fun riding in a nearby state park as well as the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania. Both are beautiful places to ride with great trails.

Things have been busy musically as well. One of the best accomplishments over this summer was finishing the complete transcription of the new CD, "Coming Home". The book is a very close note for note transcription (as close as I can get it), and the graphics are sharp and wonderful, thanks to my lovely wife, Linda. It is now available on the website www.gregmaroney.com. I am still composing songs for the next CD, and have about 6 songs done. I think this time I will record them in groups of 3 or 4 songs, rather then wait to do the whole CD at once. Recording 12 to 14 songs over 3 or 4 days can be taxing on the ol' memory banks, so I may try it this new way. That is the advantage of recording on my own piano in my own studio rather than having to rent studio time.

I still have plans to travel with Michael Dulin to Birmingham and the surrounding area this December for a brief concert tour, and we are putting the finishing touches on the Pacific Northwest tour in April 2015. I will also be at a music conference in Anaheim, California in late January. If anyone in the area would like to host a house concert or knows of an intimate performance venue, please contact me. This will be January 23rd, 24th and 25th.

Lastly, we are going to offer a private "special" sale on one item per month. This offer is only for the people who receive this email. This month it will be the Christmas Song Book and CD (yes, it is coming and it is time to start practicing). Click the following link to get to the sale page on the website (you have to use this link, it is not available from the home page of the website): "Special Sale".

Thank you all for your support, it helps me make more music!

Greg Maroney

Friday, August 1, 2014

Thanks for Listening


Hello my music friends,

Well, summer is in full swing, and I love being outdoors. My wife and I are enjoying biking, kayaking, and gardening. We have finished up a lot of outside projects and are now maintaining the gardens. We redesigned and built a new entry way so my father-in-law, who is 90 years old, does not have to walk up or down any steps. We also built a new patio from the ground up. We excavated the dirt, my wife built the walls and then we worked together installing and leveling the pavers. It was back breaking work and we had to be careful not to smash our fingers! I suppose construction and piano are not the most compatible occupations, but you do what you have to do, right?

Musically, I have also been busy. I had a lot of work done on my piano, going beyond tuning, extra voicing, and getting rid of some buzzing overtones, so it is sounding better than ever. This has made it easier to prepare for the coming benefit concert in Gettysburg at 2 pm on August 17th, as well as the house concert here at our home on August 16th. Michael Dulin will be sharing the performance stage with me for both performances. Tickets are available here. All proceeds go to the Adams County Library System, raising money to increase their capacity. The venue is located at the Lutheran Theological Seminary Chapel at 147 Seminary Ridge, Gettysburg, Pa. It is a gorgeous bulding with great acoustics, and the piano is a Yamaha C7, so it should be a great concert.

Michael and I are working on 2 concert tours, one in the late fall to the deep south and one in April 2015 to Seattle , Spokane , Portland and surrounding areas. More details to come on these concerts.

We will also host a house concert here at our home in south central Pennsylvania on September 14th at 2 pm. Reservations are required, as seating is limited. Contact me if you are interested. The house concerts are a blast, seating is close to the piano, and I talk about the songs and how they were composed. Cookies are always enjoyed during the break.

I have been busy transcribing all the songs from the latest album "Coming Home", and have only 4 more to go. It is a labor of love, and takes time and concentration, two things I run short of sometimes. But, slowly but surely, I am getting them on paper.

For those of you who may be interested in the business side of music, it is a fast changing environment. Difficult in some ways, but rewarding in others. iTunes is beginning to fade into the distance. People are streaming music more and more and not buying mp3s. Why buy it if you can just stream it on Spotify or Pandora? Pandora does pay a small royalty "per spin" for any song that is played but it takes millions of spins to make any money with them. So please, if you have the opportunity to create a Greg Maroney station on your favorite streaming source, please do, it helps a lot!


I've had several fans email to ask why my CDs are different prices on different sites, especially Amazon, where the whole solo piano genre went up to $20 a CD recently. Just so you know, the artists are not the ones that decide the pricing, that is determined by the selling site and then they take a percentage of the sale, 55% in the case of Amazon. So all I can say in response is, go directly to the artists' websites to support your favorite musicians.

Well ...that’s most of the music news for now. I hope to see some of you at the house concerts and in Gettysburg next month.

Thanks for listening,

Greg Maroney
www.gregmaroney.com

Sunday, June 15, 2014

What's in a name?

Hello my music friends!

I have always thought the name "New Age" was not quite right for my style of piano music. Although the lines may blur a little with some of my music, to me "New Age" means a more ambient, alpha wave sound. I do have some songs that fit into that mold, but a lot of my music does not. Take "After the Storm", for example. That is a more passionate and emotional song. Some of my music is romantic, some of the songs are tone poems, music for music's sake. So.....with that in mind, I have come up with a new name for my style of music called, wait for it....."Modern Romantic". Let me know what you think of the name, does it fit or do you have a better name? If you do let me know!

Well, June is here and the weather has been spectacular. My wife and I have been working hard on the gardens. We replaced a treacherous walkway that was always slippery and full of ice. To do that we had to tear out the walkway, build a new gate and fence, and landscape the area where the old walkway was. It was a big project, and my wife worked her fingers to the bone. There are pictures of the project on my Facebook page. We are still trying to reclaim the areas around the house that were damaged or reshaped from the addition we added to the house 2 years ago, but we are closing in on the projects.

Now for some piano news. I am working on transcribing all the songs from the new album "Coming Home". I am over 1/2 way done, and just finishing up on the song Coming Home. Hopefully after the songs are done I will go back and try to transcribe some of the most requested songs such as Esmeralda, Walking the Orchard, and others. As always, we have a professional transcriptionist available who can get a song done in about a week, but it costs between $100- 140 per song. If anyone just cannot wait to get a particular song, we can make arrangements with him to transcribe it. He is pretty good and accurate.

Concerts:

There is a local benefit concert coming up on Sunday, August 17th at 2 pm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA. Michael Dulin and I will present a solo piano concert to benefit the Adams County Library System. I think it is a great way to hear solo piano music as well as support the Library System. Anything we can do to pass on knowledge is worthwhile. Here is the link for tickets:

Greg Maroney and Michael Dulin Benefit Concert

We will also have a house concert at our home outside of York, Pa. on Saturday August 16th at 2 pm. Reservations are required for this concert so drop an email if you are interested in attending. These concerts fill up fast so claim your chair now.

Michael and I are also planning an extended tour of the Pacific Northwest in early April 2015, and a short tour in the South East in December 2014. Let me know if you have a good place for us to perform, we need a concert level piano with an intimate hall that can seat 100-200 people.

That's the news from here, I hope you are all well and enjoying the summer. More music is always coming!

Take care

Greg Maroney
www.gregmaroney.com

Thursday, March 13, 2014

March: robin sightings and other news...

Well, once more I am starting the newsletter with a word about the weather.  I find it amazing how much it affects our everyday lives.  This winter has been pretty wild. We had lots of snow, an ice storm or two, and very cold temperatures.  I think it started snowing the first week of December, and there has been snow on the ground since.  An ice storm in January left us without power for 3 days, and I am still cleaning up limbs that I could not get to because they were buried in the snow.  But the one good thing about winter is, it allows me to be inside working on music and music related things without the distraction of a warm day. Of course spring is just around the corner, my wife and I found a green bud sticking its head out of the ground just this afternoon and robins have been sighted.  We were delighted to think of the warmer days and getting our hands in the dirt.  I bought Linda a new digging tool, she is ready for the onslaught of weeds, not to mention ripping out stone walkways, rebuilding them elsewhere, and re-purposing just about every garden space we have. Cabin fever will do this to a person.


Now, of course, on to music news.  There are a lot of things going on all fronts, so here they are....

Sheet music:I have finished the complete transcriptions of the CD "Wind Chimes".  I had the books printed with the spiral binding once again for ease of use when playing.  This seems to be my most popular song book, probably because it has the song "Breathe", my most requested, downloaded and streamed song.  I have also completed many more transcriptions of older songs, they are marked "new" on the sheet music page on my website.

Recordings:  We are sending the new CD "Coming Home" to the manufacturers first thing in the morning.  It has been a lot of work to complete the recording and mastering, and my wife has spent hours on the cover graphics.  We are going to try printing them in Eco Wallets this time, getting away from plastic jewel cases.  They will be more ecologically friendly, much easier to travel with and less expensive to mail.

Videos:  I have been making videos of each song in the new album, from an instructional point of view.  I am hoping they will help people learn the songs.  They are available on YouTube under my name.  Here is a link to one of them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvSXAamAlVs

Performances:  I was privileged to perform in the Whisperings All Star and Awards Concert in LA in January.  What a fun night that was and there were some amazing pianists performing.  There is a video available of the concert with this as the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GE7VPQ_Hw4

We are thinking of having a house concert here at our home in early May, stay tuned for the date.  We live in Pennsylvania for those interested in coming.  A tour of Boston and New York is in the works for fall, as well as the southern states next fall or spring.

Pacific Northwest Concerts:

Michael Dulin and I will be traveling in Oregon and Washington this April for the following performances.

Apr 10, 2014 7:00 PM
Concerts at Kathy's, Florence, OR.
Address will be provided after your order is completed
Florence, OR 97439
$15.00 Tickets here

April 11th, 2014 7 pm
Classic Pianos Recital Hall, Portland, OR
3003 SE Milwaukie Ave (@ the corner of SE Powell Blvd.)
Portland, OR 97202
$15.00    Tickets here

April 12th 2014  7 pm
Carol's Concerts,  Spokane, Wa.
Address will be provided after your order is completed.
Deer Park, WA 99006
$15.00   Tickets here

April 13, 2014 3:00 PM
Stage 7 Pianos, Seattle, Wa
511 6th Street South
Kirkland, WA 98033
Free Concert    Tickets here

April 14, 2014
Private house concert
Portland, OR.

That is the main news from here.  Thank you for being a part of this musical process, and I hope to see you at one of the concerts.

~ Greg

Monday, January 6, 2014

Enter the vortex

Well, we are experiencing the "Polar Vortex" in full force. It is brutally cold outside. I'm usually pretty cold hardy, I just put on my insulated coveralls and roam around outside to get my exercise and take care of the property and animals. Today I lasted about 5 minutes. The wind just cut through my clothes and burned any exposed skin I had left uncovered. My cheeks hurt and I simply wasn't having any fun! Fortunately, I have a warm toasty house to retreat back to, and spent the remainder of the day safely tucked inside working on music and other sundry things around the house. Plenty of leaks to plug in the old part of the house, and they are quite easy to find now with the cold wind blowing.

As usual, there is plenty of music news to write about. I have finished recording the new CD and will take it to the recording engineer to get it mastered later this week. I really like it so far, it has a bit of a different feel to it, a little more spontaneous and improvised, but still has some of the bigger songs as well as some sweet songs. I have also finished transcribing the complete CD Wind Chimes, it is at the printers as I write. Also, Michael Dulin and I are arranging concerts in the Pacific Northwest for April. And, of course, there is the big Whisperings Award Concert in LA toward the end of January that should be a wonderful event.

First, the transcriptions. The CD "Wind Chimes" is completely transcribed. I am going back through my older CDs and trying to get them down on paper, and this is one of the first older CDs I have fully transcribed. It has some great songs in it, a few times I was scratching my head wondering what I played in a particular passage.... but for the most part it is a close to accurate transcription. It is at the printers now, and I think we are going to put a link up on the website for pre release purchasing if anyone is interested. It should be ready in about 2 weeks, but if you want to pre-order that should be available.

The new CD has been recorded and will be mastered this week. Mastering is the process of editing the beginning and end of each song so they start and stop with the right amount of time between them, putting on reverb and cleaning up any noise like the dog scratching and making her collar jingle. That is the danger of recording at home. Although it is a more relaxed atmosphere and I can play the song as many times as I want to get just the right "take", it is hard to keep everyone quiet long enough to get a clean recording. And of course the wind makes noise, the wind chimes clang and the dog barks......

Concerts: Lots of concerts coming up.

!. The first will be a Whisperings Awards concert in LA. Here is an excerpt from the flyer:

It's the Whisperings All-Star Concert & Awards Ceremony, happening Sunday, January 26th in Costa Mesa CA. This once in a lifetime event will feature live performances by 15 of your favorite Whisperings piano artists, INCLUDING performances from all the Whisperings Solo Piano Album of the Year nominees! Dozens of artists from Whisperings Radio will be in attendance. And you, as a guest, will have the chance to meet and greet the artists after the show for autographs and photo opportunities!

Tickets available here: http://www.solopianoawards.com

2. Michael Dulin, Tim Neumark and I will make use of our time while in LA and perform in concert:

The concert is 7pm on Saturday, January 25 at:
Knauer Pianos
19301 Ventura Blvd
Tarzana, CA 91356

Tickets here: https://timneumark.com/store/dulin-maroney-neumark

3. Michael Dulin and I will be touring in Oregon and Washington early April. This is still in progress, but it looks like:

April 10th at Kathy Parsons house for a house concert. Contact Kathy personally at www.mainlypiano.com for details and cost.

April 11th for a 7 P.m. concert at classic pianos in Portland. Visit their website at this link:http://portland.classicpianos.net/about/recital-hall

April 12th in Spokane

April 13th in Seattle

April 14th private house concert in Portland.

So, I think that is most of the happenings from this house. Thank you so much for supporting my music, it helps me create more to share with everyone.

Take care

Greg Maroney