A retro rhapsodic tribute to 77 wasted lives. I watched a T.V. report showing how this murderer is being given 5 star treatment and ‘human rights’ in the ‘prison’ prior to his trial. I wrote this music the same day (14th April 2012) There is no real anger in the music, (I don’t really do musical anger) but there is passion, sadness and frustration… but then it does contain joy in the hope of eternal justice and resurrection. The music does not in any way reflect the diabolical scenes on that day. (Mel Stallwood)

I really do love rain, although having said that, I love most natural phenomena, but especially anything water related – waterfalls; rivers; becks; lakes; rain; snow; rainbows, even cloud formations etc. I don’t particularly have any morbid desires to drown as far as I know… I only have to think of anything watery and (having first visited the loo) I begin writing all these terrible sloppy tunes. I am really sorry for those people that hate this kind of piano mush but I can’t help it. I am trapped in this vaporous purgatroid of compositional self-harm…

One day I may drown in my own arpeggios…

Cindy's Card

It was Saturday morning February 11th (yesterday) and for once the postman arrived in the morning. I blearily checked through the mail and noticed that one of the dozens (only joking) of this year’s batch of Valentine cards was from ‘Cindy’. After excitedly reading Cindy’s letter, I placed the card on the piano and sat down for my morning doodle. Looking at the card with Cindy peering through the heart shaped cut-out, with the words ‘Guess who loves you’ eating at MY heart, I began to write my only tune so far this year…

Cindy is one the dogs we sponsor at the ‘Dogs Trust’ www.sponsoradog.org.uk since we lost our own dog.

The sad and evocative piano music of Mel Stallwood brought to its tragic reality by the words of poet Jane Carol

Eric Satie

Here’s a little tune that I’m not totally satie’s fied with. It is a perfectly lamentable effort called ‘Paul’s Lament’. On Satie-day Paul through out the challenge to write a Gymnopedie on the spot (or even a  Gnossienne), so here is the attempt. It took a few minutes to get the the tune and about four hours to muck around with the embellishments. It may be a while before it is Satie’s factory…

Almost as good as the Middleton scarecrows!

While I’m on the royal bandwagon I wrote a piano piece for Charles & Camilla which was included among their wedding presents in 2005. Go on have a listen…

The 3rd Way

I started out harmlessly writing a simple novelty tune for students to improve their ability to play scales in 3rds. The title ‘The 3rd Way’ popped into my head and thought it was a suitable title.

Soon I was including all kinds of ‘new labour’ references in the thing, i.e. the fairy dust opening will feature Mrs Thatcher morphing into Tony Blair.

The twin sugary sweet (con saccharino) major/minor 3rd progressions at the start are now representing Tony & Gordon’s initial relationship (as the general spin was).

The augmented descending triads represent an added interval causing new labour to descend into chaos.

The D minor section in the middle has the following words…

To-ny wants’ to go to war
May-be he’ll get round the law
We can build a new Je-ru-sa-lem in Bab-y-lon
We’re O. K. be-cause there’s wea-pons of mass de-struc-tion.

Jack is not a man of straw
Claire is such a fright-ful bore
Spinner’s weav-ing all their oil-y rags, mem-oirs in the bag,
Plant the Red Flag in the Sand!

The fairy dust now shows Blair/Brown morphing into Cameron/Clegg and the ‘sweet’ music begins all over again…

I just need to start on the video for You-Tube…

All for a little piano etude.