Roger Bourland
writes about music and life

This is a music video that effectively explains what all of us music theory teachers believe and try to impart to our students.

[Thanks to Richard Garrin for this.]

I woke up thinking about a person’s choice to be receptive. This can apply to a variety of issues and situations that one can be receptive, or open to.

Love and friendship
liking a work of art or not
having your mind changed
sex
changing jobs, abodes or partners, traveling, putting yourself into unfamiliar situations

And then there is being receptive [...]

Last night at MacGowan Little Theater on the UCLA campus, HOMER IN CYBERSPACE was premiered to a packed house. The performance was excellent, and considering how much could have gone wrong, the technical side was damn near flawless. Ok, there were a few crackling wireless microphones that fell out from time to time, but besides [...]

Madame Wong was a great lady and family friends that I was lucky enough to meet through my extended family. She came to my 50th birthday party and sat and made pot stickers for hours with the greatest concentration. I’ll never forget a dinner I had at the Shiplacoffs where she turned to me and [...]

The late 1950s and early 60s saw a huge upswing in popularity of so-called “folk music” that was as popular as 50s rock n roll. And then the Beatles came along and folk music, at least for many baby boomers, got incorporated into rock bands and solo artists
(think: Bob Dylan, Beatles Rubber Soul, the Byrds, [...]

Being involved with this hi-tech musical has been an exciting process. Last night we saw HOMER IN CYBERSACE — the whole bloody thing — put up for the first time, costumes, sets, makeup, sets, computer animation, videos, dance, music and of course the actors. There are so many components in the show (as in most [...]

Yesterday I wrote a cue for a transition between scenes. I liked it a lot, Mel not so much, so I’ll do another one. Mel is right; it actually doesn’t sound anything like the music from this musical, it is, rather, most likely my next piece being born. Hmm, sounds a bit like Prokofiev.
[Audio clip: [...]

Yes, at the beginning of this clip is a very cute Clint Eastwood riding off into the sunset, But Wait!! We get to hear the famous Dimitri Tiomkin cowboy classic “Rawhide.” I don’t know who the singer is, but what a voice! I’ve sung it my whole life. Some mornings I get up and just [...]

This is a song that I got to know in the 60s around the same time that “Winchester Cathedral” came out: “Loving you has made me bananas” — one of those Vaudeville throwbacks like “When I’m 64.” Only today have I learned that it was written by Guy Marks (1923 – 1987) in 1968. This [...]

Today isn’t the first day of summer, but it feels like it. Do you remember graduating from high school or college, and what it felt like the first day after you graduated? You just didn’t know what to do without that reality and routine.
This morning I woke up thinking I might have finally finished the [...]