Tell The Truth More Easily With Fiction

Here's a short quiz to identify Mixed Meters' Three Readers:

1.  How many times per month do I post new articles?
2.  What is a Thirty Second Spot?

If you answered both of those correctly, congrats, you're one of the three.

For the rest of you, here are the correct answers:

1. Four.  (Whew.  By posting this, I just barely made it again this month.)
2. Read In Which David Explains 30 Second Spots - one of MM's earliest posts, from October 2005 - which is pretty much still accurate.

Tell The Truth More Easily With Fiction is a brand new 30 Second Spot.

Back during the Classical Period of 30 Second Spots I would compose at Starbucks and eventually pick a title from some snippet of overheard conversation.  However, this particular Spot was composed at home where there is no overheard conversation to overhear.  Instead I turned on the radio to NPR news.  "Tell The Truth More Easily With Fiction" was the first phrase I heard the announcer say.  (The story, which I didn't bother to listen to, was probably about some author somewhere overcoming repression in some country.)

Listen to Tell The Truth More Easily With Fiction
© 2012 by David Ocker 37 seconds

The sound world of Tell The Truth More Easily With Fiction is four saxophones plus temple blocks.  These sax sounds come from my music program, Sibelius 7.  I was investigating various pitch ornaments that the program provides.  The ornaments are called:

• scoops 
• doits 
• falls 
• plops

These are mostly foreign musical territory for me.  Explanations are here, courtesy of our brave fighting men and women.

All the scoops, doits, falls and plops give Tell The Truth More Easily With Fiction a kind of raucous out-of-control feel.  I played it for Leslie.  She called the piece a "jiggy apertif".  And who am I to argue a music critic who knows as much about my music as she does.  So please enjoy this jiggy apertif.

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Two early Mixed Meters posts involving saxophones:

In which David reflects on saxophones, Moondog and automobile ads
In which David hears ten baritone saxophones

I posted nearly every day back at the beginning.

True Fiction Tags: 30 Second Spots. . . David Ocker. . . jiggy apertif