Private Instruction – BARRY HARTGLASS

Sep262020 by Barry HartglassNo Comments

Sound Captivation EP and “RIP Summer” by Baravin

Blog

Story by Wesley Orser, one of Barry's former Hofstra University Electronic Music students The work of Andres Virola, a recent high school graduate who has taken composition lessons with Barry for over three years, is finally paying off with the recent release of his first EP, Sound Captivation, and single, "RIP Summer." In the last year since composing "Doomed Paladin," a piece for his school orchestra, he has started using the FL Studio DAW to create electronic music under the artist name Baravin. What started out as just playing around with the FL app on his phone led Barry to recommend Andres get the computer version, which he ultimately did. His creative approach is somewhat unconventional in that he doesn’t use a MIDI controller and manually enters all of the…

Aug72020 by Barry Hartglass2 Comments

“Meditation on Roads Not Taken” by Audible Abstraction

Barry's Projects, Blog

During the Fall 2017 semester at Hostos Community College, I was grading Exercise 2 (E2), a recording and editing assignment in Introduction to Recording Techniques (DM106). For this assignment, students were asked to choose a page or two from the syllabus, a technical manual, or a poem and record themselves or someone else reading the text, and then edit any reading errors. It’s always interesting to see and hear what students choose to record for this assignment. The first student I graded chose the Robert Frost poem, “The Road Not Taken,” and he did a great job recording himself reading it. As I began listening to it, unaware of what it was at first, I noticed that it sounded strangely familiar. Coincidentally, a few months prior, one of my piano…

Jul152019 by Barry HartglassNo Comments

A Q&A with Intern Jake Santiago

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My interns continue to make me proud; Jake Santiago sent in these thoughtful insights about his time at the studio. Hopefully mentors and mentees reading along can learn from each other's experiences. Having interns always reminds me of the importance of being organized, and of students following their inquisition to improve their careers. Questions by former intern & assistant Brianna Caleri. Why did you choose to pursue this internship? I chose to pursue an internship with Barry because of recommendation from one of his other students. We go to the same University and he did his internship with Barry and said he might be able to help me set it up. I am very grateful to Barry for taking me in. Music has been a part of me since the…

Jun232019 by Barry HartglassNo Comments

A Performance of “Doomed Paladin” by Composition Student Andres Virola

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High schooler Andres Virola has been taking private lessons with me for the past three years, and he’s come a long way. His school orchestra recently performed a piece that he composed electronically, adapted for strings, trumpet, piano and percussion, “Doomed Paladin.” https://youtu.be/8F-1JnTZ210?t=255 In his spoken introduction, Andres explains that the programmatic piece details a knight’s final fight with vigor and pride, rather than defeat. We can hear a careful balance in the piece between the groups, which often shift in and out of the foreground, and alternate between giving each other space in a patchwork texture, and working homogeneously for the piece’s most triumphant moments. Ascending motifs in the higher strings create an atmosphere of anticipation and determination, while the lower strings play a more mysterious melody. Seizing the…

Jun92019 by Barry Hartglass1 Comment

Supporting Young Musicians by Sharing Resources

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A couple weeks ago I got an unexpected, but encouraging email, and I wanted to share the message with you all. “Good afternoon Barry, I just wanted to shoot you a quick email to say thanks. I'm a youth mentor, and one of my mentees…is an extremely talented tuba player. We meet biweekly and go over everything from current homework and projects to his life goals, dreams, aspirations, struggles, etc. He had a project due this week on Music Theory and your [student resources] page…was a great help to him so we wanted to let you know how much he appreciated it. [My high school student has] started exploring his options in terms of where his musical passion and talent can take him for college. Together we found this really…