Jim - playing with The Bodfish All-Stars in 2003. |
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Jim Scully is a composer, performer and educator in the fields of contemporary classical music, electroacoustic music and jazz studies. He has been contributing his diverse talents to the music scene in Bakersfield, California for over 20 years. Scully holds degrees in music from CSU Bakersfield (B.A. in Music) and UC Irvine (M.F.A. in Music) and has taught music at the collegiate level at Bakersfield College, UC Irvine and now, CSU Bakersfield. He has served as Director of the Bakersfield College Jazz Ensemble and Director of the UC Irvine Community Jazz Ensemble. Currently, he is a full-time member of the CSU Bakersfield music faculty where he teaches a wide array of courses in the fields of Music Theory, Jazz Studies and Music Technology and serves as Director of Small Group Jazz and as Producer/Director of the CSUB Jazz Coffeehouse Concert Series that features small jazz ensembles under his tutelage. Scully plays such traditional instruments as the guitar, electric bass and piano and also makes music on Apple computers using Logic Pro and various software samples. He has appeared, collaborated, or worked with Kris Tiner, Kyle Burnham, Kenny Burrell, Eric Marienthal, Billy Childs, Carl Allen, Kei Akagi, Paul Cierley, Charles Owens, Laura Porter, Mandy Rees and the CSUB Theatre Department, and many others. Scully’s works have been performed at the Pacific Coast Collegiate Jazz Festival, Bakersfield Symphony New Directions Concerts, CSUB Jazz Coffeehouse Concerts, UC Irvine Composers’ Concert, Bakersfield Student Composer Concerts, CSUB Theatre for New Voices, Bakersfield Jazz Festival, and the Queen Mary as part of the Music Association of California Community Colleges Conference in October of 2000. Scully has also led or co-led numerous small jazz groups including the Jim Scully Group, Jim Scully Trio, Jim Scully/Kris Tiner Band, the Bodfish All-Stars the Jenn Neil Group and the Speedy Neptune Project.
Contact Jim Scully at any of the following websites to hear music or just gawk. Jim's CSU Bakersfield Homepage
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Compositions | |||
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Obscure Utterance |
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| Obscure Utterance.mp3 - complete | |||
| Obscure Utterance.pdf - excerpt | |||
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The piece is composed for flute, marimba, violin and viola and is a little over 4 minutes in length. I have had two live performances of this piece, one in Irvine, California and one in Bakersfield in April of 2006. Both performances had their moments, but I wanted a more accurate file to post on-line, so I went the technological route. The performance heard here is a realization using Logic Pro 7.2 and the Vienna Symphonic Library. I extracted the parts from Sibelius notation software and saved each part as a MIDI file then imported each MIDI file into Logic Pro and used the wonderful samples of the VSL to emulate the flute and strings. The marimba was created using the Sculpture Audio Instrument from within Logic Pro. Of course, the velocity data was heavily manipulated to achieve a fairly human performance. Similarly, I used the combination sets of VSL instruments to implant MIDI triggers into the string and flute sequences to achieve the timbral changes on the fly - such as the flutter-tonguing, tremolo, pizzicato, etc. I have found this to be a cost-effective way of achieving good performances of my pieces to share with colleagues while still angling for great live performances in the future. | |||
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Hop, Skip and Jump |
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| Hop, Skip and Jump.mp3 - complete | |||
| Hop, Skip and Jump.pdf - complete | |||
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This recording of Hop, Skip and Jump, for solo Bb clarinet, was recorded by Monica Duncan for an upcoming CD release in 2008. | |||
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The Eleventh Hour |
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| The Eleventh Hour.mp3 - complete | |||
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This is a piece written for stereo (2 track) playback. The piece was composed in 2001 while completing my MFA in Music at the University of California, Irvine under the tutelage of Dr. Christopher Dobrian and Dr. Michael Zbyszynski. There are only two sound sources in the entire piece – a synthesized bell sound and my voice. I recorded myself speaking, shouting, humming, and the such and manipulated the audio in the ProTools environment to achieve the piece you hear here. | |||
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Enigmatic Joe |
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| Enigmatic Joe.mp3 - complete | |||
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This is a tune written for jazz septet (trumpet, tenor sax, trombone, guitar, piano, double-bass and drums). The performance is from the 21st Annual Bakersfield Jazz Festival held May 11 & 12, 2007. The Group is the Jim Scully Group, consisting of: Steven Mettler, tenor sax Ron Christian, trombone Jim Scully, guitar Zeke Victor, piano James Dethlefson, double-bass Brian Palla, drums. The piece is an altered AABA form - with the A sections being supported by a groove that outlines an F minor triad with a major 7th (E natural). The 4-bar phrase that creates the groove is 15 beats in length. A 3/4 bar adds a bit of metric dissonance to the A sections. The B section is a sequential idea moving through a set of changes that eventually lands on a climax of D maj.7 #11 before a return to F minor (maj. 7). Trombonist Ron Christian, myself on guitar and trumpeter Steve Eisen take solos over a 64 bar solo form that alludes to the harmonic movement of the piece. | |||
©2005 by James Scully
All Rights Reserved
James Scully is a member of Society of Composers, Inc. SCI is dedicated to the promotion of composition, performance, understanding and dissemination of new and contemporary music.