This recording: Jul 28, 2002
Public release: Jul 29, 2002

The song

Many years ago, a little song was released on a brand new web site called the Furry Music Foundation. It was a cute and playful song called Happy Weasel. It wasn't very widely recognized. In fact, I received almost no comments about it, but it was the first released song on FMF.

Five years later, I've composed the second movement for Happy Weasel: Weasel's Return. In this song the weasel returns, triumphantly. She's more mature now and age shows her beauty. Don't let that fool you, though. After the first two bars, you'll realize that she still enjoy the same playfulness as before, only more cunning.

Form

Caution: This section contains a lot of dry musical terms. It can safely be skipped by anyone who doesn't care about those.

Weasel's Return continues the trend set by the first movement (Happy Weasel), poking fun at conventions and rules by using subtle tricks in unorthodox ways to achieve musical effects. Happy Weasel was mostly relying on unexpected key changes, and novel chord progressions darting in all directions, but the rondo form was completely clear and unambiguous.

Weasel's Return is instead playing with form. While it was originally a failed fugue, presented as a variation on a theme, it has now also been disguised as a rondo. It presents the main theme in the first two bars, and then pretends to do exposition, while quickly (and completely illegally breaking the sonata form that it never quite aspired to, anyway), slipping into development and stays there, while periodically returning to the main theme in the main key, thus faking resolving the development into recapitulation. All in all, this should be enough to make the rule sticklers gnash their molars in sheer anguish.

If you're a classical music rule, consider yourself thoroughly broken! :)

Making of

The main part of the song was written during a quite intense weekend at home with good intentions, three days of food supplies, a locked apartment, headphones and a lot of sketching on the synth. Out came this, for better or worse. After that, I've been spending some hours every now and then, trying to come up with a mix that I was happy with. In the end, I'd have to settle for a rather dry but bass-heavy version that seems to work on the few loudspeakers I've had the chance to test with. I'm still not completely satisfied with it, but okay, it works now.

The instruments used

Alesis QS PP: Piano, Pizzicato Strings, Harp, Oboe, Clarinet, French Horn, High Strings, Percussion, Timpani, Glockenspiel
Roland U110: Trumpet, Flute, Choir, Low Strings
Terratec EWS64XL: Crow

The Piano

In the old days, it would have taken a piano player of considerable skill for this song to be recorded at all. Let's face it, it just would not have happened. Another sad composition for the scrap heap.

Enter technology.

While this song was and is somewhat tricky to play in full-tempo, the fastest parts could still be played comfortably in half-tempo, and it was quite possible to slow down the rest of the orchestra to a crawl while the back then poor wannabe piano player (me) pretended that he was technically much better than he really was. The real trick was to sound like you played at full speed (there's quite a difference, as anyone who's tried this trick can attest). To get the best sound, though, all parts except for the very fast one were recorded at full speed.

What's with the crow?

Why not? Kraah!

Special Thanks

• Mark Treefox for lending me a decent pair of headphones so that I could finally listen to the finer frequencies.
  
• Jumpy for invaluable help with mixing issues and for being an inspiration when it comes to orchestral music.
  
• Jarrell and Tambako for betatesting the music and coming up with constructive critisism.
  
• You for listening to this song and commenting on it