quick note

Just a quick note before i go to sleep

was a good day, very productive. had a meeting, gonna get going with some local outreach type stuff. Should be cool.

Also, wrote a lot of music. Start movement 3. not sure it's quite what i was thinking. will revisit tomorrow.

in analysis, the professor is stressing looking at repetition as a good way to get into a schoenberg piece. I noticed it somewhat before, but now i'm really seeing it. for those pieces he wrote during his atonal, pre-serial time, it was all about motivic invention.

that's how i write

damn you Schoenberg for being awesome. I know i loved Pierrot Lunaire for a reason...and not just because it's a crazy clown.

Anyway, it is now time to sleep. perhaps something longer tomorrow.

taking a day

So, i took a bit of a day today. meaning, i've done a lot of looking at music, made a couple small changes to a score, but didn't get into writing as much. It's probably bad form to take a day when i've only just begun this "everyday" idea, but, i needed it.

Last night, after posting, i kept writing. and talking to people online. and writing...and writing. And then it was 3 am. After getting past that initial hurdle, things fell into place.

Today, was workshop. I shall continue to refer to it as such, because i still dislike the terminology "group lesson." and, it opens up the idea that we can all talk. anyway, ours is small, 3 people, so we really each get about 40-45 minutes of time. I showed/played the first movement of "6 Pieces After Basho" or whatever i'm calling it today, and what i had fully done of the second movement, about 25 seconds. yeah yeah, i wrote and wrote and got 25 seconds. I write slowly. sue me.

After i finished, there was some light talk about how to write a graded piece- i told the other two guys that i was giving a presentation Feb. 28th on how to score for wind band and was going to include a hand-out that has a break down of graded literature...if i can find it- and then we moved to discuss the piece.

Everyone was surprised at how pretty it was. Considering what they heard was my opera- check out my FB page or my myspace to hear that- i could understand their momentary confusion. it's not that i can't write pretty things, i just don't particular agree with the language often times. I strive to write something pretty using the language I think is pretty- which happens to be not what a lot of other people consider pretty. lol.

After that, it was basically one comment. "the first movement felt a little disjunct at this one point. maybe hold a note over?" and i was like "AH! yeah, that'd perfect the piece. yep yep." and that was it. No "have you thought about this?" or "This part-writing here seems pretty weak..." or "When i was your age, alto saxes did things like this." ok, that last bit is over the top. lol. still...i dunno.

I always go into these things expecting to hear "Why in the name of heaven and hell is this person here?" i don't know why i expect this. I got in, after all. Still, it's somewhat nice and disconcerting to basically hear "Good work for your first week here." maybe it's because, really, it's a small showing, 25 seconds in a week. Or maybe, i'm actually pretty good at this composition thing. I'd still say they were humoring me. lol

Anyway, i'm going over my first movement briefly tonight and that's it. I was going to score out the rest of the passacaglia and move on, but i've been so tired all day. last night drained me, but i've reached the point where finishing the movement will be "easy" so i'll take the night to sleep.

And i made eggrolls. They are awesome. I should post that on my food photo journal on FB. sometimes, i forget things. and by sometimes, i mean all the time. and by things, i mean everything.

looks of an elephant, without the memory.

oh, watched "The Colour of Magic." Good movie adaption of the Terry Pratchett novel. yep yep

a bit late at night...will continue this tomorrow, maybe

Ok...it's been an interesting night

I've really taken up some steam in "6 Pieces after Basho." it's a piece i'm writing for HS band with the following instrumentation

Flute

Clarinet

Alto Sax

Tenor Sx

Horn in F

2 Trumpets

Baritone

Trombone

Tuba

Percussion (around 3 players for now, though i'm writing a total of 5 parts...though, really, i think it can be covered with 3)

The idea is to take 6 haiku by Basho and put together 6 one minute pieces, each piece a complete idea. It's a fun exercise in limitation; limited the time, limit the content (i'm working really from 1 melody, 1 countermelody, and a short motive)

The first movement "Lighting Gleams/Into Darkness Travels/A Night Heron's Scream" i finished months ago. For the most part, i think i've succeeded with that movement. The second movement "The Old Pond/A Frog/Plop!" has been much slower going. I think after the success of the first movement, the second suffered from "not being good enough," comparatively.

A couple days ago, as i was sketching away, i realized that the movement wanted to be a passacaglia. So, i've gone with it. Yesterday was...not so good. i scribbled a lot. today was the breakthrough, the "AH HA!" moment when i figured out the orchestration of the bassline, how to move it around, and the "melody." I went to an old stand-by; take the main melody (in this case, a 4 bar passage from mvt 1), write it out in different transpositions (this time, putting it into the key of the song. Yes, it's "tonal" sue me. it changes the numbers a bit, doing that, but it's ok. it's tonality! it makes everything fit!), and then playing with it. I always start with the inversion, cause after that you have 4 ways of doing the melody quickly.

Then, i start playing around with it. So...it's about a frog. what if i leap from melody to inversion, skipping x amount of notes each time?

and, blammo, there's my melody, all jumping around, playful, kinda tonal, almost. lol.

Also, i have been having a great conversation with Speaks Coffee tonight about craft, what's important with writing, etc. it's always fun, comparing her experience as a writer with mine as a composer and seeing the differences between music and language.

Anyone who says music is a language obviously hasn't talked craft with a writer before. I see the differences immediately. like, when discussing divorcing ones style from analysis. I said it seemed like it was easier for a musician, possibly because we have such an insane amount of analysis. then, Speaks Coffee with a great question "but, do you think in music? I know you think in English, most of the time."

but its a great point. With music, our style is individually developed; on paper, in a computer program, in our heads...but, no matter how much we try, is it as engrained as English? I think ABOUT music a lot. I hear passages in my head, i sing to myself (talk to myself too), get rhythms going as i tap away. but i don't think IN music. when someone asks me a question i don't think "0 5 5 7 8 0 11 0 11 2 2 1 0" i think "well, that's a stupid question." Even when i think about music, its in english.

So...it's a good pedagogical thought. It's harder to divorce oneself from analyzing writing in a 1st person perspective- "this is how I would do it/this is how I would word this/your style is so [whatever] compared to mine." you're intimate with how you speak. You're intimate with you're vernacular. Just look at my writing. It's pretty damn near how i speak. Lots of rambling, short sentences, ideas tossed around all willy-nilly. lol.

and i usually an laughing when i toss in an lol.

It's something to ponder more...but when i've had some sleep. maybe some coffee. Right now, i better get a little sleep before tomorrow. I have composition workshop, and not nearly as much as i would have liked to show for the week.

But, the steamed pork dumplings were DELICIOUS!

and, there will be talk of esotericism vs. commercialism at some point...i'm for a happy medium, and let's leave it at that for now.