distraction

Last night, i got a bit distracted. the habit i've been trying to get going is using this blog at the end of a night to gather my thoughts before bed. Well, didn't happen last night.

they turned my water off for the morning, so, at midnight, i was like "oh, i should take a quick shower cause i won't get one in the morning and i don't want to stink for teaching." i also saved some water in a bottle so i could brush my teeth/drink water. I got a bit sad, cause when i woke up, my first thought was "I bought coffee!!!" followed by "Crap, no water..."

anyway, last night, i was working on "6 Pieces" Mvt. III. i've finally got the idea mostly in hand, i think, though i am probably going to tweak it like crazy today. the movement is titled "A Little Girl Under a Peach Tree/Whose Blossoms fall Into The Entrails/Of The Earth"

the basic idea is that there is a melody and a countermelody. this melody then loses notes, taken, first, by the wind-chime, then the Woodwinds, and finally the low brass. ya know, like the wind blows, and grabs a blossoms, and it falls to the earth? the original idea was to just leave the notes out as empty spaces, but the line got too jagged and empty...it works great for the allusion, but not so well musically. It's cool, like the tree is becoming bare. however, musically, it just...doesn't work too well. first off, it ends up with INSANE counting. seriously. the whole thing in in 6/8 and a lot of notes start popping up on 2 5 and 6 with rests all around them. do 7 measures of that kind of counting and even i don't want to play it. lol.

so, instead, i decided to take the notes out and rework the melody, shorting the melody half a bar each time. eventually, it should work out to almost being a chorale, since the note values of the remaining notes keeps elongating

Anyway, that's the idea. I've been distracted though. mind is just floating around the cosmos. at least i got the idea now. that's better than this weekend. still, mind, wherever you are, if you could make your way to my brain, that'd be awesome. thanks

and so the spaces continue

Read some more of Cohn's article. haven't finished it. reading that much on a screen hurts my eyes, so i printed it, and one by Ian Quinn "General Equal Tempered Harmony- Intro and Pt.1." I got these articles from a good friend who took a class, "Musical Spaces," with Joseph Straus. I chickened out and didn't take it. should have. woulda been awesome. then i could have had more guidance than one friend 1300 miles away.

Still, it's fun reading these articles, learning about how people have been dealing with this issue of space in music. It's interesting. Really goes back to relationships. How is such and such a note related from this particular set of notes, be it tonal or atonal. the neo-Riemannian theory article by Cohn talks about how the first systems were created to discuss tonal music, or at least music that started from a chord normally thought of as tonal- such as a C minor chord. I won't go through it, as Cohn already has.

the complete name of the article, again, is "Introduction to Neo-Riemannian Theory: A Survey And A Historical Perspective."

it is a nice intro. and the idea of the Tonnetz is quite simple. I built a full one (hitting till i repeated on all ends) in about 25 minutes or so for [ 0 3 5 ]. i even practiced my Inkscape skills by drawing the center of the doughnut. yep, a Tonnetz ends up a doughnut. At first i didn't recognize the top/bottom relationship. then my friend typed it and i did . lol

Anyway, i'm not really using the Tonnetz in my piece. I chose [ 0 3 5 ] because that is the pitch collection for a central motive i'm using in the piece - 6 Pieces After Basho - but it doesn't particularly help me much. All it shows is all the transpositions, and gives me an idea of how far away each transposition is from the original. it's a fun tool, and i like building new relationships with it - like overlaying another picture and connecting the dots - which is a method i MAY use for a later movement.

i thought about it briefly with the current movement, overlaying a cherry tree...and having the leaves dropping being the changes in pitches through a chaotic fall through the numbers, however, i went with a simpler method. Basically, i'm taking the melody and having notes drop off. these dropped notes are held and passed along by the other instruments, at first in the same relative range (floating on the breeze) and then lower (on the ground). talk about text painting.

Anyway, that's been my day. I was going to keep working on the piece, wanted to have the sketch done by midnight, but my brain is still too scattered. I blame watching part of the Harry Potter Musical. seriously. my bff told me to tune to that youtube playlist, so i did...and i felt dumber for it. and it was spectacular. and awesome. i shall finish it later though. lol. totally distracted my mind

ever have that happen? be working on a task, like writing music, then do a task this is very similar, but different enough that it screws everything up? it's one reason i don't listen to a ton of music while i'm actually thinking about music. It screws with my head...can't hear my own notes anymore. Anyway, yeah, maybe that's just me.

G'night