OK, so maybe that doesn’t seem so very creative, but anything that helps me get the work I need to done is a good thing. And then I wrote about it (tried to blog it but Blogger crashed. What a surprise) which is both creative and helpful to others who may be struggling.
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So now I have a short list of two books to have a look at: The Musician’s Guide to Theory and Analysis by Jane Clendinning, and Stephan Kostka’s book on harmony which sounds more like a traditional harmony text. Very excited to be getting this project underway!
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Very excited! I was hoping to find a composer group in London and this one does – it sounds – pretty much what I want: meetups to talk through new works and problems and occasional special events focusing on a particular topic. Yay!
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I’m still exploring the new box set I bought last week – well, with 22 CDs, odds are I’ll be exploring it for a good long while to come! – and today I listened again to the disc of Poulenc and Britten songs (composers accompanying), and had my first listen to the Khachaturian disc (composer conducting), which has the Violin Concerto on it. I heard this piece on the radio the other day and was so taken by it that I had to switch it over from clock-radio to real radio to read the track info – so I was very glad to find I already had a recording of it. I’ve also been reacquainting myself with Peggy Glanville-Hicks’ Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird which I have loved ever since I first heard it sung by Gerald English at a composer conference in Melbourne back when I was at uni. It’s a really intriguing work, and relevant to me especially now because of the Whitman songs being similarly fragmentary and miniature.
I’ve also listened to an incredible piano piece – most definitely NOT miniature – by Carolyn Yarnell, called The Same Sky – you can hear it from a link in about the 6th paragraph down in Kyle Gann’s post ‘Aiming My File Cabinets into the Right Student’s Ears’. I’d link to it directly, except that Gann’s post also includes a chunk of very beautiful and daunting-looking score, which is worth seeing. And also because if you don’t know Gann’s work, you should get to his site and have a listen. I highly recommend, in particular, Custer and Sitting Bull, which truly shows how beautiful and emotive microtonal music can be.
And to celebrate djeli’s safe arrival home from the snow, I cooked another new recipe from my big Greek cookbook – ‘Drunken Pork’ – fantastically delicious and easy. Will have to pull this one out for guests sometime, I think!
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Wow! What a book. That’s just totally shaken me up. And I just totally devoured it. I did kind of feel that I should be taking an Artist’s Way approach to it and only doing one chapter a week, to really let it sink in, but I couldn’t let it alone – I couldn’t wait to see what she’d say next, so I made myself keep at least to just one chapter a day so the ideas didn’t get too muddled. I’ll write a review of it sometime soon and post it here.
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I’ve read a lot lately about a productivity technique called the pomodoro technique which I’ve been thinking could be useful as a way of organising myself into some more regular composition. So I gave it a go today while working from home and I have to say first impressions are quite positive. I’m definitely going to continue the experiment.
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A friend arranged for a bunch of us to go on a Vinopolis wine-tasting tour for her birthday. V interesting and loads of fun. The star wine of the night I think was probably the Cretan wine – “Red on Black”. Lovely stuff. Djeli’s madeira sure gave it a run for its money though!
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Over the past week I’ve managed to clear about 20 items off my read/review list. It’s a long list and there’s still 127 things in there (and that’s not counting whatever’s lurking in my RSS reader or the hard-copy file!) but it’s great to feel it decreasing a bit.
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Made a hefty start on the first forms for the super-secret web project djeli and I are working on. Once the form was done, I pulled out my jQuery reference and tinkered until I had a field that auto-filled in as you fill in another field and which cuts off the auto-fill once you edit it so it doesn’t match any more. A little complicated to explain, but huge fun to get working, and will be useful, I think.
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on CSS-Tricks, which now has me all fired up to get back to designing both raspberryblue.com and my new personal site. It’s not much of an achievement, I know, but I’m poorly today and this is about all I’ve been capable of in between naps. iPod cosy is about 2/3 done now.
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