1. Dodged a too-much-work bullet by managing to send off a substitute piece which actually doesn’t need any work done to it for it to be performer-ready, so hopefully that will be appropriate for the concert for which Shimmer (9 mins) was too long

2. Wrote a few more notes

3. In listening through to the piece again, I’m really starting to understand what my tutor’s been saying about adding in harmony. I do want it to be texturally light, but there’s just too many bare octaves. The doublings are good, it’s just that there needs to be a little body in there too. Not entirely sure how I’ll tackle this as harmony is SO not my strong suit. It’s good to have taken a step back from the piece though and to hear it with fresh ears so that I understand – I’m listening to it and hearing what’s really there, rather than my idea of what’s really there.

Tomorrow is my last day before I go to Spain for a brief holiday, so I’m hoping I can get some real work done on it. I also need to think about what I’ll be able to do while in Spain. I think taking the laptop is overkill, so I might review the apps I have and check out the App Store for new alternatives and just see how I can approach what’s there. The latest part of the piece is increasingly melodic/contrapuntal (as opposed to using brief fragments in various permutations, which is what the opening is) so maybe I can do something with that.

It evidently did me some good though because after a couple of rounds of Labyrinth and finally getting the house to myself, I’ve been able to have another listen to the piece. And I ADDED A NOTE. How sad that this seems like progress. I think I’m stopping there though because my brain feels like it’s on the brink of overwhelm and Finale is driving me insane because it’s stuttering on every other note, so I think the time really has come to do the full system reinstall I’ve been threatening for a month. I am therefore now in the middle of manic backups and thinking about how best to organise my system when I redo it. Now that I’ve upgraded to Parallels 6, I’m going to see if I can ditch Bootcamp, for a start. I pretty much never use it, and hopefully the improvements to Parallels will mean I can run some of my PC games inside a virtual machine, which should free up some disk space. Looking forward to a shiny new system!

This year I’m working towards finishing off the orchestral piece I’ve been working on for about the past 6 months, Carrion Comfort. It’s been a slow process and I’ve been working on documenting it too over on the other site – have a look at the posts if you’re interested (you can also sign up to the mailing list if you want to get them right into your inbox) – and here I’m planning to track what I’m working on and documenting the documenting of the whole process, seeing as how I’ve committed to making the development of the work somewhat public already.

I’ve been going through a bit of a rough mental patch lately, though, and haven’t even been able to make myself listen to any music at all, far less my own, so I’m starting slowly with getting back into this. Today I listened to the work I had already done on this piece. I was happy to find that I feel that it’s all hanging together pretty well, although I think I need to do some more work on the orchestration – it feels… patchy. Might have to dig out some orchestral recordings, do a bit of reading and a bit of experimenting to sort that out. I guess it’s not hugely surprising, given that this is the first real orchestral piece I’ve written – it’s all a bit trial and error…

7 out of 10 people who say they have a religion are Christian (in the UK, obv): If I take 7 away from 10, I get 3, which is of course the Holy Trinity

646 constituencies: All politicians are liars. Lying is bad. 666 is the number of the beast but there have to be a couple of politicians who at least are trying, so I’ll take a couple off the middle of the pack.

Insane, eh? But somehow it seems to be working, to some extent at least. I think the process of inventing the mnemonic is making it stick as much as the mnemonic itself. Certainly in the case of the constituencies… I’d have been stuffed if I thought politicians actually had our best interests at heart!

So that saw me through most of the day, including all the way to Euston and back, seeing Djelibeybi off again – this time to Manchester. He’s home tomorrow, but it was nice to get out and see something of the world, even if it was just an assortment of grotty tube stations.

This evening has been a riot of learning. I started out doing some listening when I got in (Arvo Pärt’s Tabula rasa and Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antarctica) because I suddenly realised that I’ve got another composition lesson in 2 days’ time and I haven’t done any work at all – got a bit too comfy with the whole 3-weeks-between-lessons schedule and now need to pull myself together. Tabula rasa provided some rather nice minor revelations, especially structurally – hoping to pick up the score for that before Composer Workshop tomorrow, but the RVW left me a little unsettled. I’ve always liked that piece, but I guess I never really listened closely to it before and structurally it leaves me feeling rather adrift. Possibly the recording I was listening to, possibly seeing the score might make some sense of it, but at any rate, stuff was learned, I think.

Then after that I had booked myself in to sit in on a couple of live sessions from the Authority Rules conference I’ve signed up for. Djeli and I have a bit project going with a friend of ours that is going to require some proper promotion in a few months’ time so this conference on content marketing turned up at pretty much just the right time. The first of today’s sessions was on online lead generation and it was pretty interesting – some stuff I already knew, but also some I needed to be reminded of, some new takes on old concepts and so on. It was a good session and well worthwhile. But it was totally blown out of the water by the second session, which was on Search Engine Optimisation. Now, I do know a bit about SEO – I kind of have to because of my dayjob. I know quite a bit about how Google assesses the content in a page to determine if it’s a good fit for a given search query and I try to apply what I know in my sites (not so much in this one – mostly because I’m lazy, but also because I have more important and generally useful sites, I think, to focus on). What I hadn’t really considered in much detail at all though was the idea of SEO strategy, of developing content and working various channels to get stuff out there and actually circulating, as a way of building audience. That’s a very simplistic way of putting it, but safe to say, it was a bit of a revelation to me, the detail it went into and I have come away with all sorts of ideas and plans from both sessions. And a very tired brain that felt like Swiss cheese.

Had another osteopath appointment this afternoon. I’m taking it as a good sign that I left his office in more pain than I went in. And that after a relatively mild (but still agonising) session. I’m hopeful that next week’s might be the last. Not sure whether it’ll be soon enough though to give me the all-clear to travel to Australia for my mother’s eye operation on 31 May, but we’ll see.

Nothing musical at all happened today. But I am about to listen to some Satie to redress the balance. Otherwise, did some knitting, listened to a webcast recording on content marketing, read some of Unstuck which continues interesting, although this chapter (on finding guides) I’m finding not quite so interesting as the previous chapter on nutrition and intolerances. I also read a bit more of Made to Stick which is also excellent. I’ve slowed down with this one recently, but very much still enjoying it and feel (or at least hope!) that my writing may be the better for reading it. At any rate, it makes me more aware of what’s going on in other people’s writing which is very interesting indeed!

So I’ve not been doing much lately. I have started a new knitting project to teach myself short-row bust darts, which is coming along well – the first actual garment (as opposed to accessories) I’ve knitted since I was about 13! Feels like a big step. I’m pleased with it so far but trying to maintain an experimental approach and accept that things may go wrong (I may have picked the wrong size – it’s hard to tell when you’re as big in front as I am what size you should be making to fit across the bust as well as on the shoulders – or the short-rows may go horribly wrong) and the whole thing may need to be unravelled, but for now it’s a nice gentle knit which is coming along well and is helping to restore some calm to my frazzled brain.

I’ve also been studying for the Life in the UK test which we’re taking next Friday. Gosh it’s dull. And I am absolutely no good at remembering either statistics or random dates or numbers (and why does it even matter that I should know how many constituencies there are??). Anyway, just going to revise and cram and do practice tests now ad nauseum for the next week.

Today I made crumpets.

And the great news is that this time they’ve actually come out properly crumpetty. Unlike the last two times when they lacked holes and ended up heavy and a bit blech. These are light and tasty. And the butter pools correctly. They have the Djelibeybi seal of approval. I also made them in the shape of space shuttles and Gromit.

I also tweaked and posted a blog post on caitlinrowley.com, The wrong teacher, or just the wrong time?. I’m glad I wrote this post. Not only does it seem to be getting a rapid and enthusiastic response, but I think it’s been important for me to realise just how far I’ve come since my first year studying composition, and to acknowledge that I was at fault at least in some measure. I doubt I could have known that back then – I was timid and ignorant and there was no internet to ask questions of even if I’d thought to do so – but I think it’s good to reconsider the situation and what I could have done to improve it. And maybe it’ll be helpful for other new students who feel they’re not doing so well as they hoped they would.

And finally I finished the iPad case! OK, not 100% – I still need to make a loop to hold the stylus securely, but the case itself is finished and ready to travel. YAY! SO glad to be done with the handsewing. Never again…

This isn’t the finished case (still need to take proper photos of it) but it shows pretty much how it’s ended up. I’m rather pleased with it

Anyway, I’ll be back soon. And then the whole adventure will start all over again

Diabolus for unaccompanied violin by caitlinrowley

I’ve been getting some nice comments about it too, which is comforting. People seem to think it’s worthy of getting a real live, performance. Ooh I feel all glowy.

Did some listening & score reading in the afternoon – Nicholas Maw’s Life Studies, which my tutor suggested, which led to some reading about Maw which led to listening to Schoenberg’s Survivor from Warsaw, which is the piece that inspired me to write a 12-tone work for my HSC. Gosh it sounds pretty tame now, compared to other 2nd Viennese School stuff. I enjoyed it though. Also gave Gordon Crosse’s Thel another run through. Then changed tack entirely and listened through to Tansy Davies’ new CD Troubairitz because it’s, well, new. And awesome. Did a little drawing too, which always seems to consolidate thought.

I’ve also come up with a shiny new plan for The Next Piece. Tansy posted an amazing-looking opportunity to the ChaCoCo group on Facebook today – a residency opp with Manchester Camerata, which looks to be right up my alley, but requires 2 works to be submitted: 1 for up to 6 players (which I can do easily) plus one for 9+ players or chamber orchestra (which I don’t have). It hath a deadline of 18 April. Then I found an opp for songs for voice & chamber orchestra due in September, so I figure if I write a song (or start writing a set of songs) for voice and chamber orchestra, then I can hopefully kill two birds with one stone. Hey, presto! PLAN!

And after the plan was made I sat down and accidentally wrote almost a minute of said piece, which Djelibeybi seems to think is a promising beginning, as do I. Guess I need to settle on a text now. The Blake I was investigating as a possibility I think won’t really fit. Maybe Manley Hopkins? The sister-in-common-law has suggested I investigate Cavafy. He seems to be (just) dead enough to avoid copyright problems (although translations may be difficult and I don’t speak Greek) and sounds interesting. Considering…

Plus I’ve been tweaking the layout of the score for Diabolus, which is due tomorrow (email deadline, thank heavens). No more note tweaks now, just moving things about and trying to make a custom… thingy… to indicate that a note starts out with vibrato but ends up with no vibrato. Not as easy as it would seem in Finale.

Still no student card though. I had the day ALL PLANNED. I was going to go out to my lesson, then come back and head straight to TVU. However, as soon as I left my student’s house I was attacked by a cloud of building dust which zoomed straight into my left eye, and didn’t all remove itself until about 6pm. I figured one red weepy eye was not a good look for a student card photo, so that’s back on the list for tomorrow.

Had a bit of a listen to some Barber songs tonight too. Thinking about Dover Beach as a possible model for instrumentation (tenor + string quartet) for the new piece. Also thinking about whether it might be possible to use some of The Compleat Angler for the text. Gosh I love that book. Yes, it’s all about fish, but the prose is just so beautiful. I’ve wanted to use it for something for ages. Maybe I could pick just one fish. Maybe I could have minimal text and use the voice as an instrument. Once I have my student card I will see if TVU has a copy in the library – mine’s in storage in Sydney, so that’s not much use