Score printed, parts printed, rough cover design hurled together at 1.30am, notes written, everything bound, envelope bought and addressed. And yes, finally, Deconstruct: Point, line, plane has gone out into the world in its guise as a piece for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, trombone and piano. Suppose I’ll find out what its fate will be soon enough…
Tagged with: completion, composition, music | Add a comment
Yes, the piece is done, printed, ready to post. Trying hard not to think about work tomorrow and the big new project I’m working on this week…
Tagged with: completion, composition, music | Add a comment
BIG-time. Don’t ever recall having this much of a struggle before. But gradually the work’s getting done. And in the meantime, oatmeal biscuits have been baked and a fantastic new dish – a Jamie Oliver roast cherry tomato and sausage bake thingy – tested and given the thumbs up for future experiments.
Tagged with: baking, composition, cooking, music | Add a comment
I’d actually forgotten about this poor little blog. There’s just been so much going on over the past month – work, the piece for London New Wind Festival (stress and heartbreak over that one – more on that later, I suspect), my healing ankle (good news on that one, at least!), a week off frantically working on the piece, then frantically trying to get the house in order & achieve other chores before zooming off to Edinburgh to sample the Festival for a few brief days and go to a meeting in Dundee. And of course, while in Scotland I accidentally relaxed, and within 4 hours had the flu. Which I still have, a week and a half later.
So now I am at home, bored, frustrated and wanting to get things done but lacking the actual physical strength to do it. Every nap is plagued with hideous nightmares (this afternoon I was being chased at vast speed by an aggressive eagle, last night I woke whimpering at 3am thinking my legs were wound around with hundreds of red and black centipedes) which usually indicates that my creative brain is running and ready to go… except that I don’t have the strength to actually do very much.
So it’s been a tad on the frustrating side, really. And we’re nearing the end of August now. The piece is due in final form, with parts, on 1 September; on 21 September my parents arrive for 3 months and we all go to Paris for a week, which I’m quite looking forward to – when my brain lets go of the panic of all the pages and pages of things that need to be done before then – everything ranging from doing some handwashing (working out the best way to do handwashing in our new flat) to getting the landlord to take away the horrible lumpy bed in what will be the parents’ room to harassing Djelibeybi to organise a passport for Number One Son who is supposed to be coming to live with us next year. Not to mention getting back to my harmony studies, the Satie/Dada article, the web book, reworking my website and actually doing something about the many, many incomplete projects that are lying about the place…
Now I’m going to stop thinking about it and maybe go and do a little gentle baking, if the germ will let me stay standing for that long.
Tagged with: baking, blogging, health, mentalhealth, music, organisation, relaxing, travel | Add a comment
Well, actually, it’s been underway for a while – I just haven’t been posting. Things got a little overwhelming there for a bit, culminating in the recent death of djelibeybi’s uncle, which rather hit me for six, but I’m gradually clawing back to what reality ought to be rather than what it actually is. The piece I’m working on is for 5 flexible wind instruments (flexible instrumentation, that is, not bendy flutes!) and piano, which I hope may prove suitable for this year’s London New Wind Festival. I’ve been reading a bunch of Kandinsky books for it, which have been mostly interesting (the beginning of Concerning the Spiritual in Art did seem to rather rate the term ‘twaddle’ though) – not entirely sure how they’re relating yet, if at all, but one has to start somewhere.
Tagged with: composition, music | Add a comment
and thought about my sheet-music shopping list: thinking Telemann solo Fantasias, Poulenc Sonata, Chaminade Concertino, the Roussel Jouers de flute – and maybe a little Bach? That ought to keep me occupied for a while 
Oh and I cleared a hole in my to-do list too – no more overdues!!
Tagged with: gtd, music, organisation, play, shopping, thinking | Add a comment
from the library – and played my new flute, of course!
Tagged with: library, music, play | Add a comment
After 5 years without one, and 4 years of saying I’d buy one, today it finally happened! Found a great flute – a second-hand Miyazawa 95SE – at a good price and brought it home. Huzzah!
Tagged with: music, shopping | Add a comment
Thinking about writing something which uses the geolocation features of something like the iPhone to drive the playback and construction of a piece. Think it might work – need to do some more research though.
Tagged with: composition, ideas, music, thinking | Add a comment
The choral piece is galloping along. I feel like I’ll probably come back around and thicken up the textures at the start a little. But it’s taking shape and I’m three lines in (out of 11) so I’m quite pleased really. Reusing the initial idea I think works well, rather than having it all stream of consciousness. A certain amount of repetition works for the subject matter – the closest thing in sound to silence, I think, is repetition. Or possibly a drone, but the drone is just repetition stuck together, really, innit?
Tagged with: composition, music | Add a comment
