New sounds, new recipe

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!

Tagged with: cooking, learning, listening, music, web | Add a comment

More Whitman progress

I had a relevation last night – after 2 years of quietly fretting, in dribs and drabs (NOT continuously) about the wide range in the first Whitman song, I suddenly realised I was dead wrong – I’ve written it in the tenor clef, so while the low C I knew was at the end was indeed a low C, the high A-flats were in fact not high A-flats at all, but middle-of-the-treble-stave A-flats. Which meant I had about a 6th’s worth of space to move upwards. Which I have now done. The winning key is F minor (as opposed to C minor), and the whole thing sits much better, and especially with the tessitura of the second two pieces. Once that was done though, the second song still felt a bit off. I think it’s because it doesn’t have an accompaniment rather than anything inherently wonky with it, so I tried inventing one, but nothing wants to stick to this melody, so I’ve now moved on to the approach of inserting a tiny piano solo before it. Just to create a little padding between the moderately lush (for me) movement of the first song and the brittle sparseness of the second. A piano equivalent to the second song, really, that will bridge the gap between keys and balance the two instruments. And it’s half-written already! All in all, I think I probably put in about 2 or 3 hours’ composition today – a huge leap forward from what I was achieving even a few months ago when it felt like things were starting to be on a roll. Feeling really good about this. And even more so about the fact that I didn’t write on Wednesday (very big day at work – I was completely exhausted when I got home) but made myself get back to it on Thursday, and have had no trouble carrying on every day since.

Tagged with: composition, music, thinking | Add a comment

Sent two scores off to Germany

For consideration for the Borealis Festival in Norway in March – they wanted solo pieces of less than a minute long, and as I almost seem to specialise in the miniature, it wasn’t too hard to find something – even though I only found the call at about 10pm and the deadline was today. Thank heavens for email submission! So I’ve sent Egg the Eighth (one of the 2 by 4 two-part inventions) and the second Whitman song off to them – with the Festival so soon, I guess I won’t have long to wait to see if they like them!

A bonus with this is that I get to strike another thing off my 2010 goals list. Woot!

Tagged with: composition, music, self-promotion, web | Add a comment

Messed around with listening to some songs

Peggy Glanville-Hicks’ 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, a disc of Poulenc & Britten songs, performed by the composers and some Reynaldo Hahn songs. Hunting for a clear way through the transposition mire for the Whitman set.

Tagged with: composition, listening, music, study, thinking | Add a comment

Did some composing

Messed about with the Pianist app on the train – discovered you can record one line, then record another directly over the top, so you can do chords in 2 or 3 passes rather than trying to crush your fingers. Also had a look at ranges in the Whitman songs. If I move everything up or down a bit in every song, I can get them all to fit within my range at least, if that’s suitable (problem being a composer with a not-so-common voicetype – i’m a true contralto, bordering on female tenor) – but now they’ve all shifted away from the same basic related keys, it feels a bit haphazard and like it needs some glue to fill in the cracks *sigh* Might have to try another tactic.

Tagged with: composition, experimenting, music | Add a comment

Bought some ink

I’ve been ‘drawing’ my own manuscript lines for little fragments of idea while working on the Whitman piece. I bought myself a manuscript nib a little while back and it works well – but I’m finding that drawing them in black ink means I have to make my noteheads fairly enormous if they’re to be seen easily – very unlike my usual anorexic noteheads, so I wove my way up to the Atlantis art shop which is just round the corner from my office and bought an assortment of coloured inks which I plan to experiment with: Burnt Orange in the Dr Ph. Martin’s Radiant Concentrated Water Colour (absolutely gorgeous – might have to get some more of these…), Red in the Dr Ph. Martin’s Bombay India Ink (a lovely rich red, feels very Erik Satie), and the Apple Green Winsor & Newton (a lovely colour, but felt a bit flat after the other two).

Tagged with: experimenting, shopping, tools | Add a comment

Pulled it all together

… and typed the song up into Finale. Not many changes to make actually – I think it’s going to stay sketchy. I put in an extra note, changed the timing of another one, but otherwise I think the accompaniment’s going to stay quite sparse. It’s a song that’s all about tone and touch, really. Quiet and precise – the sort that people look at on paper and say “oh, that’s easy” but may be actually quite tricky to grasp exactly the right feel for, even if the notes aren’t hard. Still really pleased with it. I think the whole set’s going to be for alto – tenor wasn’t quite fitting it, but I suspect I’m going to have to work on an alternate section in the first song somewhere – the range is just too wide to be reasonable.

Tagged with: composition, music | Add a comment

Finished reading ‘The Creative Habit’

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.

Tagged with: creativity, ideas, learning, reading | Add a comment

Second half of the song sketched

and I’m loving it, really loving it – it’s fitting together so well and it’s so simple and delicate it’s almost like it isn’t there at all. Can’t wait to get back to it tomorrow.

Tagged with: composition, music | Add a comment

Wrote half a song

Sat down at the piano, not really expecting much to happen – and next thing I know, I have the framework for half the final Walt Whitman song down!

Tagged with: composition, music | Add a comment