Downtime

Yesterday was notable for getting very little done on RPM. I started trying to write a piece for piano, then when that proved too much for me, switched to trombone which was equally difficult. All of which eventually culminated in me taking myself off to the Emergency Room at Hammersmith Hospital where the doctor said that, yes, I had managed to properly concuss myself but that it wasn’t serious. I will be without my brain for a couple of days apparently. Talk about appalling timing! I don’t HAVE a couple of days to spare right now! End of the month, sure! But now? Aaargh!

Anyway, there’s nothing much to be done about it, so I’ve been trying to do some thinking and listening and get things sorted in my head for when I’m capable of stringing notes together again. I’ve come up with an idea for the slide guitar piece which is a bit of a variation on the one I didn’t tell you anything about a couple of days ago. I think this may work, assuming I can battle Logic to do what I want. The inspiration for this one is one of Josh Davis’ Praystation machines. That is all I will say

I sent off the first email to my lovely commissioners, just to wave and send contact details and let them know what’s on the final list of instruments, really. Now I need to work out whether there’s an easy way I can set up for them to send over their recordings. Will investigate whether I can do this via Dropbox or Box.net first, then might have to resort to FTP. Wonder if I can do a website form that will FTP a file to a designated spot. That would be nice & easy. Hmm.

In other news, I spent about half an hour today switching over my comments system here and on caitlinrowley.com to use Disqus instead of Intense Debate. Intense Debate’s been bugging me because the layout onscreen is pretty messy, although the options are quite good, and to clear out the spam folder I need to deactivate the plugin, which is just plain stupid. My friend Jen has Disqus on her Tumblr blog and in using it this morning I was impressed how tidy the experience was, so I’ve shifted. And hopefully it will make commenting a more joyful experience. In doing so I discovered that at the moment I seem to working to a ratio of 30 minutes work to 3 hours napping. Productivity joy.

Hoping I’ll be able to start thinking more in terms of notes tomorrow…

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Day of drama

Today has been filled with dramatic events but, alas, not really a lot of work.

The first dramatic event was that I found out that Carrion Comfort has been chosen as one of 10 (out of 16) pieces to be workshopped by London Contemporary Chamber Orchestra on my birthday, 31 March. I can’t wait to hear what the orchestra makes of it – hope it’s not too hard…

Secondly, I made some little tweaks to Nest and sent it off to the performer. She had a question about trills which resulted in needing to clarify the notation a little, so I did that in the evening. Hopefully it’s at its last version now. I’ve laid it out ready for binding as I’m thinking of offering the participants of my little commission project the option to receive a bound copy of all the scores created. That might be fun.

Thirdly, I managed to concuss myself. Fortunately just a little bit – hit my head rather hard on the badly designed cupboard that juts out with a sharp corner directly above the dishwasher – but it effectively wiped out the afternoon for real work as I felt quite woozy and couldn’t make my eyes focus properly for more than about 5 seconds at a time. Seems to be mostly better now. Just feeling a little fragile.

So, counter to the plan, I wasn’t able to start on either the piano/organ or harp piece this afternoon. But I didn’t want to waste time either, so I did a bunch of listening and came up with a plan for the slide guitar piece. I won’t reveal it here because I’m running it past the performer to see if he’s cool with the concept but it was good to be devoting some time to thinking about that one as I suspect I may get totally caught up in the intricacies of writing for slide guitar if I try to write a fully-notated piece, but doing something that’s 100% graphic score seems a bit of a cop-out.

I also found, and attempted to apply for a job at Collaborative Arts Network, except that when I clicked through to apply it said the job wasn’t available, even though the deadline was 14 February, and I completely failed to find current contact details for them anywhere on the web – the best I could do was an email address, which bounced. Apart from that I found the Director on LinkedIn. He may be my only chance! Of course, it’s entirely possible that they just found someone they already knew, but it does seem odd, so I feel I should pursue it.

Lights are still out across half the flat – D went to Robert Dyas today but didn’t understand that Djeli wanted him to buy fuse wire as opposed to just fuses, so I have to go out tomorrow to get the right stuff and take the fuses back. Hopefully tomorrow evening there will be light.

Oh, and yesterday’s bread which had seemed such a disaster turned out to be nothing of the sort. True, it’s not as light and airy as one had hoped, but it’s still perfectly edible and delicious. Looking forward to having another go with this flour (Dove’s Farm Malthouse)… when it’s not snowing!

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Nest!

RPM is progressing in leaps and bounds this weekend! The commission project is now fully subscribed – AND there’s even a small waiting list too in case anyone pulls out! Never expected that!

Today was a snow day. Djeli and I slowly crept into Ealing to do some shopping but decided that things were just too slippery to risk going to Ikea to look at kitchen stuff, so instead we came home and watched Les Aventures d’Adele Blanc-Sec, which was good fun.

I started making a proper multigrain loaf, which started well but alas seems to have fallen at the final proving hurdle – or rather failed to rise very much. I’ve bunged it in the oven anyway, because hey, I’d only throw it out so might as well see if it turns out edible rather than assuming it won’t. (Confirmed: It is brick-bread. I don’t think any part of it is salvageable. Will have to try again later in the week)

And while waiting for the bread to rise the first time, I wrote a piece for oboe! This is the first of my RPM Project commissions and it’s called ‘Nest’. It’s mostly made up of a combination of grace-noted chirps and little snippets of melody, with the occasional trill for good measure. Hoping it’ll be more “twit! twit!” than twee. Time will tell. At any rate, it’s something like what I had in my head, if not quite so graceful, and the whole thing was done in about an hour. I’m finishing off the layout now then will send it off to its performer tomorrow. Next up is either a piece for flute, piccolo or alto flute (I haven’t decided which yet) or a piece for assorted keyboard instruments. I’ll see where inspiration strikes in the morning … and also what the light’s like – we had a fuse blow tonight that took out half the lights in the house. It’s going to require Djelibeybi to get down on hands and knees with little bits of fuse wire which he can’t find tonight because the lights are out so I will be artificial-light free tomorrow. May have to go out…

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1 down! Many to go!

I’ve completed my first RPM Challenge track! It’s the flute improv/field-recording collage piece and it’s called Watching the streets of Zurich and Brussels. I’m mildly happy with it. It’s very serene but not, I suspect, hugely interesting for multiple listens. The ghastly word “pleasant” is springing to mind. But it’s done and I think it’s kind of OK. And it’s tackled a few things that needed tackling:

1. Improv. I hate improvising. I have no confidence at it and never do it
2. Getting something down that’s actually a reasonable length for a proper piece of music – this one’s 6’16″ in length – about twice the length of most of my notated music. Good to be thinking in longer spans, actually, and working more broadly – thinking it might be a good exercise to work with this sort of collagey stuff every now and then to think more in terms of chunks of ideas instead of single notes.
3. Identified and started to tackle my issue of continually going back and listening from the start.
4. Quarter-tones: I’ve got a piece booked in to write for Carla Rees and her quarter-tone alto flute. I was a bit lost at the prospect of thinking about quarter-tones. Focusing on using them in the improv has helped quite a lot with this, I think

The other exciting thing is that today I decided to take RPM up a notch and make it more about the composition, so I launched a commission project: I’ll write pieces of less than a minute in duration for up to 9 people. For any instrument they want – all they have to do is to commit to sending me a recording of it before the end of the month. Want to be a part of it? As of now (7pm) there’s only 3 slots left! Find out more and sign up here.

1am update: Wow – I can’t believe how popular this commissioning project has been! There’s only one place left! And I seem to have reached the maximum number of guitar pieces I can take on – with electric, slide and bass guitar pieces, it’s going to be a challenge!

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Improv

Wow! What a day! I’ve made a huge start on my first RPM Challenge piece: First thing this morning I pulled down the recordings from Iraklio and Brussels into Logic, so all those field recordings are now on my hard disk. I also spent about an hour messing around with ideas on my flute and recording them (note: this is a big deal for me – I NEVER improvise!). A slight setback when the very best take for ideas AND execution AND tone ended up being lost when my laptop suddenly shut down without warning, but I managed two takes which are halfway decent and I’m cobbling them together to create overlapping parts. This afternoon I started sticking it all together in Logic: After exploring some other field recordings I had lying around, I’ve decided to stick with just the Zurich and Brussels recordings and the two flute takes – the more stuff I try to work with, the slower I’m going to be and the point of this whole exercise is speed.

Anyway, I now have 4:28 of music!!! It’s not the greatest thing I’ve ever done. It’s a little morbid and ambly. But the point is that I’ve actually created nearly 4 1/2 minutes of music in a single day! Hoping I can finish it tonight or tomorrow (although I just remembered that I have to get the parts done for Carrion Comfort, so it won’t be tonight).

I published a blog post on perfectionism and what I’m hoping to get out of this challenge: it’s up on caitlinrowley.com if you want to read it. And – relating to that – over the course of the afternoon I identified a reason why it takes me so long to write stuff. I keep going back to listen to the whole thing from the beginning! I kept catching myself doing this, even when it wasn’t really necessary. I feel like what I’m writing is losing touch with what I’ve written before, so I go back and listen from the beginning – and of course, as the piece gets longer this takes longer each time, so now I’m trying to watch out for this and when I go to do it, I think: do I really need to do this? Or should I just press on a bit longer?

1am update: Parts are prepped and ready for a print-out proof tomorrow… just as soon as I nip out to the shops to buy some more black ink. Also got a bit caught up in the moment when I ought to have been heading for bed and finally fixed up the time signatures for Egg the Ninth – I KNEW 9/8 wasn’t right. But 6/8 wasn’t either – turns out it needed to be 6/8 interspersed with occasional 9/8 bars. FUN!

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Recorders and recording

Busy day! Not a lot on RPM, but enough: I retrieved the MiniDisc player from D, set up the MBox (which hadn’t worked since I reinstalled but neglected to install ProTools – this time round I found just a driver and skipped the ProTools) and recorded the field recordings I made in Zurich (street noises, trams) across into Logic, so I now have them in a usable format for my piece. They were less defined sounds than I’d hoped to capture, and the recording a little noisier (disc noise just as bad in places as I’d feared but it’s only in patches – where it sounds like a quiet coffee grinder – not all the way through) but they should be entirely usable, even though I may combine them with some other recordings or use some sort of processing on some of them to give a bit more shape to the whole. I also found, in addition to the Zurich and Brussels recordings I knew were there, an MD marked “Iraklio” – I’d completely forgotten I made any recordings on the MD in Greece. I thought I only had crappy ones taken with the audio function on my camera because we kept coming across things that required instant reaction (not possible with the MiniDisc) – a teachers’ strike, a children’s band playing enthusiastically but with a delightful disregard of pitch. Looking forward to seeing what’s on there tomorrow!

I hand-delivered the score of Carrion Comfort to Herne Hill (which is lovely, by the way, if you’re thinking of moving to South London) and did the first round of corrections on the parts on the train. Mostly they’re pretty OK, except that Finale’s done some weird thing where the spacing between staves is different on every part – it’s like Finale’s tried to make all the parts fit into one page exactly, so the trombone part has masses of space, while the viola part has markings colliding on every stave as the markings below the stave run into the markings above the stave of the next system! Aargh!

And tonight I trekked off to Nonclassical (trek being the operative word – really wish they’d find a venue that’s actually near a Tube station – then I wouldn’t have to leave quite so early to be sure of catching the last train, and would be more likely to go to more of them!) to hear Consortium 5, a recorder consort. Excellent music – I made some great notes on ideas for Ladders of Escape which I’m writing for the Pink Noise recorder quartet in Bristol. Loads of ideas! And I caved and bought their CD too. I am weak. But happy

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Small beginnings, major triumph and Matilda

Today’s is a portmanteau post. I will start with the major triumph which is that Carrion Comfort has, at long, long, long, long last, gone to the printers. Yup, it’s done. I have had to make a couple of compromises because of the amateur nature of the ensemble it’s destined for, but the original timpani part at least will go into the final post-(hopeful)-workshop score. I felt it would just confuse when sending the score to a group I know doesn’t have timpani.

And tonight we went to see Tim Minchin’s musical version of Roald Dahl’s Matilda. It was supposed to be D’s Christmas present, but he didn’t like it pretty much at all, while Djeli and I agreed that we can squish up our list of “Best Theatrical Performances Ever” to make room for another one. Amazing stuff, great voices, the kids in the cast were simply astonishing. It was funny and heartbreaking and the staging was superb. I could find nothing wrong with it all. Get a ticket. That’s all there is to be said. How could you miss a bunch of extraordinarily talented kids singing a song called “Revolting Children” and loving every minute of it?

Today has also, of course, been the first day of the RPM Challenge. Obviously most of my time has been taken up with getting Carrion Comfort out of the house, but I was able to spend some time thinking about RPM, I pulled out Egg the Ninth and tinkered around with the time signatures which need changing (I think it should be in a mix of 6/8 and 9/8, not just one or the other). I also came up with an idea for an improv piece – create a tape part using the field recordings of trams and some other street sounds in Zurich several years ago, then improvise a flute part over the top. I’ve got some ideas I’ve been thinking about for the various flute pieces I have to write in the next few months and I might use this as an opportunity to mess about with them and see what happens.

I can’t believe how excited I am about RPM now. It’s like getting rid of Carrion Comfort (which had become a bit of an albatross around my neck) has been such a relief, I just want to work on something that’s about as different as it can be – which is what RPM represents. I’ve started re-reading Michael Nyman’s Experimental Music too – just seemed like the right time to revisit this one. So many ideas floating around! Hope I can get down to some real work tomorrow!

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I must be mad

Today I think I’ve broken all procrastination records, but in the last 10 minutes I think I’ve surpassed myself – crazy exhausted from germ, battling to get Carrion Comfort off to the printers so it’ll get to London Contemporary Chamber Orchestra by their deadline, unable to focus… and I’ve just let myself be talked into signing up for the RPM Challenge – record an album (10 songs or 35 minutes of music) in a month. And a small month at that, being February. Never thought I’d be so happy to see a leap year.

But anyway, I’ve loved the Creative Pact challenges I’ve done the past couple of years, even if I kind of failed at 2011′s – they’re always great, and some of my Twitter friends are doing it too, so it’ll be fun. And who knows, either I’ll get a ton of stuff done and experiment like crazy, or I’ll become the procrastination queen of the world and somebody will give me a prize.

I’ll blog it here because, while it’s not a required part of the project, I keep track of myself better when blogging, and it’s good to take note of failures as well as successes.

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Achievement and a New World Order

It’s been a big day today. Today I finally finished a task that’s been on my to-do list for about a decade: I have joined PRS for Music! Well, obviously when it went on my to-do list I was in Australia so the task then was actually “Join APRA” but it’s effectively the same thing. I filled out the form online yesterday and paid the fee over the internet, then this morning I printed it out, signed it and made a copy of my passport and then – yes – I PUT IT IN THE POST. YAY! There aren’t words for the triumph I feel over this. I did actually print out the forms about 5 years ago, but there was some confusion over whether I should join as just me or as my and Djeli’s limited company, and then there was confusion about what the status of the company was re: VAT and I just never got it all sorted out. But it is now. Which means I can start receiving a pittance for every performance! True, they won’t actually pay me till it hits £30, but still – prospect of payment! WOOOT!

The thing that set this amazing productivity off was that yesterday I went to the Barbican to a thingy organised by Sound and Music called “Counting In”. It was a panel session on composer careers and was extremely interesting and inspiring. So not only did I join PRS for Music today, but I have decided that a New World Order is in… order. Again. I know I keep doing this but one day it’s going to stick. One of the things really brought home to me yesterday is that I HAVE to get my health sorted out. Quite possibly this is even more important than actually writing music – I have so many ideas and so many things I want to do, but this permanent state of crippledom, criminally low energy, tendency to catch every bug going and my weight spiralling out of control making everything worse has to stop. It really does. My brain is sluggish and tired ALL the time and I never have enough energy, either physical or mental, to just get on and do the stuff I need to – stuff like laying out scores to send to potential performers, having a go at writing a piece in super-quick time for an imminent deadline, actually getting a blog post written for caitlinrowley.com every week as opposed to every now and then. Not to mention having the energy to travel and do fun stuff with Djelibeybi too.

As always, the heart of this New World Order has to be getting my eating right. If I’m not eating right, I don’t stand a chance, but I can’t go back on the deprivation diet as it was originally – that might have resulted in 14 kilos of weight loss in 6 months and huge energy gains, but it was unsustainable simply because it made me miserable, so I need to devote a little time this week to going through my nutritionist’s initial prescription and working out a more even balance. And I need to finish reading the book on stress eating so I can better understand what I’m doing. As a first step I’m going to try to not eat anything once dinner is done. Water is OK. Even a cup of tea is OK. But no actual food – it shouldn’t be necessary and mostly I eat then just because I’m too tired to do anything useful. So instead I should have some water and just head to bed.

So I’ll start small. And hopefully build on that to make a healthy, unstoppable me. Havi Brooks has a great weekly “Very Personal Ads” ritual on her blog, and I think that’s what this is for me this week:

WANTED: Willpower and strength to follow this through and mend my body so it can support all the things my mind wants to do.

Oh and I’ve finished the dynamics for Carrion Comfort and done a first draft for laying out the score. Can’t believe how much work has gone into this darned piece. So many instruments! So many dynamics! It kind of feels like I’ve overdone the dynamics and it should all be a lot simpler, but I’m not sure. I feel as if all the mezzo-fortes and mezzo-pianos are just imposters and should be deleted, but I’m certain I put them there for a reason – will review again later…

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Australia Day

I frickin’ HATE Australia Day. It usen’t to bother me – it just seemed a bit pointless. Now it actively offends because the whole thing has become so American. I have no problem with Americans being American about American celebrations. But for a day which is supposed to commemorate the founding of our laid-back nation, the current trend for flag-waving just nauseates me. Not to mention that for a small but significant proportion of the population it’s Invasion Day. The current patriotic overkill just seems to rub that fact in just a little bit more. And maybe squeezes lemon juice in the wound too. So I don’t like it. And I don’t celebrate it. I do my very best to ignore it, which seems pretty much impossible, with the result that I am always in a filthy temper on Australia Day. And today seems to be no exception.

However, I have turned it to my advantage and drafted up a blog post on whether I’m an Australian composer or not (jury’s out on the verdict of that one) which has made me feel a bit better. I also battled my way through some more work on Carrion Comfort and came to the conclusion that I don’t have the foggiest what key it’s in. My harmonic skills are not advanced enough to wade through the chromaticism and come up with a definite answer. It definitely starts in G minor, with moments of G major, but after that, who knows? It may possibly end in C-sharp minor, but I really wouldn’t swear to it on a Bible, so I am taking the wuss’s way out and declaring it to be atonal, which means ditching all key signatures and relying on accidentals. I hope the amateur players won’t be too put off by that. I am converting all sharps to flats, in an effort to make it easier to read. Really wish I didn’t have to do that. F-flat is not the same as E-natural in my book – conceptually it’s a completely different animal, but there you have it. It’ll be easier to read. I do wonder sometimes whether my loose interchanging of sharps and flats when I’m writing a piece isn’t influenced by being a flautist – B-flat or A-sharp, it’s the same fingering regardless, so it’s more about what goes on in the head than what goes on with the fingers. Maybe for string or keyboard instruments it’s not so easy to change mental gears like that. Or maybe I’m just weird.

I’ve also made a bit of progress on the fanfare. It had got a bit stuck, so I’ve tried a different approach and started a new section, using the same material, hugely slowed down and separated out and with a fair bit of whitespace too. I’ll review it tomorrow and see what I think.

I doubt Carrion Comfort will go to the printers tomorrow. Or at least not tomorrow during the day. I’ve achieved too little on it today. So the absolute deadline is for it to be waiting in their inbox at 8am Monday morning, so as to have a hope of being able to pick it up, bind it and send it on Monday afternoon. CAN’T miss that deadline.

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