photo credit: mitch98000
Composing most of the day, which consists of jumping around different parts of the score, notating down little fragments, slicing things apart and together.  Get bored in one area and then you jump into another.  Every once in a while, you get a giant swirl that you can hear the whole piece [...]

Continue reading " A Swirl of Fog "

Good session today.  A bit too creative – pulling apart different tetrachords out of the octal set and recombining them into new structures.  Appealing figures of light, although it lead to new experimentations in transformations which lead to more work to do – without settlement and on and on.  So, I leave open this section [...]

Continue reading " Smoothy "

photo credit: matthew_moss
An interest group of composerly sessions these last few days as I work through jump starting the middle movement.  Seems that composing off the seat of my pants produced some rather mundane materials – boxy phrases and harmonies which I found annoying and for a while useless.  I had hopes that it [...]

Continue reading " Studies "

photo credit: frozenchipmunk
On this Saturday, after catching up on errands and exercise, I started in on notating down the opening measures, which turned into an exercise of relativity.  Notating down the accompaniment – is it 4/4 with 8th notes; or is it 7/4 with quarters; or is it 3:2 8th notes in 4/4; or [...]

Continue reading " Timing "

Spent most of the day listening to concerti, starting with Ravel and Prokofiev and ending with Saint Saen, of all composers.  Ravel’s G major concerto is still in my opinion the most perfect piano concerto ever written –  too many technical reasons to mention here but lets just underline the whole thing with the word balanced [...]

Continue reading " xmas day "

Day before xmas and evening – mostly working through various notes I have for this work in progress.  In the evening, digesting old piano concerto friends – Ravel, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff.  Rachmaninoff’s #1 – score in hand scares the living crap out of me. Prokofiev #3 still the most fun concerto to play.    I miss [...]

Continue reading " Piano Meanderings "

photo credit: artpeoplestyle
Acceptable structuring today and more decisions on what this work is or isn’t – and one decisive move there is deciding this should be a work for piano and orchestra.  Sorry, but the violin work will have to wait.  Probably best anyway as I have some better ideas for the lightness of [...]

Continue reading " Piano and Orchestra "

photo credit: cafrizell
Much of the day, in fact all of the day, at the piano – drifting in and out.  Playing.  Constructing.  Right brain had a field of a time – changing and reshaping what was previously completed, finding new materials, runs, arpeggios, melodic fragments, a bit of everything.   Simplifying yet again the [...]

Continue reading " Twist and Turn "