32 posts tagged “composition”
the past few days have been freakin' aMAzing. i can't quite believe it. from the restless mess i was 4 days ago - couldn't settle to anything, brain malfunctioning, grumpy and pretty over everything, all has finally come good. i've now written actual music for each of the past three days and today. real live notes, i tell you! (well, today was real live note (singular) but hey, it's a weekend!) i'm not sure yet whether any of it is worth making a real fuss about, but there were actual ideas begging me to write them down. and then more ideas! and i didn't have to force any of them at all - they just lined up for me. i can't even remember the last time that happened. certainly i haven't produced anything of even the tiniest compositional interest since last year and not a single note has flowed from my pencil since february, so i'm pretty gosh-darned happy with this.
the knitting has been going well too - the scarf i am knitting for my mama (who is languishing in a chillier-than-usual sydney winter) is 3/4 done and should be finished entirely in the next couple of days. i'm pretty pleased with it too. my friend lis has lent me the pattern and humungous (15mm) needles to make a chunky-wool beanie too. she knitted hers up in 1/2 hour so looking forward to some instant gratification knitting there soon. i have been contemplating returning to the yarn shop at much wenlock to see if they have any of the yummy yummy hand-dyed welsh merino yarn in a fat enough weight to use on this project, but i think if i don't get there in a couple of weeks, i might just pick up some more usual chunky wool and have a go. one can never have too many winter hats, in my opinion...
i just had an insight descend upon me as if from on high. i am obsessed with publication. and along with the insight came the realisation of the starting point. it began way back in primary school at the age of about 8, when my class was set a project to produce our own newspaper. being about 8 it was a frog newspaper, called the slippery slimy times and two of my friends and i were assigned the fashion column (this will amaze anyone who's ever met me. fashion is *not* my forte!)
and now this manifests itself in oh so many different ways:
- 4 regularly updated blogs
- publication of my own scores
- plans for publishing other peoples scores
- ongoing writing of articles intended for publication
- constant development and planning of new websites
- a website publishing my honours thesis and other articles
- a bizarre desire to make full use of the services offered by sites like lulu.com and issuu.com even when i don't have a specific project in mind - i keep coming back to what i *could* do...
- binding up random documents (bank statements, printed-off articles from the web, recipe cards) to create neat and organised books
- a book i edited, published jointly by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Australian Music Centre
- my music recorded on a commercially published CD (even if a hard-to-find one)
- articles published in music magazines
- a piece published a long, long time ago (and littered with typographical errors by a careless copyist) in The Flute magazine
- editing, copy editing, proof reading, writing, music copying, design and layout for sounds australian journal and other AMC publications, including CDs
- copy editing for independent film magazine
- a brief stint working on the website for australian arts publisher currency press.
i don't mean to brag about *being* published, just to say that this realisation has made me think, and now i wonder a bit about where i am and should be heading. yes, i want to write music, but i also have about as strong a desire to lay the stuff out as i do to write it. i suspect that over the next few weeks, i will start to think a little more clearly about this and maybe it'll show me a new way to organise myself. maybe i've been confusing myself by relating score layout with composing. maybe in the many many pigeonholes in my head, i need to make a new label for one and separate out the publication component from the creation component of the various things i do. hmm. that will take a bit of thinking about
well, i had hoped that gramophone magazine would have pulled itself out of the horrible mire of populism it was sinking into when i cut off my subscription, but it seems not. this month's editorial - http://www.gramophone.co.uk/newsletter/060508_newsletter_editorial.htm (as vox seems to have done away with the link button for some obscure reason) - just confirms it. this little gem features:
"Composers today have largely left behind the old credo that audiences are irrelevant to their work. Now they once again write music that catches in the ear, the mind and the heart."
anyone care to tell him that that happened about 20 years ago?
back from paris now. and next weekend we go to switzerland skiing for a week with some friends. djeli is dying to go skiing, but it's looking like i won't be able to ski at all because while we were in paris my leg and foot started to swell again and the whole left leg has been uncomfortable (to the point of needing the heat pack again) all week. i blame the paris metro. all those stairs. grr :-) but at any rate, i doubt very much that i'll be skiing while lopsided, so i need to make a plan that involves accompanying djeli on his drive to troistorrents (nearish lausanne) and then playing hermit for a few days to do some work while avoiding the 2-year-old that apparently populates the place where we'll be staying, and maybe fitting in a day-trip or two to lausanne and/or berne as well.
paris was pretty good though. my french is getting better and better and i was quite shocked to discover that i had better french than anyone else who was there (we went with two of djeli's sisters and their families). i've now got to the point where i can natter a bit with shopkeepers and don't feel so flustered about asking them to repeat themselves if i don't understand because i feel now that if they repeat, i have a chance of working it out, and sometimes they simplify the vocab too, which makes it easier. we did a bunch of touristy stuff because none of the kids had been to paris before, so there was notre dame, with attempts made on the saint-chapelle (closed), the conciergerie (closed), a view from a particular department store that susie (older sister) had been told was great (closed for refurbishment) and djeli's and my absolute favourite-ever patisserie and home of the chocolate-encrusted brioche (closed down); then the next day to the science museum (always very cool and my translation skills much improved over the last time we were there, thank heavens), then the eiffel tower and our favourite posh supermarché out at porte maillot which spared us from the tedium of a fourth trip up the arc de triomphe in three years. and then a little required shopping at sephora and the galleries lafayettes food hall on the last day. i'm looking forward to going back again soon. i really really want to go to the (i think) palais de tokyo where they keep all their early-mid twentieth century art - matisse and so forth, and also thinking that i should make a concerted effort on the louvre sometime - maybe a three-day midweek trip on my own, sketchbook in paw. might try catching the bus across. i adore the eurostar, but if i can stand the bus then it's likely to be a lot cheaper, and it was quite bearable from brussels to london. must start trying to cut back on the 5-star travel...
i took delivery of two new books between copenhagen, sussex (where we went for new year) and paris - the last of my gift voucher bonus from PwC (which I have to say has been the best bonus ever) - both of them excellent. The first is a tiny little book by an advertising guru called paul arden and is called it's not how good you are, it's how good you want to be which is an excellent summary of all sorts of things i need to keep reminding myself of with my work and i'd recommend it to anyone who needs a pocket-sized kick in the artistic pants every now and then.
the second one is a book called inspired which is a series of interviews with assorted creative folk, looking at where they find inspiration, what their working environment is like and so on, with a ton of photos of creative journals, collections of this and that, and brilliant workspaces. i find the creative process and the different ways people approach it to be absolutely fascinating and this book in itself is amazing and has inspired me to be a bit more creative with my own creative (mainly composition) journal. i always thought i must be a bit mad to keep the ton of bits of paper that i do simply because they have an image that intrigues me on it - i like the texture or the colour or the shape, or it makes me smile and i can't throw it out - but reading this book one thing i found was that about 80% at least of the people interviewed confessed to collecting something - from adidas shoes to fabric swatches and packaging - so now i don't feel quite so weird and i'm starting to stick these random bits and pieces into my composition journal so they (a) don't clutter up the place and gather dust and (b) can be got at when a little spare inspiration is required. i'd much rather store a bunch of composition journals than a box full of little pieces of paper i'm not looking at. anyway, it's an excellent book and so many ideas to play with! now i want to do EVERYTHING - i want to paint and collage and draw, and write music, and write lists, and dance and walk and tidy and bake - all sorts of stuff.
this evening i drew for the first time in... oh... months and months. and gosh it felt good. a real stress-reliever. give me a box of willow charcoal, a big bit of paper and a nice big space to spread charcoal dust around in and i'm a happy happy gal. and i got to thinking about grand gestures, how good just letting rip in whatever way makes us feel - big sweeping strokes of charcoal across paper, really let-loose dancing, going for a good run or whatever. and then it struck me that you can't really do this with composition. even writers can lose the lines and write in
REALLY BIG CAPITAL LETTERS
if the fancy takes them, but the grand gesture in music invariably involves the creator sitting down quietly and writing lots and lots of little notes, each of which has to fit tidily into its allotted space on the stave, or nobody will be able to play it. and if you write music that can't be played then its questionable whether you've actually written music at all. so maybe i need something like drawing to help me let rip so i can be as fastidious and pernickety over my notes as i need to be.
job is coming to an end next week and then i'm back to my scores, and hopefully back posting a bit more often too. and who knows? maybe i'll even get around to finally getting the film i shot in australia processed and scanned...
Where is your favourite place to be on a sunny Sunday afternoon?
Submitted by Rev Stan.
right where i am now, i think. sitting in my deckchair in our garden with my laptop, working on my composition, reading twitter posts as they come in and listening to the quiet family sounds of our neighbours having relations round to celebrate their new baby. it all feels very peaceful and right.
well, i've had two days back at work and am steeling myself for the 6.15 awaking tomorrow once again. the new job is going well, and is interesting and i'm learning loads too, although friday was a bit stressful (mostly being new and not being able to find anyone who could confirm that i was working from the right design when the code was supposed to go to the client by c.o.b. friday) and overall by the end of the two days i was left with a cottage-cheese brain which lasted all the way through yesterday (resulting in a disgraceful lie-in followed by the consecutive watching of ghandi, robin hood: prince of theives, and mrs brown without really noticing the day drift by). fortunately by this afternoon it had solidifed somewhat into a state resembling cream cheese (still soft, but somewhat less lumpy and runny) and i was able to consider the not inconsiderable problem of how on earth do i maintain my artistic momentum in the face of such mental and physical exhaustion.
i'm really pleased with how far i've come over the last few months of my sabbatical. in spite of all the interruptions and crises, i've managed to complete my set of two-part inventions, explored a new direction in writing the satie song arrangement for america (which the commissioner likes so much he's suggested i do another two), written a psalm for satb choir and the first two songs of a group set to the short poems of walt whitman. and more importantly, i've got myself back to a point where, given alertness and appropriate quiet time, i can write for a couple of hours or so without too much trouble. the problem of course, is finding the alertness and appropriate quiet time. with 1 1/2 hours commute each way every day, having to get up so early and correspondingly go to bed before i really want to, i'm left with very little time to myself. and the cottage-cheese brain doesn't help.
so i have turned to my trusty friend, guilt, for help.
a couple of weeks ago i came across an online project being run by the tate, national gallery, v&a, sir john soanes museum and a bunch of other institutions which is ultimately aimed at helping people to make the most of the various museums' extensive digitised collections, in particular in inspiring and helping people to make their own art. the project is called creative journeys and they were looking for an assortment of artists to volunteer for the pilot. basically, we roam around the online collections, reading and viewing and blogging anything we find intriguing or influential on our own artwork - whatever that may be. so i signed up with the view that as i'd committed myself to the project, it should help me to push through my mental fug and actually do something.
today i had an idea which is based on the same premise and with the same goal, but at a smaller level. i've launched a new blog called one creative thing which i will be using to track the creative things i do every day - sometimes it'll just be one thing, sometimes a few, but hopefully by keeping this up, i'll be making myself focus on doing at least one thing either with or for my creativity every day. of course, one hopes that every day will be a litany of amazing compositional progress, but i know myself better than to expect that. instead, i plan to record anything creative or which encourages me to think creatively or to play in some creative way, be that baking a batch of muffins, booking concert tickets, borrowing a book of poetry from the library, sketching passengers on the train, working on my satie and dada article or buying origami paper.
so why on earth post this online?, i hear you cry. and i guess that's a good question. it's not like i expect anyone will actually read it ever, far less comment on it, but it holds me accountable in a way that a list in a notebook on my desk does not - it's visible to the world, so there's always the chance that someone is reading, and if there's that chance, then i have a responsibility to keep it up. plus, if anyone should stumble over it and think it's a good idea that they could gain from themselves, then that would be awesome.
now i need to go and book tickets for tuesday night's prom, lay out clothes for tomorrow and get everything ready for the morning. heigh ho!
at long, long last i have completed the redesign of my business website, minim-media.com . its last redesign was in 2000. yep, seven years ago. that's a hell of a long time. why is it that i spend so much of my time making other people's sites all whizz-bangy, yet it's taken me about 4 years to rework my own site? i don't understand. but finally, the frames have GONE. and the whole thing is sleeker and more standards-compliant, which is a good thing. there are still some tweaks i need to make, and some improvements i've thought of that i think php (which i've just started researching) will be able to help me with - hoping to implement at least some of those ideas later in the week.
i discovered an exciting thing last night - lovely westminster library has subscriptions for its members to the new grove dictionary of music & musicians online, and to the naxos online library, containing every naxos recording (and that's a hell of a lot) plus a bunch of other labels too - bis, abc classics, all sorts of stuff. true, it's not for downloading, but it's online all the time and will stream in near-CD quality. and, as a member of the library, i get it for free, which certainly counts for something. i came across the most wonderful description of the naxos catalogue today on nico muhly's blog which i just have to pass on to you:
sososo true :-) really loving his blog - so many interesting and offbeat things, and he has no hesitation in chucking in mp3s of music from all over the place. i should try to do the same...I love those Naxos discs; it’s sort of like Ikea recordings, where if you just have to have a footstool, you can have one for $4.99; eventually you can replace it with a big-girl footstool but the $4.99 one always has a place in your heart.
the satb psalm setting is coming along nicely, and i had good news from my tame percussionist about the satie arrangement - yes, he says it's fine to have pitched bits in the tape part - so long as they're at concert pitch, there shouldn't be a problem with tuning with the vibraphone. and i've also found a harpist from the royal college of music who is willing to help me sort out the recently-discovered problems with my harp piece, (en)twine for an extremely modest fee. huzzah!
i'm supposed to be finishing off my website revamp so i can start applying for jobs - i've had three nibbles from agencies in the past day and all it's done is really make me not want to do anything at all about getting another job. gah. very slack. a friend has suggested i go freelance for a bit, and the more i think about it, the better it sounds. i've still got some money in the bank and if i can start getting a little extra coming in nowish, then i'll still be able to spend time on my music, but hopefully without ending up in a critical financial situation.
the last few days have actually turned out pretty well for the composition. i still feel like i'm slowly clawing my way back to sanity, but i've actually been able to get some thoughts down on paper, and have started to slowly expand one of them into a choral piece based on Psalm No. 1:
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.
i particularly liked the bit about the "seat of the scornful" :-) i think it'll be fun. and a good starting point to get back into writing choral music given that, as i said last time, there are so many opps around at the moment for SATB.
my lovely da also sent through the christmas carol words he's been working on for my sydney commission, and i think they're pretty good. maybe just a couple of tweaks to be made, but not much.
and i've finally managed to get facebook to import my vox blog so it'll register when i've put in a new public post. given that most of my RL friends seem to be facebookers and not voxers or twitterers, this might be a good thing. time will tell... must stop procrastinating and go and buy djelibeybi a birthday present for tomorrow...
gee whiz. i'm really getting into the self-examination now. i went for another long walk around the park on thursday, and was having a big ol' thinkfest about my music, how i put it together, why i'm dissatisfied with what i'm doing at the moment and what has changed since i was at uni, and to cut a long and probably very tedious story short, i've decided to return to my minimalist roots. the only thing that has really changed since i left uni is that i mislaid my arrogance somewhere along the way and replaced it with a cringing crisis of confidence. so i'm going back to where it all began, am ordering steve reich's writings on music from amazon and listening to a bunch of reich, philip glass (songs from liquid days - haven't listened to that in about 6 years!) and michael nyman, and ooh it feels good. it's been an age since i've really listened to any of this stuff and am just revelling in it.
also read a totally inspiring interview today on newmusicbox with an american composer, nico muhly. must hear more of his stuff - seems we are both fans of a lot of the same things - the english choral tradition, minimalism, susan cooper's the dark is rising books. so must find out more!
still trying to post the satie arrangement draft sound file, but it's still going all paul robeson on me so i'm afraid the box. net link is the only way to hear this for now. i'll try making a lower-quality mp3 and see if that makes a difference, but as it's way under the max 25mb, i doubt if it will. might have to report this one to the vox powers-that-be. grrr.
oh, and today we went out to the v&a museum of childhood to see picasso's histoire naturelle etchings (nudge nudge, wink wink) which were supremely awesome. it closes tomorrow, so if you're in london, get down there. oh, and it's free :-) bethnal green tube. you won't be sorry.
