Here it is, the third and final 10-day compilation playlist, with titles and links to the original posts. It generally took me a day or so to assign a title to each piece, which is why the titles didn’t appear at the same time as the sound files. “Maineville Shuffle” is named for the little town in Ohio where McDoc’s sis and family live, since that’s where I composed it. (Their basement makes a great music studio! 😉 )
It’s Day 30! Wow! It’s hard to believe this is the last day of the project! Of course, there’s no law saying that I have to stop, and part of me would love to keep doing this every day for the rest of my life, but I’m going to stick to the parameters of the project and stop here for now. Besides, there are plenty of things to do next… I want to extend some of the pieces from the project, clean up the notation files so they look nice… because next in the works, I hope, will be The 30 Days Project: Live! and The 30 Days Project: The CD! (Could 30 Days: The Movie be far behind? 😉 )
I couldn’t decide whether to go out with a bang today or have a nice peaceful close, so I did a bit of both. I used a hymn tune I’ve been wanting to fit in, “How Great Thou Art,” which is another one of those tunes that I fondly associate with VirgoMom. (cheeseful MIDI here!) And I threw in at least 3 or 4 sappy cadences, just to show how bittersweet this day is for me! 😉 This piece is for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano.
I want to thank everyone who has supported me during this project, especially McDoc, and everyone who listened and left comments and emails! This has been one of the most incredible, amazing, challenging and rewarding experiences of my life so far.
In the past 30 days, I wrote 50 MINUTES OF MUSIC!!!
I’m not trying to make this thing complicated, but the cool thing about being a composer is that the orchestra is your toybox. Actually, the whole world of live and recorded sound is your toybox. Pretty dang cool!
I’ve been thinking about wind instruments lately. I hadn’t yet written for bassoon or oboe, and I like them both very much, so I thought I’d better get them in (I can’t believe tomorrow is the last day of the project! 😦 ). In fact I chose woodwind quintet, just because it’s kind of quirky and doesn’t get much written for it these days, as far as I know. It can be difficult to think about what to write for it, since the instruments are pretty different from each other and it can be hard to get them to blend and balance.
McDoc and I are visiting my sister-in-law and her husband this weekend, and my brother-in-law Chris is a guitarist and singer who always shows me lots of cool jazz music when we visit, so I’ve got jazz on the brain. Goofy jazz, of course — or it wouldn’t be me! 🙂
Phew! I’m a little late, but that’s what happens when you: get up late, pack, go on a 4 1/2 hour road trip, go out to dinner for your birthday, drink two margaritas, and then sit down to compose. 😉
And this was the first day that I actually had done a little bit of advance preparation. During the summer, McDoc and I became interested in the sounds of cicadas that we could hear in our neighborhood, and we did a bit of online research and found a site that had several sound files of different species of cicadas. I thought the sounds had wonderful musical potential, so I wrote to the scientists to ask permission to use them. They very kindly said yes.
I hope they don’t regret it after hearing the piece.
I heard a particular musical reference in one of the cicada sounds, and I went with it. It’s very silly, I know, but I couldn’t resist…
It is my birthday, after all… you can blame the margaritas! 🙂
I was in a slightly melancholy mood today. I’m not sure why… maybe it’s because I saw this movie last night. Or maybe it’s just because of all the laundry that needs to get done before McDoc and I leave tomorrow to spend a long weekend with his sister and her family! 😉
Whatever the cause, I feel better now that I’ve written this piece. It was windy and rainy today — at one point I had to run from the car to the door of our building while it was pouring — it’s amazing how wet you can get in 3 seconds! In today’s piece, for solo piano, I attempted to capture the capricious character of the wind as it blows those first few raindrops around — as viewed through the window, from the dry comfort of indoors!
Oh, by the way, our weekend trip won’t cause any interruptions in the project. I’ll pack up the McVirgoland recording rig and take it on the road! Fingers crossed that we won’t encounter any technical difficulties!
Update: Oops! I called this “Day 25” initially, but that was yesterday! It’s not “Groundhog Day,” really! Like I’ve said before, not a math person… 😛
I drove Doc to work early this morning, and when I got home and sat down to my morning online news rounds, the first thing I saw was the news that Luciano Pavarotti had died.
While I was living in New York (back in the last century! 😛 ), I had the good fortune to see/hear Pavarotti perform live at the Metropolitan Opera in a production of Tosca. I could tell that his voice wasn’t as powerful and perfect as it once had been (though it was still extraordinary), but I didn’t mind one bit because his expressivity and acting ability were so sublime. He made singing look so easy, and I know from taking voice lessons that it isn’t. (It’s fun, though! 🙂 )
I watched a few YouTube clips of his signature pieces. Can I just admit right here and now that I’m a sucker for Puccini? I mean, I’m a sucker for romantic music in general, but there are a few things in particular that reduce me to a puddle of quivering jelly. Here’s one, overplayed as it may be:
I used a couple of emblematic melodic gestures from this aria in today’s piece, which I wrote for 4 cellos. It would also work for string quartet, but the all-cello instrumentation has a dark, rich sound that is very special.
Pavarotti’s official website took a very long time to load just now — it must be swamped with traffic. It’s just a single page today, with a photo and the following quote:
Penso che una vita per la musica sia una vita spesa bene ed è a questo che mi sono dedicato.
I think a life in music is a life beautifully spent and this is what I have devoted my life to.
Okay, so I finally took the dare. McDoc has been asking for a fugue pretty much since the project started. I liked the idea, but a fugue in one day? That’s a tall order. It’s kind of like doing an acrostic multiplied by a crossword puzzle, divided by a sestina. In Latin.
What convinced me was a suggestion McDoc had for a theme to co-opt. But I won’t give it away yet — you have to listen first. 😉
Brief rundown on what a fugue is, anyway. It’s a form of imitation (like a round — think: “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”) that follows particular, strict rules. It starts with a short melody, called a subject, that is played in different voices (or instruments) at two different transpositions, a fifth apart — in other words, if it starts on C the first time, it’ll start on G the second time. There can be anywhere from 3 to 6 voices; 4 is typical. I’ve used 3 here to make things simpler. After all the voices have played the subject, other interesting things start to happen, like episodes, where the subject is cut up into even smaller bits and the music cycles through different keys, and stretti, where repetitions of the subject get piled on top of each other fast and furiously. I did one of each of those. Then there’s usually a big coda at the end.
I did a couple of things that you aren’t really supposed to do in a fugue, like have 2 instruments play part of the subject at the same time. I think it works with the style of the music — see what you think!
Do you ever find yourself having trouble communicating?
I had several phone calls to make today on a number of business matters. Sometimes I dread that kind of thing, being an introvert and all. (I’m not just saying that either — I took a test, and I’m more introverted than 90% of the population!) And the experience can vary greatly — sometimes the interactions are pleasant and stress-free, and other times it’s like pulling teeth. I had a mixture of experiences today. I had a very pleasant conversation with a staff member at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology confirming that I have permission to use some of their researchers’ sound files as part of an electronic composition (stay tuned! 😀 ). But there was a bit of frustration involved in making an appointment for an eye exam for McDoc. The nice lady kept offering days and times that wouldn’t work, such as 9 a.m. on a morning when McDoc is getting off of the night shift. I started to explain his work schedule to her, thinking it would make it easier for her to offer a time that would work, so I could stop taking up her time. “I don’t need to hear all that,” she replied, at which point I felt like telling her to (if you’ll pardon my French) go piss up a rope, but I’m happy to say I resisted that temptation; I’m sure her job is far more aggravating than I care to imagine, so I couldn’t take anything she said personally.
It got me thinking about communication in general. It’s such a tricky thing; how many times do people talk past each other, misunderstand each other, take offense where none was intended, and on and on. McDoc and I have argued about petty little things on plenty of occasions… and the craziest part of it is, we often come to find that we don’t really disagree all that significantly, but we just expressed things in different ways.
For me a lot of this boils down to our mistaken notion that we’re separate from others — alienated, on our own, hung out to dry, etc. Therefore we have to be on the defensive at all times. Doesn’t help us play nicely with others, though!
So today’s piece, for flute, clarinet, percussion and piano, is about communication misfirings. The instruments interrupt, “talk past,” ignore or shout each other down. The clarinet, having initiated the (attempt at a) conversation, nearly gives up, but comes back and tries again toward the end, when at last a bit of teamwork materializes. 🙂
I got to hear a lot of extraordinary percussion playing on Saturday, so I thought I’d write a percussion piece today. A few other pieces within the Project have had percussion in them, but this is the first one that uses unpitched instruments exclusively — no marimbas, vibraphones or glockenspiels this time. Actually, although “pitched” vs. “unpitched” are official categories that percussion instruments are placed into, it would be more accurate to use the terms “instruments of definite pitch” and “instruments of indefinite pitch.” Drums and cymbals and woodblocks and the like aren’t notated at specific pitches, but if you listen closely you can hear whether they sound high or low, or in between. Drums have to be tuned occasionally too, as the metal frame that holds the skin taut will loosen up gradually with repeated pounding. Here’s the little tool percussionists use to tune their drums, called a drum key:
Percussionists get all the best toys.
Here are the instruments I used, in all their MIDI-fied glory: (links will show a picture or video and you’ll hear the instrument’s name pronounced — you might want to lower your volume)
I did a marathon yesterday! A marathon concert, that is. 😉 It was relatively easy for me, though — I played one 11-minute with a violinist around 5 pm, then I got to hang out and listen for most of the evening, until I played with everyone in the very last piece (which started at 1:30 a.m.!). That was Terry Riley‘s In C, one of the first minimalist pieces.
I guess you might say I have a love-hate relationship with minimalism. I won’t go on about that here… suffice it to say that I was excited to have the opportunity to play in such a historically important work with an amazing group of musicians — and I accepted the fact that I might need ice and ibuprofen for my hands when all was said and done. And it did look fun to play — there are 53 phrases of varying length, called “cells,” that each musician repeats a number of times and then proceeds to the next one. You go roughly at your own pace, and it’s neat to listen to how everyone is and isn’t together. But before going to the rehearsal, I read this in the Wiki entry:
As detailed in some editions of the score, it is customary for one musician (“traditionally played by a beautiful girl,” Riley notes) to play the note C (in octaves) in repeated eighth notes. This drone functions as a metronome and is referred to as “The Pulse”.
(emphasis mine.)
I rolled my eyes and thought, whatever, Terry… as long as I don’t get stuck doing that.
Well, guess what? 😛
It seems “The Pulse” is traditionally played in the high octaves of the piano, where I happened to be sitting (it was a 4-hand piano situation). So I was drafted.
Oh well, don’t hate me because I’m beautiful! 😀
It made me nervous, though, because if there’s one thing you do not want to do, it’s have your pulse tempo be in any way unsteady in the presence of a dozen or so world-class percussionists. Trust me on this.
I think I maintained my composure when it came to the actual performance, though. And my hands were only a little limp afterwards.
The marathon was incredible overall, and I plan to write more about it later. But now, on to today’s piece!
McDoc has been nagging me to write something in the Bluegrass, Scots-Irish-descended Appalachian realm. I’ve resisted slightly not because I don’t like the music, but because I know that it’s not as easy as it may look, especially for a one-gal band. But today was a good day to give it a try as a change of pace, because I haven’t yet processed yesterday’s experience enough to write anything in the same world. Besides, McDoc wants to see how far afield from contemporary music I can go without getting my composer card taken away! 😛
So here it is. It was a challenge, but it was really fun too. I should say that most of what little I know about Bluegrass comes from the following two CDs, which I think everyone should give a listen to: New Favorite, by Alison Kraus & Union Station, and The Grass is Blue, by Dolly Parton.
Miss Music Nerd 