Testing things out.

I've written half of the first piano soliloquy and dumped it into Finale to try it out. Although it isn't the final program I'll use to set it, I did key most of the original version of Chaos into it, so I'm using it to make the adaptation, and expand it to a concerto.

I pretty much like what is there, although I'll need to flesh out more of the piano part. The first section will need some work on the strings, too.

This section is complicated to set, so I probably shouldn't waste too much time on it. I won't be able to get much of a good representation of the overall sound either.

At least it is still moving.

Finally, some composing time

The concerto is now three pages longer. I was able to use my full composing hour yesterday, plus about twenty minutes from the previous day.

I also had a revelation during my donut sleep last night. When I started Chaos, it was programmatic, i.e. based of the beginning of Paradise Lost - Lucifer's fall. Somehow, when I restarted it, I had lost track of that, and was composing "absolute" music. Now my head is back in gear, and the next section begins Lucifer's monologue. He's fallen and is now contemplating what to do next (in the filthy stench of Hell) surrounded by his legion of fallen angels.

Lyrical piano solo with a few orchestral interjections. This will use the progression I devised for the original improvisation. I may also include some improvisation here.

Never enough time

I try to set aside specific times of the day to compose and write. An hour for writing seems to be almost enough, but for composing, I find that my work day has a habit of creeping into that time.

Yesterday, I was left with only a half hour, and that just isn't enough time to get into the groove. Yes, I finished page 17, but I still don't have my head together for this free solo section. My original plan was to have it mostly improvised, but this early in the piece, I've decided I need some introspective, written music. When will the improvisation come? I don't know yet.

New sets

Now I have committed myself to finishing Chaos as a piano concerto, I had to go back and re-classify my sets. That is, my Chaos sets. I hadn't gone quite as deep with them as the original concerto sets, and these sets are 5+7, meaning they are harder to classify.

As before, I had to use overlap notes, or in this case a single note. This is important because the closing section uses the overlap, as I switch to six-note sets.

I: D F F# A C
V: Eb E G G# A# B C#

As I hinted before, I'm going to insert the progression from the improvisation section that I sketched before, although I'm going to write out more of a soloistic interlude. There will be some improvisation, but not as much. After that, it will be back to the free Chaos material and finish with another toccata-like section. As I mentioned before, this is a more difficult section metrically, so I may have to simplify it to accommodate the orchestra.

At least I'm rolling again.

Chaos and order

I now have a fully-scored 4 minutes of a piano concerto. I spent yesterday afternoon re-scoring Chaos, and while it might not be a conventional concerto, the pianist has a lot to do, playing almost constantly, but I still need to move things around a bit. The 16th-notes are relentless, and there is very little in the left hand. When Chaos was still a band piece, I was worried that the piano had too much to do. I'm not worried any more.

The midi sounds good, although I don't think everything is audible. I still need to tidy up the strings, but I'll wait until I've written the next section. That will be new material leading back to the free stuff of the middle section of the band piece.

There is some difficulty there, but I don't think it is too difficult. The weakest section of this orchestra is the strings, and at the moment they aren't doing too much.

I'm feeling much better about it now.

Chaos theory

The band piece. It's called Chaos. If I remember correctly, it is about 16-20 minutes long. Of course there would be some re-scoring to do, but I listened to the midi of the outer sections, and I think it has a lot of what I wanted to do with the piano concerto in it.

It has a free section in the middle, it has a tarantella section/movement at the end. It won't have the Parsifal quotation, but I can live without that. I think I would also still like to use the improvisation section from my concerto sketches, however, I would have to use the Chaos pitch sets, although I can use the same progression, since my set construction is similar.

I know this seems like a cop-out, but I was getting nowhere with what I was doing before.

What I worry about most is the difficulty of the orchestral part. I may have to water it down, and I'll certainly have to rebar sections.

So what is left to do on it?

1. Rescore for orchestra, expanding the piano part.
2. Incorporate the improvisation section into the middle section.
3. Write the ending.
4. Decide whether I want to add an introductory section. It starts with a bang right now. Based on the opening of Paradise Lost, it probably should, but I might want to expand the opening section in that case.

New beginnings

I started over again last weekend, but I think this isn't the one either.

In case you are wondering, I have two fall-back positions. I have always wanted to orchestrate Solomon's Seal as a piano concerto, and that is one option. I also have 2/3rd of a band piece that could easily be reworked as a piano concerto. The piano has a prominent role already, so it would be a matter of expanding that a bit and removing the saxophones and adding strings. I'm going to have another look at it. That would require the least work.

There is another option. I have the beginning of another piano concerto that was supposed to be for a small orchestra. There is less of it, but that could be expanded, or even incorporated into the existing plan for the current concerto. However, the pitch content is different.