Should ...

As expected I've been procrastinating. While I've been waiting for proofs of Oyre's Garden and Chaos, I've fiddled around with my Symphony No. 2. It's needed a minor revision, and I also wanted to finally typeset it. Nobody wants to perform off hand-copied originals anymore. I had input about half the first movement into Sibelius at some point a few years ago, so I've spent the past week inputting the rest and making the amendments. I've also clarified some notation and fixed some wrong notes.

It's printing out now, and I'll take my time proofing it. Setting an 82 page score in a little over a week, is moving quite quickly, so I want to make certain everything is right.

So the current timeline is:

Chaos: proofs to arrive early next week, should go live shortly thereafter.

Oyre's Garden: proofs to arrive next week, there were some strange errors flagged up by Createspace, so I need to check it carefully.

Symphony No. 2: I will proof it sometime over the next 3 weeks, and then upload it. ETA, end of January. Although, Spring semester begins mid-month, and I have to prepare for that, as well as do a parts job by the middle of the month. I also have to prepare to conduct Remembering the Night Sky for the performance 31 Jan. 2016.

It's going to be a busy month.

New arrangement

I've been quiet here, but I've been busy.

Firstly, I think Chaos is just about ready to upload to Createspace, and ultimately Amazon. I've edited the harp part, but I may have one more look through the score before finalizing it.

In the meantime, I've finish an arrangement of Remembering Child for a performance in Syracuse at the end of January (http://www.societyfornewmusic.org/concerts.cfm), and I'm expecting proofs in the mail in the next few days to approve. I'll post an announcement. This the first score with my own digital artwork, and I'm hoping it looks good. I'm not sure about the scaling of the jpeg. I may have to go back to one of their stock images. Someday, I hope I'll be able to supply real artwork for my covers.

I've also set the original version with piano, but it's too few pages to publish on Createspace. It's only 16 pages and the minimum is 24. Front matter takes it up to 18, but that is still 6 pages short. I could publish my sax quartet with it as a bonus, or possibly Mirage, which I haven't typeset yet, but it is only a couple of pages long. It's a solo alto piece with loads of multiphonics, key clicks, and pops. I might consult on it first. Some of the multiphonics are awkward, and I might try to find some notes with smoother fingerings approaching and leaving them.

There are two more works on the horizon. Firstly, I have another piece to write for the Society for New Music - for next season. Also, I've been sketching a wind ensemble piece based on Bach's harmonization and my reharmonization of Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. I'll give more details on that later.

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.