Despite its being Christmas Eve, I have forced myself to tackle the next bit of Make Way. I had orchestrated the Rabbit’s entrance in a very restrained manner, and today I looked at the next twenty measures or so, moving through the Wise Cow’s reply to the opening of her waltz.

On the whole, I think it’s not even there yet. I was working in SoftSynth mode to save memory, but when I tried it in Garritan Personal Orchestra, it sounded so different that I think I will have to continue in memory-suck mode.

My mind’s not really tuned into it, of course, so I’m not sure whether what I hacked out today is going to stand. It’s not very subtle. What I may need to do is go straight to the last stanzas and orchestrate the big finish, then back up from there.

I may also try backing off some of the orchestra and letting the piano handle some of the chordal accompaniment for the first stanzas. It’s what I’m used to hearing anyway…

This is proving an interesting challenge, because this piece was one I sketched out many years ago but didn’t actually write until we returned from Scotland, i.e., 2003, and as such is representative of my “mature” style, just more solid in structure and development. I like it a lot; I think it’s quite a nice piece, and making the transfer from piano score to orchestra is difficult. Like Milky Way, it has got to sound exactly “right” to fulfill its promise. And at the moment I’m not sure I’m getting it exactly right.

That’s the joy of using the computer, though: it can be wrong again and again, and I can just switch instruments until finally it is exactly right. Whether I achieve that by January 9/10 is another question.