One step forward, five steps sideways.

In playing with the tone-row that is the theme of Prelude No. 6, I transposed some notes octavewise to smooth out some of the spiky leaps , and found that the two halves of the theme are identical and lead into each other. I could make the harmonies of each half the same, but that would be boring.

The bigger problem is that, left to itself, the theme is static in the extreme. I will have to break it up to get it to go anywhere.

I played with several modulations, mostly rhythmical. None are grabbing me at this point. I am truly in the phase of creating a lot of crap.

I did write an ending which grew on me.

The situation is this: I have to take that step out into the void and create such weird, useless, lame crap that something decent will appear in order to balance it out.

As promised, I have been stabbing away at Prelude (no fugue) No. 6, and by George, I think I’ve got it. So naturally I’m taking a break.

First of all, it occurred to me that the sounds (“Piano Moods” by one Herbert Boland) I had downloaded from freesound.com to make a warning sound for my teaching periods at school would make awesome ringtones. Thanks, Herbert!

(I used GarageBand to combine three minutes worth of Boland’s sounds to make this warning sound. We’ll be deep in some kind of info skills work, and from nowhere comes the sound of the “time fairies,” as the kids have nicknamed it. Very gentle, very nice, and it gives us three minutes to put our work away and get ready to leave.)

So, Prelude No. 6. I had sketched out a nice little ditty previously, but set it aside to see what else I could come up with. (Here’s the mp3 of that sketch.) This morning, I started afresh with a quiet, simple theme which I then could repeat at a fugue-like interval: Prelude 6-2_sketch. There’s the opening thematic statements, then a little break, then a trial run of how I could play with the theme and defeat the expectation of the fugue.

Then I took a break, since it was going well, of course, and picked up a book, Labyrinths, by Sig Lonegren, which I had not opened in months. Just kind of thumbed through it and all of its New Age-y moonbattery. That’s where I found, on p. 139, his correlation of the paths of the 11-circuit labyrinth (mine is a 7-circuit) to the notes of the scale. Well, who could resist that?

So now I have a twelve-tone row, which I am treating as a tonal progression, in a non-fugue kind of way. To wit: Prelude 6-3_sketch. Notice the nice opening theme, which leads into a fugal statement. There’s a break, and then I try out a chord progression for the notes, both in the tonic and the dominant.

That’s where I am at the moment. It’s lunch time, and I’m happy. Now all I have to do is write the damned thing.

Oh, and the first one I think is going to be used in the cello sonata.

I sat down last night determined, not to write Prelude (no fugue) No. 6, but to futz around on the keyboard until I had some valid ideas. Further, I decided not to do it on the computer screen, i.e., in Finale, but to use my Moleskine music sketchbook for the purpose for which I bought it.

So for two hours I tinkled and banged and tried to explore. I wrote down three motifs. I came up with nothing.

It occurred to me this morning that if I rely on what I can do with piano and paper, then all I’m going to get is John W. Schaum’s Purple Book at best, because that’s the level of my pianistic ability. So tonight I will return to the method that produced the other Preludes, which is actually a version of drawing the music on the computer screen.

I fiddled with Prelude (no fugue) No. 5. score | mp3

In short, I removed m. 17 and smoothed that break over, and adjusted the implied chord progression at the end. It’s tighter and better.

I’m still working on Prelude (no fugue) No. 5. It’s giving me fits, largely I think because it’s not the kind of music “I” write. I’m having to discover how to handle themes and motifs that are not a natural part of my musical language.

I persevere, however. I’m going to have at least some idea of how to structure it by lunchtime today. Which is 30 minutes away, so I’d better stop blogging and start banging my head against the keyboard. Figuratively.

update: Tell me what you think. I know what I think.

Prelude (no fugue) No. 5: score | mp3

(The first four Preludes can be found here.)

I’ve been working—I really have—on Prelude (no fugue) No. 5, and I’m making progress. My problem is finding the time. You would think that since I have no evening commitments on the calendar, this week would have been a good time to dig in and figure out how to make it work.

Sadly, no.

By the time I get supper made, get supper eaten, and touch base with my lovely first wife, it is deep into the evening. I am lucky to get even an hour of time in my study, and since it takes me 20 minutes to disentangle my brain from everything but what’s in front of it, that’s not a lot of time before my body is saying that it’s time to call it quits for another day.

I have made progress. It was solid and was saying essentially what I wanted it to say, but last night I took a crowbar to it and broke it open, and suddenly it threatened to veer out of control , and that’s a good thing. So now I’m faced with continuing that energy into the middle and end of the piece. Will I have time to do that?

This weekend, of course, is given over to relaxing, although I may have time on Sunday to squeeze in a few notes. Next week I have to revamp the GHP parent video, so there’s limited time there. Plus it’s my lovely first wife’s birthday, which is always festive.

It makes me wonder whether I’m going to get a cello sonata written by October.