Category: music

Creating something every day for 365 days: the music

Updating Blake (Day 176/365)

Posted on by Dale

I’m at a hotel in Lithia Springs, staying overnight as the GHP interviews get under way. After I checked in this afternoon, I decided to go ahead and start converting all the orchestral scores from Finale 2006 to Finale 2007.

I got the first two pieces done, not without some scary moments: a ritard in William Blake’s Inn froze the notes. I thought I had a dead file, but deleting the ritard marking fixed everything.

Since I now have enough memory to work Finale properly, I’ve begun rethinking some of the orchestration. For example, I’ve added a lovely gong to the opening and closing of the first piece. The next time you hear some of these, they’re going to sound subtly different!

Another hearing (Day 175/365)

Posted on by Dale

Other than the run-of-the-mill creativity at school (banners and handouts and such), I didn’t really create anything today. Tonight, I did have the opportunity to expose a few more people to William Blake’s Inn. Ginny’s book club had their first meeting of the year, and she and Bette decided that their first book ought to be A Visit to William Blake’s Inn. They invited me to talk about the music and the production, so I did. The Ladies of the Club were impressed.

Then I retreated to my study to catch up on some reading.

Workshop (Day 174/365)

Posted on by Dale

Wow o wow o wow!

Tonight we had our first workshop for William Blake’s Inn. In attendance were Marc and Molly Honea, Carol Lee Shankel, Melissa Houghton, Laura Lambert, Brenda Weaver, and me.

I brought everybody up to speed on what we were doing there, and what our eventual options were for the backers audition in May: we could stage a piece, we could stage puppet version of a piece (to show what an elaborate staging would look like), or we could project designs/sketches/ideas of a piece.

We passed out the scores and scripts to our three pieces, and we listened to all three. I sang them.

Then Marc talked about some approaches he had taken to coming up with ideas for the songs. We decided to work on Sun & Moon Circus first, so I rolled out a long piece of paper and taped it to the mirror.

We listened to the piece again, and wrote down images and thoughts and moods and feelings and ideas and characters.

Then we shared, and this is going to be the most fun, coming up with all the ideas that we can then use as staging. Marc contributed the idea of the Tiger and King of Cats, et al., having a magic slide show in their room. Among the images they’re watching are the Sun and Moon. Tiger begins to hear noises and gets spooked. I talked about how the music was both ominous and anticipatory.

Other ideas: the Rabbit as butler, turning into a ringmaster. The Inn as the living quarters for children’s toys, and the children have come for a visit. Angels outside the inn with the chime that recurs in the music, like on a clock. The Sun and Moon appearing on swings, or on circus drums. The Sun and Moon both as dancers and as puppets.

The Inn in the background with puppet versions of the characters we see later close up. A fullscale circus at the end of the song, with tumblers, angel tightrope walkers, clowns. The Tiger is pushed to jump through a hoop.

Several of us realized up front that one thing we have to keep in mind is what children will do in each piece. Since I originally wrote the work as a song cycle for adult chorus, I especially have to think about working children into the vocal texture.

Lots more ideas as well, but you get the picture.

We then watched the documentary on Nancy Willard, Uncommon Sense. She is amazing, both as a writer and as an artist. Very inspiring.

Homework for next week: draw/paint/collage a moment from Sun & Moon Circus. This is going to be fabulous!

I’m a composer (Day 173/365)

Posted on by Dale

Seeing the article in the paper on Sunday was an interesting experience. For one thing, there was the surprise; I had expected the Times-Herald to publish it earlier in the week, and when they didn’t I assumed they had just tossed it. So it was a pleasant surprise to see it on Sunday morning.

It was more than pleasant. It was gratifying. The unambiguous headline: “William Blake’s Inn Moves into Production.” The outright definition of Lacuna as a local theatre cooperative. The ridiculously oversized photo of me and the flowers, with the sly caption about William Blake having sent the flowers from Poughkeepsie.

And more than all this, I realized, the shock accorded by the leap of faith it took for me to call myself “composer Dale Lyles.”

I am sure there are those who read the article and who snorted at the designation. I don’t think I’d be surprised at a list of those names, either. But over the past year or so, I have come to a new understanding of myself in that regard, and I am more than comfortable calling myself a composer.

Am I a trained musician? Nope, other than paying attention under various choral directors. Do I know one chord inversion from another? Maybe. If it’s a triad. In the home key. Could I write a susp. aug. 9th chord? Not if my life depended on it. (I’m not really even sure whether “susp. aug. 9th chord” is a real thing.)

But am I a composer? Yes, I am. I write music. I write lovely, effective music, and I’m getting better at it all the time. The last two pieces I’ve written, Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way, and the Epilogue, are very nice indeed. Those who might snort at my calling myself a composer have not heard this work.

That sounds a little defensive, and I don’t mean it to be. My point is that I think I’ve reached a new plateau in my creative efforts and can ditch some of my insecurities. I can make music do what I want it to, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s what a composer does.

Video & DVDs (Day 172/365)

Posted on by Dale

In getting ready for Wednesday night’s first workshop, I’ve transferred some video to a DVD project for the first time. I have to say that the amount of creativity I have actually had to dig down and find is minimal, because Apple’s iDVD is a gorgeous thing: by the time I actually buy DVDs to burn, I’ll have put together a very simple and very beautiful product without even trying.

However, it has inspired me to get the video presentation for the backers audition started, using Final Cut Express to edit all the Scotland video, plus video footage we shoot during the workshop. This is a pretty exciting tool to be using. I had forgotten how much fun video editing can be, and now with a fast supercomputer to play with, it should be even more fun.
And what I come up with will impress the backers, and we all know that’s the most important thing.

Speaking of which, the Times-Herald ran the article about the First Look in yesterday’s paper, with a huge picture of me and the flowers. Very impressive. Of course, the article was so short that the picture had to be huge to fill the space. Still, it has given the whole project a sense of permanence and validity. I can’t wait to get started on this!

Planning & Thinking (Day 171/365)

Posted on by Dale

Today I struggled a little with the Lacuna site’s link issue, but not a lot. I also struggled with getting Retrospect Express to back up the new laptop on my new backup drive, but to no avail. It came with the drive, but I think I’ll go back to ChronoSync.

Anyway, otherwise, etc., I did some thinking about Wednesday night and how we might proceed. Marc was over for dinner, so we chatted briefly about it. Mostly, we will introduce the work for those who aren’t familiar with it, then outline what we need to get done before May, define some ways we can go about that, and then get to work.

I still need to read over the puppetry exercises in The Complete Book of Puppetry.

Almost nothing (Day 168/365)

Posted on by Dale

Recovering from illness and a full day back at work. I did get email from John Wilson, the gentleman in Scotland who will be responsible on that end for bringing students to Newnan for William Blake’s Inn. So that part of the job is revving up. It’s also GHP time, with interviews starting next weekend. So that job is revving up.

So much to do, so much to do, and so little brainpower with which to address it all.

Meeting the agenda (Day 166/365)

Posted on by Dale

I did two out of three of my projected goals for today, plus one.

I wrote Nancy Willard a full report on the First Look and will mail that tomorrow.

I explored http://www.vyew.com and I think it will suit our needs admirably. Anyone can join the “room” where we are working and add ideas. We can all meet at the same time and chat while we work, or we can arrive at our own schedule and work through whatever is there. We can leave sticky note comments. We can upload and download all kinds of files. One thing I don’t think we can do is embed actual hyperlinks, but as long as we can leave a text block with the URL, that should be enough.

With this kind of thing at our disposal, we don’t have to wait until Wednesday nights to share ideas. In fact, we could all meet at the coffee shop or at Fabiano’s/Alamo Jack’s and have our “meeting” there.

I did not get around to mapping out the workshops yet. I’ll do that with Marc; plus, I have a ferocious cold coming on. Again.

The other non-agenda’d item I did today was to purchase the domain name for lacunagroup.org. In a week, the group should have its own website, with a front page and two blogs, one of them for general group discussion, and a separate one for Marc’s theatre training posts.

The laptop has reached Anchorage.

Nothing big (Day 165/365)

Posted on by Dale

Nothing big today, like orchestrating Make Way or Tale of the Tailor. (Besides, I’m waiting for my laptop, remember? It has left Shanghai.) But in the midst of the continuing undecoration of the house, I did get some smaller things done.

I wrote an article for the newspaper about the First Look on Wednesday. I got the blogpost for Wednesday written (vid. sub.).

I mailed the orchestral score for Milky Way to Stephen Czarkowski, a conductor friend of mine, for his perusal.

I emailed my Senators and Representative, urging them to tell Bush to fire that ******* Charles D. Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs. I emailed the White House and the Pentagon, and for good measure wrote Robert Gates a letter. If I disappear in the night, listen for the black helicopters.

I cleaned off my desk and drafting table because I know in the next few days I’m going to need an uncluttered space for a couple of projects. I have to plan the upcoming workshop with Marc. I have to edit the GHP parent orientation video. I have a new laptop arriving and will have boatloads of new software to install: Finale 2007, Adobe Creative Suite, and Macromedia Studio 8, all of which are upgrades and which I’ve held off installing until I got the new computer; and iWork 06 and Final Cut Express HD, which are upgrades.

I’ve thought about how I will spend my time tomorrow, when I’m off for the holiday: I’m going to block out ideas for the workshop. I’m going to explore www.vyew.com. I’ll write a full report on the First Look to send to Nancy Willard. If I’m thorough, that should be enough.

Musings (Day 163/365)

Posted on by Dale

This was one of those days where any creativity going on was in my head, ideas and strategies and possibilities stalking around in my head like antsy cats not knowing what they want.

Part of the unsettledness of my thoughts is due to the fact that we are in the middle of undecorating the house. That’s right: it’s the middle of January and we’re just now taking down the Christmas decorations. Well, we never take them down until after New Year’s anyway, but this year we decided to spend time with Grayson rather than undecorate, then we had to take him back to school, then there was the preparation for the First Look… So this is our first chance.

But it also means that I can’t sit down to post about Wednesday night, nor do the report for Nancy Willard, nor a followup article for the newspaper. Three major writings that I can’t get done.

I have ordered a new laptop, huzzah!, so I will finally be able to orchestrate the remaining pieces without the memory hiccups that I’ve been grumbling about. It left Shanghai today, give or take an International Date Line, so I should get it next week. I’ll keep you posted as I obsessively track its progress via FedEx.

And finally, Marc has suggested that we need some kind of online workspace where we can dump the images and websites and ideas we have about each piece in William Blake. I think I’ve found one: http://www.vyew.com. Check it out and see what you think. I didn’t have time to explore it, but it looks as if it’s perfect what our collaborative efforts will require.