Category: Creativity

Creating something every day for 365 days

Lichtenbergian goals from 2015

Posted on by Dale

Hi there!  I’ve been busy getting A Christmas Carol on its feet, so apologies all round for the lack of fabulously interesting content around here.  But now the Lichtenbergian Annual Meeting[1] is upon us and I must take a look back to see how well I’ve done on my goals for this past year.  Let’s take a look, shall we?

Seven Dreams

Nada.  After I finished Dream One last year, I was waiting on my librettist, C. Scott Wilkerson, to provide more text for our opera (based on his play Seven Dreams of Falling, a retelling of the Icarus myth).  Alas, he’s been caught up in finishing his PhD, so I twiddled my thumbs.  There were some abortive attempts to set the opening and ending of Dream Three since I knew what it was going to be, but I failed utterly to crack that nut.

3 Old Men

Check.  My goal was to expand the camp, which we did but not in the way I originally intended.  As documented here, I constructed fabric “walls” to go over the tent stakes of the labyrinth, replacing the yellow rope and improving its looks quite some.  We also added some really cool new Old Men to the camp, one of whom brought fire art to the entire concept.

Five Easier Pieces

Done! I can check it off my list, where it has been for at least two years.

Christmas Carol

My goals for Christmas Carol for this year were a) finding an affordable software music sequencer that works like the old EZ•Vision sequencer did; b) learning to use it; and c) completely rescoring Christmas Carol again with a full orchestral accompaniment.  And d) directing the show.  I did it all and infinitely more.

SUN TRUE FIRE

It remained a back burner project.

design & construction of labyrinths

Not a major goal to begin with, I designed two labyrinths for “clients” that ended up being unnecessary.  Still, a pleasant diversion.

general work habits

This one was a success—I re-established a daily routine that worked for me and actually was more productive than the short list above would indicate. The principles of Lichtenbergianism teach us that having goals is important even especially if they only serve to provide reference points to avoid, and that’s what happened here.

Next…

Lichtenbergian goals for 2016—let’s see what comes out of my mouth at the Meeting.

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[1] For those just joining us, the Lichtenbergian Society is my group of friends who support each other in their willingness to procrastinate their way to creative success.

Easier Piece #5: another update

Posted on by Dale

Soooo close…

The end is particularly wonky, but I can’t decide if it’s dazzlingly kaleidoscopic or just inept.

Easier Piece #5 (12/17/15): mp3

update:  Oops, I finished it.  (Minor futzing, and a tweak to the ending.)

Originally, I intended the piece to be a nocturne, a dreamy quiet  finish to the five pieces, and definitely more Arvo Pärt than it turned out to be.  Oh well.  I suppose I could make it Six Easier Pieces, but then I’d have to put it on next year’s Lichtenbergian goals.  Not going to happen.

I’ve left a lot of the articulation of the moving parts to the pianist, although there are a couple of deliberate staccatos in there that anyone who plays this should feel free to ignore.

Now, are these pieces actually easier to play?  Compared to Six Fugues (no preludes) they are, but are they in fact objectively five easier pieces?  Someone who can actually play should play them and tell me.  #playdalesmusic

Five Easier Pieces: No. 5 (Sonatine) | score [pdf] | mp3

Five Easier Pieces, an abortive attempt

Posted on by Dale

I don’t know when I became averse to posting my abortive attempts, but I think it’s true that I have.  I’d like to be generous and say that it’s because I like to surprise and delight my readers with a finished product, but the truth is probably closer to the fact that when what I’m working on is a deliberately “simpler” piano piece that will probably be only two minutes long, I don’t want anyone to know how ineptly I struggle with hacking my way through it.

I’ve whined before about not being able to play the piano and how it hampers my growth/expertise as a composer, and never has that been more true than with these bagatelles.  (Another whine: my USB keyboard is extremely unreliable inside Finale, and today even playback volume became quirky.  There’s an upgrade, but I can’t apply it until Christmas Carol is over in case it borks everything, which is what happened several upgrades ago.)

Oh well.

Here’s “Easier Piece #5” as of today: mp3 (only about 30 seconds of music; the rest is blank measures that I will fill up.  With genius.)

<ETA> Here’s what I like about the piece so far: I like the way that the moving parts feel as if they are not bound by a specific meter.  It sounds like it’s trying to be a waltz, but the bass line won’t cooperate.  I like the almost clichéd fillip at the end of the main melody.  I like the potential of the second theme, and the work I’ve done on the piece since posting this morning leads me to believe that it will end up as a sonata allegro.  More later.

Christmas Carol: Overture!

Posted on by Dale

Here’s something you haven’t heard in nearly fifteen years: the Overture to Christmas Carol.

You may recall that last year, I labored for half a year to reconstitute the score for a small ensemble which never materialized.  None of the original computer/MIDI files existed any more, and so I had to work from my original handwritten piano score.  This was not a problem.  But the overture was never written down—I composed it directly in the computer using the sequencing software EZ•Vision (which no longer exists.)

I was going to have to recompose the piece from the ground up, although I had a pretty firm idea that it consisted of the Christmas Waltz, 20 Questions, and People Like Us.  Since the music I wrote last year never got used, I was gratified that I didn’t put the effort into the overture.

This year, though, I wanted my overture back.  I cobbled together the opening by copy/pasting the Christmas Waltz, then pieced together the 20 Questions sequence—and then I just laid it to the side and ignored it for months.  This week, though, since we open a week from tonight, I figured I’d better get in there and finish it.[1]

Today, I opened it up and began working, and by lunch I was mostly finished. Bits of “A Reason for Laughter” sneaked in, and I quite like that section—it’s definitely my recent style as opposed to my 20-something self.  The final half is a neat orchestration of the “People Like Us” canon, and while it resembles what I remember from 20 years ago it, too, is more of my recent style.

The rest of today has been Successive Approximation all the way, as I tweaked and added and subtracted—then after premiering it at tonight’s rehearsal, I heard tons more that needed fixing. Tomorrow, I’ll probably futz with it again, but for the moment, Behold! An Overture!

Christmas Carol Overture | mp3

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[1] The other impetus was that I discovered yesterday that I have to gear up and supervise the construction of almost all the gowns in the show.  In a week.

Lichtenbergianism: some progress

Posted on by Dale

I have been surprised at my assiduity in writing Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy.

Here you can see that I have all that I need:

  • computer
  • coffee
  • reference works1
  • Assistive Feline™
  • new agey Pandora station (not shown)

Thus girded, I have written and written and written.  If I have a goal of 25,000 words total, I am 370 words short of being halfway there.

I know this because Scrivener, the authoring software I’m using, allows me to track my progress.  I’ve set a putative deadline of April 12, 2016, which is totally arbitrary of course, but the fun thing is that if I click the little “calculate session goal from deadline” thingie, then I only have to write like 130 words a day.  Pfft.  After allowing myself to revel in the idea that this is a really doable goal even for a Lichtenbergian, I turned it off and went back to a still-modest 500 words/day.

Still, today I knocked out more than 800 words, and that’s not bad at all.  I may be up to 1,000 by the end of the day, should I decide to keep writing rather than making cookies for Fuzzy Labyrinth holiday sales.  Or reading more on The Gift, an influential piece of work on my thoughts about creativity.

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[1] I begin to realize the daunting task ahead of me in obtaining permission, even in a research setting, to use other people’s work in mine, particularly Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s aphorisms as translated by R. J. Hollingdale.

Lichtenbergianism: a realization

Posted on by Dale

I was mulling it over and thinking that I want Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy to be a relatively short book.  I mean, it’s not a weighty philosophy to begin with, so I’m thinking it ought to be about the same length as Art & Fear.

So this afternoon I took my copy of Art & Fear out to the labyrinth to do a quick estimation of the word count and came up with about 34,000 words.

Well.

I already have 9,800 words just from transcribing my notes from the Waste Book [Precept #4].  Without even getting started, really, I’m anywhere from a quarter to a third of the way to my goal.

Cool.

Lichtenbergianism: oy.

Posted on by Dale

While on the Lichtenbergian Retreat last weekend, I may or may not have started writing Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy.

The stone is Fancy Jasper; its woo apparently “encourages not to procrastinate, helps make positive plans for the future, stimulates creativity and self-discipline.” So I have that going for me.

I’m using a piece of software that I’ve owned for quite a while but have never used for anything, Scrivener.  Apparently while I wasn’t paying attention, it’s become a major player in the “let’s write a book” arena.  So far, I have really enjoyed using it to transcribe all my notes from my Waste Book, and now as I begin to flesh the text out, I find that it’s performing exactly as advertised for keeping everything organized.

If I come up with anything worth sharing, I’ll let you know.

A short break

Posted on by Dale

We will take a short break from examining the REMS Scale of Woo, mostly because I don’t have the next post ready to go.  We will resume our regularly scheduled blatherings tomorrow.

Thank you for your patience.