Category: Creativity

Creating something every day for 365 days

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.

Very productive day (Day 170/365)

Posted on by Dale

I burned through some assignments today.

I updated the GHP parent orientation video, which was kind of quirky, since (as I mentioned previously) the old Final Cut Pro 3.0 didn’t make the transfer to the new laptop with its authorization intact and I no longer have the installation disks. So I had to use my old laptop to do that. That barely took an hour, and then I was able to set the old laptop to the side and get back to work on the new one. I had the old one rendering the updated sections of video while I moved ahead in other projects on the new one. I could get used to this multiple-computer lifestyle.

I went ahead and blocked out the new Lacuna website. That went smoothly as well, until I made one tiny change to the color of links in one section, and suddenly the links weren’t that color but white, which renders them invisible. I cannot find anything wrong in the CSS file or in the HTML files, and in fact the links look fine in DreamWeaver. It’s just when you get to the actual browser that you can’t see the links in the stories.

To make it even more squirrelly, there’s one page where the link does render correctly. Ah, you say, compare the code between that file and the others! Yes, that would seem to be a good idea, except that all the files are from the same template. I’ll check, but there ought not to be any difference in the HMTL markup.

I’m ready to be composing again. Today’s Writer’s Almanac had Edward Lear’s “The Jumblies” as its poem, and it reminded me how much I want to set that to music. I copied to my Texts folder.

Lacuna website (Day 169/365)

Posted on by Dale

I did a little more futzing around with the new Lacuna website, working with the logo and that kind of thing. In the process I discovered that some key fonts (Avant Garde, for pete’s sake!) had not been copied from the old laptop. That meant booting up the old one and digging through all kinds of weird places to find the missing fonts, and even to figure out which ones were missing.

At any rate, I’m sort of stuck with the site. I don’t really know who it’s for or what it should be saying. The membership, at least when it was active, thrived with just the blog. We don’t really have an “audience” yet who would need some kind of newsletter approach on the front page. So the structure of the site eludes me.

I’ll have to sit down and answer some basic questions about the site before I can proceed. Not a problem. It will make for an interesting Saturday.

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.

Still sick (Day 168/365)

Posted on by Dale

Still sick today, so I didn’t do a lot of anything that required a brain. I did manage to get the new laptop running almost up to speed. Two setbacks: my wireless keyboard does not work with the new keyboard, and the manufacturer “has no plans” to release an updated driver. I’ve stolen the keyboard from the iMac downstairs, but that’s a temporary fix.

The other one is also temporary: every year I have to update the video we show at the GHP parent orientations during the interviews. Just the year, dates, deadlines, that kind of thing. I figured that my new Final Cut Express HD would not open the old Final Cut Pro files, and it doesn’t, but I was a little surprised when Final Cut Pro told me it had to be reinstalled with the original disks. Those were the disks that disappeared on the plane back from Scotland four years ago, of course.

Again, not a real problem. I just edit the video on the old laptop, and then make plans to completely reshoot the video this summer. It’s about time for an update anyway.

I also played around with Lacuna’s new website. Part of the puzzle here is trying to figure out what I want the whole site to look like. The blog idea served us well last spring, but do we still need it? Marc’s part of the blog could very easily be its own sub-partition of the entire site, not just a blog.

And if the blog(s) are not part of the site, then what is? I’m still figuring that part out. And then I need to figure out whether I can make a CSS page a template in DreamWeaver.

And I still have to plan next Wednesday night, the first night of workshop.

Sick (Day 167/365)

Posted on by Dale

I’ve got whatever I had back in December. The good news is that the new laptop made it from Anchorage yesterday to my hands today. I’ve been installing software on it.

The bad news is that I can’t get Finale 2007 to do what I need it to do. The main issue seems to be that the actual instrument files, the Garritan Personal Orchestra, have not been updated to deal with the new Intel chips. Garritan’s website says “late January,” so I can be patient here.

Otherwise, the new computer is not as big a thrill as, say, the previous one was. For one thing, it’s exactly the same, interface-wise, and since I’ve transferred all my files over, there is no difference at this point.

When the orchestra is ready to roll, perhaps then I’ll be excited over my new toy. For the record, using the Finale version of the orchestral sounds (which are lacking tubular bells and a couple of other vital sounds) was a breeze: no memory glitches or holdups.

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.