Today I burned copies of the CD for the seven members of the Jan. 10 ensemble, made labels for them, printed complete piano/vocal scores for them, wrote a letter of introduction/instruction, collated everything, and got them ready to go out the door.
So far, we have Anne Tarbutton, Denise Meacham, Mary Frances Glover, Ginny Lyles, Matthew Bailey, Marc Honea, and me. I’d like to have one more tenor just for balance.
Next, a guest list (other than Lacuna) for the evening.
No music today, but I did do something fairly creative: I made a slide presentation showing third graders how to find their name (or something close to it) in the encyclopedia. It’s to give some classes extra practice in understanding and using the guide words at the top of the page. What, you can’t just browse from page to page?
Normally, of course, I eschew PowerPoint. PowerPoint kills. But this was all pictures that told a story, and I didn’t use PowerPoint, of course, I used Apple’s Keynote. Prettier and simpler, if that counts for anything.
The lesson itself went over pretty well. The kids, whose lackluster performance in previous lessons inspired the slide show, actually did a not bad job and did it with something approaching gusto. Young Mr. Porter was delighted to find that he had heard “Anything Goes” before, while Mr. Goncerzewicz was a little frustrated.
Today I went through the whole score and double-checked the lyrics against Nancy Willard’s poetry. It is astonishing the number of discrepancies I found. You would think that after twenty years of working on this I would have the woman’s work memorized. You would be wrong.
Nothing egregious, mind you, but enough slips to make me go through all fifteen pieces with a fine tooth comb. They are all now corrected and ready to print out for a piano-vocal score for the small chorus to sing on January 10.
Minimal activity today: after I printed out the orchestral score of Milky Way on Friday, I noticed that the title was wrong. Since I had used Sun and Moon Circus as the template for my orchestrations, Milky Way still had that title, both on the first page and as headers subsequently. So today I’ve gone through to doublecheck all those files so that an incorrect title won’t be a reason for me to have to print out a score again. Didn’t take long, which leaves me time to consider other items.
For example, I’m thinking the tabloid paper (11×17) I used is not going to be big enough for a conductor’s score. The notes were tiny. However, the tabloid setting is the largest that Finale seems to handle. I guess. I haven’t installed the 2007 version yet. I have trepidations.
The good news is that last night I got an e-newsletter from Gary Garritan, he of the Garritan Personal Orchestra sounds that have been giving me such trouble computer-memory-speaking-wise. He was letting us know that the German company who makes the Kontakt Player has updated that program to work with the new Intel Macs, and that he would have his stuff re-coded by the beginning of the year. This is a Huzzah, folks, because it removes any qualms I had about sinking huge dollar amounts into a new laptop. We’ll see what Apple announces in January.
Since we’re beginning to move forward in a definite way on William Blake, the need for the new laptop becomes real: I need reliable sound-making for demos and for rehearsal CDs and such. Also, orchestrating the remaining big pieces won’t be such a big hairy deal.
However, I also am going to need a big ol’ laser printer at some point to print the conductor’s score. Those are even more expensive than the laptop, and I cannot justify that expenditure at all.
In other news, I have watched two videos in the last week or so that have really inspired me. One was Uncommon Sense: the art and imagination of Nancy Willard, a short 2003 documentary of Nancy Willard’s artwork. She does these beautiful, unsettling assemblages, the people and creatures which inhabit her writing. (Yes, she has the Inn, and I’m thinking we need an exhibit of her work to accompany the premiere.)
The other video is on a DVD which includes Powers of Ten, a film by Charles & Ray Eames, the husband and wife design team. The other film on the DVD is 901: after 45 years of working. Made by the couple’s grandson, it’s a tour of the studio at 901 Washington Boulevard in Venice, California, which Ray had decided should be shut down and dispersed in the event of her death. Before this happened, the filmmaker documented the space and the materials and the work.
Both videos show what truly creative people can do given the necessary freedom. Willard does hers on a small, personal scale, while the Eames’s work was international in its scope and impact, but both involve the assemblage of disparate elements in often surreal but always striking ways.
It occurred to me that this is the environment we need to establish to work on William Blake: a studio of resources, both personal and material, that will feed the creative energies of the company. Easier said than done, of course. Both Willard and the Eames maintain huge stockpiles of stuff, the raw materials of their dreams. We have no place for that. Any storyboarding/flowcharting we do has to be stowed before we leave and put back up the next time we work. That’s going to hamper us in small but definite ways.
What we need is a storefront somewhere we can use for the next year or so to get this thing ready. Yep, that’s what we need all right.
I meant to write this last week, but was caught up in decorating duty. And actually, if I’m going to be honest, this is actually being written on Sunday, since I was on decorating duty yesterday also. But today the Empress of Decorating has gone on an excursion, and I am free to get some other stuff done. For example, after I write yesterday’s post, I will work on something for today.
This is another entry in my “With My Lottery Winnings” series, something I haven’t done in a long while. But last Friday’s Times Arts section got to me. So let’s see what I would have been doing if I had been in New York last week. We’ll just go through the two sections page by page and see what’s up.
First of all, I have to compliment my readers for resisting commentary on the phrase “My father had Speedball nibs” which was nestled in yesterday’s post. Damned mature of everyone, I must say, unless Jobie hasn’t read the post yet.
Now we’re off to a hospital holiday function, but before I go, a liberal rant:
So Mary Cheney is going to have a baby. I think that is fabulous, and I wish her and Heather the best.
This is not to say that I am not watching with raised eyebrows and pursed lips the inevitable reactions from Cheney pere’s constituency. One can really not make this stuff up.
I took a break from the music today and instead went to http://www.myfonts.com to browse and see if I could find a typeface that absolutely must be the logofont for William Blake’s Inn.
I got through 50-something pages of 177, each with 24 fonts on it. I’ll do the rest today or this weekend. I love fonts. I absolutely love them. I don’t know why I’m this way, but I recognized early, like fourth or fifth grade, that I was really turned on by Old English or calligraphy. It is not a choice, it’s the way I was born.
Done, for a ducat!
The orchestration of 10. Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way is done. Or at least the first draft is done. There are still a couple of measures that I’m sure I will revisit, but for now, it’s finished.
Here is the mp3 of the completed orchestration.
So, what next? Here are our choices:
I rather think I’ll leave Marmalade Man till last, since it’s already mostly orchestrated. What does everyone else think?
I didn’t get to work on any music today, this is driving me nuts, because first I had a meeting at school with some parents, and then I had decorating duty.
The meeting at school was a good one: parents of students who are going to try the 100 Book Club project. It was informational, to answer any questions they might have about the whole thing. I’m assuming that those who didn’t come have already checked out the web page I set up for answers.
So I was working on something creative, just not THE PROJECT I NEED TO FINISH UP AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!
I have nothing scheduled for tomorrow night. Maybe I can sneak in those last six measures of Milky Way before decorating duty hits.