Problems with Milky Way (Day 120/365)

Posted on by Dale

I’m having real problems with mm. 76-80 of Milky Way, the rat’s sullen complaint and prediction, “What’s gathered by fools in heaven will never endure.”

I want it to sound low and sullen so that the final quatrain sounds elated, but it just sounds gawky and unpleasant. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my orchestration style in this piece can only be described as “pointillistic” or “mosaic-like,” i.e., instruments enter willy-nilly to provide color and then just as suddenly drop out again. But this passage just sounds clumsy.

I thought about taking the low strings and making them pizzicato, but I’m not sure that cellos can actually pluck that kind of sequence, quickly arpeggiated sixteenth notes. Perhaps they could divide them up?

Part of the problem also is that I’ve scored it in patches, so that there’s truly not a smooth transition from one measure to the next, and whole voices just disappear.

It’s all a matter of balance, I suppose, and finding the will to tinker with it. I’m so close to the end!!

A little progress, and a connection (Day 117/365)

Posted on by Dale

I got back to work on Milky Way today, hacking my way through the rat’s sullen complaining. If I can adhere to some kind of schedule, I should be through with this piece by next weekend. Then it’s just Make Way and Tale of the Tailor for orchestration. (Marmalade Man was conceived in practically full orchestration already. Piece of cake.)

I have not posted any updated mp3s for that.

Tonight, I went to Amazon to find a book of poetry of Nancy Willard’s called In a Salt Marsh, a poem from which was sent by Knopf Poetry as part of its April Poetry Month emails this past spring. While I was there, I looked at some of her other books, and there was one from last year of which I had been unaware. It’s called Sweep Dreams, and it’s illustrated by Mary GrandPré.

First of all, of course, Mary GrandPré is the illustrator of the American editions of Harry Potter, but more than that, she is the sister of Tom GrandPré, aka Captain Shubian himself. Can we all say Six Degrees?

Out of our minds 2 (Day 115/365)

Posted on by Dale

I read chapter two in Sir Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds, wherein he examines what he calls the septic focus in education and society on purely academic skills. He explains where our respect for this narrow set of human activity has come from and the impact (both positive and negative) it has had on the world.

He looks at IQ as a factor in academicism and at the (same) skills that particular number purports to measure. He also looks at the assumptions underlying England’s “eleven-plus” exam, which separates the sheep from the goats at the end of sixth form. All are found wanting.

Continue reading “Out of our minds 2 (Day 115/365)” →

More CSS reading (Day 114/365)

Posted on by Dale

I read more in my CSS books, and I’m beginning to get a handle on how this whole thing works.

However, I am also formulating a theory that just like all other technological tools, most of what it’s used for is irrelevant. I like, I prefer, well-designed sites, brochures, letters, etc., but while all the examples in the book and on the website itself are lovely, there is some level at which I just don’t see the point.

I guess my main quandary is I have no clue as to what I would redesign my website to look like. I mean, it’s got quiet, sophisticated colors, and the layout is plain vanilla, but honestly, what more would I need? All the real action is over here in the blog.

CSS reading (Day 113/365)

Posted on by Dale

I spent a lot of today reading through two new books I bought on CSS: The CSS Anthology: 101 essential tips, tricks & hacks, and The Zen of CSS Design: visual enlightenment for the web.

The latter is devoted to explicating the contents of the website csszengarden.com, a pioneer in getting web designers to consider CSS as a design force. I had encountered it before, but never really needed to look at it in depth.

The concept is pretty interesting: the site has a single HTML file, and scores of approaches to that single page using CSS to lay it out. WARNING! TECHNICAL EXPLANATION AHEAD: HTML was originally developed to mark up research papers (and the web was originally developed to share research papers.) It was never meant to be a layout tool. Before long, the designers wanted layout capability, so frames and tables were developed, i.e., ways of chopping up your screen into little squares that your browser would reassemble to match what the designer wanted you to see.

However, we are all supposed to despise frames and tables now. (Actually, we’ve been despising frames for some years now. It’s hard to keep up.) Nowadays, CSS is what all the cool kids use to spank HTML into submission.

I’ve cheated in redesigning my main website by using templates provided by DreamWeaver. However, I’ve modified the template to meet my needs, and now I’m thinking about making it a little more elegant if I can figure out exactly what that might look like. From what I can tell on csszengarden, it’s all about using images as backgrounds. It’s all very complicated and, I’m afraid, time consuming. Still, I’ve had some cool ideas about the eventual William Blake website that I think will dazzle.

First, though, I think I’m going to redesign and rescue the production photos from Figaro. At the moment, they’re still in the old NCTC design, using tables. Quel recherché.