An Early Breakfast (Day 63/365)

Posted on by Dale

Hey, it’s Monday night, and yes, I had Masterworks Chorale rehearsal, but guess what? I got some orchestration done this afternoon beforehand!

In fact, not only did I orchestrate 6. The King of Cats Orders an Early Breakfast, I orchestrated it twice, so now you get to compare and tell me which one is better. One has a piano, and the other doesn’t.

In both, I’ve used a clarinet to stand in for the vocalist, because he’s a capella for the first half, and the mp3 just was silly, with trumpet fanfares then seconds of silence. The clarinet sounds dumb, but at least you’ll know what the King of Cats is singing.

So here’s the piano score, the mp3 with piano, and the mp3 without piano.

The ones of you who have been paying attention have noticed that I’ve skipped No. 4 and No. 5 in our sequence. So sue me. 4. The Sun and Moon Circus Soothes the Wakeful Guests is almost done; I just want to even out some of the last part of it. 5. The Man in the Marmalade Hat Arrives involves a whole battery of percussion, up to and including a ratchet, and I hate dealing with percussion in the sequencer. Ick, ick, ick.

A rant (Day 62/365)

Posted on by Dale

Perhaps someone with more legal savvy than I can let me know for sure, but I’m thinking I’m right on my perceptions here.

As far as I can tell, the McCain Torture Act, which was passed last week by both the House and Senate with no substantial opposition, has given permission to George W. Bush to

  • arrest me without a warrant, as long as he considers me to be an enemy combatant or even a material supporter of one
  • throw me in a prison of his choosing, without the opportunity to call for legal counsel
  • prevent me (or anyone) from knowing why I have been arrested (the 900-year-old right of habeas corpus, for those who are keeping track)
  • use hearsay evidence or evidence extracted by “alternative examination techniques” against me, to present evidence seized without a warrant (even evidence gotten within the U.S.) and to prevent me or my lawyers (if I’m given one) from examining that evidence
  • acquire evidence from me by “alternative examination techniques” that are not overseen by the Geneva Convention and are at bottom determined by George W. Bush
  • keep me in prison without trial as long as he thinks is necessary without communication or representation
  • prevent me from appealing to any court for relief, or any court from intervening

Please understand what I’m saying: the McCain Torture Act does not specify that these abrogations of U.S. and international law are to be applied only to suspected foreign terrorists, George W. Bush is free to arrest me. And you. And any other citizen of this nation. He has permission from Congress to do so.

And before I hear that whiny conservative rebuttal that nice people don’t have anything to fear, let me point out what they have missed: the McCain Torture Act empowers the President of the U.S. not to have to care about any of that. All he has to do is say you’re an enemy combatant or a supporter of one, and the rest of the machine falls into place. Even if you were innocent, you would never escape the machine: the guarantees of our Constitution no longer apply to you.

If someone can point out where in the McCain Torture Act that these acts are prohibited, I’d be glad to publish that here.

Last week, when I was invited to go meet a visiting Chinese delegation, I used the phrase habeas corpus in discussing current events, and my dinner partner asked if I were a lawyer, because I had used a legal term. The idea that an average citizen might know this term and what it meant did not occur to this citizen of the world’s largest authoritarian society.

Less than 24 hours later, the term ceased to have any real meaning in this society either. After all, as our President said about a year ago, the Constitution is “just a goddamned piece of paper.”

CSS explorations (Day 61/365)

Posted on by Dale

After cleaning house and my desk, I spent most of the day tinkering with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and trying to learn how it works.

Well, I think I know how it works, but getting it to actually perform is another thing. I tried two different approaches at the same time: downloading barebones templates that the author of this book offers on his website, and opening templates from within DreamWeaver. It might seem easier if I actually had a week off and had a chance to sit down with the book and go through it step by step.

I was almost successful in wresting the template to my will, although often I would change the color of a heading in a particular section in the stylesheet, and the actual webpage wouldn’t change at all. My goal is a revamping of my main website.

Another curious frustration is that none of the images I plugged into the page would show up in the browser. I haven’t read anything in my CSS research that suggests I have to trigger the display of images, so that may be tomorrow’s problem to solve.

In other news, we went to Decatur to celebrate Jobie Johnson’s 30th birthday. We left earlyish to make room for younger celebrants, so I’m sure we missed the male strippers.

A tiny change (Day 60/365)

Posted on by Dale

Actually, this was another of those “life of glamor” days, where we attended the reception for Françoise Gilot and the renaming of the gallery at the Centre in her honor.

Still, every little bit helps, and today I fixed the harmony on that one transition in “Milky Way” that has bugged me, and probably everyone who had heard the piece. It’s the one where we’re moving into the Rabbit’s plaint that he’s getting cold. In the sequence of far-ranging chords that come after the main theme, we originally land on E major. This time, we hit E minor for the Rabbit. The problem was that chord between the E minor chord and the Rabbit’s entrance in E minor. Now, you might think that this was easy enough, just back off to B7 or something and come back in. But that didn’t really work for me.

So I played around and ended up going from the C minor chord in the far-ranging sequence into an F# min6 (who knew?) instead of a G# minor and dropping the entire “resolution” measure entirely. I think it works a lot better.

update later: I tinkered with the bass line and now it’s a B9. I’m getting so adventurous.

ASO (Day 59/365)

Posted on by Dale

This life of glamor I lead is eating into my orchestration time. Last night I went to the Atlanta Symphony (accompanied by the lovely Marc). They played Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, and it was gorgeous. They also did VW’s Symphony No. 5, which was a bit of a muddle. But mostly they did Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor,” and it was stupendous.

These days I find myself using concerts as quick lessons in orchestration: how’d that effect work? What about that combination? Don’t forget that texture. And so forth.

Last night, the scoring technique that jumped out most at me was the use of muted strings in the scherzo of the VW 5th. Very subtle effect, and I’m thinking it’s one I need to try when it comes time to orchestrate “Milky Way.” If I don’t forget.

Nothing, really (Day 58/365)

Posted on by Dale

I was prepared to finish up “Sun & Moon Circus,” but I got dragged to a social event for a Chinese delegation, where I had some interestingly frank discussion with the coordinator of the program. He kept looking around while we talked.

Still, it’s not like I’m not working on the project. I have a CD of all the piano score arrangements of the entire work, and I’m listening to it in the car, getting in my head the kinds of orchestration I want before I sit down to do each piece.

At this point, I have to brag about one of the pieces, “The Wise Cow Makes Way, Room, and Believe.” It’s really nice. Here’s the mp3 and the piano score.

I also had a lovely idea for staging of the end of “Milky Way.” The poem ends with Blake handing out stars to everyone, but “a handful of dirt to the rat.” The basses speak that line, then the coda sweeps up and out into the night sky. The other members of the cast continue their walk, but the rat is left alone downstage. As the music fades, a star comes within reach, and he reaches up hopefully for it as the lights fade. Good, eh wot?

Sun & Moon Circus (Day 57/365)

Posted on by Dale

I worked on the orchestration of “4. The Sun and Moon Circus Soothes the Wakeful Guests” tonight, but it’s not ready for public viewing yet. Still too clunky, in my opinion. Perhaps tomorrow night.

The problem is smooth, musical transitions from one section to the other, and the growing fear that the music I wrote many years ago no longer matches what I think the poem is saying. I will have to revisit the scoring to see if I can couch the melody in orchestral terms that make sense.

Here’s a fun game: go download the score on the Wm. Blake’s Inn page and see if you can tell what I’m shooting for. Then, when I post the mp3, see how close you came to matching me. Or, to put it another way, how far off I was.

Orchestration (Day 55)365)

Posted on by Dale

This one’s a little bit of a cheat, since it’s from the post-2003 period of composition. When I started this project twenty-plus years ago, the thing was a song cycle for chorus and piano. Everything I wrote was for the piano. After we went to Scotland and decided to stage this, it became bigger, and everything I wrote was with an orchestra in mind. Some pieces, like this one, I wrote already orchestrated. However, I did get it up and running with the GPO sounds today, plus tweaked dynamics.

Here is “3. A Rabbit Reveals My Room” in score and mp3.

I think I’m going to create a page for all this so that people who visit here don’t have to track down all the posts.

Orchestration progress (Day 54/365)

Posted on by Dale

OK, so this morning I’ve whined and struggled and come to accept the fact that my little PowerBook G4 isn’t going to be able to handle even a small orchestral ensemble (although actually as I look at it, it’s pretty much a full orchestra with a whole bunch of percussion).

So I took “Blake’s Wonderful Car” and muted everybody. Then I added instruments back in one at a time, testing the opening to see if the distortion returned. I got the strings and the woodwinds, the bass drum, the harp and piano. The cymbals brought back the distortion, but if I deleted the roll in the second measure, we were OK. The xylophone blew it out, so it stayed mute. I got the two French horns back in, and that’s where I’ve stopped for the time being.

I’m still missing the trumpets and trombones, but I may not need them. The tubular bells are probably gone for good.

Some discoveries: If I create markings for pizzicato and arco, then Finale automatically switches the GPO strings back and forth. This is good, because otherwise I have to input, in a second voice, a note so low that my keyboard won’t go there. It’s a pain. Also, the solo flute has flutter tongue available, which I needed for this piece, but it only plays one note. The “flute player 1” will play the two parts, but has no flutter tongue.

Anyway, here’s the resulting mp3. Here’s the old SoftSynth instrumentation. Preference, anyone? I’d really like comments on which one is more appealing. Here’s the piano score if you don’t have it.

UNRELATED UPDATE: There was a photo on the front page of the paper this morning that I thought was instructive, so I’ve included it in a previous post.