200 down, 200 to go...

So, I'm half way through annotating the score (putting in dynamics, articulations, bowings for the strings, slurs for the winds). Should be done by Friday. I really hope so!

Finished (kind of)

I put the last note in the opera this morning.

When I can bear to look at this computer screen again, perhaps tomorrow, I shall blog about it :)

I still have to put all the dynamics in the computer score, and there is still a lot of work to do, but, well, since the last post was entitled "Panic" I thought I should do this short update.

But first there is sun to be soaked up and perhaps a glass of wine to be drunk.

Panic

I am increasingly being overwhelmed by panic that I'm not going to be able to finish this opera. It's 381 pages and counting, and I've still got 8 minutes of music to write. It will get done, but as the deadline approaches there is still such a ridiculous amount of work to do. I think I'm also quite scared of finishing it: living with something this big for 7 months makes you intensely protective of your work and the thought of anybody not thinking 100% of it is utterly brilliant is quite hard to contemplate. That sounds very pretentious. I guess the thing is to just carry on...

Haha!

Back to feverish creativity today. Having immense fun with off beats, in the attempt to write some rather techno-y music for the entrance of a group of people listening to their iPhones. All is well...I think I may have just needed a break....

Utter uselessness

Hmm, well I knew it wouldn’t last....

The last two days have been utterly useless, and I’m hoping that by writing this blog post I’ll put some kind of line under it and just get on with things. For some reason I was kind of overtaken by a blind panic about finishing this opera, and so, logically I just decided to sleep for most of the day yesterday, and so far today have had to virtually force myself to sit at the piano, but I’ve not really lasted longer than 10 minutes at a time. It’s quite pathetic really. I’ve been unable to print in the last week because of my printer drum needing to be replaced, and me taking ages to order it (because of being inspired and not getting round to doing anything practical). I think psychologically, it’s going to be good to print out the whole score and see how much I’ve done, and how little there is left to do. Such a simple thing, rather stupid really, but I think it might get me going again. So I’m waiting eagerly for the postman to deliver it, hopefully today or tomorrow....

Anyway. Off to play a salsa gig tonight. Perhaps a complete change of musical scene will do me good and get me back on the right track. You always feels so pathetic though, when you waste a few days for no good reason at all, which only results in me having less time to finish something which still has a lot of work to be done on it. Ridiculous. 

Anyway, back to it...!

On being tormented by folk tunes.

In the last few days I’ve been suffering from inadvertent-blurting-out-folk-song syndrome. They are just so stuck in my head I’m wondering if they’ll ever leave me. It was when I realised I’d been singing along with the beat of the car indicator that I realised it had got serious. 

This is largely due to the fact that in the last few days I’ve spent most of my days with the folk tunes that sword dancers dance to. In the opera there are three one minute sword dance sections (you can find more about sword dancing here, and see some here). 

I love this kind of work...I wanted to create interesting and quirky arrangements of the melodies, whilst still having them retain their character. I’ve managed to do sorts of things - layer three folk tunes on top of each other, one of which works at a canon of a crochet etc, and then, amazingly, the main folk tune that I’m using fits really well over a chorus that I wrote months ago (before I’d listened to the folk tune). I guess my interpretation of ‘fitting’ is slightly more relaxed than a lot of peoples, but I’m generally quite thrilled.

I think today I shall orchestrate this section...

On finally having a justification for not defrosting the freezer yet.

A little anecdote that may illustrate my current mental state. I was playing through an arrangement of a folk-tune that I’m arranging for the sword dance part of the opera, and the fridge started humming, at exactly the right moment. I knew something was missing at that point! A drone! It’s going in the opera....

I guess inspiration is to be found everywhere.

In the zone, as it were...

So, today I have started writing again, after an orchestrating ‘holiday’. The orchestration is pretty much there now. I reached saturation point whilst on a stop-at-every-stop train at about 1am last night, coming back from a performance of another of my works at the Yehudi Menuhin School, trying to work out who plays what note in the huge chords at the end of the opera, whilst attempting to balance my laptop on my knee. That’s the thing with orchestration - it’s not so knackering as actual composing: there comes a stage with composing where you just have to stop because you are an utter zombie. With orchestration, zombification creeps up on you slowly, and it’s only at midnight, when you suddenly realise you haven’t moved an inch in the last 15 hours (ok, that’s slight exaggeration, but only a slight one) that you realise your brain is no longer functioning. It’s strangely addictive: I can’t compose anywhere but in a room away from people, with a piano, but orchestration can be done almost anywhere...on late night trains, in cafes, in station waiting rooms...

On the positive side, orchestration is like all the fun and creativity of composing, with about half of the hard graft. It’s sometimes a bit of a puzzle to work out who plays what note in big chordal passages, but, for large amounts of time, it really is a case of looking at what you’ve written and either already knowing what instrument plays that bit, or having fun imagining who to give that bit to. Sometimes it almost feels too easy and I have to keep reminding myself that well, I have already written the music, so, it’s ok for it not to be soul-searchingly hard...

I’m working on a kind of “I’m at the stage where it will all be ok if I get hit by a bus and have to go to hospital” principle at the moment. Sorry, that’s sounds really depressing - but, what I mean is, that if I’m really up against it timewise, I can finish it in a few days if need be. As a composer you do have to always factor in a “if it hits the fan” time buffer into your timetable. Not that you actually ever do, but that’s always the plan. Actually, goodness, that says quite a lot about me and my approach to my work that I have this inner “if I’m somehow dead, someone will able to finish it in time for the 28th June because my intentions are now very clear”. But that’s probably something I should discuss with a qualified professional, not the world wide web...

Anyway, so, well, I’m writing this at 21.55 on a Friday night, and I’m just starting to really get into writing the music again. But hell, it’s Friday night, so tonight’s writing mainly consists of reading and re-reading the text of the Prologue with a glass of dry white. I’ve always been rather good at multi-tasking anyway... 

I had a meeting with a writer the other day (about a separate project you can read about here) and we were discussing our (as it turned out rather similar) recent writing experiences. There is something wonderful about totally immersing yourself in writing - I’ve done it before, but not to this extent for quite a while (probably not since I stayed up for 72 hours straight once to finish an orchestral piece when I was still at school). Despite all the moaning I’ve been doing recently about quite fancying a life outside of this opera, being so engrossed in it does have wonderful side effects. My mind feels like it’s somehow rid itself of the shackles that my inspiration usually has to rattle vigorously at for some hours, days, or weeks to get past. Sitting just now reading through the Prologue, I’ve come up with so many ideas (and really, I’ve only had the one small glass, I’m not delusional, yet). 

I think I’m just so ‘in’ the music, the drama, the story, that ideas really are just flowing. That sounds dreadfully cliched but it really is the best way to describe it. And it’s really great.  

I shall post this as soon as I’m online, because, well, tomorrow I’ll probably be as stuck a very stuck thing, and, well, it will be encouraging to reminisce about the mindset I’m currently in, and rather enjoying.

37 days until rehearsals start. Crikey.

Orchestrating...

Hello,

Sorry for another hiatus in this blog. Basically I have been orchestrating pretty non-stop since 15th April when I sent off the scores to the singers.

The score is 288 pages at the moment and I still have 20 minutes of music to write....so somewhat daunting at this stage still! I am just about to print out the first draft score of the orchestrtated material so far.

Lots of considerations really when orchestrating something of this length - not to overuse certain sounds or instruments, whether instruments are associated with particular characters etc etc.

More soon....