Some piano practice yesterday, tidying, backups, and a piano lesson with new student Peter.
Slept late today after a night of casual stomach pain. Oh for youth. The delicate decay of physical matters is the ultimate cause of decline in productivity and quality. More energy is needed to maintain and keep hold, leaving less to push forwards with, another reason why creative work takes longer and longer, although the need to make it better each time is a factor too.
I went to Queen's Park to see the Jubilee events. It was packed with people, and full of distorted (and, oddly, speeded-up) recorded music, plus a live George Formby tribute 'band' - I say band though all six players had only ukuleles, while the bass and all other instruments seemed to be on a recording.
Some initial revision of the Salome music. All creative problems come from unasked and unanswered questions.
Question: Do I want the music all on piano, or produced with lots of layers and instruments? Answer: Lots of instruments. This is tricky because I'd like the scope for something grand and 'full orchestral' when, in all expectation, I'll be playing all parts (one part) solo on synthesizer, or piano. I'd like a choir, with four main vocal performers plus Deborah as lead performer, but I won't have that, it will be Deb and I alone. Everything needs to have potential, but work well for a duo too.
Question: Do I make the score more complex than I can play? Answer: Yes, ideally... it should push me, but not so hard that I can't play it... this is a complex problem. I feel I can compose much better than I can play, but if I do so then I'll not be able to play it; yet, my live playing often adds a lot more than I score anyway. I think Beethoven played the 3rd Piano Concerto from memory and mnemonics; I wonder how close to his score this performance was? Or how close ANY of his scores were to his real playing, I feel certain that they were different. Either way, an ultimate solution is for me to learn to read and play sheet music better. My answer now is add something more, but not much, a slight push.
For The Anatomy of Emotions, Cycles, Music of Poetic Objects, I hardly pushed myself, with one or two well-composed pieces but, even then, very simple backing, and a few very simple ideas, hardly compositions, nothing too difficult so I had the freedom to fantasise and cadenza while playing. This time, things are more complex. I also have the added complexity that now I have 12 pieces; the others had about 6, a big difference. My aim is to use a main theme and create variations of that for a few pieces, this makes things both simple and more complex, more unified, but still each piece having a different mood. Too much difference can overwhelm any listener.
The pieces are:
0. Intro
1. Truth Seeker in a Madding Crowd
2. Entwined in Infinity
3. The Planet's Oracle
4. The Bird in Borrowed Feathers
5. Cosmic Solitude
6. Give Me Your Pain
7. Empathy With Daisies
8. At Freud's Lecture
9. Dream Sequence: Shapeshifting Counsellor
10. Sit With Your Ghost
11. Shelved
1, 2, 3, 4, 6, are just about complete. The Intro, 0, was written first but the melody is a bit light and nursery-rhyme-ish; not easy to play and doesn't sound very dramatic either. I will rewrite it, but can't much as many of the other tunes are based on it. I expect that this will be a variation of those, so its initial spark will be in the finished music only as a ghost.
