A busy day working on sheet music, managed to, just, write the score for the two remaining 'basic' The Anatomy Of Emotions tracks, and the rest of the Gunstorm songs. It's amazing that I've not recorded which pieces we used for Anatomy of Emotions, the live performance. The initial performance was totally different, and used French stream-of-consciousness words to make for a very 'avant-garde' and surrealistic experience. After this, Sabine and I partnered with Tim Watson to make a more focused performance of 6 pieces about emotions, but I can't remember what they were exactly...
The emotions were loosely defined and the music evolved over a few performances, though we stuck with Sabine's video and Tim's words closely for each of the several performances. The pieces were The Dance/Childhood, Memory/The Old Days/Old Photographs, Awe/Distance/The Stars, then Loss/Closing/Silent Shadows, then an unknown piece that I think was purely improvised music without words, or perhaps no music or words, just video; then Resignation at the end, which (I think) also had no words but certainly had music. I have scores for all 'five' pieces, but nothing on the 'possibly improvised' one. Loss/Closure also changed musically quite a lot from the first performance to the recording.
I've managed to score these main five, and have rough scores for Remembering Love, which I composed for the album and might have played live, and for The Astronomer, which was composed for the Vermeer suite, a one-off performance in Chester Art(s) Centre, for which Tim later wrote some words. The other piano music on that album was improvised, so scoring would be a slow matter of note-by-note transcription.
I also finished the scores for the Gunstorm EP and these were much faster to complete, even with lyrics. I've included the bass-lines of Gunstorm and One Day, with simple leads for Ultramarine and You Make Me Happy. All have chord symbols. Deflexion includes 4 staves for other instruments.
The Salome CDs also arrived and look fantastic. I've had CDs made in tiny batches for 20 years or so and these are the best in quality. It's a sad irony that nobody buys them any more. In ten years the format will either be revived by those tired of expensive and awkward vinyl, or dead completely, or, perhaps, still the same; lingering on for specialists, like tapes still linger... but tape players or casettes are nowhere to be found in normal shops. Record players are still there, a comeback after their near-death. Small, perhaps kitchen or bedroom orientated, CD players are still sold, often with in-built radios. The format of these players indicates that the medium is not a 'serious' medium for audiophiles, but I love my CD player and, live radio aside, still listen to music on CD almost exclusively.
In the evening Deb treated me to a trip to the Lyceum to see The Addams Family musical performed by her old troupe, Acton Amateur Operatic Society, an amateur group in name only as the quality of the performances and production is on-par with a professional group. Deb performed with them for 10 years, 1998 to 2007. The production was brilliant, but the show itself average in story and with no stand-out hit song.
Today, a trip to Sandbach for Christmas presents. By chance, I found a book of REM scores, which was an interesting find for me, to see the layout of published music. A U2 album of scores was also there. The U2 scores included guitar tabs and two staves, some with fists of chords. The REM scores sometimes included three for other instruments, but generally two. All very interesting.
I've spent the rest of today preparing these seasonal gifts.
