A full day of scoring the Cycles music. It's amazing how different some of the original live piano pieces were from the recorded versions, and I'm sure there were elements of improvisation making each performance unique and different from any score anyway. At least two of the six pieces are different tunes live vs. recorded, but the complexity varies wildly for the others. Now, I'm unsure which I prefer. Scoring Cycles VI took a lot of work, often staring at the MIDI notes and working note-by-note. This took about 6 hours to transcribe the 6 minutes of music. I knew this would be one of the most difficult.
There's a wild bit near the end I'll not bother notating; consider it a cadenza, but here it is for posterity:
So now I have scores for the six Cycles tracks, the recorded versions, and my original piano versions. Should I make those public too? I've nothing to lose, but a public publication needs to look good, be up to a certain standard, use the correct terms etc., in contrast to the scores I use and read, which can be any old thing just for me.
An odd thing happened to the computer. When sleeping and waking, it forgot to reactivate the USB sound card, which happens sometimes, but, unusually, I didn't restart the PC, but just slept it again. Later, on the second wake, it reactivated.
Another thing I did today was connect the MODX to re-record one of the new The Golden Age tracks, called Nature Mort, this is actually a live MIDI recording made during the Remembrance Service sessions. When I connected the USB I suddenly had new sound devices to record from and play to, too. One of the things that now 'works' on this new PC (the old one didn't).
There are a lot more tracks on Cycles & Shadows, so I'll start notating those. Shadows will be tricky to some extent, but these tunes are broadly unstructured and improvisatory, so I hope and will assume that automatic conversion will suffice.
I can't afford to waste months of my life notating my music, but it feels good to have some firm copies, and I will, when I legitimise my media empire, publish it all correctly. This process makes me appreciate it more, even the music seems old, simplistic, and too easy, to me now.
