Charged into a full day here. Scoring my music is a long term goal, and though time consuming and not instantly valuable, I'm convinced of the long term value of this. It has many benefits, from the ability to more easily perform it (and crucially make it easier to others to perform), to advancing my skills as a sight-reader, to providing a long-term archive of my music in a format which has lasted centuries, to improving my composition skills by analysis of these raw notes.
It also gives me a new appreciation of my songs, seeing them in a new critical light. The music on The Dusty Mirror was so good and I enjoyed discovering it again.
I completed 9 scores today, for 'Since You Kicked Me Out', 'Except For The Hatred', and 'Fear Of The Thing Itself'. Back in the ancient days of 2011 when I wrote 'Fear Of The Thing Itself' I thought it was one of my best songs, a worthy tribute to the Queen song which inspired it, but the others seem better now. 'Except For The Hatred' was a particular delight.
The music is in C-minor, and has a lumbering, insane tone. The chorus descends in unusual chords of G-minor, F-Major, D#-Major, D-minor, then C#-Major, in a sequence which makes every chord sound more minor than the one before. A 'circus clown-organ' plays as this happens to reinforce the insanity. The melody breaks into D-Major for a respite, for the hopeful parts, before the madness kicks back in. D-Major is perhaps the happiest of all chords, partly because on a guitar, it's played only in high and singing strings, with none of the boomy power an E or A chord has.
I'm a better producer than I was 4 years ago, but a much better singer and guitar player - a process which is continuing apace. This album needs and will get a re-recording at some point, but not quite yet. As things are, if I re-recorded it in 5 years, it would be that much better than if I re-recorded it now!
Another incentive to do this it that I'm just about the only person who can make these scores. Prometheus, the software I designed and use to write all of my music has good export capabilities which, with a little tweaking in Sekaiju to merge tracks, and then MuseScore to import, makes this process faster than anyone else could achieve.
These days I'm writing tunes with a foresight into future transcription, so doing things like splitting chords into 3-tracks of single notes rather than using a 'chord' instrument. This saves time.
There are 12 tracks on The Dusty Mirror, and I aim to transcribe 3 per day. I have notated 16 albums of music so far, but have 23 to go, excluding the new music which I'll continue writing and publishing during the many years it will take me to do this task.
