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Hi, All!

Another piano composition creeped out of my subconscious over the last several days.

I'm ready to recopy the rough draft of the composition into a neat final copy.

My method of notation is old fashioned, involves ink pens (mostly black but sometimes a red one is useful for tracking where to go on the rough draft), an old credit card (convenient for drawing bar lines), correction tape (that often malfunctions, GRRRR!!), and composition paper. Scissors and Scotch tape or GlueStik are also sometimes part of the mix.

My rough drafts are often a road map; some more than others.

This one in particular requires lots of concentration to navigate. It's the ultimate road map, that is:

I must notate the final copy according to all of the bits and pieces I worked into the music which are on various sheets of composition paper:



1-Play page 1, the entire page, then…

2-Jump to the pink star at top of page 3. Play those 2 bars, then…

3-Jump down page 3 to the triangle inside a circle and continue playing until I reach my handwritten note…

4-"Go back to page 1 Bar 2". Keep playing thru Bar 16, then…

5-Jump to page 2 (top). Play all the way thru until I reach the down arrow, then…

6-At the down arrow, go to Pg 1, Bar 2

7-At Bar 17 (at down arrow), jump to Pg 4, #7 in a circle

8-Go back to Pg 1, play to & including to Bar 5, then

9-Go to Pg 3 "END", play these 4 bars, then

10-Jump to Pg 5

YEE HAW!

And this piece is not quite complete.

I also still need to wrap up the final bars of the "END"; I need to complete the final few bits of this piece, but that should be easy enough.

So I'll be spending the next few hours scanning and notating and reading betwixt all of the measures and bar lines and numbers and symbols and arrows and such and I just hope I don't mix something up or skip something accidentally. Then there will be gnashing of teeth.

And how's YOUR day coming along?

Jeanne W
[i][/i]

It is very fortunate that tables are (usually) much bigger than computer screens.

mydp: Good idea! However, the floor in our sunporch most often serves as my table.

As long as we're on the topic of composing music, this comment that Indigo Dave made in a post in one of the other PW forums really caught my attention.



That seems humorous, made me laugh, but also extremely accurate.

Jeanne W

Ouch! My back is already hurting!



A fine phrase indeed.
I wonder if animals have a feeling of where roots lay. Maybe they actually know there are some just under their nose. They may smell them. Does that break the analogy?

mydp:

Ouch! After slaving over pieces of paper spread about on the floor my back often does hurt!

Regarding your comment about wondering if animals have a feeling of where roots lay, if they actually know there are some just under their nose or smell them, and if that would break the analogy...

I absolutely think that does NOT break the analogy.

When improvising at the piano, my fingers most often know exactly where to go next. Mostly, my fingers seem to know "where the roots lay."

Jeanne W

Jeanne W: This is a very interesting point.
I remember reading on a biography about Chopin that the composer would freely improvise on his piano, until he found (so the author said) “the blue note”. From there the composer would pull out one of his incredible melodies, as if pulling out a root from his brain hummus.

I’d say that I feel something similar (not that I am comparing myself with Chopin), and you say your fingers know where to go. It is as if something clicked inside your head and then you say “I like this”.

What interest me most is the nature of this click. To me, although this is obviously untested, this nature is associative and culturally defined, if you understand me. That group of notes triggers a response deep in your brain, because it associates with other similar music, or other emotions that went with some music, and that now, to quote you, creeps out of the subconscious.

(Sorry if I’m being a bore ;))