monkey business

rehearsal of the new music with the smaller group has been moving along. workshopping (the nice way of using the group as guinea pigs to fix the mistakes) works great for me, but sometimes not as great for the group. its enough to try and learn new music, but i make it harder for them each week by creating a "new and improved" version of each piece. that being said the process is going faster than when we first started 3 summers ago. we had to create develop the ensemble as well as learn the music.

its easy to forget how much work it takes to edit a piece until it feels right. it feels like we are learning a whole new set of music, although a chunk of it is music from summerland. even those songs feel new because i have re-orchestrated them for the 6-piece group. beside rescoring them, i also fixed some of the sections that never really worked. boundary violations always felt awkward, so i changed the orchestration (adding bass, and vibes) to smooth out some of the syncopations. the new version sounds like a strange smooth jazz/grunge metal hybrid. its more fun to play and there is less stress holding it together.

my two new songs are also coming along. cheap admiration has gone through to two rewrites where i changed the keyboard part to fit in better with the bass. in last nights rehearsal we also worked a lot with they keyboard sound. i usually use a organ sound, but the clarinet/bass/organ combination is much too muddy. through some trial and error the harpsichord/plucked percussion sound cuts through the ensemble much better. my inner satan started out as a counterpoint exercise that i brought to rehearsal for fun. when we played it i was pretty surprised that a piece that is so simple on paper is very fun to play. i have been taping rehearsals with my new minidisc which allows me to send the completed files through a usb 2.0 cable to my computer. i have been posting mp3's rehearsals for the group online and i'll post some (family friendly) snippets of our latest rehearsals once i edit all the inappropriate language (me) poor playing (me) and general monkey business (all of us) from the recordings.

florida or germany

i'll be spending the next six days in one of those places.... not by choice, but by family.

by the way... why do people choose to leave there friends and family behind, move to a warmer climate where they don't have to pay property taxes and ignore everything they did for the last 30 years. is this such a good deal?

huh? back to the real world

rehearsal was good today. we started solidifying the new music for the smaller 5 piece lineup. i have two new pieces (cheap admiration and my inner satan) that are coming out nicely. cheap admiration is based on a pezel chaconne that i bent around to fit my aesthetic need and my inner satan(not yet finished) was much more successful in rehearsal than i had planned. until this afternoon it just had a born-on date (062205) instead of a name so i brought it along to see how it would work. its a white-note chaconne that makes some interesting stops along the way. because the opening is a development of tutti 8th-notes, i originally though it was too static. its got some good legs and i hope the karma is around to finish it when i get back. we also are rehearsing eric's modular work seven. its in the style of terry riley's inC. scott said that the three times he played inC was incredible (i played on two of them), but his friends and family have never warmed up to it. i'm not saying seven is a better piece, but its damn fun to play and it can serve as a enjoyable "gateway drug" to other modular works.

i'm really happy that things are going well. vacation is time to relax and collect your thoughts. i'm going to try and catch up with some reading. i have a varied batch to get through:

Susan McClary, Conventional Wisdom : The Content Of Musical Form
i read some of her more famous articles in grad school, but until recently i had forgotten all about her. she wrote the famous afterword for a Attali's NOISE, a favorite book of mine that i have been rereading this summer. I don't agree with all of her writings, but her nontraditional approach to musicology is a breath of fresh air.

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
i really got into his stuff reading his book survivor, but i still haven't read fight club. i really don't like to read books after seeing the movie. anyway i look forward to the twisted journey to begin.

it always hard to change gears when things are going so well, when i get back i look forward more composing, reading, rehearsing and blogging. until then you might want to check some of my new blog friends.

renewable music

the undisputed guide to making tea

wooster collective, a celebration of street art

other news:

just got word from shane cadman that realnewmusic is a go for 2006. grrrreat!!! if you are interested in performing i'm sure that the shane cadman (the peter sellars of whittier) would like to hear from you. contact him at:

shane@realnewmusic.com

we are going to have some august performances coming up with the smaller group (now known as because they are dead). i'm going to try the club thing and see how that works, my local punk/sound/noise club is going to host our inaugural performance on sunday night, august 8th. we also (tentative) have a show at the orange county center for contemporary art on saturday, august 20th. the big group will be back together for a lunchtime concert at biola university on wed, september 14th.

if the planets align i hope to have a final performance (for at least a few years) of retrace our steps at csuf in late september/early october. new york late 05/early 06 is still in the works and will be the first order of business when i return. the way things are going we could have a dozen shows before the end of the year.