A breath.

Now we take somewhat of a breath after all the toil of the first project. Overall I thought that my pieces went well in performance, the first two especially. The third one I'm not overly happy with, compositionally. The guitar part still bugs me and I feel as though it's lopsided. I may make a couple of changes to it on down the road after all this madness settles down.

Who knows.

The Avant-Garde Ceilidh

I feel like this is an article that I can relate to very easily as I lived in that sort of environment growing up. While there were a few acts that came into town now and then, Goose Bay never often saw big names. After a while there were hardly even any local acts. So my friends and I for years would have ceilidh-like times where we just got together and jammed and everyone contributed. There was a very strong sense of community there.

I totally agree with the author's musings on the excessiveness of show business these days. I feel like live music these days has become very impersonal in many ways both in the way we see live music and the way we listen to music on our own. Most people don't even buy cds anymore. This is one of the things that really interests me about avant-garde music. There is often little choice but to see performances in small, personal settings. Certainly, if our society continues in the destructive way that it's going there will be no choice but to return to the fundamental, communal musical practice of the ceilidh. And I can't say that I wouldn't welcome that.

Three.

So today I finished my third piece. I've shortened the title simply to 'River'. It's meant to represent how the character has reached a place where they are in tune with the timeless clockwork and now takes the things that made life complicated in the first piece (i.e. the tense and jerking interactions between the two instruments) and accepts them and moves with them through this river.

I've done a fair bit of simplifying to this piece. I've entirely gotten rid of the 7/8 idea that I originally had and instead have written the guitar part with swelling chords. I've also decided to write the whole first section of the guitar part in harmonics, the timbre mixes much better with the piano now.

Down the hatch!