Category: 24 hour challenge

24 hour challenge #3

Posted on by Dale

from Mike, 2-777-22, which gives us:

… I dance a
clubfoot’s waltz, my legs driven by horsemen,
bones hounded by lust.

Thank you, Mike! That’s ll. 20-22 from “Song of the Andoumboulou: 15,” by Nathaniel Mackey.

[If you’re just joining us, here are the instructions for the 24 hour challenge, as well as previous efforts.]

5/23/09, 9:46 am

Well, that was fast. I must have been inspired or something.

24 hour challenge #3, “I Dance a Clubfoot’s Waltz,” for Mike: score [pdf], performance [mp3], bassoon [mp3]

I really like the quartet. The vocal line I’ll have to grow used to, although the actual line “bones hounded by lust” I think is effective.

I just learned with this piece that I can record my voice in Finale, which is definitely easier to follow the score with these tricky rhythms. That cuts out using GarageBand in the middle. Now if Finale would export an mp3, I’d be down to one piece of software.

24 hour challenge #2

Posted on by Dale

from Marc, 3-751-20, which boils down to:

‘Clay Boy, you never saw
some little old gal
get all hotted up
with one of those mean low-down
Gospel choruses?’

Lines 16-20 of Paris Leary’s “Love Lifted Me.”

This is going to be tough, because clearly this calls for some mimicry, and I have a Shubian shoot tonight. I’m hereby defining “24 hours” as “midnight on the following day.”

I have actually read this poem (my sources for this project are huge thick books; I haven’t read all of them) and love it. It’s a kind of narrative, which suggests to me treating this passage in a kind of operatic way, i.e., accompaniment with loosely fitting vocal line on top.

[If you’re just joining us, here are the instructions for the 24 hour challenge, as well as previous efforts.]

5/22/09, 4:05 pm

24 hour challenge #2, “Gospel Choruses,” for Marc: score [pdf], performance [mp3], bassoon [mp3]

I have to say, I’m pretty pleased with this one. A live performance would have tenutos placed over mean and low-down, but amazingly, those are not built into Finale. They’re not even mentioned in the manual. Incidentally, I am not singing a wrong note on Clay. That’s as written. It just sounds wrong.

By the way, I now have four more challenges. I’ll get to them as soon as I can. Notice I never said that this was a daily 24-hour challenge. I promise I’m not cheating by thinking about these before I post them and set the clock ticking.

24 hour challenge #1

Posted on by Dale

Wow, that didn’t take long. Turff, who has made lurking a point of pride, was first off the mark with 4-872-22, which produced the first line of P. J. Kavanagh’s “November the First”:

A long farewell:

See you tomorrow. (I’ll post the results here.)

5/21/09, 4:27 pm

24 hour challenge #1, “A long farewell,” for Turff: score [pdf], performance [mp3], bassoon [mp3]

My singing is quite awful. That’s OK, so is the piece. Everybody does understand these are going to be fragments of fragments, right?

Some new challenges

Posted on by Dale

I’ve been inspired by Mike’s 24 Hour Toon venture, so I’m going to set myself a challenge, more about which in a moment.

The other challenge which I’ve set myself is to fill a couple of pages of sketches of people’s mouths. (I thought about leading off with some statement about sketching “body parts,” just to set your filthy minds in motion, but why waste the time?) Those Lichtenbergians who’ve had their reference photos taken will be my subject.

After I do mouths, I’ll move on to noses, eyes, etc. I may do chests or thighs.

OK, my 24-Hour challenge.

  1. Pick a number between 1 and 5.
  2. Pick a number between 1 and 1082.
  3. Pick a number between 1 and 40.
  4. Email those three numbers to me, in order: 2-563-24, for example.

Here’s what I’m going to do. I have selected five books of poetry from my shelves:

  • The Best American Poetry 1999 (2000)
  • A Controversy of Poets: an anthology of contemporary American poetry (1965)
  • Master Poems of the English Language (1966)
  • Poems for the Millennium: the University of California book of modern & postmodern poetry, vol. II (1998)
  • A Year in Poetry: a treasury of classic and modern verses for every date on the calendar (1995)

Those are not in order 1-5, by the way. Your three numbers will give me: a volume, a page number, and a line number. If the page number or line number exceeds the number of pages or lines, I’ll do the modular math thing until I get to a number which is contained in the volume/page. A couple of the books have essays interspersed; if the page number is within an essay, I’ll move to the first page of poetry after the essay.

And…?

I’ll post the sender and the line of poetry (perhaps the complete sentence, if I’m in the mood) and within 24 hours, I will compose a brief setting of that line for baritone voice, i.e, me, and post it here. I am not going to compose an entire piece, merely that one line, for voice and piano (or if I’m really inspired, a string quartet).

If all of you email me at once, I’ll take them in order as I get them.

Let’s see how far I get.