As is often the case when I’m stuck, I retreat to the printed word.

After my recent frustration with my attempts to orchestrate the central passage (mm. 62-71) of Milky Way, I decided to do some academic homework. I pulled out The Study of Orchestration, Samuel Adler, second edition, and actually read some of the sections on orchestrating different sections of the orchestra.

While it’s not as funny as Norman Del Mar’s Anatomy of the Orchestra, let’s face it, few books are, the Adler is nonetheless well written and useful. I sat beside my fire in the living room and read the chapters on woodwinds and brass as deployed in a full orchestra, and I began to think through these measures.

Continue reading “Progress, of a kind (Day 102/365)” →

I went back and reworked the measures I had blocked in last night. They’re getting there, although I still can’t hear exactly what they should sound like because of the computer. I tried switching over to the SoftSynth sounds, since they don’t have the memory issues, but they sounded very strident.

I’m now into the first part of that climactic portion that gave me so much trouble nearly 60 days ago. It’s got to sound exactly right, and I have a feeling I’m going to have to work with it a lot… and with a computer that doesn’t have the power to give me what I need. Feh.

Even though I didn’t have full time at the computer tonight owing to a social event, I have orchestrated more or less halfway through Milky Way. And this time I have an mp3 to prove it.

Lots and lots of tempo glitches in this one, since the orchestral sound is really too large for my laptop to calculate on the fly. Whenever there’s a dropout in the playback, it shows up as a hiccup in the recording.

Still, it sounds nice. I’m sure it will evolve further.

By the way, is anyone writing their novel this month?

My luck holds with Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way. Tonight I got another 18 measures orchestrated, and although I think I still have some polishing to do, what I have is still fine. (I’m not ready to post it as an mp3, however.)

One thing I’m learning is to hold back my resources. I remember reading (in several places) that Schumann would never trust his winds to hold the line on their own and consequently muddied his textures unnecessarily by doubling them with the strings. I’m afraid I suffer from his fears. But as I listen to symphonic music these days, I pay particular attention to those times when the woodwinds especially are holding down the fort all on their own, and I try to force myself to use them as they were meant to be used.

I think I’ve been successful in that passage which follows the line “and I fear we will finish it old,” m. 31-34. I’ve sprinkled that melodic line all the way down the woodwinds section before picking back up with the strings at the end. It sounds like real music.

In fact, this represents progress on a problem that has been facing me since I finished Milky Way: how to orchestrate the nearly constant sixteenth note passages that drive most of the piece. I knew I would have to find ways to vary who’s playing them, or it would be insanely boring if not outright grating. Up to this passage, it’s just been the celli, which is fine, since it establishes the themes. But from here on out it’s got to be shared amongst the rest of the orchestra.

And again, I say, ha!

After how many days of essentially nothing, I have produced this [an mp3 of the first 20 measures which has been superseded by further development], the orchestration of the opening of 10. Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way. The mp3 is missing some of the subtlety of the original file, and Finale/GPO wouldn’t know a tenuto from its ass, so you’ll have to imagine some finesse here, but boy, this is good. It’s really good. It’s so good I’m afraid to go on.

[note, 11/4/06: this post has attracted beaucoups of spam comments, so I’ve turned comments off for it. If you have a comment, email it to me and I’ll post it for you.]

After I posted Sun & Moon Circus last night on the William Blake page, I realized that I had never posted an mp3 of the piano score of the final piece, 15. Blake Tells the Tiger the Tale of the Tailor. So I whipped one up and posted it.

Now the collection is complete, for those of you who want your very own copy of the piano scores and a CD to go with them.

I keep saying Tale of the Tailor is the final piece, but it’s not. There’s an epilogue, and it must be set to music. But I’m going to write it later, probably during rehearsal. It’s going to be a quolibet of themes, ending as it began with the opening number’s music.

So there it is. Thirty-four minutes of music.

Now what?