I worked on cleaning up 4. The Sun and Moon Circus Soothes the Wakeful Guests. It’s OK, but I’m betting we revisit it in rehearsal. There are a couple of hiccups where my little laptop just didn’t have the computing power to get all the beats into each measure.

Here’s the piano score and orchestral mp3 of 4. The Sun and Moon Circus Soothes the Wakeful Guests.

I also updated one choral part in 10. Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way.

Now I burn this CD and pop it into the mail with the score.

I’ve always liked 14. The Tiger Asks Blake for a Bedtime Story. It’s such a sweet little scenario, the tiger with his tummy-ache asking for Blake to soothe his pain. Of course, Blake responds with the gleefully perverse Tale of the Tailor, but that’s another posting.

This is one of those pieces I composed very early, so it’s at least twenty years old. It was always very, very simple in its approach. However, as I was scoring the section where the tiger admits his fault and appeals to Blake, I discovered some interesting harmonies that I suppose were implied. They’re there now. Maybe later in rehearsal we’ll throw them all out and just use the bass line, as in the piano score, but for right now I’m kind of digging them.

Herewith, the piano score and the orchestrated mp3 of 14. The Tiger Asks Blake for a Bedtime Story.

And here concludes all the work I can do using the Garritan Personal Orchestra within Finale. The four remaining large pieces will have to be done using the Softsynth instruments, which are certainly not shabby in the least. However, they’re not as lively, and I will be missing some instruments and some control. Who knows? Maybe I’ll splurge on a new computer.

The other milestone we’ve reached here is that I can finally get the CD and score mailed to Nancy Willard. I promised it to her some weeks ago; after telling her I wanted to clean up some of the piano score sound files, I got wrapped up in the actual orchestration. Oh well, this is certainly better.

Mondays are Masterworks Chorale nights, so I never get a lot of my own work done.

I did open up an orchestral score file of the last piece, 15. Blake Tells the Tiger the Tale of the Tailor, to find that I had already done a lot of work on the first half of it in the SoftSynth instrumentation. I don’t like it, it doesn’t fit what I’ve been hearing recently in my head as I listen to the piano score in the car, but there it was.

It also drove home that I will most sensibly score my larger pieces using the SoftSynth option.

This one took a lot of work, and I’m not sure I’m through with it yet. The King of Cats returns with his second show-stopper, 13. The King of Cats Sends a Postcard to his Wife. I’m not at all sure that the KoC is not the “old man’s lunatic cat” referred to by the Bear in 3. A Rabbit Reveals My Room, and the music of this piece reflects that.

Here are the score and the mp3 file. There are some weird tempo issues near the end that I can’t get the computer to correct.

This morning, I orchestrated 12. The Marmalade Man Makes a Dance to Mend Us. This is one of those slight cheats, since the original piano score was easy enough to do with the eventual instrumentation: flute/pizzicato cello. As you’ll hear, the completed orchestration is not much more complex.

Here’s my question: does it need to be more complex?

Here are the piano score and the orchestral mp3.

I have two more smallish pieces to do, 13. The King of Cats Sends a Postcard, and 14. The Tiger Asks Blake for a Bedtime Story, and then I’m faced with a dilemma. Anything even approaching a full orchestra simply overloads my laptop. It doesn’t have enough memory. It’s clear that I’m going to need a new computer before going much further with this project. The remaining pieces, 5. The Man in the Marmalade Hat Arrives, 9. The Wise Cow Makes Room, Way, and Believe, 10. Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way, and 15. Blake Tells the Tiger the Tale of the Tailor, all of which are huge orchestrally-speaking-wise.

So can I get another laptop, which would be my preference, or will the memory requirements of Finale 2006/7 and Garritan Personal Orchestra force me to buy another desktop computer, which will be a great deal of money more than I want to spend? This will require a lot of research and a couple of extended visits to the Apple Store at Lenox.

Since we have another full evening, I knew I wouldn’t have enough time to do anything real today, so instead I’ve gone back and taken the SoftSynth orchestration of 1. William Blake’s Inn for Innocent and Experienced Travelers and converted it to the GPO version. It’s a bit glitchy because of my poor laptop’s memory issues, but it’s a nice setting.

And I wasn’t through with it. I went back and listened again and worked to lighten the opening up. I added a measure at the beginning and stripped the strings out of the first bits, just leaving the muted violas to move into the woodwind motif at the end of the phrase.

Is the marimba the right instrument for the bass line? I may try a muted cello. It’s just that with the synthesized orchestra, there is not the delicacy that I know a live player could attain. (Just listen to the way the violas just shut off in the first three measures, ack!) Right, Stephen?

At any rate, here’s the updated mp3 of 7. The Wise Cow Enjoys a Cloud. It’s still not playing the rallentando at the end, and the Adagio should kick in on the harp’s glissando, but I can’t seem to make the tempo changes stick.

I’m not sure I’m through with this one. This is 7. The Wise Cow Enjoys a Cloud. It was one of my earlier “experimental” pieces, the experiment being that I wanted to see if I could do away with that iambic beat in the music, just erase the barlines, as it were.

As it happens, I literally erased the barlines in the piano score. What I’m still not sure about is whether I’ve gotten the delicacy I need in the scoring.

11. When We Come Home, Blake Calls for Fire is the first of the William Blake’s Inn poems that I ever set to music, in 1983, if I recall correctly. It’s remained one of my favorites, so I began to worry that it would not fit any more: it comes right after 10. Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way, the last one I composed. Twenty-something years of composition separate them, and their styles might seem glaringly dissimilar.

Not to worry. As I orchestrated it this morning, it came alive all over again. I remain proud and a little thrilled. Here are the score and mp3. The mp3 is a little messed up in the forte section: my laptop’s age and lack of memory and speed make for some glitches in the recording process. They’re small, however, so though you may notice them, I think you will have no problem being swept away.