Getting out of a rut

[rhu]

I've been kinda down for the past week. It's a combination of low-sun blahs (yes, I know, grow lamps) and a weekend in which I spent too much time unsuccessfully trying to develop a crossword idea and a feedback loop in which my lack of creative productivity saps me of the drive needed to exercise creative productivity.

So tonight I forced myself to do more editing on KabShab. In this instance, it was finishing off Psalm 92. The way I've been composing these is on a piano staff, and then "exploding" the parts out to six voices and distributing lyrics. Some movements this is more involved than others --- sometimes because they're contrapuntal and sometimes because I'm really writing for fewer than six voices at a time and I need to work out who gets which phrases and/or whether a phrase should be doubled in more than one voice. Plus I'm fighting Finale's really broken way of handling lyrics data.

Anyway, Psalm 92 is now "exploded." Of the ten movements, numbers 4 (Shiru Shir Chadash) and 5 (Yirgzu Amim) need a significant amount of part editing, and 8 (Lecha Dodi) needs a small amount as well. A few others need lyrics cleanup, and they all need a pass to check dynamics and range. But it's actually conceivable that I will be able to get a group together to record these in late spring.

That would be really awesome. It would be great to get some of this "creative productivity" to the point where someone other than myself might enjoy the fruits of my labors.

Comments

[cellio]

Cool! It would be nice to hear these. (I'm only good at "hearing" music from sheet music up to about three parts...)

It's interesting that you write in compact form and then distribute the notes later. How do you make each line work horizontally? Once you've "exploded" something do you find yourself going back and editing the note values (and thus the aggregate) to make the individual parts work?

(I write in open score, and while I try to do all the parts together what actually happens is that one part -- not always the same one -- will get a few measures ahead and then I'll fill in. I have not been taught any formal methods here, to be clear, so I'm always interested in learning how others do things. What I do is pretty much essential if you're going to do counterpoint, which I've done, but it's hardly required broadly.)

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

I write on a grand staff for a few reasons: It's easier to see all the parts together to watch out for parallel fifths, octaves, and thirteenths (especially thirteenths) when they're not spread out over six staves. It's easier to sit down at the piano and play it through to make sure it sounds right without having to visually combine six staves using three clefs among them. And it uses one third the paper.

There's a lot of post-"explosion" work on editing note values, shifting words to fit the stress better, re-voicing chords because of problems that the piano disguises: sometimes it turns out that the line is hard to sing because of awkward jumps or because I ended up with too many notes in a particular range and can't assign them properly, and that sort of thing. That's the "tedious bookkeeping" part that I'm slogging through now.

So when are you posting an mp3 of your performance from January?

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

In what kind of soil do you grow lamps? [duck]

Good One

[rymrytr.livejournal.com]

I LOVE that kinda stuff!!! :o)

Hang in there!!

[rymrytr.livejournal.com]

As to your last line, you will make it. Remember that Moses sat around for 40 years, tending sheep before the bush burst into flames.

And remember how much patience David had, waiting to be King.