Well, it’s insane o’clock so I must be quick because I have a huge day tomorrow – a lovely friend who I’ve never met (!) is coming to stay for a few days, so I need to up and about fairly early. And in the evening we’re off to the London Composers Forum workshop on writing for guitar, so I’m going to want my wits about me.

But the important stuff: the bass guitar piece is finished and sent. I’m expecting it to be returned with red markings all over it because I really don’t have a clue about writing for guitar (hence workshop attendance!) so I’ve been flying blind a bit. But I’ve tried to set it up so the most prominent possible-issues should be able to be relatively easily resolved. We will see what Alun says is playable and what not. Here’s hoping it’s not the entire piece that isn’t!

And I’ve written a trombone piece for Rob. I do feel a little bit like I’m cheating on this one because it uses the opening of the piece I’m writing for brass quintet at the moment (due to be premiered in April), but it goes in its own direction, so I hope that’s OK. I may actually steal some of it back for the quintet! I’m exploring tone colour in this one, mostly, and have chucked a couple of mute directions in there because I’ve never worked with brass mutes before and I think it might work well and give it a more defined shape than it has on its own. So the form of it is done, and I think it just needs to be slept on, followed by some minor tweaking. I’m hoping to send it off tomorrow, but I suspect that may be a little ambitious, and Friday is more likely.

Which leaves… one. The last one is for Shana’s lever harp, and today she sent me part two of her amazingly useful Tiny Treatise on writing for lever harp. This one details how to set the harp up to use the octatonic scale. How much fun will that be?! I’m not entirely sure when I’m going to get to write this one, I have to confess – it’s going to be a real push to get it done before the end of the month, but after the concussion, the harp piece sort of by default ended up on the end because while I couldn’t really compose during that week, I was able to lay out – and what I laid out was the pedal harp arrangement of my Pieces of Eight, so Shana has that and is planning to record it. If I get the lever harp piece finished, then Pieces of Eight can be a bonus track, otherwise at least I have my ten tracks, even if one of them isn’t strictly new. And I’ll be doing the lever harp piece regardless because, seriously, who could resist an opportunity to write octatonic music for harp?

So close!

In other news, I am now finally a full writer member of PRS for Music. Am I a real composer now? 😀