Well, this is all very stop-start. And time is pressing on. I’m getting a bit worried about my own personal deadline, to tell the truth. My plan was to have all pieces written and sent out before my friend arrives next Thursday, so all the performers would have a full week or more with their pieces, and I’d be able to have a lovely chilled time with my friend. And if I could get back the week I spent concussed, I’d be calm. As it is I’m a little stressed, but I’m just going to go full speed ahead, and see what happens.

This evening I’ve been back at work on Sam’s graphic score for the slide guitar piece. I think I’m sensing a pattern here – the last piece I wrote for real instruments + tape took me forever to do the score too and I think it’s because I really don’t like transcribing random sounds and hoping I note them in the right place and that others can interpret my squiggles for what they are. Yes, procrastination has been hard at work here.

However, this evening I’ve finally got a rough first draft down of the tape part. I’ve tried to keep it pretty simple, noting mostly where notable things happen. I think I’ll need to put in time markings too, to give some context, then I need to work on the guitar bit, which I kind of have in my head but just need to get down on paper/iPad. This initial version I’ve done on iPad because rubbing out is easy when I get it wrong 😀 I need to work out a neater way of dealing with the audible text moments though, in particular. But just so you can see that this piece isn’t actually a myth, here’s the work-in-progress snap:

There’s a chance I may need to cut it up a bit and spread it out some more, but I just needed to get something down. Mostly spreading it out would allow for more detail in the guitar part, so I need to think a bit about how much detail I want to put in there. This is mostly new territory for me, both technically and stylistically. I guess that’s why it’s taking so long.

The other exciting development today is that Jenni sent me her preliminary recordings of her oboe piece, Nest! SO exciting to hear the piece taking shape. I don’t think I’ve ever had real performer feedback on a piece while it’s still so fresh from the writing, so this is fantastic.