Slight interruption to Creative Pact proceedings this week in the form of a very nasty cold which saw me confined to bed for four days with a fever and massive earache and general ear/nose/throat misery. So Creative Pacting was a little held up, although I have managed some listening and thinking on a couple of the days when the pain and ear-blockage eased a touch.

In particular, the second listening day I was returning to quiet and satisfying old favourites – Abrahamsen’s Schnee and Per Norgård’s A Light Hour, which made me think about how much I enjoy beautiful melody and wonder whether this is something I could endeavour to incorporate in this piece. My last piece – Fortune Favours the Brave for flute – was the first piece in a long time that I’ve written for a real instrument and for someone else to perform, and that’s something I’ve been wanting to get back to. While I feel that my experimental work tends to be stronger than my more traditional music (in a broad sense, of course – we all have off patches!) I’ve been wanting for a while to bring elements of the work I was doing for conventional instruments back into the experimental pieces. And maybe this piece could do that?

Anyway, it’s all been very slight because of the aforementioned ear/nose/throat misery, and I’m not 100% well yet although finally on the mend at last. I’ll keep thinking about these ideas though and how I might work with this to feel that I’m using both sides of my work in this piece.

So I’ve missed two whole days of Creative Pact work, but I think I’ll just carry on with the day-numbering and catch those up at the end. Hopefully from here on I’ll be capable of doing something every day again…