Molossus

This week in review: a bunch of crap. There are two things that vaguely resemble accomplishments... therefore making me feel closer to the end.

Gamelan took a trip yesterday to Otterbein College... which is in some town near Columbus. Pretty much as soon as Counterpoint II was out at 11:20, my day was shot. Loading the U-Haul truck... going there... unloading and setting up... giving a demonstration... going to dinner... doing the concert... loading up... going back to BG... unloading again. Otterbein provided us with a kickin' dinner, but other than that I did not enjoy the experience. I rode in the truck with Dr. Harnish, while four (or was it five) other cars of people went separately. This was by my own volition; I did not want to be stuck in a carful of people who annoy me, so I went with Harnish.

When at last I got back to my beloved car, it was 11:20 PM. At this point, I was dying for two things: my own music to listen to and a burger. Dude, it's hard not to listen to music for a whole day. So finally I felt like I was back in charge of my life, and I put in Batman Begins and took a quick night drive to Burger King with the windows down. Man, that felt good.

Two more weeks until the final gamelan concert. I can't wait to be done. The novelty wore off after the first concert. I'm still glad to be in it, but... man. I went through a lot of Excedrin this semester.

The second thing about this week is that I recorded about 13 minutes (4 separate cues) of original music for Starbuck's poetry reading project. There was a fifth cue for which I simply remixed an older composition of mine, so I'm not counting that.

The music is quasi-improvisatory, for solo piano (me). I tied the pieces together so there is some cohesion. One cue was just me tooling around like George Crumb, occasionally quoting clusters from another cue. My favorite of the cues clocks in at 5:25, and is structured around four "cells" of ideas. It is carefully structured, but there is room for some improvisation. It's actually the kind of stuff they put on Praecepta concerts here... or Student Composers' Forums. Mind you, that doesn't say much. But it's the best one of the four.

This summer, I plan on making a piece for extended-technique piano. It will be at least 16 minutes, but it will not be improvisatory at all. This is one of about 14 worthwhile ideas I have in mind for the summer... we'll see which pieces I actually get around to writing.