Music in the Middle of Things
February 8th 2008 07:46
Meant to say that it hasn’t been all work and no play. Between states of exhaustion I’ve managed to copy out two piano pieces that I came across during all our shifting. These were both written back in the mid-fifties, which makes them some fifty years old. They were given to me to play sometime in the early sixties, I guess, when I got to know the composer, a violinist. At that time he and I used to play quite a lot of violin/piano music.
The two pieces have been languishing in my house somewhere all this time, forgotten by me, and probably by the composer himself, who’s now in his 80s.
I put them onto Sibelius and gave him the original music and the printed out copies a couple of days ago. He was quite amazed, I think, to come across them again.
Besides that I’ve been carrying on work on pieces for brass band. What started as an experiment is going somewhere, and proving to be an interesting exercise. Hopefully at some stage, when I’ve done some more work, I’ll be able to persuade the brass band here in town, whom I’ve had a lot of contact with over the years, to play them. Time will tell.
The only frustrating thing about composing for larger forces, like a brass band or orchestra, is that my computer isn’t up to coping with all the variety of sounds at one time. It does its best, but generally cheats a bit and leaves out clarity on anything it thinks won’t matter at a certain point. The only option would be to improve the sound card somehow, though I’m not sure what that would entail – and how much money it would entail!
At least if I listen to the playback through earphones things are clearer – without them the sound is tinny and useless, but the earphones can only play what they ‘hear’ and that’s still just the computer’s version of things. I just checked to see what make of earphones I’ve got (wondered if they might be Bose headphones, but they’re not). They’re something called Custom – probably a cheap version of ‘real’ earphones! So maybe that’s compounding the hearing difficulties.
The two pieces have been languishing in my house somewhere all this time, forgotten by me, and probably by the composer himself, who’s now in his 80s.
I put them onto Sibelius and gave him the original music and the printed out copies a couple of days ago. He was quite amazed, I think, to come across them again.
Besides that I’ve been carrying on work on pieces for brass band. What started as an experiment is going somewhere, and proving to be an interesting exercise. Hopefully at some stage, when I’ve done some more work, I’ll be able to persuade the brass band here in town, whom I’ve had a lot of contact with over the years, to play them. Time will tell.
The only frustrating thing about composing for larger forces, like a brass band or orchestra, is that my computer isn’t up to coping with all the variety of sounds at one time. It does its best, but generally cheats a bit and leaves out clarity on anything it thinks won’t matter at a certain point. The only option would be to improve the sound card somehow, though I’m not sure what that would entail – and how much money it would entail!
At least if I listen to the playback through earphones things are clearer – without them the sound is tinny and useless, but the earphones can only play what they ‘hear’ and that’s still just the computer’s version of things. I just checked to see what make of earphones I’ve got (wondered if they might be Bose headphones, but they’re not). They’re something called Custom – probably a cheap version of ‘real’ earphones! So maybe that’s compounding the hearing difficulties.
The GR digital kid wears his headphones and appears to be listening to nasty modern music!
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