What Are You Practising / Composing Now?

[BBMmk2]

Sounds like good practice this.

I’ve been asked to arrange some Bruce Springsteen songs for big band lol! I’m an avid fan of his, so this be really exciting to do!

[cloughie]

Sounds like good practice this.

I’ve been asked to arrange some Bruce Springsteen songs for big band lol! I’m an avid fan of his, so this be really exciting to do!

Some good big tunes for you there - Blast out ‘Born in the USA’ and ‘The Rising’ could be very poignant!

[BBMmk2]

Some good big tunes for you there - Blast out ‘Born in the USA’ and ‘The Rising’ could be very poignant!

Ah yes. I forgot about a The Rising. I thought of doing Because the Night too!

[Richard Tarleton]

Some good big tunes for you there - Blast out ‘Born in the USA’ and ‘The Rising’ could be very poignant!

Darlington County!

[BBMmk2]

Darlington County!

There quite a few!

[Joseph K]

As I mentioned a while ago, a piece I've been and still am practising is Barrios's Una Limosna pour el amor de Dios (spelt off the top of my head) which is a tremelo study for guitar.

This is one of two tremelo studies that all guitarists know (of)… the other is Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Tarrega. I prefer the Barrios personally, but have come to the conclusion that there's no point in learning the Barrios unless you're also going to learn the Tarrega - this is because the latter is more difficult than the former because in Recuerdos large parts of the tremelo is spent on strings other than the top E, meaning one's tremelo has to be all that more precise than it does on the top E, where there is no adjacent string above it to get in the way. However, there are a few bits of the Barrios on strings other than the top E, and so, in order to magnify and overcome this technical problem, it makes sense to learn the Tarrega, where it is the norm rather than the exception.

[Richard Tarleton]

As I mentioned a while ago, a piece I've been and still am practising is Barrios's Una Limosna pour el amor de Dios (spelt off the top of my head) which is a tremelo study for guitar.

This is one of two tremelo studies that all guitarists know (of)… the other is Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Tarrega. I prefer the Barrios personally, but have come to the conclusion that there's no point in learning the Barrios unless you're also going to learn the Tarrega - this is because the latter is more difficult than the former because in Recuerdos large parts of the tremelo is spent on strings other than the top E, meaning one's tremelo has to be all that more precise than it does on the top E, where there is no adjacent string above it to get in the way. However, there are a few bits of the Barrios on strings other than the top E, and so, in order to magnify and overcome this technical problem, it makes sense to learn the Tarrega, where it is the norm rather than the exception.

I never tried the Barrios, Joseph - one of John Williams's party pieces, too . I also like his Un Sueño en la Floresta which has a nice tremolo section - I've seen someone play it, it looks horrendous. I love the Tárrega - I learnt it 50 years ago, and even played it on a visit to Granada in 1972 (in the Youth Hostel, not the Alhambra - an American guy turned up when I was there in a beat-up old van, and from under the dirty clothes in the back, produced a guitar case containing a most beautiful Ramirez guitar. We swapped pieces for an hour or two). I last played it to an audience (60 people, in a packed village hall ) in 2013.

[Joseph K]

Tonight, I have Yoda's advice to Luke Skywalker ringing in my ears: "You must unlearn what you have learnt" … because that's precisely what I need to do! Again, my overzealousness is my downfall, I have been pulling back my middle finger far too much in tirando (free) stroke, in my desire to go faster, but obviously it hasn't helped me go faster at all, I should (and this evening, have been doing) have concentrated on economy of movement and rather than tensing or clenching this problematic finger (it's not a problem with the other fingers) relaxed it and pluck the string with a small but convincing motion. Of course, it means (once again) slowing right down and getting rid of a lot of built-up tension. It's all part of the road to good technique I suppose.

I notice that this is on the 17th of March. Well, today, a month and a half later, I feel as though I've made a 'breakthrough' as regards my technique and economy of motion. My middle finger is now under much more control and makes a much smaller movement and consequently my scales and other things are much quicker.

[MrGongGong]

Live electronics for Shakuhachi / Live electronics gig at Noisefloor
which might also include a bit of David Bedford's Balloonmusic1 in the talk I'm doing afterwards

[BBMmk2]

I’ve begun the 3rd and final movement of Berlioz’s Symphonie Funébre et Triomphale.

[Pabmusic]

This has just been published in Munich. It's 50 minutes long, for baritone, narrator & orchestra - a sort of companion to The Book, allowing much of Butterworth's unknown music to be heard in a concert piece. Plenty of mine, too.

Now I'm completing the score of my 1976 Symphony for publication.

[Richard Barrett]

That looks very nice, Pabs. In these days of online publication (+ people reading their parts from iPads!) I pay very little attention to making a bound score look attractive, which is a shame.

Having been rather hectically working on the electronic components of the two new pieces premiered last week I'm taking a few more days off, before returning to something put temporarily aside a few months ago: a piece for ensemble (featuring uilleann pipes, a first for me, hardly surprisingly) with solo double bass. I find the process of composing electronic music strangely similar and strangely different to writing scores - the trombone piece membrane is "accompanied" by more or less complex electronic textures for most of its 30 minutes - the lack of necessity to put everything into notation makes the actual process of making the sounds much quicker, but on the other hand the necessity to be the "interpreter" as well involves a great deal of "practising", which takes the form of listening and adjusting again and again, sometimes to the point where one isn't sure what one's hearing any more, or whether it's what was originally intended, or something more interesting, or a waste of time.

[Pabmusic]

That looks very nice, Pabs. In these days of online publication (+ people reading their parts from iPads!) I pay very little attention to making a bound score look attractive, which is a shame.

...

I wish I could take the credit. The publishers are Musikproduktion Höflich in Munich, who have real presses, etc. They specialise in reissuing old scores (want a set of Raff's symphonies?) - usually as reprints. I've been writing prefaces for the scores for years. Back in 2007 they started a new line - things that I'd found or thought interesting, and called it The Phillip Brookes Collection (that was definitely not my idea!). There's now 90 or so titles in it, including a few bits of my own. This is where the orchestration of the Shropshire Lad songs, and Parry's music from The Birds (both used by the BBC) reside.

Their website is here:

https://repertoire-explorer.musikmph.de

[Pabmusic]

These are hardly new (1979 and 2015 respectively), and they're played on a computer, but I've just made videos about them.

Mr. Bunting Goes to Town:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aruix6f6WJw

Little Train to Nowhere Special:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k_x_n5tfCU&t=19s

[Joseph K]

My latest crack at BWV 1000.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0aB12jCiKU