Monday, January 29, 2007

A Composition Journal, Part 2

January 12. 2007

Woke up late after 9 hours (!!) of sleep. Gray morning. Coffee, read a few poems by Tu Fu.... Read them again.
To work on "Captured Light." My mission today is to paint in sound the color field I see as Gold/bright green. This entails taking a section of yesterday's work, cutting it, then re-harmonizing it in the program Acid. (I have tuned it 21 half-steps up.) Then cutting again to size and proportion, laying it in so that it fills the right time/space within the piece. I'm quite sure I've never worked so visually before; but it seems appropriate, given the inspiration for the piece. Like stepping back from a canvas, I listen. Make changes. Step back. listen again.


January 13

This morning's work: simply listening.
Gray, warm-ish but raw outside. Like April again.

January 14

Deep sleep. Up at 7. Snow falling; big, pretty flakes in gray dark morning.
Coffee, reading in Tu Fu. Sadness in these words; an autumnal chill of aging, regret.
Work on "Freedom of Captured Light." Recorded a shimmering pulse of metallophone for the color-field White-gold; after that, a steel guitar melody arcing to a Major 7th as its highest tone: A yearning, sweeping arc of bright blue (from mountain tops to sky.)
Next, hours of layering, moving, removing, mixing.
Snow falling.