Category: Personal

One lesson I learned back in 2019 when I was experimenting with orchestral writing was that–one personal revelation that is–I love writing for percussion. From college-and-after-days I’d always admired the drummer and their skill of body-wise coordination rather than hand coordination; admired it likely because it was simply of equal competency to a pianist yet foreign. And that sounds really arrogant, but I think it’s just more naivety of the percussionists’ milieu. No offense, but you’re awesome.

Continue reading Suite for Orchestra, “Figures in a Landscape”–Writing for untuned percussion

I finished the book by Barry England, Figures in a Landscape, maybe a year ago and it tore me apart.

It, and it’s ideas, came back to me recently for no particular reason, but the story immediately felt like a primal source of expression for something current in me. As inspiration, you look for the internal emotions–those that are the wordless–that you hope to express to others so that They Can See the Importance of those subjective ideations. More to the point: I look for those aspects of what’s in me to be important out of me… but I think it’s uncontroversial that this concept is universal w/r/t artists in general.

That’s a sloppy way of pointing out that: you say what you want to, and have to, say, and hope others enjoy it.

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