Complete Sentences Optional
Majorly knackered here. Fridays are always a bit of a sprint because I have both piano lesson and home tower bell practise.* This week there has been the additional drain on resources of trying to relearn how to use Finale.** I am totally glad to have composing software and, since Finale is what Oisin uses, I’m very glad to have what he can bail me out of. But . . . oh . . . gods.*** I didn’t get nearly as much shoved and rammed into the computer as I meant to because I wasted so much time over the ‘make me’ arbitration.
But it is extremely pleasing to be composing again, even if perhaps only briefly, till the waters of PEG II close over my head.† And I had enough more of Frost and Fire and Ice to take in today for Oisin to complain more bitterly—last week he had the perfect excuse of failing to read my handwriting—and furthermore with this song the vocal line has become seriously detached from the piano accompaniment so trying to play all three at once is like trying to pat your head, rub your stomach and tie your shoelaces. Obviously one of us should sing. No.††
Oisin said, I don’t want to put you off or anything, but this is slightly more diatonic than sometimes with you.†††
It’s probably the voice lessons, I said, wincing as he pointed out a few of the rather dramatic leaps my vocalist must get round. I have this gruesome idea that if you give someone a rest, you can do anything to them after it, because they’ve had time to pull themselves together. Oisin suggested, smiling evilly, that I should practise singing it, that picking up those perilous notes after the rests will do wonders for my development of relative pitch. I forgive him, however, because he also said that it sounded a little like late Vaughan Williams, after he’d got the English-pastoral out of his system. Beam.‡
Then I had to come home and hurtle hellhounds before bell practise. Tired person. Fortunately going hand-over-hand up a ladder such as the one into our ringing chamber is considered normal, and a lot of people tend to slump in corners on Friday evenings anyway. But we had enough of a turn-out that I got to ring triples. Yaay. I even managed to claw enough still-semi-responsive brain cells together to remember to keep counting places‡‡ to seven (triples) rather than five (doubles) or six (minor). I can’t say that my Grandsire Triples were a delight to the ear, but I did get through . . . and then we rang Stedman Triples and there were actually two of us who weren’t quite sure what we were doing and we still got through it so this is Very Good.
Right at the moment we’ve got the holidays and weather from hell as an excuse for some fairly thin on the ground practise nights as well as the ones that have been outright cancelled, but I’m mournfully aware that I am now squarely into that murky midrange area where it’s no longer a given that simply turning up for practise regularly will get me much farther: the stuff I want to learn requires a good band, not just any old band—and I still only learn anything by grind. I do not want, five more years from now, still to be saying ‘well I managed to get through a plain course of Stedman Triples tonight, I wonder how long it’s been since the last time I had the opportunity?’
However. Tonight is tonight, I rang Stedman Triples and my piano teacher says he can hear some late Vaughan Williams in the piece I’m trying to write, and the snow is melting. ‡‡‡
And I wonder if I can stay awake long enough to walk back to the cottage.§
* * *
* Once upon a time I had my piano lesson on Thursday. Oisin moved me to Friday because it worked better for him^ and I always meant to negotiate about moving back . . . and then Thursday became handbell practise. Oops.
^ His most entertaining students for Friday afternoons?
** &^%$£”!!!!!!!!!†††+={@????<++*#~‡!!§§!!!!!!!!!! etc. Who designed the ugleblarging thing? Mad wombats?
*** And speaking of troubling deaf heaven^ with one’s bootless cries, Oisin has an almost unbearably thrilling new toy. He’s got a whole sound studio in his attic already but apparently organ software has recently taken a giant leap forward and he’s just bought the digitalised version of some prodigious French organ the size of two or three Lockheed C-141 StarLifter Heavy Transport planes.^^ Although a somewhat different shape, and with less crew and more keyboards. Anyway, never mind what the thing sounds like—he hasn’t loaded it yet so I can’t tell you—it’s beautiful. I want one. I just . . . want it.^^^ Want. I guarantee that I would find its company very inspirational.^^^^ Meanwhile . . . Oisin says he needs a new computer to run it properly. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. The old ‘new computer’ scam.
I did tell^^^^^ him (again, with feeling) that if in his travels he comes up with any better playback options than Finale’s basic, which furthermore do not involve taking an advanced degree in Musical Instrument Digital Interface Protocol, I would be grateful to be told. And I’ll worry about the inevitable ‘new computer’ wheeze later.
^ Ie the Finale help files
^^ I love google. http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/transport-m/c141/ And . . . ‘StarLifter’? Whose idea was that? I think some military mind had been reading too much space opera.
^^^ As previously observed, what I want is to be 13 years old and talented, and I’d be all over organ lessons.
^^^^ And it seems to me large gorgeous pipe organs are seriously underrepresented in fantasy literature.+
+ Phantom of the Opera does not count.
^^^^^ ‘Whimper’ might be more accurate
† I’m too tired to try to describe how composing is just like word-writing only different. Some day I want a chat with a professional, earns-a-living-at-it music composer who also writes occasional word-stories. I want to know how much of the apparent difference is only the result of what you’re used to.
†† It’s true. It’s for mezzo.
††† I like creeping around chromatically. What can I tell you.
‡ Mind you, I adore Vaughan Williams’ English pastoral. But I also remember, many years ago, when I was first making small tentative forays into classical music beyond Verdi, smacking into one of Vaughan Williams’ later symphonies. Whooa! Yeep! Bring me Greensleeves! Bring me more Larks Ascending! Yeep!
‡‡ Where I am in the row. Remember that every bell has to ring once before any bell can ring a second time. All x number of bells having rung once is a row.
‡‡‡ Although as I reported slightly hysterically on Twitter a few hours ago, we’re supposed to get gales, torrential rain and flash floods tomorrow. Maybe I’ll just sleep all day. If I let the hellhounds on the bed, they’d probably go for this.
§ Unless the torrential rain has started. Latter half of the night, they said. Which is . . . er . . .
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