Green Men, Kingfishers and arranging with StaffPad

The Green Man orchestral suite is now available on iTunes by clicking on this link...

The album also includes a piano arrangement of Elegies (and Energies) from Book 2 of Multiple Field Sketches for small orchestra. When I decided to make this piano reduction, it occurred to me that I could do this in situ alongside the original orchestral arrangement in StaffPad. This would mean that I could refer to the score as I proceeded into the piece and even copy and paste parts into the piano arrangement. So, I copied the StaffPad orchestral version, opened it and subtitled it 'piano arrangement' so I had two new identical versions. There may be an easier way of doing this...Maybe the StaffPad people could enlighten me, but I wanted to preserve the orchestral version as it was and this was the best way I could figure out to do that.

I then added a piano part to the new version and found that it was a delight to work on this while referring to the original version alongside it. Copying and pasting worked a treat...In 'Elegies' there are some pretty complex cross rhythmic hemiolas which would have been a bit of a task to replicate and I found the new lasso to select function very useful. Pasting selections into different voices is, necessarily, a bit fiddly as you have to keep selecting the right voices to copy and then paste into, but StaffPad intelligently sorted the beam directions (even in interweaving parts) and made the job easy.

Before very long, I had a complete piano arrangement and I then deleted all the other instruments...Fantastic!!! If you do this from a fully notated (with directions and dynamics), these can be copied and pasted in with the actual music.

I'm currently working on some arrangements for large orchestra and am working in a similar way, except I added the new instruments to the orchestral score resulting in a sort of semi-filled template.

Of course, like all music where there is a possibility of copying and pasting, you have to guard against being lazy and think about whether the voicing and timbres will work when one part is transferred to another instrument, but that's what being a composer is all about, isn't it???

We had a huge thrill recently when we spotted a kingfisher diving for beetles in the pond. It's a couple of years since we removed the Koi carp that we inherited (they were not doing well as the water was not properly filtered for them, so we found them a lovely new home) and removed the leaky liner to make it into a natural wildlife pond. It took a couple of weeks, during which we smelled permanently of silt, but we've ben really pleased to see all sorts of wildlife make their home in there...Great diving beetles, water boatmen, greater crested newts, dragonfly larva are all in there and there are often ducks and moorhen on it. The kingfisher was a real surprise...We're not sure where it comes from, but there are larger areas of running water nearby where it must make its home.

Keeping in touch with nature...

Writing and recording music can be a very esoteric enterprise and it's easy to lose touch with the natural world. Living in a thatched cottage in a tiny hamlet is a lovely way to keep 'grounded'. For example: This is the time of year when it's good to have a tidy up in the garden and have a bonfire to get rid of any branches and twigs that have fallen and been collected with any other garden rubbish. It's also the time I tend to get rid of any royalty sheets/accountancy stuff that we're no longer required to keep, so I literally 'cook the books' on the bonfire. This is where nature stuff like the wind direction comes in. We normally have a southerly wind here, which would blow any smoke back towards us and our neighbours, So, when the wind turns round to the north (usually bringing colder weather) conditions are ideal for a good burn up.

This happened yesterday and I soon had a good blaze going with the smoke giving our neighbour across the field a wide berth and continuing into the open countryside beyond. I took the opportunity to get some of the cut logs that have been seasoning down the end of the garden beyond the summer house and split them ready for the cold snap that the wind was bringing. 

Log splitting with a heavy maul is a very satisfying thing, especially when all goes well and the log splits in half first time with a lovely crack...A bit like hitting a six in cricket, or I suppose a home run in baseball. There is a sort of 'Murphy's Law' with logs which states that the smaller and flimsier a log looks, the harder it is to split. The only thing more welcome than a clean 'six' is the first proper cracking noise a stubborn log makes after a sustained battering!!!

All this is a nice contrast to wiring up the legacy rack and the second monitor in the studio. The rear speakers are in their permanent home on their new brackets made by a local metalwork/blacksmithing friend. On the musical side, Artful released a new disk last week which is now available worldwide and I'm at the final stages of mastering my first classical release for Compendium Recordings.

Snow followed the northerly wind overnight...It didn't settle for long despite cold temperatures and ice on the pond. This is also the time of year that our thoughts turn to warmer climes and we begin to plan the annual trip to LA and Vegas. I'll be in LA from 11th for five days before heading off to Vegas via San Diego. I'll probably be back in LA in October.