artsyhonker | Entries tagged with worklog

16th Feb was a difficult day for me, and in the end I said "sod it" to work and did some gardening instead.

Yesterday was a bit better, but though I was working on composing for part of it, I didn't really... get anywhere.

I think on days like that, it would be better for me to set a timer for 30 minutes and if I haven't written anything, give up and do some reading or some listening.

It wasn't a completely wasted day, though, because there was a ULCC rehearsal in the evening. I always feel better after a good sing. We rehearsed Tallis 'Sancte Deus' which I love; it has that ambiguity over major and minor, and instability of key, that I enjoy so much. This time I noticed that in the final "Amen" section, every part has a sort of ascending pattern: the highest note in the phrase is one higher than the last, for three phrases. This makes me think that the word underlay in the alto part of our copies is wrong, as they have one more "Amen" than the rest of us; whoever put it in (rather than just having one very long A----------men) clearly wasn't paying attention to that.

We also worked on John Ireland's Mass setting, which is rather lovely, and SS Wesley 'Wash me Throughly', which again is harmonically somewhat twisty.

Today is a sort-of work day, too. I've moved the draft of Winter Stars onto the computer, and I'm participating very gently in the February Crowdfunding Creative Jam.

Lent starts soon and I've been thinking about a Lenten discipline to take up. One strong contender: "some PhD reading and some PhD listening every day". Sundays are exempt. I don't generally give up physical things (chronic pain means my flesh is, essentially, self-mortifying already), and there's a bit of me that is thinking "yes, but a Lenten discipline shouldn't be something you ought to do anyway" -- but if taking this up as a religious discipline would allow me to get into the habit and stop being avoidant about it, then it would be a good thing, to be sure. And working through fears and blocks, getting over one's self if you like, is very much part of Lenten discipline, for me; I cannot focus on, listen to and obey Christ if I am so busy avoiding my fears that I am unable to fulfil my academic or creative duties.

That said, there are other contenders, not for discussion here, which may yet win out; I haven't decided. The biggest danger for me is of choosing too many things, so that my Lenten discipline looks something like "give up snooze button, go to Morning Prayer, 2h bike ride, reading, spend no money" and I give up after half a week, or cannot schedule it around other commitments.

Kirkoskammer competition is only open to people born after 1982, which is NOT ME.

Boo.

Well, I guess at least I finished a piece... really just need to tidy up the score now.

This evening, I made a list of all the competitions, proposals, assignments and commissions I currently have on my plate that have deadlines.

There are twelve of them. I guess these are sortof the equivalent of conference/journal papers in other disciplines.

( lots of things )

While I'm doing this, the "undeadlined" things I have on my plate include:
-the Choirs Against Racism project
-Some more PhD-specific writing that isn't competition-driven
-moving some more WIPs into the "finished" bin generally: I have over 20 in the "back-burner" pile.
-wanting to finish one work/month to put onto Patreon, or even two works/month if I can manage that (I could really, really do with the money).

This afternoon I had another meeting with Dr Francis Roads about the London Gallery Quire CD.

This morning I got my Patreon rewards all ready for posting. Something I want to improve at in my crowdfunding practice is getting those envelopes ready before I even put the music online, so that when the Patreon payments come through I can just go to the Post Office. I'm not there yet, though.

Signed up for Pinboard, have spent some of my evening moving open tabs to bookmarks there instead.

I have various other bits of yakshaving to do, too.

Thinking about categorising my to-do list more generally as "work, yakshaving, firefighting" as this is as good a way to do triage as any.

Today was supposed to be for academic reading, to rest a dodgy arm showing early signs of RSI and to, well, get some of my reading done.

Nope.

Sigh. I'll try again tomorrow, when I at least have a reward planned.

(from yesterday)

Went to John Lewis in Stratford, got myself a pot of peppermint tea, and sat and did some composing. Draft 2 of 'Winter Stars' by Sara Teasdale is done; the next step will be putting it into the computer. My concentration wasn't great for some of the day so I am expecting to do some re-writing in the computer drafts.

I do like John Lewis as a place to work. There is plenty of space, meaning I can find somewhere to sit even when it's very crowded, though I prefer the booth seats as the chairs mostly have seats that tilt backward: not comfortable or ergonomic for working. Much of the area is carpeted and there seems to be some thought given to noise reduction; and there's no background music, of course. There is free wifi, though I tend not to use it for my work. I can't remember if you have to sign up for anything to get it, I don't recall giving them my e-mail address at any point but this may have changed.

The tea and coffee now all comes from self-serve machines and there is some self-service for cakes etc too, which I think they've done to try to speed things up at busy times; it could be difficult if you're trying to juggle a pram or wheelchair and a tray as the coffee island doesn't have a tray ledge, but there are also full-service hot drink stations. There are also sandwiches and salads and things, and hot food, too, both the kind that you take with you to your seat and the kind they bring to you with a number (mmmm, pizza), but that's not what I was after yesterday as I'd eaten lunch already.

The toilets are just the ones in the main John Lewis shop. They're on the same floor, and as it's the top floor they tend to be not visited very often, quiet, and clean -- but if you're on your own (as I tend to be when working), it can be a bit of a pain to pack up all your stuff, go pee, and then come back -- and possibly find your table has been cleared of the tea you hadn't finished. I would leave a note, just to be sure. Or, you know, go before you go.

This morning, I woke up feeling reasonably energetic, washed, had breakfast, did my morning pages, and thought, "I'll get loads of composing done today!".

Then I fell asleep and woke up at 10.30am. Clearly I am still catching up on sleep after last week.

To my credit, I did then actually get some composing done: more on my SATB setting of 'Winter Stars' by Sara Teasdale, which is for a competition.

Not so much on the reading, unfortunately, though I did do some admin.

Sunday, 5th February:
Slept late, eventually dragged myself out of bed in time for the Eucharist at St Paul's Cathedral (11.30am, the last morning Eucharist on a Sunday that I can get to). Nice Mass setting (I forget the composer) with lots of plainchant-y motifs; lovely Finzi anthem setting words definitely old enough for me to set, too; a Collect that is probably still in copyright but that I might be able to find an out-of-copyright version of, somewhere. I have the order of service in a pocket, so will have to transfer the various texts to appropriate places, and listen to the Mass setting with a score in front of me if possible.

I missed the psalm though. Services without any psalms feel incomplete to me; especially when there are only two readings and the one that isn't the Gospel is an Epistle. This was especially ironic given that the Gospel reading had Jesus telling the disciples that not one letter or stroke of a letter of the Law would pass away "until all is accomplished". So, yes, reasons I am an Anglo-Catholic: I want more scripture in my church services than I tend to find elsewhere. But I digress; I mentioned the psalm because I'm wondering if, specifically, psalms of lament might be a good area for me to explore as part of the PhD.

After that, off to St Mary's Rotherhithe for an Accession service with the London Gallery Quire. Because of the way the church is ordered, we almost never end up with enough space; it's really very odd. Yesterday was no exception, and I think we had some trouble with timing which could have been alleviated had the band been able to sit together, but the service on the whole went reasonably well and there were certainly some good moments.

Today (Monday 6th Feb):
Personal stuff until evening, then off to Southwark Cathedral with CLESO to learn about and play the organ there. I'm fond of the cathedral, and the organ is a T.C. Lewis which is not entirely dissimilar to the one I played at St Andrew's, though of course it's bigger and in better repair. As there were considerable numbers of us we didn't each get a long time to play each, but I did get to chat with the Director of Music a bit. I mentioned my supervisor's relative fluency composing in just about any style, and he pointed out that Rutter is like that, too -- he "makes his living from the sweet stuff" but is actually an incredible craftsman. And that in turn is interesting to me; maybe instead of learning about various bits of the 20th-century Western academic musical canon by reading books about them, I should be reading as little as possible and just attempting to write in each style, even if only for a few bars. It might be fun to do this almost as a sort of abecedarium... "A is for Adams, a rhythmic minimalist, B is for Boulez," etc -- just as an exercise, you understand -- though if I do it well enough it could also be a didactic tool for others.

Tomorrow I'm hoping will be full of composing and reading, at least in the daytime.

It's been a bit of a week and I have struggled to update here!

Sunday:
ULCC sang my Nunc dimittis (YouTube) at St Mary's Eversholt St. It went well, and was well-received. If you want to hear it again in a better version than YouTube, it'll be sung in St Mary's Undercroft Chapel, Parliament, on Tuesday 21st March; I'm not exactly sure what time the service will be.

In the evening I went to St Mary's Addington where they were having the licensing of a curate combined with sung Compline. This combination is sufficiently unusual that I thought it would be worth going, and... well, it was, but it was over in about half an hour, including the bishop preaching. We were using the Common Worship modern language version of Compline, which is in modern-ish blobs notation, and I have to say I do prefer the trad language version with chant notation: plainchant is much easier to read in that version.

Monday:
Did my tax return. This was an entire day before The Last Minute, which isn't bad going really. Besides that? Not a lot of other work-work, though I did do some various bits of healthwork and housework, and a smidgen of composing.

Tuesday:
Medical appointment in the morning (I'm fine).

In the afternoon I had a meeting with Francis about LGQ CD stuff. We met in Sunflower, a little place on Leytonstone High Road that sells crepes, icecream, milkshakes, and various other tasty bits and pieces -- savoury as well as sweet. There's no background music, there's free wifi (ask for the password at the counter), and they've never had a problem with me turning up and working for a few hours.

Choosing repertoire for a CD is a bit like choosing hymns, only with more flexibility. That flexibility can be good or bad; there are over 500 pieces in the LGQ repertoire, and we needed to choose twenty of them. I'ts just as well that we had a short list of pieces that had been suggested by various members of the Quire, and that the CD itself has a seasonal theme so we needed pieces to fit that.

Then, in the evening, I went to Southampton, so sing some music by my friend Gemma who I've known for years. The occasion was a song circle in support of a pilgrimage, and the songs were all to do with Brighid, the Celtic saint/warrior goddess, as it was Imbolc Eve. It was slightly challenging to me to learn the songs without any musical notation, though I have always had a fairly good memory and managed well enough; for some of them I and others improvised some harmonies. And in another lifetime, I could do a PhD in sacred choral music in the context of this modern, pagan/pagan-ish movement which is so often expressed in homegrown, small groups, working with the resources they have and with a shared heritage that is not entirely canonical. But I'm in this lifetime, and taking part in such worship doesn't sit easily with my Christian faith; and observing wouldn't necessarily be welcome. As it was, though, I was glad to be there to support my friend, and her songs were both moving and singable. And I was able to record them when we sang them at the end of the session, which hopefully will be useful.

On the train on the way home I worked on a hymn setting, and put a hymn I'd composed earlier onto Patreon to make sure I get paid this month. I still need to put it on CPDL and my website, and provide MIDI robots and so on.

When I got home I submitted two hymns to the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music -- a day late, as the deadline was actually Monday, but as the form was still on the website I decided to go for it. We'll see. I also made a submission to a Canadian composing competition; this one was within the deadline, thanks to time zone differences (it was well after midnight), but it wasn't the piece I've been working on and which I hoped to submit, as I haven't finished that one. Instead I took another piece, which I submitted to a different competition earlier in the year but hadn't published yet, and re-arranged it for SATB. Well, we'll see.

Wednesday:

On Wednesday I was rather tired. I did review the LGQ CD choices, and send a copy of my Magnificat without the score reduction off to ULCC for printing, and managed some errands, and then there was LGQ rehearsal.

Today has been quite quiet, and a good thing, too. Tomorrow will be fairly busy, and I really needed the more restful day that I had today.

Not much progress on the Canada150 piece today. Got some small admin things done, though:
-set up my phone to check my abdn e-mail
-e-mailed a proofreader
-found a couple of possible sets of dates for actually going to Aberdeen, asked supervisor which is better
-actually did a weekly update

Off to ULCC rehearsal via catching up with a friend; it's unlikely I'll get much more done today.

Got soem composing done on the Canada 150 thing -- I like how this piece is turning out, but I'm not sure whether I'll be able to finish it in time.

Spent some time on a piece I'm writing for LGQ, to words by another member. It's in three verses, but the character changes a lot, so I'm doing the first verse TB and the second verse SA and the third verse SATB in the tonic major relative to where I started, and a different time signature. I have about 11 bars to fill in some harmony on before I'll be finished the second pencil draft, at which point I can move it along one step and put it in the computer.

I use a personal kanban system for organising my composing. ( more on my workflow organisation )

Following an extended period of avoidandce, today I have been going through my abdn.ac.uk e-mail account.

It isn't as bad as I feared, but I should not leave it so long again, and so another of this week's tasks (I hope) will be to figure out a way to at least read it from gmail. Yes, I know, but Outlook through a web browser is horrible.

I'm still rather lurgified, which isn't helping with getting things done, and now beloved spouse is off work sick with the same thing.

Well, I was supposed to be doing some composing today. Instead I saw that someone I sortof know who has 150k Twitter followers and writes for a national magazine has set up a Patreon account and in less than 24 hours attracted over 200 pledges, to the tune of $1700/month. And I felt bad, and inadequate, and a bit jealous, if I'm honest, especially since she gets paid for a lot of her writing work already. There is a lot of advice out there for people starting out on Patreon, much more than there was when I started nearly 3 years ago, but a lot of it simply isn't suitable for what I'm doing; it assumes an end product more engaging than a piece of sheet music. And the quickest way to get a sustainable income there is to already have fans.

So I spent some time reminding myself to keep my eyes on my own work, and reminding myself that just because my work is much more niche and not as instantly relateable and not so popular does not mean that it is worth less or is in any way less important.

My work is important. My music has broader value to society. If I didn't believe these things I wouldn't do it.

But keeping my eyes on my own work only goes so far; just because I'm not famous-on-the-internet and I don't have 150k followers anywhere and what I create is rather niche, doesn't mean there is nothing I can do.

Things I can do:

load up Hootsuite with a bunch of auto-tweets/FB posts again so that people actually know about my Patreon and my music, and keep doing it

collaborate with others more -- poets, other musicians, artists

get my website in slightly better order (this is a work in progress)

get my business cards finished and printed, and always carry some, and don't be afraid to give them out when I meet people in person

put more of my work on Lulu so that if people do want to buy printed copies, they can

make more recordings/get more recordings made so that people hear my work more (and look into ways of doing this other than giving all my money to Choral Tracks, though I intend to keep using that for some work)

take more pictures -- seriously, it's worth a try, partly because Instagram is apparently v good if you post regularly, partly because people relate better to pictures, partly because it helps tell a story of my work

I actually have plans to do most of this stuff, so it's not as if I'm sitting around in a cave, writing music and then wondering why nobody has ever heard of me. The thing is, actually doing all of this takes time and energy, and finding a balance where it doesn't take time and energy away from composing is the trick of it. It's winter, and last year was tough for me in many ways and I'm still recovering from that, which combined mean I could spend the entirety of my time on the admin and still be flailing. And maybe the important thing about the PhD work, for now, is that it gives me an obvious focus for the composing itself, a reason to do that before falling down the rabbit-hole of trying to fine-tune socmed or whatever to maximise my income.

And now I have to go to LGQ rehearsal, so that's the afternoon gone, and I've not composed a single naked note OR done any academic reading/listening and I haven't made it to Evensong. Tomorrow is a stay-at-home-and-do-admin day, but I think in the circumstances I can use some of it for composing too.

The last couple of days have been really annoying: trying, and failing, to write music for the Canada 150 competition. In the end I scrpaped the idea of using my own words for the moment and have started setting something else instead, which seems to be going better; and I've done some minor admin, but not a lot.

Today was very frustrating and I didn't get a lot done.

Having decided to set this poem of mine for a competition, I'm revising it ever so slightly. The thing that's tripped me up is "ordinary terraced house" -- a terraced house, in Canada, doesn't really indicate ordinariness, first because joined-up houses aren't referred to as "terraced", second because there's a LOT more space in Canada than here and as a result there's a lot more detached housing. So I'm trying to find an expression that works better internationally.

The house in question when I wrote the poem was actually fairly small even by London standards; new enough to have low ceilings and poky windows, and a ridiculously tiny kitchen.

I think "a small, ordinary house" might be the best I can do.

Other than that? Sent the form off for the workshop. Hummed and hawed a lot. Cycled to and from Stratford to have a sticky bun. The edges of this piece are starting to coalesce in the back of my mind but it won't hold still long enough for me to write anything down, yet.

The rest of the week isn't going to be very productive, either: we have a house inspection on Friday, so tomorrow is going to be for tidying, and Thursday for hiding whatever is left of the mess. But I will keep reading the poem and I will keep pencil and paper nearby in case something does jump out at me; and if there's nothing by Friday, well, I'll try a less intuitive approach.

Some of the best music I've written has been by a similarly intuitive process to what I'm doing now: sitting with a text, doing other stuff, turning it over in my mind and waiting. With the waiting sometimes I get dribs and drabs, sometimes I get whole verses at once, usually I get a melody and some smattering of harmony and then have to fill in the rest myself. But I've also written music by rather more methodical means -- almost a sort of brute force approach -- which has turned out to also be very good; I don't always have the luxury of waiting for intuitive processes. The difference, and the reason I favour the intuitive when I do have time, is that the methodical stuff is far more likely to be crap and have to be scrapped and started again.

Stayed home for this one. No tea. But I transcribed the new ending of O Sweet and Blessed Country, and messed around with a bit as it still wasn't quite right. I made a recording of robot flutes playing it, and then realised I also needed to send in a CV if I wanted to enter it for the musica intima Novum 17 workshop. So then there was a bunch of messing about with the CV I used for my Aberdeen application; only a CV n Canada is sortof a different thing to a CV here. What we call a CV here, would be called a resumé there, and when Canadians ask for a CV they don't want a work history quite so much.

Anyway, I got it all sent off, and now they want me to fill out a form.

Also today I met another LGQ member at a local church to have a think about the acoustics for recording. I think we decided that the price was excellent but the background noise was too bad.

I spent a good bit of yesterday, and almost all my working time today, reading poetry.

I am looking for something for a Canadian composing competition. There are a few this year, because of the 150th birthday celebrations, and they tend to be open to Canadian citizens/permanent residents: this is a rather smaller pool of entrants than some competitions have, so it feels more important to enter.

But, well. What's an appropriate text? These aren't sacred choirs or competitions for the most part, so something secular would be good; yet, I'd still like it to feel transcendent enough that I relate to it as I might relate to a sacred text. I'm not much of a patriot and I'm uncomfortable with nationalism, but something Canadian-themed seems like a good idea. But I also don't feel I can do justice to anything touching on the genocidal colonialism that is part of Canada's history and still results in serious oppression for First Nations people today; nor do I want to pretend that didn't happen by only focusing on aspects of Canadian history that are seen more positively.

So, then, a text on a nice safe topic by a Canadian author seems in order. Great! But most of the good stuff isn't in the public domain; and what is in the public domain has failed to grab me, so far. I can't tell whether that's because it's doggerel, or whether it's simply that I've read so much that everything seems like mush now.

I could use some of my grandmother's poetry. I've not previously found it easy to get an official-sounding signed permission form from my father regarding the copyright; the closest is an e-mail along the lines of "Of course you can use any of Gramma's poetry, dear" which... won't really cut it. I can probably ask him to just sign something if I can come up with some wording, but the likelihood of managing that before this particular deadline is low. I also don't speak enough legalese to know where to start with this; and if I then want to release the music itself under a Creative Commons license, which is my preferred practice, it gets even more complicated.

So, I'm probably going to have a bash at setting one of my own poems. I'll need to make some changes to the language: nobody in Canada talks about a terraced house, really. And it feels very, very vulnerable, setting this poem, which is about a real person in my life. Also, it's a bit of a sod to set: a lot of sudden contrasts between the fantasy and reality sections, and wordy in places, and with no real resolution. But I have been meaning to set it for quite some time.

Time: Friday afternoon, 2017-01-06
Location: Southwark cathedral refectory
Tea: Chamomile
Activity: Fixing the end of 'O sweet and blessed country'

In my haste to get to Mass on time beforehand, I failed to bring a pencil with a rubber o it with me, so there was some crossing out to do. I needed to re-write the end of the piece as it was pretty crap before: I'd written most of it previously, then the ending on what must have been a bad day. I'm not entirely convinced it's much better now, but at least it's different, and better in keeping with the style of the rest of the piece; I'll have to sleep on it, and see whether I like it. I'd like to submit this piece for a workshop I only found out about this afternoon; the deadline is 2016-01-09 (er, Monday) at 5pm PST (ah, the timezones help me out here). The piece itself is a setting of my preferred version of the last verse of the hymn "Jerusalem the golden": the one that has "Exult, O dust and ashes, the Lord shall be your part; his always, his forever, thou shalt be and thou art!" in it. The actual original text is many verses longer than what appears in most hymnals and so different versions crop up all the time; I know that S, who I'm considering dedicating this piece to, also prefers the version I prefer, and dislikes the version in the Beastly Orange Hymnal.

No background music in the cathedral refectory, but during busy ties it can still be on the noisey side. The busy times don't tend to last very long though. The windows give plenty of natural daylight earlier in the day, but afternoons can be rather dim. There is some hot food at lunchtime, and tea/cake/etc available the rest of the time. The loo is down a narrow flight of stairs, there is an accessible toilet elsewhere in the building, near the gift shop. It's quite handy for London Bridge station.

After that I went to a stationer, then wrote most of a "review of the year" post, but I am not up to typing it tonight; I'm barely managing to type up this worklog and it's only short (I'm backdating it). I do have a tablet and a bluetooth keyboard, and it might be worth bringing them along on these café excursions for worklog and blogging purposes, though they'd be more than I really wanted to carry. We'll see.

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The Artsy Honker

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worklog

BOTHER

worklog: competitions and commissions and proposals, oh my!

worklog: yakshaving

worklog

worklog

Worklog

Worklog

Many worklogs

worklog

worklog from yesterday

worklog

worklog

worklog/rant/crowdfunding todo list

worklog

worklog: Canada 150 competition; admin soup

worklog: O sweet and blessed country

Text issues

worklog

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March 2023

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