Entry 6.

Hard to believe that the semester's pretty much halfway over- I've got my flight booked for home already too though part of me seems stuck in winter mood- I've had 'Rockin' around the Christmas Tree' stuck in my head for hours. I seem to have drawn the short straw this semester, and 2/3 of my exams are late but I guess to find the silver lining would be to find that I've just been given more time to prepare for my two later exams...Neither of which have much of anything to do with music...But this paragraph doesn't really either, which is why I'm going to change the subject now and write about compositions and stuff.

So I presented some new materiel in class today- the piece that I had in a dream last week while in a bit of an ill daze. I got some really good pointers today in class, especially regarding the instrumentation. I'd really like to use the vibes, but as it was pointed out, and as I had suspected myself, the notation would prove to be a bit tricky and there's not very much time left between now and the performance, so I think I might put what I've got written in the vibe part over onto piano, and write something different for vibes with the motor thing running to add to the texture. I should probably research it a bit first, to make sure that that's the sound I want, and how it can be modified.

A few things have been brought to my attention in the oboe part as well, which should be easy enough to fix- I took down bar numbers and will be more mindful of 'honking' notes on the oboe.

I've also been prompted to graph where I want the piece to go, seeing as I have relatively no idea right now. I'm just letting the texture and harmony of it waver all over the place, going where it wants to go, and I'm very relieved to hear that it's not tonal, despite the fact that it has a lot of tonal elements. I'll try and make some kind of graph to give myself a better idea of its path, hopefully It'll help me have a better destination in mind.

I've had a few other ideas come to mind to. We've been encouraged to introduce an aleatoric element to the music, and I haven't exactly done that. I've been toying with the idea of having someone read a text while the musicians play the music- whether I'll write the text or use one which already exists I haven't decided yet, though I'm leaning toward the former. I won't give the reader any indication of speed or rhythm for the words- I like the natural inflection better than notated rhythm, and it'll produce a different performance every time depending on the speaker. It's just an idea, though I'm beginning to like it more and more.