Entry 11.

So it’s back to the grindstone I go…After taking a bit of a hiatus due to health issues which I haven’t quite gotten rid of I’ve decided to really buckle down on this one and do some hard work, even if it's pretty late at night. At least it’s entertaining, and I seem to compose better when I’m less than half awake anyway, as I was shown when I composed ‘Subconscious.’ It’d be nice if I could have another compositional dream, because that way I could both compose and sleep, but I guess we can’t always get the best of both worlds. I'm going to try and pull an all-nighter to finish one of the movements of my band thing just to see how far I get. I just realized now that I have no idea what I'm going to name the thing as an entity, though I'll probably be able to draw some inspiration from the text.

Tonight (well, this morning- I'm starting this at 12:55am) I'm focusing on the second movement, which is called "Un Drole de Bete." My apologies- I still can't make accents on my computer- it has a laptop keyboard and doesn't do the whole 'press down alt and put in a combination of numbers to make an accented letter' thing. The author of the book, Antoine Saint-Exupery, drew pictures that go with various parts of the book, and in this part it shows the little prince in the desert looking down at a yellow snake in the sand. The position of the snake makes it look almost as though it's just another ripple in the sand, which gives me a few ideas about layering chromatic passages one on top of the other- but I don't want the texture to get too muddy.

So I've got to start at the beginning. I want to start with the brass, seeing as I've neglected them a bit in the first movement which hasn't made any progress since I presented it last time in class...I'm a failure. Sometimes.

Random idea- maybe Asteroide B-612 for a title for the entire work.

...And the ADD begins....But I like to jot down ideas as they come to me, even if I'm mid-sentance....But only relevant ones. I think if I wrote down every thought that came to me, I'd be rambling myself off a cliff, and no one would be able to follow my thought process. I'm tryig to keep reminding myself to heed the advice given in Clark's last blog entry about extending the opening section longer than I might be naturally inclined. Looking at what I've got written already, I think he's right. I began with a kind of fanfare-ish opening which lasted a grand total of four bars- but in my defence, it begins in 7/4 time, which is almost like having eight 4/4 bars. The extending has begun...

I've done as much as I'm going to do right now- 26 bars for an intro, which then goes into the 'Tango del Muerte.' I think thats means 'Tango of death,' either that or 'tango of the dead.' I'll google it at some point. It's 2:04am, and I have class at 10:00 which I'd like to be at least semi-alert for, and I really shouldn't be up this late anyway while sick.

I think this is when composing becomes decomposing.