Collapsing Elbows is done!

I just finished the score for "Collapsing Elbows." Or course, I still have some minor editing to do but every note is on the page. The next phase after the final edit of the piano score is to add the instructions for mixing the electronics live. Once that's done, hopefully, I won't be too far from purchasing that Mac Book Pro that I've been in dire need of for my entire life and then Tania and I can sit down and rehearse the piece. So, upon finishing this evening, I threw my hands up in excitement. That's one more thing accomplished this year. Baby steps. That's how I finished the piece after all. By cutting it up into chunks. That and slowing it down and playing certain selections back looped. It was a long hard task it seemed mainly because of the rhythms. I improvised some crazy stuff. Complex septuplet rhythms and triplet 32nd notes all over the place, plus multiple meter changes. I'm still deciding if I'm going to cut out barlines for some of the measures. There's still more work to do to make this score readable, etc.

Anyway, remember my new website? That's still happening. We had some setbacks but fairly soon there should be something up. We're going with wordpress and we've come up with some great ideas for driving traffic to the site. I'll be blogging software and music tutorials as often as I can. I'm also going to be cross-linking the site everywhere and customizing my look on myspace and youtube. Excitement and anticipation again.

Meanwhile, this New York winter is giving me seasonal affective disorder or something. Okay, not really but I find myself craving sunlight and heat these days. The temperature was in the single digits the other night, colder than it got last winter, yet that's not what's been affecting me. Hell, I managed that just fine (the trick? thermal shirts). What really gets me is the angle of the sun. It's so low these days that I'm not sure I'm getting any vitamin D from its rays. I'm still not at the point where I loathe New York City winters. It's pretty grueling but I have this faint memory of what the city is like in the summer time that's going to get me through these next few months.

I'm not losing perspective though. In fact, I was reading stuff from my old blog that I had before I started this one and found that it helps me sometimes when I feel far away from the reasons I moved up here. I'm mostly scanning for entries that highlighted all the uncertainty that characterized the months leading up to my move. I enjoy the perspective I get from seeing how I was back then and what I expected would happen, the things that turned out when I thought they wouldn't. It's like much needed entertainment but also a reminder that things do work out. Also, it serves the function sometimes of reminding me of the things I was planning to do that may never have gotten done. Perhaps I'll get back on track with some of those things this year as I plan for the upcoming tasks on my plate.

For now, I'm going to go write a few more emails and watch TV because I'm tired of sitting in front of this computer. Daoust: out!