Daniel Powers

Archive for October, 2007

Carol of the Birds is finished and has been sent in. The Garritan Community Christmas CD will be out sometime in November (one hopes!).

The version submitted was shortened from the original. We were supposed to keep things under 4 minutes for the CD, but I wasn’t paying attention to the length as I was working on it. Imagine my surprise when I actually checked the length and found that it was about 5 minutes 20 seconds. Yikes! How did that happen?

Oh, I know how it happened, of course. The song is 4 verses long, so naturally I wanted my arrangement to reflect that. But by adding an introduction and coda, and using a fairly slow tempo, I let the length get out of hand.

The fix was pretty easy, for once. I just cut the third verse from the arrangement and edited the transition somewhat. It now times out to 4 minutes 13 seconds, a little longer than it was supposed to be but not overly so. While the cut version will appear on the Garritan CD, I will post the full version on my website when I have time to update it, hopefully tomorrow. And of course, I’ll add a link from here as well.

My version of Carol of the Birds is scored for 10 solo strings, namely 4 violins, viola, 4 cellos, and double bass. The rather odd combination was dictated by the number of solo strings available in the Garritan libraries (contributors to the CD were restricted to using Garritan products). I used the Solo Stradivarius Violin as first violin and Gofriller Cello as first cello; for the remaining strings I just used all eight of the solo strings that are part of Garritan Personal Orchestra.

Now back to the piccolo concerto. The solo part is mainly done at this point, but there’s a lot to do yet on the orchestra score.

After my brief foray into glass music, I’m back to working on the piccolo concerto.

As of today, the first section is pretty much done except for a few details. As for the second section, the piccolo part itself is nearly complete except for a few gaps that hopefully won’t take long to plug. Most of the orchestra part currently exists only as a harmonic progression, with few details noted as to texture. Which is actually not unusual at this stage.

The frustrating part is the ending. I have a pretty clear idea of how I want the piece to end but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to connect it to the rest of the piece. Hopefully I’ll be able to fix this soon.

In other news, I’ve been contacted by an entertainment concern in Branson Missouri about using one of my older Christmas music arrangements as background to an e-card promotional campaign they’re planning, to announce their Christmas offerings. Something new for me. We’ve come to an informal agreement, but contracts and stuff have not been signed, so I’ll hold off on further information for the moment.

Today is our 15th anniversary. Yay us!

A couple of days ago, I had a great idea. Since the 15th is associated with crystal (like gold for the 50th), and since I have a modest collection of sampled glass instruments, why not write a piece for glass ensemble, record it with my sampled instruments, and give it to Martha as an anniversary present?

So I did. (Honestly, I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself, what with all my other projects, which I stand to get paid for, and which have deadlines!)

I found some time yesterday, wrote and recorded the piece in about 3 hours, and played it for Martha this morning. She loved it! (Don’t worry, it wasn’t the only thing I gave her.)

And now, here it is for your listening pleasure:

Crystal Anniversary for glass ensemble.

This was recorded with Vienna Symphonic Library’s now defunct Glass and Stones library (melody is Glass Harmonica, occasionally doubled with Musical Glasses; rhythm track is Glass Harmonica and Verrophone played with mallets) and Bolder Sound’s Crystal Glasses and Meditation Bowls. Enjoy!

The arrangement of Good King Wenceslas is finished and has been given to the Carmel Symphony. One down.

The Concerto Piccolo is back to top priority. I worked on it for a few hours this afternoon and got a lot done, mainly on the piccolo part. Hopefully, a bit of momentum has kicked in and I’ll be able to finish it in a few weeks.

There’s also a little progress on Carol of the Birds to report. Not much, but I’ve filled in a couple of pages of sketches. I now have an outline of the harmonic progressions, and a good deal of the voice leading. There’s also a good idea (only in my head at the moment) for beginning the arrangement, but still no idea how to end it. I’m still planning it to feature solo violin and cello, accompanied by 8 other solo strings and possibly harp as well (not certain about the harp, though).

Nothing on any of the other projects to report for now.