Tuesday 31 August 2010

I'm sitting at my desk at 11pm with a celebratory glass of Guinness having got to the end of draft 1 of an arrangement. Some people (myself included) can only get on with 'back room' activities like writing or arranging when they're under the shadow of a looming deadline. The work is more stressful, but as it takes shape it does become easier. 

Yesterday was a complete disaster in terms of productivity. I had two near-simultaneous interruptions: one was welcome and expected (Alison and Catherine Motuz dropping in for a late breakfast), and the other wasn't either of those (some contractors arriving to clear some asbestos that we'd found in the garden). Once the contractors had finally gone, Alison and Catherine took advantage of the sunny weather on the trampoline and in the hammock while I got on with work-related stress indoors.

So today was much saner by comparison. Having had the necessary ideas while walking round  the house last week, the only way I could actually get them down in notated form was to print out the structure that I'd carefully inputted into Sibelius, chuck all the paper up on the piano, and scrawl all over it with a pencil. Then I could type that back in to Sibelius again. It reminded me of visiting Don Davis's studio in the Hollywood hills in 2001: the control room had an entire wall of Roland rack samplers for his demos, but behind all the state-of-the-art kit there was an upright piano at the back of the room with a board and manuscript paper on it, where he preferred to do the actual musical work.