So what have I been doing since April?

Well I created an MP3 of what exits of “Morning Prayer” and loaded into my mp3 player at the end of April, I then took a walk every night for about six straight weeks while listen to the entire 36 minutes of music. What I came away from this experiment is that I am happy with the prelude, which is finished. I am happy with the first movement which is 99 and 44/100ths finished. I am happy with the second movement which is 99 percent finished. I am happy with the third movement which is 90 percent finished. I am pretty happy with the fifth movement, some doubt about the “second theme”, but overall happy with is and it is about 80 percent finished. And I know what needs to be done with it, and I just need to take the time to do it.

That just leaves the troublesome fourth movement. I have altered it several times, have tired different approaches; making it only drum and bass, making it an acoustic piano feature, using a bunch of synthesizers, using synthesizer pads with free soprano sax lines over a driving bass/drum ostinato and even considered replacing it whole sale with my piece “Eous” But nothing seems to work, so I have put the piece back on the back burner.


So putting “Morning Prayer” on hold I began working on my “Symphony No. 0”. First by working out the high level concepts and ideas and organization of the piece. I used the FreeMind Mind Mapping Software to brain storm and organize my ideas for the Symphony. This step is mostly complete at this point; The third movement has already written and is finished, baring any last minute changes. The fourth movement is a work in progress and is maybe 50 percent completed. I have begun sketching out the first movement and then end of final fifth movement.

I have also upgraded my Sonar DAW from version 5.x to 8.5 and been working through some of the video tutorials that came with it and others that are available on YouTube . What I am finding is that all of the tutorials are geared towards pop/rock/hihop/techno productions and music, but very little in the way of classical (and I do NOT mean hollywood movie sound tracks) and jazz, which is my main focus, but never the less I am enjoying the ride and might end up doing some more tehcno sort of stuff. Note; trying to do 13/8 in the step sequencer is not straight foreword, as it is so 4/4 (or at least quarter note) oriented in its world view.

So while I have not been keeping up with the Blog I have been moving forward with the music.

Ursus Demens

PS: I also spent two weeks in Japan in July.