Eous

As a composer I occasionally get a musical idea stuck in my craw that I can not shake out of my ears until I get it down on paper and published; Eous (1) is one such piece.

Eous is a piece for a Jazz group consisting of Soprano Sax, Vibraphone, Bass and Drums. Please take a listen to the MP3 for an example of one way the piece could be interpreted. Thank you.

Eous


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(1) Eous is a made up word with no meaning.

Black Fire

Well I have finally posted the score to “Black Fire” and it is now available along with a preliminary recording to listen to. Please take some time listen. Thank you.


Ursus Demens

http://www.sibeliusmusic.com/index.php?sm=home.score&scoreID=149060

Getting There

It always seems that the last three percent takes the longest to finish. All of the notes are on the paper for “Black Fire”. Now is the tedious task of going through each part making sure all of the small but essential things are in place. Thinks like dynamic markings, queues, articulations and that each part is layout in a readable fashion. Just a lot of detail work to do to finish the score. The music is done, just need to make it presentable to the world. Perhaps by the end of September.


Ursus Demens

Slow

Well the push never really happened, so I have gotten little done on "Black Fire". I am almost all the way there, just the last little bit to finish. I am going to be busy tonight and Saturday, but maybe on Sunday I will buckle down and finish it off.



Ursus Demens

SBS

Slow But Sure

While I have not updated progress, I have been making progress on proof reading the “Black fire” parts every night except last night. Not sure how much I can get done before Sunday, but I hope to be able to make a big push next week.


Ursus Demens

End of August

“Black Fire” Status.

Well I will not have a finalized score and recording for release before the end of August, I can say that all of the music has been “composed” and in that narrow sense the piece is finished, but not ready for release. I am still working through all of the details, things like dynamic markings, phrase markings and other such things. Then I will need to proof all of the parts before the piece is ready to be published. And then we can move onto making a recording. So I am happy with the progress I have made this month as the “notes” are done.


Ursus Demens

Black Fire progress

While I have not posted in a while, progress on "Black Five" continues to move forward each day. I do not know if I will be done before the end of August, but I am very happy with the progress and I think the wait will be worth it, as I am very happy with the piece at this point.

Black Fire

So I have settled on what I think will be the final title for my current piece in progress. The new title for “The Red Dress” is:

“Black Fire”

The only question is should it be “Black Fire”, “Blackfire”, or “BlackFire”?



Ursus Demens

Killer Joe and Things

Last night I got a lot of work done on “The Red Dress”. The big thing that got done was I made a minor tweak to one of the transitions that was working OK, but was not quite there, I added just a little bit to it (just a single note actually) and now it works really well.

I also made a preliminary recording of it which I dumped onto my MP3 player. So the piece is pretty much complete with just minor details to work out.

There are two decisions left to make about the piece:

• Which of two endings to use.
• What should I title the piece as.
  

I am only about 80 percent happy with the current title of “The Red Dress” and the variation “Her Red Dress”. I would have to say that the piece owes some of its inspiration to such classic Jazz tunes as “So What” and “Killer Joe”, with perhaps a very small dash of “City of Glass” thrown in. So I am looking for a title to reflect its ancestry; a bit dark, a bit edgy late at night, give me another Scotch sort of title.

The Piano Part

Work on “The Red Dress” continued last night. just got a little done, mostly making small changes and corrections to the piano part. We will see how much I will get done tonight.


Ursus Demens

Weekend.

As predicted I got very little done “The Red” Dress” over the weekend, but I did get a little work done. The big thing though is I did install my Sibelius 6 upgrade on Sunday. So far it looks very nice and did seem to “clean up” “The Red” Dress” score making it cleaner. As for the upgrade its self it went very smoothly with none of the pain when I up graded to Sibelius 5.

A Fifth

Well was able to work on “The Red Dress” last night. Fourth day in a row, but only a little work, but I am happy with the final “big” structure of the piece, so I am now just working on the details. But as the y say “the devil is in the details”. Some of my time was diverted to proofing the parts for “... and into dust you shall return”.

We will see if I can get a fifth day of work done, but since it is Friday the odds are not good.



Note: Lead sheet for “The Red Dress” is here , see page 2: N.J.S.G.