DISCORDATURA

What it’s from: The hit list. At the moment, it’s a set of cues to be improvised by an ensemble, recorded, and then (conceivably, presumably) tactfully rearranged with some sequencing software to either a) stand alone as a completed piece or b) get played back alongside another ensemble tackling the same set of cues. Here are the roughs for numbers 10, 11, and 14.

My daughter generously contributed the colorization, which I should certainly think will find its way into the finished score.

Of course, that means I have to finish the score.

Soundbites aren’t the only layer of de-composed musical miscellany that litter my life. It’s fairly often – as attempts to jumpstart my creative output are regular, near seasonal occurrences – that amidst the snowdrift of paperwork that follows me from work to my bag to my bedside to underneath the bed to a folder in a box I find scraps of notation. Pieces that were scribbled down in haste, along with the thought that I was assumedly leaving myself enough crumbs of information to be able to get back and complete the idea when more time made itself apparent.

Obviously, there’s no level of information apart from a complete recorded score, preferably with a DVD-like commentary track where I explain in full, ridiculous detail to my future self, just what the hell I was thinking at the time.

Today, for example, I found this gem.

I’m going to take a few to ponder just what in the devil’s name that’s supposed to sound like, and then come back with a recorded interpretation… For laughs or whatnot.