Another “A” Assonance? Absurd!

I think I may have run out of witty thing to say.  And really, that just makes me not want to write a blog entry as much.  A suppose there might be a few people out there who really just want to know the monotonous details of what I do in a day, but at least for myself, I prefer if the story has a little spice.  For now tough, I'm pretty much spiced out (you can tell I'm close to empty when I find assonances intensely amusing).

So here's what's new.  Tomorrow (or by the time I post this, last Friday) I am going (I went) to Windhoek.  Engelhardt has an audition where if he's successful he will get to perform as a soloist with an orchestra in a big concert!  Sounds like a great opportunity.  I heard his audition pieces yesterday and they're quite impressive.  One of them he does entirely in falsetto - it went up to a high E or a high G or something.  Either way it was really high.  I think he's got a decent shot, but then, I don't know what kind of people are also auditioning.

Yesterday I wrote out all the alto parts for the musical on Finale and made sound files for the choristers to practice with.  Today I copied them all onto CD's.  Mostly pretty boring stuff, but I'm happy to do whatever I can to help.  But, one very exciting thing that came out of it (to me at least) - I had been putting off learning how to use the Speedy Entry tool on Finale.  At Grant MacEwan I learned how to do it with a MIDI keyboard, but lacking a MIDI keyboard here, I was forced to figure out the other way (I certainly wasn't going to use Simple Entry for all that music [I'm guessing this all means something to about three people]).  Anyway, now I am fluent using the Speedy Entry tool, which should make for far more efficient use of Finale in the future.

I also showed Mrs. Venter the part that I had written for the musical.  She really likes it!  So I think we're going to use it.  Hopefully I'll get to write a few more of these little parts - I just need to sit down with Mrs. Venter and the script and figure out exactly what we need.

As I said earlier, tomorrow I'm going to Windhoek.  Engelhardt's picking me up at 7am.  Which meant last night that I had one day to break my sleep cycle of sleeping about 9pm to 1am and 5am to 10am.  So I had to stay up, no matter how tired I felt.  I read my book for a while - Poisonwood Bible - very enjoyable in spite of the "Oprah's Book Club" sticker on the front (there, that was a little witty).  Around 10pm I couldn't read anymore, and had nothing to do.  Then it occurred to me - I've been meaning to arrange "Help Me" by Joni Mitchell for jazz choir for the longest time.  So I got to work on that!  It was indeed a challenge (to transcribe) as Joni Mitchell's melodies are all over the board, plus the form of her progressions are all over the place.  But then, the thing that really blew my mind.  There was one rhythm that just didn't seem right no matter what I tried to do.  Then I suddenly realized - it was a 7/8 measure.  It runs out she's dropping eighth notes all over the place in this tune.  But the part that blows my mind is that the groove in that song is so tight that I never noticed it.  Usually when a song has a random 7/8 measure it's done as a jarring effect of sudden asymmetry, and is usually meant to be noticed.  But in this case, it's as if Joni just decided that she didn't want to have eight eights notes in that measure and when rolling merrily along only having played seven.  Anyway, after that revelation I really got going on the arrangement.  I went to bed at 12am and got up at 7am, and finished the arrangement by 11am.  Hopefully the cycle is broken for good.

Now I'm just over at Mrs. Venter's, having just finished copying the CD's I mentioned earlier.  MacDonald is on his way over for tea!  That should be exciting!

-Joel.