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I have created this site in order to provide performers, listeners and composers with a description of a composer's experiences with the creative process. The posts will provide discussions of the inspirations, challenges, and successes of a composer from the inception of the piece to the culmination in performance. I will provide a link to where you can see and hear the works in progress. Comments and questions are always welcomed. They will not posted unless you grant me permission.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Lan Na Thai Formatted

Yesterday, I worked on formatting La Nan Thai so that the saxophonist would be able to turn pages and also coordinate with the pre-recorded sounds. The first thing I did was to make my score a transposed score since the saxophonist will be playing from the score rather than an extracted part. In doing so, I decided to add key signatures even though the piece in not in a traditional major or minor tonality. The key signatures made the reading easier as there were less accidentals. The middle of the second movement was put in Db major as this section uses a black key pentatonic. I changed some of the notes enharmonically in order to make them easier to read.

The next step was to be concerned with page turns. I first told the Sibelius program to hide any unused staves. It does this by system and made the notation cover less pages. I then looked at where the page turns occurred and combined the gong and taiko drum parts in spots in order to eliminate more staves. I then combined some measures so that page turns always occurred during rests for the saxophonist.

The last thing I did was to extract the pre-recorded sounds part by muting the saxophone line. I am sending Andy Wen an mp3 version of the pre-recorded sounds along with a pdf file of the music for his comments and suggestions. I'll let you know if anything needs to be changed.

I have posted to the following link a transposed and formatted version of the score so that you can see the results of yesterday's efforts compared to before. The recorded accompaniment sounds are not accurate on the MIDI playback. The shakuhachi plays back like a saxophone instead of a flute and the gong ageng plays as a cymbal instead of gong. Since the correct sounds and balances are an integral part of the piece, I have posted an mp3 version of each movement that uses the Sibelius Sounds Essentials playback. To see and hear what I have composed, go to http://www.cooppress.net/lan_na_thai_blog.html

Dr. B

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dr. B,

I really enjoyed your new work entitled "La Na Thai". I really like the 2nd movement. I know you'll continue to write great sounding music.