September has come and gone, and so has my Creative Pact 2015! For those who have missed my (somewhat intermittent) posts, I set myself the challenge of scribbling some new music every day for the course of the month. Why? Well, August seemed to be a bit taken up with tidying up scores, redrafting and refining, and the final stages of six separate pieces. After so much work on the tail ends of pieces, I felt the need to be creative again whilst not worrying about the final destination for the music. Lots of snippets and ideas was the aim. The whole idea of a creative pact is to work on a project every day; my working patterns mean that I do normally work every day, but some of these can get swallowed up in engraving, admin or proposals. The scribbles idea would ensure I focused briefly on those initial sparks of creativity each day.
Obviously it’s hard to categorise some of the scribbles, but a rough count of the scribbles is as follows:
3 scribbles for choir
3 ideas on a treble clef
1 idea that is specifically woodwind based
2 ideas that are lines for bass instruments
2 ideas specifically for violin or viola
13 ideas that have been written on a grand stave (not that they all necessarily need to remain there; some of these are specifically piano, but some may be harp or marimba or similar!).
That totals 24 ideas! Some of the days were spent extending ideas from previous days, and some were taken up with the final finishing touches to a commission.
Overall I am very pleased. Some of the ideas are only a few bars, and some are a whole page. Either way, I managed to write something new most days which is definitely a success!
What’s next? Well, this month I need to return to some previous projects for redrafts, and return to my list of commissions and projects. However, I intend to spend time reviewing each of the scribbles from this month and trying to see which I could develop into a longer piece. Tonight, for example, I’ve spent time on the woodwind idea and on one of the piano ones, which I’m hoping to extend for future piano collection. Creative Pact 2015
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