Concert & Review

The concert happened last Friday night and was a great success! My friend Jeff wrote up a review for NectarNotes, check it out.

http://nectarnotes.com/musicnews/peter-lawless-review.html

I will be posting recordings of the concert soon.

The End

It's done! It's over! I put in my last two hours in the window!

...I'm exhausted.

The past week has been incredibly stressful. Having to carve out two hours a day to spend in that freezing window really hampered my fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants lifestyle. It's been especially hard because I haven't had much to do the past three days. I have finished all of the pieces for the concert!

When I started this project, I thought that it would be hard to get started but that I would quickly get used to it. But that's not really how it worked. The excitement of starting a new project fueled the first couple of weeks, and as the pieces started coming, this continued to fuel me. After three weeks, though, I was just getting tired. I was being successful writing, but this was at the expense of my non-musical life. I didn't have time to take care of my normal errands (I went a whole week with almost no food in my apartment because I could find time to go to the grocery store), I have a whole stack of bills to pay tomorrow, and, worst of all, I haven't been able spend enough time with my friends. I've been feeling sort of distant and alienated, and the stress has made me really irritable and dickish. These were some effects that I hadn't really anticipates.

I just need a good, long night's sleep, but, of course, there is no time for that! I have to get to rehearsal in less than two hours, and I'm playing at the RecordBar tonight with the Blackhouse Improvisors' Collective. Plus, there is still plenty of work to do for the concert on Friday - rehearsals, advertising, set-up, figuring out and making a program, etc. Someday though ... someday ... I will catch up on some sleep.

Days 26-28

This is getting tough! But I'm so close!

Musically, the project is going nicely. I am done with all of the big pieces: the improvisors board game, the violin duet (Methological Individualism), and the Ron Paul setting (Current Conditions or Just a Bad Dream). I have four songs that were part of what was originally called a political song cycle, but the political sentiments are not particularly prominent. These songs are in various states of completetiong - mainly, they need words. I guess I will be spending my last three days trying to finish these up.

Planning, logistics and advertising for the concert have been taking up the majority of my time lately. Going around town hanging up flyers is the worst! Especially when it is this cold out. I'd much rather be spending my time in my nice warm apartment - but I guess somebody has to do it!
(Of course, all of you can help by telling all your friends about this awesome concert coming up next!)

Day 25

Finished the fabrication on the board game and made a final draft of the violin duet, which is now titled "Methodological Individualism."

Day 24 - Another One Down

Here is a good example of how I sometimes work. I wanted to write a single-line fugue for the violin duet. I had an idea and began to develop it, but, after 12 measures or so, I didn't like the direction it was moving in. So took the few measures that I liked and tried to vary the material in a different way. I did this four or five times, but it never came together the way I wanted it to. So I took a break and came back to it later. I wrote a totally new fugue that did not utilize any of the actual melodic material from the first attempts, but called upon my favorite structural components.

Day 23

Day 22

Making progress...

The Board Game for Improvisors: Vocal Edition is formally done, but I still have some work to do in fabricating the board and game cards. Here's some examples I've got, along with the rules:

Pics from Days 20 and 21

Busy, Busy

I have been neglecting the blog a bit lately, but, once again, it was for good reason. I have made significant progress toward getting all the pieces done for the concert.

Big News: I FINISHED THE FIRST PIECE TODAY!!!

-it's a quirky little number called "So Many Books." I haven't worked out the full arrangement, but it will most likely be performed by me on ukulele and voice and Lauren Wells on violin. I making headway!

Today was also a good organizational day. I made a list of all the pieces I am working on and gave an estimate of the percentage of completion (I would post the picture of it now, but I am too tired and will do it tomorrow). Most of the works are more than halfway done, but I am stuck in the early stages on two of my songs for the cycle.

Interestingly, the piece that is the least complete was the first thing I did in the window. It was a compositional exercise that lead me to a nice melody with some interesting chord changes, but I really haven't made any progress on it since about the third day.

Day 18

Yay! Today was very productive! I did a lot of work on the violin/saxophone duet ... which is now for two violins. The idea is that the two players play off of identical music, but because each repeated figure is repeated an indeterminate number of times, the musical texture will vary over time. Also, based on this structure, each performance of the piece will be unique. I actually got the idea from some old fugues which consisted of just one line of music. I think they were by Telemann, but I'm not quite sure.

Day 17

Ugh, these are the days that make this project hard. I had it all planned out - I had to get my flat tire fixed, go to the grocery store, and then hit the window. Unfortunately, the gods were not happy with me today. Simple car procedure took over two hours, threw off my plans and gave me a huge headache! When I finally got to the window, I was in no mood to compose - and I didn't really do anything. Luckily, I had scheduled for my friend Lauren to come look at the violin parts in progress. It was a great little rehearsal, and it has really whet my appetite to keep going! Tomorrow will be better!

Half Way Reflection

I have been neglecting the blog a bit lately, but that is because I have been quite busy working on music. I'm feeling the crunch of trying to write all of this music in such a short time. Some of the pieces are mere fragments, but I am choosing to spent my time on the more fully formed pieces. I want to get these pieces done so that I can focus on the less developed ones.

One question that has been popping up in my head is "What style will this concert be in?" As a composer and performer I have made many different kinds of music - some fairly traditional, some totally outlandish. I work a lot in improvisation, but I also have written many thoroughly composed pieces. Sometimes my aesthetic comes from the avant-garde, and sometimes it comes from mainstream popular music. So what do I choose for this show?

As it stands right now, I am writing music from all of these perspectives. I don't know if their is a unifying theme, but that's fine with me. I love variety!

Here's the pictures from the past three days:

Day 14

For some reason, I'm having trouble uploading the pictures lately, but here's a cool video that somebody shot of me the other day:

I'll figure this picture stuff out and be back on track soon.

Also, I'm playing with the Blackhouse Improvisors Collective tonight at 9 pm at the Paragraph Gallery. 23 East 12th St. It's a showcase of artists involved with the Charlotte Street Foundation. Hope to see y'all there!

Down and Up

Today's time in the window was fairly unproductive. I just couldn't come up with any ideas. I've got a lot of partial pieces and I wasn't able to expand on any of them. I did not tape up any new music today :(

But when I got home tonight, I began working on the Ron Paul text setting and things really started to flow. First, I decided to use all of Sen. Paul's speech instead of just the small portion that I had originally chosen. I think this will be better for the spoken word format that I am using. Second, I started working on it on the computer. In the window, I had already created a basic chordal structure for the first part, but I was having trouble making it flow correctly. Putting everything into the computer really help me to give the piece a form, it started to make sense a little better. I guess I really am hopelessly attached to this devise in some ways. But that doesn't concern me, I am quite pleased with results of tonight's work. I will print it out and tape it up tomorrow.

Here's the new pages:

P.S. - If anyone out there has any comments or questions on this page. I will definitely respond. I'm beginning to wonder if there is anybody out there...

New Format!

I came up with a new idea for how to use this blog. I wish I would have thought of this a long time ago! At the end of each day, I will now be logging my progress by taking a picture of each page before I tape it up and one of the window from the outside. I hope this will help make the experience more engaging for viewers not in Kansas City (or even people here who don't want to venture out in the cold). Also, by photographing the pages viewers will be able to see the back sides of the sheets!

So here's the shots from Day 11:

One Third of the Way There!

This project is now about one third of the way over. I'm getting concerned about creating a whole concert's worth of music, so I am trying to get organized. I made a list of everything that I am working on and what progress I have made on it. Hear it is:

a "political song cycle" - includes:

"So Many Books" - lyrics complete, needs chords and arrangement

"It's Not Up To Me" - derived from Bjork's "It's Not Up To You" - has melody, needs chords and more lyrics

"Exercise #1" - took Black Flags "Rise Above" and made a new melody and chords to the original lyrics, needs a set of original lyrics

Some song that I started today on the ukulele, needs words

somewhat related to the song cycle, is a setting of a speech that Ron Paul gave to the House of Representatives on May 15, 2009. The text is quite poetic, and I have edited the lyrics down a bit to make them even more so. This setting will be for a narrator (female), violin, accordion, and keyboard. You can see the original speech here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMWvbMCHwCY&feature=player_embedded

a twelve-tone row that will be used in the Ron Paul piece, but may also find it's place somewhere else

a violin duet that may become a duet for violin and saxophone. It will also include some staging and movement

I am also doing some work on a new version of my Board Game for Improvisors. It will be quite different from my first two versions

I think if I finish all of these it will be quite a full concert!

Day Eight

mmm...so nice and warm with my new heater fan.

The challenge of writing a whole concert's worth of music in one month is starting to dawn on me. I need about one and a half to two hours worth of music ... yikes. For this reason, none of the music will be one hundred percent completely written out - it will all have some element of improvisation. Improv is present in almost all my music, some times it is used subtly in small doses and other times it accounts for almost all the musical material. Even a simple song will often only consist of a melody, chords and lyrics. It requires improvisation to turn that into a multi-part arrangement, even if the improvs become locked into place in subsequent versions. I also do things in a graphic notation. You can read about it hear: http://peterlawlessmusic.webs.com/structuredimprovs.htm . I rarely write these kinds of fully graphic scores anymore, but I may bring in a few of the symbols for pieces that include traditional notation.

Ultimately, what I am doing with these improv structures is to draw on the creative powers of the musicians I choose to help me create a richer experience than I could by dictatorially writing out every note. For this project, I am also helping to get everything I need done in time.

Reflection

Well, it is still snowing like crazy and it has been all afternoon. I decided not to go into the window, and I, instead, stayed at home all evening. I did do some work but not too much. No ideas are quite coming together in any meaningful way. This project is already starting to really stress me out only six days in. The early stages of experimentation are always full of terrible ideas for me. It's only by sifting through lots and lots of bad ideas that I hit on any goods ones. So putting all my brain-storming and early drafts on display for everyone to see is really quite scary. I only want people to know my best ideas, and I want to bury those bad ones. But I guess that is one of the main purposes of this whole project: to show off the creative process. This is the really nitty-gritty here. I'm almost literally throwing ideas against the wall (window) to see what sticks.

Day Five

Here's some pictures that Heidi took on

Day One. Check out my snazzy new sweater! Thanks Katelyn!

I just noticed all the hideous typos on this contract today. I'll make a new one...