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: