November 17, 2005
Turbine Peek
I’m chugging away at the orchestration of “Turbine.” If you’re curious how it starts, here are the first two pages in PDF format. (In Safari, it looks a little weird when it first loads the page, but the fonts are all fine on the redraw.)
Since there’s no percussion key yet, here’s what’s happening at the very beginning:
Percussion 1: Choked China cymbal, followed by splash and suspended crash cymbal
Percussion 2: Two brake drums of different sizes
Percussion 3: Two more brake drums, of still different sizes
Percussion 4: Tam-tam, then marimba
Percussion 5: A second tam-tam, as well as a suspended crash cymbal
Percussion 6: Bass drum
Percussion 7: Bass drum 2
So, that’s two tam-tams, 2 bass drums, and 4 brake drums in the first bar, all played as loud as possible.
I love loud. And fast.
Don’t worry; it all quiets down by the middle of page 3. But only for a moment… 🙂
To be continued!
Comments
Nikk Pilato says
Looks good. Can't wait to hear it in February. How many hours a day would you say you spend composing/laying out parts?
Newman says
Oooh ... 5/8+2/4 groove, NIIIICE!
John Mackey says
Nikk -- Good question, and it varies! When I'm working full-steam, I can spend 12 hours a day orchestrating or copying. When I'm writing and creating brand new material, I fizzle out after a total of 6 hours or so, usually much less -- often 3 hours-ish. Copying, score layout, and even orchestration aren't nearly as exhausting, so I can spend lots of hours doing it, and have little concept of how much time has gone by.
That said, there's family visiting this weekend, so I won't be spending much time at all on this until Monday -- but then I'll try to put in very long days to attempt to make a lot of progress. Seeing a finished page -- like these first two -- is incredibly motivating, because a piece finally looks like "real music" when it reaches this state. It makes me want to make lots more pretty pages. :)
-J
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