AKA, New Year, same ol’ whiney posts.

But this will likely be the last post before I switch web hosts. As doctors so like to say, ‘Some side-effects may include…’ But hopefully there will be no ‘dead air’. As always, if you notice anything untoward, please give me a jingle… e-mail… tweet… flaming arrow… semaphore…

I needed more space and some features to make the upcoming ‘Detroit’ site possible. There’s also the older concert videos which I haven’t had the time or the web space to present. So there are a lot of plans… if I survive. 😉

NB: I’m writing this from bed. Again. Don’t ask. Instead of opera-tin’ (get it? Even with the grim reaper at my door, I still got it.) But it’s making me even more ADHD than usual laying on my back. To avoid going nuts, I’m trying to remain ‘useful’ by doing stuff I always mean to get round to—like ITEM #318: Re-learn French by watching Canadian TV and old OSS 117 movies. (Did I say ‘going’? It may, in fact, already be too late.)

Another thing I hope to do is finally publish the two or three dozen ‘half-rants’ I never got round to finishing.

For now, I got some sample music to post (finally!) A few of you have heard the ‘alphas’ and I appreciate the comments and support. The most common remark is along the lines of, ‘oh… now I get it.’ And by ‘it’ they mean two things:
a) What’s it all about… how one bridges the gap between a rock band and an orchestra
b) How much work is involved.

IT’S ACTING, DAMNIT!
As I’ve written ad nauseum, it’s one thing to write a two hour rock show (think Rocky Horror Picture Show.) And it’s another thing to write a two hour concert piece. But it’s like fuckin’ 10 dimensional string theory trying to integrate the two—on every level from dynamics to staging to…

As a quick example, I spent a month totally enamoured of a five minute stretch of music that I thought was ‘done.’ The music is inside a particularly important ‘song’. But then it hit me: what are the characters supposed to be doing while all this musical wonderfulness is going on? I had forgotten that these are actors, not singers. We can’t ‘cut’ to another ‘camera’ like a movie. And they can’t just stand there admiring the band, as in a concert piece. The music has to work with the staging and I have to be seeing the actors at every beat—even if they aren’t singing. In short: I got carried away and forgotten that the characters drive the show. I had a really high quality barf that day. Since then, I’m now doing what I used to see directors do—making little 3×5 storyboard cards for each bit; constantly reminding me as I compose to visualise where the actors are, and what they are doing.

Time for another pill? Bien sur! Je voudrais tant que vous avez 😀