ushabti (2007-2008) for violin and piano





OK, it's up on the site here. I have to double-check the score in detail to make sure it looks ok, so that's not on the site as of yet, but hopefully soon. The audio file, created using Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO; the version that came with Finale 2008) sounds pretty good. There's one short section towards the end in which the violinist plays col legno (with the wood part of the bow) alternating with a single pizzicato Db that sounds like it's all pizzicato only because GPO doesn't have a col legno sample, at least in the version I have. Also, the last 20 seconds or so has some unwanted accents (it's really just a steady stream of 16ths) that I couldn't get rid of no matter what I did with Finale, so that got sent off to the developers as a possible bug or issues. But other than that, it was fine for posting.

So what's with the name, anyway? An ushabti is a small figure that was left with dead Egyptians when they were buried in the hopes that it would come to life and do the deceased's work in the fields of of Osiris. It has nothing to do with the music, but as I explain, I thought it sounded cool, which is how I choose all the titles for my music. Like textbook: music of descending landscapes in hyperspace (piece for IPS). Pretty cool, no? 8-)

The piece started out as an improvisation I did in 2007, but I didn't do anything with the piece until recently since I was working on darfur pogrommen, and in the interim, my synthesizer died as was amply documented in this blog. The actual improvisation is here. The final result is considerably expanded, of course, but I find it interesting to look back at my original sketches and see how far things have come, what changed, what didn't, etc. I was initially thinking of the piece as one for solo piano, and might still arranged it for piano at some point.

So what's next? I'm not entirely sure. I have to finish dumping some old scores into digital format (just the stuff worth keeping, of course, including my first postminimalist piece from 25 years ago or thereabouts). I'd also like to set some poetry to music, but I have some controversial ideas for that I need to think through first.

Posted: Mon - January 28, 2008 at 12:01 PM          

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