I have just completed the piece for saxophone and piano. It is all composed, filled in, nipped and tucked and carefully engraved.It is called “Uriel’s Anvil”.

I was feeling a bit sentimental as I emailed the PDF by to the pianist Sandra Joy. Here’s the email I wrote as a preface.

To: Sandra Joy Friesen

The piece is done,

I present to you Uriel’s Anvil.

There should be trumpets, a parade, dancing, singing or something!

But instead I am just sending this computer file, sitting alone in my basement studio. It’s a bit anti-climactic really…

I feel like I should write you a long email, explaining everything that went into this piece. All the thoughts I had, all the clever things I put in, all the torments I endured. But that would take forever.

Still, I want to say something on behalf of this piece that has just now finished being born.

I think it is a good piece. I am proud of it. I worked hard to bring it to the point it is at. It represents a step forward, not just repeating myself. I built on the ideas I have developed while trying new things and grew a little bit for the effort.

I think it is an exciting piece, full of life and ideas, it should grab people and not let go. But I can only hope. I hope those who hear it will love it and be excited by it, but I have no control over that.

All I can say is that I, myself, am excited.

Now I’ll celebrate by cleaning up my studio…

Thanks Sandra,

Add a little here, take away there. As I complete the piece for saxophone and piano, it strikes me (yet again) how much small details make a big difference.

I just added two little empty beats before the closing section, it’s nothing right? Now the whole section feels 100% better, without changing a single note!

And scattering two or three beats in the introductory section was enough to give it a more natural flow.

A bigger change was inserting very short contrasting B sections just before important changes in texture. It creates a better ebb and flow to the piece.

It’s all about balance.

I still have to fix a few more things. I think the ending is too abrupt, and even though I generally like unresolved endings I don’t want to make it feel like the piece was cut off.

I am looking for the perfect form, and I won’t give up until I get it.

It’s going to be one nasty piece! It’s fast, showy and exciting. It has lots of cool textural and melodic ideas, some nice counterpoint, “solo” sections with big funk-meets-Bartok grooves, fast unison runs and even a canon!

I can’t wait to hear it played on October 27th!

The skeleton of the piece is done! It’s 4:40 on Friday! This was an intense day and I managed to write just over 5 pages. Not bad.It’s a skeleton because there are some headless stems and empty measures that need to be fleshed out.

“Laying down the bones” (as I call it) works great for me. It allows me to get a sense of the flow and worry about details later. Oh, I put details in if they come, of course, but I don’t force myself to fill up every measure. This allows me to keep up with the flow of ideas.

The details come pretty easy after that anyway, because I have a view of the whole now, I know what material is coming next, what pitch(es) I need to aim for— I have direction! And that helps give the music direction as well.

Another part of my “skeleton first” approach is to jot down a preliminary formal plan based on my initial brainstorm. (I mentioned that in the previous Journal entry.) I do this by picking my favourite ideas and deciding on an order for them.

The form is constantly shifting as I write, and so I keep paper handy to jot down other ideas and adjust what plan I have.

This really works well for me. It helps me keep a much clearer vision of a complex form. I can keep my head down and work at capturing whatever is coming, then and a single glance at that sheet of paper pinned above my board brings back that clear image of the form!

Doing this I can better pace the development of the material and create a better arc to the piece.

Next step: filling in the details, then doing the tweaks.

I guess you have to follow the idea where it wants to go sometimes.I’ve been trying for the past few days to develop this great idea using the concepts I gleaned from Dukas: asymmetrical bridge phrase, corroboration of material through repetition, longer ending phrase.

But the idea kept saying “no, I don’t want to do that. THIS is what I want to sound like.” And in my head the same music kept coming back, no matter how much I tried to do otherwise.

All that meant was that my melodic idea was not a good fit for the mold I was trying to push it in.

Which makes sense. After all, I spent the last 10 years or so developing a certain musical language and this idea comes directly from this effort. It would make no sense to turn away from the fruit of my labour!

So I decided to let my idea lead me where it wanted to go and continue developing the writing style I have been working on for years.

And in any case, I found that the melody writing in Dukas’ piece was pretty straightforward and doesn’t apply to what I was doing now. I much prefer the organic development of Baroque melodic writing and form.

So I spent the morning brainstorming, letting the ideas run wild and trying to catch as many as I could. That gave me lots of material to work with and a nice idea of the form.

And now after a few hours of work I have four pages of written. We’ll see if I still like it on Monday…

Now that the film score is completed I can throw myself into the saxophone and piano piece. But I can’t just write whatever comes, I have accepted that to be gainst my nature.

I always strive to learn, to grow, to reach that goal of perfection. As Maurice Ravel said:

“My objective is technical perfection. I can strive unceasingly to this end, since I am certain of never being able to attain it. The important thing is to get nearer to it all the time. Art, no doubt,
has other effects, but the artist, in my opinion, should have no other aim.”

And I really believe that and live by it. It’s not easy, though, and it has caused me considerable grief in the past. But no more! Goals are good things to have,and growth is essential!

So, with this piece, my goal is to extract and apply concepts taken from Paul Dukas’ “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time but never stopped long enough to do it.

What I want to understand is how the basic phrase works (not melodically or harmonically, but psychologically) and how the form is manages to feel as natural and well shaped as it does.

What I am looking for here are core concepts; an essence that can be applied to any piece using any melodic or formal outline.

Of course, that means I’m sweating blood developing the idea I am working on at the moment but having a grand time doing it!

The short animation score is done! Sandi Chih came in Sunday morning to record the solo flute parts and she was a pleasure to work with! All that was left after that was for me to bring in all the parts in the final mix, which is what I’ve been doing for the past couple of hours.

Doing the mix of a score requires a fair bit of concentration and patience. Listen, move a fader, listen again, move the fader some more and so on. Small things make a big difference while mixing and it is SO easy to listen too quickly and then regret a long time. “Why didn’t I bring the flute down here? The violin’s
too soft there!”

(Case in point: I was listening to mix number three as I wrote this and the flute was too loud in a few places. Fixed it. The violin seems okay, though.)

Doing the mix is also really exciting because you get to hear the whole thing come together into the final product.

So, without further ado, here’s the final score!

Part of what is hard in this one is that I wrote a solo violin part over a pretty raucous orchestral passage. What’s hard about mixing it is that I want to hear everything I wrote, but I can’t make it too loud since it will overpower the violin.

So, to satisfy my desire to hear everything, I made a version of the mix without the violin! Here’s that raucous bit karaoke-style!

I just love those chords moving around with that thick orchestration!