It's been one of those memorable weeks, and sadly not for the best. My father-in-law passed away on Sunday evening, so the family's been dealing with that and trying to get things in order. I'll be playing organ at the ceremony, my first funeral as Director of Music Ministries. Not exactly what I would have chosen -- not that any funeral is a good event to play for -- but it'll still be an honor to play for his memorial.
Then, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, I received my submissions (Requiem and Remembrance and In Faith the Triumph, both originals) back in the mail from Jeffers' ... which was really weird since I'd emailed them in the first place, not sent the pieces in via mail. Well, attached to the pieces was a personal note from Kevin McChesney, asking me to revisit the pieces and tweak them a bit, so I'm taking another look at them to see if I can make the changes he asked for. It shouldn't be a problem, but for the next couple of days, I'm not sure how much composing I'll be getting to.
What'll make it even harder is that InMuWriJu will be starting on Monday, so finding time to edit existing pieces when there are so many new rough drafts to get to ... well, we'll just see what happens. Only three days till InMuWriJu, and only two more days of school till summer vacation! Hallelujah!
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
And one makes thirteen ...
Heard back from Bill Griffin at Beckenhorst today, and they'll be publishing my arrangement of Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing this fall in their Spring 2010 release. That makes thirteen pieces accepted or published, and three still out there awaiting a response. Any day when you get a piece accepted is a good day, indeed.
Organ practice went well tonight, too -- just when the organ season is ending, I finally start being able to pedal without tripping over my own two feet.
Then, leaving the organ loft, I managed to spill most of a bottle of Noodler's Black Ink on the carpet when it dropped out of my bag. Spent the next forty minutes trying to mop it up. Fun way to spend an evening it was not.
Still, I got another piece accepted, so that has to win the day. More later.
Organ practice went well tonight, too -- just when the organ season is ending, I finally start being able to pedal without tripping over my own two feet.
Then, leaving the organ loft, I managed to spill most of a bottle of Noodler's Black Ink on the carpet when it dropped out of my bag. Spent the next forty minutes trying to mop it up. Fun way to spend an evening it was not.
Still, I got another piece accepted, so that has to win the day. More later.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
About Time!
I finally got around to adding cover images from my newest pieces to my homepage at www.jasonwkrug.com. With the end of the school year drawing near and a recital for my private piano students tomorrow afternoon, it's been hectic. Thank goodness the summer is just around the corner!
Now, time for me to explain just what, exactly, InMuWriJu (Indianapolis Music Writing June) is. I promise I'll get to a point -- bear with me!
Starting back in 2006, I began participating in National Novel Writing Month, a 30-day forced march through creativity which just also happens to span the month of November. That first NaNoWriMo (as it's called) was a real eye-opener to me. At the time I was ringing in my church's handbell choir and singing in the loft choir, working half my day as our school's computer tech and the other half as a library assistant, and still teaching a dozen or so piano students in the evening. As a result, the amonut of time I devoted to creative pursuits -- namely composing and arranging -- was minimal. I had just had Il Est Né accepted by Beckenhorst in July of 2006, and I was worried I would have neither the time nor the ability to follow it up with anything else.
Enter NaNoWriMo. I had hemmed and hawed about whether to participate after I first heard about it, and finally decided to take the plunge. The basic gist of it -- you try to write a 50,000-word rough draft of a novel in 30 days. Insane, I know. But as I had wanted to write for a while, I figured, what the heck? What harm will it do?
By the end of November that year, I had finished my 50,000 word rough draft, and it was so terrible I subsequently destroyed all existence of it. However, it didn't take me long to realize there were two important and vital lessons I had learned from the effort:
1) I have far more "free time" than I think I do, time in which I can write, compose, arrange, or do anything else I wish.
2) You can do anything for 30 days, and if it's something you enjoy, so much the better. What's more, the creative energy you build during such an intense period is unrivaled.
It took me another NaNoWriMo in 2007 to realize I could also apply this to music writing. When a couple of my writer friends decided to spend June writing new novels, I decided to challenge myself to write 5,000 new measures of music, and in June 2008, the challenge began.
The results? Despite falling far, far short of my 5,000 measure goal, the outcome was better than I could have hoped. Some pieces that I worked on or completed rough drafts of in June 2008:
Jingle Bells -- commission by the Raleigh Ringers
O Sacred Head, Now Wounded -- Beckenhorst Press, released fall 2008
The First Noel -- Beckenhorst Press, released spring 2009
O Come, All Ye Faithful -- Beckenhorst Press, released spring 2009
Winter's Waltz -- Beckenhorst Press, released spring 2009
Kum Ba Yah -- Lorenz Company, coming in either fall 2009 or spring 2010
Five more of my pieces from June 2008 are still floating around out there at various publishers, just awaiting a response.
Any of you wanting to try your hand at handbell writing, I invite you to contact me (jason@jasonwkrug.com) and let me know -- it's better to go through this together than alone! I'd love to say there's an official InMuWriJu website, but as I made it up, there's not. Oh well.
Or, for those of you wanting to try your hand at writing a novel of your very own, check out the NaNoWriMo site for details.
Now, time for me to explain just what, exactly, InMuWriJu (Indianapolis Music Writing June) is. I promise I'll get to a point -- bear with me!
Starting back in 2006, I began participating in National Novel Writing Month, a 30-day forced march through creativity which just also happens to span the month of November. That first NaNoWriMo (as it's called) was a real eye-opener to me. At the time I was ringing in my church's handbell choir and singing in the loft choir, working half my day as our school's computer tech and the other half as a library assistant, and still teaching a dozen or so piano students in the evening. As a result, the amonut of time I devoted to creative pursuits -- namely composing and arranging -- was minimal. I had just had Il Est Né accepted by Beckenhorst in July of 2006, and I was worried I would have neither the time nor the ability to follow it up with anything else.
Enter NaNoWriMo. I had hemmed and hawed about whether to participate after I first heard about it, and finally decided to take the plunge. The basic gist of it -- you try to write a 50,000-word rough draft of a novel in 30 days. Insane, I know. But as I had wanted to write for a while, I figured, what the heck? What harm will it do?
By the end of November that year, I had finished my 50,000 word rough draft, and it was so terrible I subsequently destroyed all existence of it. However, it didn't take me long to realize there were two important and vital lessons I had learned from the effort:
1) I have far more "free time" than I think I do, time in which I can write, compose, arrange, or do anything else I wish.
2) You can do anything for 30 days, and if it's something you enjoy, so much the better. What's more, the creative energy you build during such an intense period is unrivaled.
It took me another NaNoWriMo in 2007 to realize I could also apply this to music writing. When a couple of my writer friends decided to spend June writing new novels, I decided to challenge myself to write 5,000 new measures of music, and in June 2008, the challenge began.
The results? Despite falling far, far short of my 5,000 measure goal, the outcome was better than I could have hoped. Some pieces that I worked on or completed rough drafts of in June 2008:
Jingle Bells -- commission by the Raleigh Ringers
O Sacred Head, Now Wounded -- Beckenhorst Press, released fall 2008
The First Noel -- Beckenhorst Press, released spring 2009
O Come, All Ye Faithful -- Beckenhorst Press, released spring 2009
Winter's Waltz -- Beckenhorst Press, released spring 2009
Kum Ba Yah -- Lorenz Company, coming in either fall 2009 or spring 2010
Five more of my pieces from June 2008 are still floating around out there at various publishers, just awaiting a response.
Any of you wanting to try your hand at handbell writing, I invite you to contact me (jason@jasonwkrug.com) and let me know -- it's better to go through this together than alone! I'd love to say there's an official InMuWriJu website, but as I made it up, there's not. Oh well.
Or, for those of you wanting to try your hand at writing a novel of your very own, check out the NaNoWriMo site for details.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
And again...
Yet again, O Sacred Head Now Wounded is on the Jeffer's Hot 40, and Celebration has rejoined it for the week. I also found my newest pieces posted on various other sites -- Stanton's and J.W. Pepper, where The First Noel has been named an Editor's Choice piece. Wonderful news for a couple of pieces barely out the door.
I hope to get scans of the newest covers up on my website here soon, so be sure to stop by to take a gander.
Provided I get a free moment in the next couple of days (doubtful it'll be tomorrow night -- Lost season finale!), I'll explain InMuWriJu in more detail.
I hope to get scans of the newest covers up on my website here soon, so be sure to stop by to take a gander.
Provided I get a free moment in the next couple of days (doubtful it'll be tomorrow night -- Lost season finale!), I'll explain InMuWriJu in more detail.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Now You See It
Now on the Beckenhorst Press site, you can see a PDF file of the covers of the three new pieces, as well as the first couple of pages. I love the way Beckenhorst always makes the covers look so nice. I know it's the music inside that counts, but for me, at least, it's the cover that really sets a piece apart and screams "published" to the world -- I know I'd never take the time to make a cover for a piece I'd written for my choir to play at church.
Also heard from John Behnke at AGEHR today about The First Noel which I've submitted to them. I suppose this falls under the category of "good news" -- he wanted to let me know it'll take more time than they usually take, and to check if that was all right with me. He said I'd probably know something by the middle of June. I'll consider this good news since he could have said outright, "No, thanks." Sometimes no news really is good news.
It's a beautiful evening here in Indianapolis -- the sun is shining, the windows are open, and my two Feline Creative Consultants are as happy as two cats can possibly be when they're not chowing down on something plentiful, smelly, and squarely in the fish family. It's a wonderful evening to relax, watch a bit of television, and perhaps start planning for InMuWriJu -- Indiana Music Writing June ... I'll explain this one later as it probably needs a whole post to itself.
Also heard from John Behnke at AGEHR today about The First Noel which I've submitted to them. I suppose this falls under the category of "good news" -- he wanted to let me know it'll take more time than they usually take, and to check if that was all right with me. He said I'd probably know something by the middle of June. I'll consider this good news since he could have said outright, "No, thanks." Sometimes no news really is good news.
It's a beautiful evening here in Indianapolis -- the sun is shining, the windows are open, and my two Feline Creative Consultants are as happy as two cats can possibly be when they're not chowing down on something plentiful, smelly, and squarely in the fish family. It's a wonderful evening to relax, watch a bit of television, and perhaps start planning for InMuWriJu -- Indiana Music Writing June ... I'll explain this one later as it probably needs a whole post to itself.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)