Grinding Away

It's amazing, summer.  My summer vacation is barely a week old, and already I've got four new pieces finished and out making the rounds.  I arranged Shenandoah for bells, mainly to use with my own choir for our patriotic concert at the end of June, but it's currently out making the rounds (I think it's at Alfred right now, but I'm not sure).  Then came a piece called Grace, which was a medley of "Grace Greater Than Our Sin," "God of Grace and God of Glory," and "Amazing Grace."  It's at Red River right now, I think (this is why an Excel spreadsheet is such a necessity). 

Then I finished up two different SATB choir arrangements -- Eternal Father, Strong to Save and Still, Still, Still.  I've been wanting to get more into choral composing for a while now, and I think this summer is the time for it really to happen.  So both of those arrangements are off to Craig Courtney at Beckenhorst, and given his usual turn-around time, I ought to know by August what's up with those.

I should take a picture of my closet door to post here -- on it, I've got stuck maybe two dozen Post-It notes or more, each with a piece I'd like to try to work on.  I got tired of having all these great ideas then bypassing them to do something else because when the time came, I couldn't remember what the ideas were.  With a bunch of sticky notes on the door, when I finish a project, I just find whichever one calls to me then start on it.  For example, I'm going back to an arrangement of Fum, Fum, Fum I did a couple years ago that just never went right.  I'm hoping to rejig it and get it off to Bill Griffin sometime this week.

The problem I find with the older pieces like that is they're so stuck in my head in a certain way that trying to alter them just gives me fits.  I start to get cross and then I just get so fed up with the silly thing so I set it aside again for another year or two.  Still, it just seems a shame to have these pieces here collecting dust when a little bit of effort could get them workable and maybe salable.

On non-creating-new-music-this-week news, a couple of the recordings for my new pieces are up at beckenhorstpress.com.  For some reason, Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella isn't up yet (at least as of this writing), but God Rest Ye Merry and The Holly and the Ivy are, so feel free to take a listen and enjoy.

So that's the update from Tuesday.  More to come.