Saturday Summary, January 22, 2011

Every Saturday, The Creative will feature a brief post about my current creative efforts and how they are progressing. If this doesn't interest you, read no further -- not only will I not be offended, I'll never know. The usual creativity-centric posts will return on Sunday.

It's been another good week here creatively.  Nothing terribly exciting or Earth-shattering, but a good week nonetheless.

Music -- I finished a piano arrangement of Kingsfold, which I'll play in church this Sunday.  I'm trying to get together a set of 8 or 10 arrangements of hymns from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales that I'm going to pitch somewhere, and the pieces I've worked on these past few weeks are some of those.  I have a few more to go before it's all ready, but like all creativity, it's a process.

I've also got a few more ideas for handbell pieces to start working on.  I haven't done any handbell writing so far in 2011, but I plan on starting something in the next week or two.  After that, it'll be a frantic couple of months of handbell scribbling to get finished the projects I've promised folks and the pieces I want to make sure are in the publication pipeline.

Now, here's where I stand on my year-long goal:

• Handbell pieces -- 20
• Piano pieces -- 20  17
• Choral pieces -10
• String pieces -- 4
• Band pieces -- 2
• Other instrumental pieces -- 4
• GRAND TOTAL FOR 2011 -- 60  57

I'm still doing about a piece a week, but I expect that to pick up a bit as the year gets going.  It's like riding a bike -- I was away from any serious composing for almost the whole last two months of 2010, so getting back into the swing of things takes a bit of time.

Writing -- Nothing here.  I want to work on some writing, but there are only so many hours in the day, and right now, they're all used up.

Publishing -- I received the proofs from Beckenhorst for my forthcoming Advent Triptych.  These will take a while to proof, as they're two sets of the same pieces -- one set is 2-3 octaves, one set is 3-5 octaves, and both are compatible and can be played together.  They're also both a set of three different hymns, about 16 pages each, so I'll be working on proofing these for a while to come.


So that's it from here.  A good week creatively, but not a terribly busy one.  Right now I'm reading a book by Guillaume Wolf titled The Creative Advantage Book. I haven't completely made up my mind about it yet, but so far, much of what he says is resonating with me, and I'm starting to realize some ways I've started slipping in my creativity.  Once I'm done reading it and have a chance to digest it, there may be a book review here about it -- we'll have to see.  If nothing else, it's an interesting read, so I invite you to check it out.

Until then, have a great week, and keep on creating!