First Published: 2022 January 25
Today is the first day of my new Spring semester. It was a fun day!
Out of the blue, I happened to see someone I care deeply about. I got to write a letter to that same person, which was claimed to be appreciated. I got a letter in turn from the exact same person!1 In my choir class I got to see a bunch of friends from last semester. In the same choir class, I got to see2 the new music that I’m going to be singing this semester, and found out that we’re performing at an early music festival3, which is incredibly fun and exciting. My ISM class4 met, and I’m learning interesting things in it/sure I’ll learn many more.
On the research side, a piece I needed machined in the shop was finished, so I got to spend some time playing with electronic-adjacent pieces5. I got to see my group and have long and productive conversations with them all about research.
In productivity, I got through more of my items today than I did yesterday, which is incredible and a little bit disappointing in how I did yesterday. I started a massive revision of a small choral piece I’m working on, which6 I will write about below.
The piece is designed to be performed during the Ash Wednesday ashing7. As a result, I want to have a piece which can be performed for some arbitrary amount of time, so that everyone who wants ashes can do so to the music, without it necessarily needing to repeat in a perfect loop. The easiest answer to that problem is to simply have aleatoric music, but simple answers aren’t always good answers. The biggest problem with aleatoric music is that I am almost positive the performers would hate it.
So, we then move to aleatoric music lite. My goal is a four part melody that can be sung as a round or as four part harmony, where each of the four voices can take each of the four parts. I am not going to be so extra so as to plan for the whole 4 factorial8 combinations possible, especially because most of them should be the same-ish sounding. There are some problems with that, however. The biggest problem is that there is a very small range that9 can be sung by all four voice parts. After that, figuring out the rules for inverting counterpoint are relatively easier.10 In the choir I’m writing for, the range I think that I can have all four parts sing is G-G11. Since it’s for Ash Wednesday, I want a sad tune, and since it’s liturgical adjacent I would like something modal. As a result, the piece is in Phrygian.12
Without this footer I’m at 461 no footnotes and 77 footnote words, which meets my goal. Maybe tomorrow I should keep writing about this, since it seems to be easy to come out
Exciting!!↩︎
the first set of↩︎
do I need to capitalize that?↩︎
Interstellar Medium, not a class on the concept of ism’s↩︎
read: I drilled some holes and screwed some screws↩︎
since I’m running short on words↩︎
wrong word, but when the ashes are put on peoples’ foreheads↩︎
12↩︎
octave transposed as needed↩︎
I hope↩︎
4-5 for sopranos, 3-4 for altos, and 2-3 for baritone/tenor and bass↩︎
E for white note scales and mi for solfeggio scales↩︎