Still not alot of time lately for much work in the musical way, bein increasing time spent on design over the last few weeks as I draw in on the deadline for the Grennan mill craft school website. There’s almost too much content to play around with! lots of student work examples and the mill building itself has plenty of character. It took me a while to figure out the best approach for the student work gallery and I ended up choosing a few very nice new javascrips galleries from dynamic drive. I’m experimenting alot more with the blending modes in Photoshop especially as I tend too stick to just a few colours with each design. Its like having inverted versions of your selected colour palette, handy for when things start to become abit same’y.
College work wise I’ve had to make some changes too the woodwind piece I’m writing. The tempo is quite fast, 140 bpm, and the rhythm pattern I had come up with was just too busy for that speed. No matter how I start to write a piece its seems I always end up needing to make it clearer – it can always be simplified more. The requirements for the piece: that it must be written for five woodwind players but may permit doubling so long as I allow enough time for the player to change his/her instrument. As the upper/lower registers on some woodwind instruments are so very different in character from each other I’m enjoying writing out of the usual melody zones ( e.g. writing a low flute line). Handy using the breath controller too as it gives me a better idea of where the breath markings would naturally be required.
