3-D Sudoku

I have decided, during my ample time spent hoping the cows outside will sing me a brilliant melody, that writing a musical score is somewhat like doing 3-D sudoku, if there is such a thing. There are numbers, certainly, that are in place- and I absolutely know where I have to go in order to succeed. It's the time spent trying to match the songs to the pieces both before and after- and then to the theme- and then to a piece five songs previous- and then to a song I have yet to write (but it MUST have foreshadowing)- that represents what keeps me going AND what makes me want to repeatedly hit the "delete" button.

I'm back at home, after a very productive week at Woodberry. In spite of my griping, I DID manage to break through a wall of sorts and write (at least a first draft) of the "Ballad of Annabel Lee," which is of supreme importance because there are about six songs that are some variation of it, and it helps to know the general direction of where those have to go. To clarify the writing process: by "break through a wall" I mean I hijacked an actual (obscure) folk ballad for the first four measures and then went from there. I forget who said it, but there was once a very famous musician who, when asked whether he borrowed anything from other composers, replied:

"I never borrow. I steal."

All in all, I got four good drafts done in one week (five working days). I'll be lucky to get two finished in the next week- when I'm at home there are many distractions.

On the script side of things, Mr. C completed the second draft of the show and we read it aloud on Wednesday afternoon. It still has a lot of work to be done on it before it's ready for the stage, but I'm enamoured with the world that we have created in what seems like a few short weeks (to be fair, we were thinking about it for the past four months).

I think in the near future I will post short midi snippets of songs on this website so that you don't have to be confused every time I reference a type of song or something like that (does anyone know how to do this on blogger?). Also, I always welcome criticism with open arms.