Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost

[karlhenning]

Ah-ha! There's been a post posted at the outpost! 

[lukeottevanger]

Yes, the outpost is now in a post-'without post' state.

[Saul]

OK, this new version of the Nightingale Sonata recording is the best I can manage - heavily compressed, the quiet stuff louder and the loud stuff quieter, and with some attempt to blend out the worst thumps and bumps. Best not to listen on headphones, I must say!

Whilst visiting the esnips site, I saw that I received my first comment 10 days ago (you can see how little I visit it!). I wasn't fully conscious that this was a possibility - unlike others there, I don't use the site for its 'community' features (why would I when I have GMG  ?) or for hawking my wares. No tagging or slideshows or descriptions of any sort from me, thank you! So I was a bit surprised to get a comment at all. Quite an odd one, really - about my piece 'X':

!!! Don't know what to make of that! Listen to the piece and see if you agree....

Very interesting!

And Beautiful!

[karlhenning]

Yes, Luke does lovely work!

[lukeottevanger]

Thank you both 

[Saul]

Thank you both 

Do you study composition? Have a teacher?

[lukeottevanger]

No - I did study composition (a little, at Cambridge University, though I'm mostly self-taught) and I am a music teacher. 

[(poco) Sforzando]

Thank you both 

I have only looked at the score so far and will get to the Mp3 when I return home from work. But my first thought is that you are writing as a 21st-century Chopin (which I intend as a compliment).

[Guido]

Luke, make some room in your inbox!

[lukeottevanger]

I have only looked at the score so far and will get to the Mp3 when I return home from work. But my first thought is that you are writing as a 21st-century Chopin (which I intend as a compliment).

Taken as one, don't you worry! Though I find it odd that this piece, which I see as both very personal and rather peripheral to the line of my music, is getting this attention! Not a complaint, mind you....

Luke, make some room in your inbox!

Ooops - people have sent me so many nice links etc that I'm loathe to delete a large number of my PMs, so my inbox is constantly hovering around the 95% mark at the moment! There's some free space now....

[lukeottevanger]

As I said to Guido the other day, I've realised that I tend to do more of my composing from spring to autumn, and true to form, today was the first time since October that I have set pencil to paper, during an unexpected spare hour at work. Just a short-ish piano piece, modal, much in the vein of some of the other pieces I've written in the last year or so, though a little more extended than those to which it is otherwise most similar. I'm in the process of inputting it into Sibelius; once I have, and once I've recorded a version of it, and if I'm still happy with it, I'll put it up here, though it's nothing to get excited about. 

[greg]

As I said to Guido the other day, I've realised that I tend to do more of my composing from spring to autumn

i have to say....... some similarities are really strange...... first i have to ask- Is it that you just don't like composing in the winter or that it's harder to compose in the winter for you?

[lukeottevanger]

Neither, really - I like composing at any time, and I don't find it technically harder to compose in the winter. For me, composing isn't something that is 'hard' or 'easy'; instead, it is something that either happens or it doesn't, and I have little choice in the matter! So, as I said before, I do compose at all times of the year, but I realised the other day that I tend to be more active once the weather gets sunny! Most of my better or larger pieces were composed with the sun outside, and an open window, or staying up through summer nights until dawn, and most of my memories of the act of composition involve some factor of this sort. Today, for instance, I was sitting at the piano at work with the sun beating down through the window, and many of the pieces I've written recently have gone through their initial stages in similar conditions. I love to feel the sun and the wind as I sit at the piano, and generally to feel and hear the natural world stirring and growing around me - I tend to get a little lost in it, and I find it spurs on my creativity, especially the creation of the intuitive, organic and texturally proliferating pieces I'm tending towards at present.

For these reasons, and because the piece written today is the first stirring of my compositional urge this year, the piece is tentatively titled 'Quiverings' - for now!

[greg]

well, if you lived down here, you wouldn't have to wait months for the sun to be out- you'd definitely be composing year-round 

[lukeottevanger]

  What are you saying about the British weather?  (Today it snowed, hailed, rained heavily and was also beautifully sunny.....   )

Although in seriousness, I don't think it is a bad thing to have 'on' and 'off' time - remember Mahler in his little hut composing during the summer, or Brahms similarly. Others too, of course. Not that I'm comparing myself, naturally........! I don't think it is necessarily a good thing to be permanently creating, and that a little time for reflecting and absorbing is also good, if only so that the next period of creativity can be even richer.

[karlhenning]

. . . I don't think it is necessarily a good thing to be permanently creating, and that a little time for reflecting and absorbing is also good, if only so that the next period of creativity can be even richer.

To each, as may best suit him!

In all events, Luke, I am far too pleased with the musical result of your work, to find anything like fault with your method 

[greg]

What are you saying about the British weather?  (Today it snowed, hailed, rained heavily and was also beautifully sunny.....   )

Although in seriousness, I don't think it is a bad thing to have 'on' and 'off' time - remember Mahler in his little hut composing during the summer, or Brahms similarly. Others too, of course. Not that I'm comparing myself, naturally........! I don't think it is necessarily a good thing to be permanently creating, and that a little time for reflecting and absorbing is also good, if only so that the next period of creativity can be even richer.

Good point, it's definitely best to alternate between learning and writing, whether it's one season (or one day) at a time.

[lukeottevanger]

To each, as may best suit him!

In all events, Luke, I am far too pleased with the musical result of your work, to find anything like fault with your method 

I wouldn't dignify something of which I was until recently unaware with the title 'method'! But as you suggest - if it is working, for me, I shouldn't want to change it, and I don't.

I found five minutes in which to dash off a quick and slightly sloppy recording of the piece today. But I need to let it settle, and to tinker with the score, before I put it up. Not that it is anything particularly exciting, mind you!

[karlhenning]

Luke, this was a fine post.

And I thought mine was an engaging reply, but curiously it found no audience.

Ah, well.

[lukeottevanger]

Pearls and swine, Karl, pearls and swine (oink). Though mine were mostly [cut-and-]paste pearls...