Category: Orchestration

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Personal Goals 2021

Goals

  1. Become a better chess player

Steps Taken

-Played every day of 2021 on chess.com

-Brought my Chess.com rating up from 628 in Feb. 2021 to 1280 by Jan. 1, 2022

-Read Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess by Bobby Fischer

-Joined a tournament

-Taught Jack to play chess

-Read Discovering Chess Openings by John Emms.

VERDICT: Success! (though much more to learn)

2. Gain deeper knowledge of physics and mathematics

-Read half of Mathematics for the Nonmathematician by Morris Kline (left off at invention of calculus, may pick it up again).

-Read Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson

-Listened to The Great Courses: Great Ideas of Classical Physics

-Listened to The Great Courses: Redefining Reality: The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

VERDICT: Good start. I need to revisit this and dive deeper.

3. Learn the basics of strength training, and the science behind it, and implement a strength training routine

VERDICT: No steps taken.

4. Learn the basics of sailing

VERDICT: No steps taken.

5. Record a complete EP of original music

-Worked with Aisling O’Dea to get recordings of violin music

–Edward Cohen recorded “Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter“.

VERDICT: Good start.

6. Take advantage of Austrian citizenship for descendants of Holocaust survivors

-Made contact with Austrian embassy, but did not assemble documentation.

VERDICT: Barely started.

7. Complete an orchestral piece

-1st movement nearly done (finish orchestration, prepare final score)

-2nd movement done

-3rd movement sketched (need to orchestrate)

VERDICT: Good start.

8. Complete new chamber music piece

-Completed first movement of “Burning,” and entered it into a competition (see below).

VERDICT: Good start.

9. Complete all 3 partitas for solo violin

-Partita #1 is fully composed.

-Worked on Partita #3 – still needs lots of work.

VERDICT: Good start.

10. Enter two composition competitions

-Entered 1st movement of “Burning” into NY Contemporary Music Symposium competition: https://www.nyccms.com/.

VERDICT: Half done!

11. Gain deeper knowledge of philosophy and economics

-Read Introduction to Political Philosophy by Jonathan Wolff

-Read The Great Courses: Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World’s Great Intellectual Traditions by Jay L. Garfield

-Read The Bhagavad Gita (translated by Eknath Easwaran) and wrote about it.

-Listened to The Great Courses: Quest for Meaning: Values, Ethics, and the Modern Experience by Robert H. Kane

-Read Philosophy 101 by Paul Kleinman

-Listened to The Great Courses: Moral Decision Making – How to Approach Everyday Ethics by Clancy Martin.

-Read On Violence by Hannah Arendt

-Read The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad by Fareed Zakaria

-Read Debating Democracy by Bruce Miroff, Raymond Seidelman, and Todd Swanstrom

-Listened to Great Courses: The Big Questions of Philosophy by David Kyle Johnson

-Read After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre

VERDICT: Success! (though much more to learn)

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Sketching a symphony

I’m writing some music for my friends. More on that in a bit.

These little nuggets will one day become my first symphony. I guess wouldn’t exactly call them sketches since the music is written beginning to end, but they feel rough because they are not yet fully orchestrated. Either way, once that final orchestration phase is complete, this work will be a substantial piece of music, with a lot of rich content for the listener to explore.

For now I’ve chosen a basic instrumentation of flute, oboe, trumpet, low strings. This can give a feel of being fleshed out, but is small enough to make sketching manageable, and colorful enough to make it fun. This instrumentation also helped me get away from the violin-centric symphony model, since I haven’t included violins in my original sketches. When I sit down and orchestrate this thing for real I will add violins in at my leisure, like a painter who, with one smooth movement, adds a bit of reflected light to a child’s eye.

The next step is to dive deep into the orchestration and make some hard choices. But for now, I’m savoring the completion of an crucial leg of this artistic journey. This particular piece has taken years to get to this spot, and where it will eventually lead I am not entirely sure. Sometimes it’s just important to pause and recognize a milestone.

The working title is “Adventure Cat!”. I’m not totally settled on all aspects of this music, but the overall arc I love. This is music for my friends. It’s a celebration of what we’ve all accomplished together, what we’ve built, the life we’ve lived, the love we’ve felt. The music goes a lot of different places, as do long friendships.

The music also challenges the ear at times, and other times it’s warm and inviting. It tries to take he listener on a road trip, over a fence, into the dark night. Sometimes it’s a song of love, a private moment, a hidden cave.

When I dive back into this music and turn these nuggets into completed symphony movements, I may end up expanding certain chunks, or slowing down the tempo for a section, or taking the music in a slightly different direction if the mood strikes me. I’m still shaping the clay a bit. But the meaning behind the music will not change. It’s that meaning that underscores every note of this music, every rise and fall. It’s that meaning that drives me to complete it.

I welcome any feedback.