Slumber of Thought – A Compositon Made in the Light of Day

Out a conversation with Jacob Barton I said that there were too few scores or midi files in our microtonal community. Anyone who is familiar with the tracker community knows about how computer music used to be open source in a sense and no longer is. In the 12 equal world you can count on everyone using the same notes (more or less) but in the microtonal world playing “by ear” is much harder. With that being said this on-going composition will be my effort to change that.

And besides the idea of sharing music at a playable level I want to talk about my process of composing just to describe it and also to spark conversations about why certain choices are being made and not others. And I welcome you to join in the conversation and express what you think. It would be an interesting outcome if the piece becomes collaborative.

So to that end there is a playable link to the beginnings of a piece in 65cET and links to the folder that contains mp3, mid, scordatura pdf. With each update I will place files with a date stamp into the folder. If anyone wants the Sibelius score I’ll post that too but you’ll have to ask since its fairly specialized compared to a midi file.

http://micro.soonlabel.com/65cET_37ed4/slumber_of_thought/
Slumber of Thought 20111109



Today I had some more time to work on the piece. I clean up the spurious rests from Sibelius and removed the sustain pedal since I think I have a clearer idea of the harmonies this way. The existing right hand was worked on and extended and I developed a cadence at measure 12 though on repeated hearing the length is incorrect. My extension at measure 13 and beyond is a copy and past with transposition and moving individual notes to fit the scale I hear in my inner ear. I am pleased with most of the left hand measure 13 and beyond. I am extremely concerned that the piece sounds way too mechanical at this point and I am weighing options to remedy that. In part the accents I placed in the pre-measure 12 runs of 8th notes were supposed to do that by accenting odd beats but Sibelius is not performing them as I intended. Right now my best options seem to be to add accelerandos and ritardondos plus phrasing via dynamics.

Slumber of Thought 2011-11-12 version
Slumber of Thought 2011-11-12 version score



The finished piece, for now, can be found here.