Musing on Composition

I have to say that my new approach to composition is working pretty well. What I have done is gone back to a much older system of basic conception, followed by pencil sketches, followed by tryouts on the keyboard and finally putting it into Finale. For a long time I just defaulted to Finale, but it was always a double-edged sword: one side benefit, the other side restrictions. Oftentimes I would just be wrestling with the program to get the idea into a form the notation would accept. Or struggling to get the playback to sound like I wanted it to. This is all distracting from the actual job of composing. But a pencil doesn't distract you at all!

In any case, the piano piece, tentatively titled Remembering What Is to Come, is coming along quite well. The only thing I am really puzzled about is the harmonic structure. But that is just my usual headache.

There is this short story by Jorge Luis Borges, as I recall, that says something about every writer creating his own predecessors and influences. I heard a Japanese piece for piano about forty years ago that has really stuck in my mind, though I can't recall the composer. It for sure was not Takemitsu. But in the absence of that composer I am going to say that my new piano piece is not influenced by Takemitsu, because I don't even recall what any of his piano music sounds like. I am listening to one piece right now, Piano Distance, and I can definitively state that it is not influencing me. Well, hardly at all. But there is a Japanese sense of flow that does have an influence on what I do.

Here is that piece by Takemitsu, which I say again, is not an influence.

Or, as the Vorlon ambassador once said in Babylon 5, "knowledge is a three-edged sword."