Eurobid day

It's been an exhausting couple of days... The Euro-bid went in today (fingers crossed), yesterday was staff training for Inquiry-based learning, preparing to go to UAE, Izzy waiting for her new brother, etc, etc. Tomorrow I'm going to her school centenary celebrations...

These improvisations using score writing videos are really interesting me at the moment. It's as if the music itself is a reflection of the process of composition rather than some finished article. The video is a document of a process, a revealing of the person behind the pen.. maybe more revealing than a video of a figure.


it's reminding me of 'Le mystere Picasso':

taking a score for a walk

Here's an innovation... drawing a score and then playing around with it improvising with it. I think I'll try this with pictures too. I am so tired... incredibly busy day today...

Jazz harmony tutorial

All sorts of possibilities are emerging with my new toy (laptop)! Here's a tutorial for tritone substitution harmony which I did with the inking tools in word (superimposed on a screenshot of manuscript paper).

You get real reflective practice by doing this sort of thing. There are mistakes (at the end I talk of the 'proper dominant', where instead it should be 'proper tonic'...) But from one recording to the next, it should get better...

Video on Organisation and the VSM

Here's my video on the organisation and the VSM, using the new inking features on my laptop... Lots of potential here!

Open Position

I'm playing around with open position chords. Bearing in mind the stuff that I've done on 'grounding', the presence of so many open 5th, 6ths is not new... but this is approaching it from a different perspective. Open position chords have a richness is covering the broad spectrum of sound... there is a completeness, a feeling of 'many voices' with different characters, rather than more homogeneous closed position sounds... Will experiment with this more

Isobel passed her first piano exam today!

new improv with laptop

here's my first post created with my new laptop. I'm very tired ... it's been a long week!

new laptop

it arrived a day later than I anticipated, but the new laptop is here. very good. but I'm too tired to do an improvisation tonight.