Musical collaboration

I'm about 3/4 way through my novel rewrite. I average about 1500 words a day (depending on my other tasks), though on good days I manage 3000-3500 words. Meanwhile, I have some other novel ideas screaming in my head, begging to be written, and I'm starting to outline those. So much to write, so little time.

I love the Internet. As I've mentioned before, Urban Tapestry has been invited to participate in performing with Playing Rapunzel on a song in their concert on Saturday at FilKONtario. I am VERY excited about this because I love Playing Rapunzel and also love the song, "Sholem" (which is also on Mich Sampson's fabulous CD, "Just Beyond.")

Mich arranged the song for our two groups, then e-mailed us a multitude of sound files including the song as a whole, our individual parts, and "karaoke versions" where we could practice our parts against the others, AND all the sheet music plus arrangement summary in text. This is one incredibly organized woman!

I found that the vocal part arranged for me was a bit too low for me to sing; I have a VERY narrow vocal range, which is why I write most of my songs for Jodi and Allison to sing lead -- three-note songs would be dull to write and sing after a while otherwise, I suspect. :-) Anyway, we ended up changing my vocal part to flute instead, after which Mich and I then had several satisfying exchanges (I LOVE this sort of musical collaboration), tweaking my flute part after I recorded my proposed flute part against the others and sent the result to her, plus also e-mailed her a photo of my altered sheet music.



From one of her recent e-mails: "Your bars 37-38 - rather than F - D - D, could we please replace that with one long D (D - D - D), to keep the ending of the vocal line clean?" Am I crazy that I love this sort of in-depth attention to musical detail? I feel the same way when I listen to Joey Shoji talk about wine. *SWOON*

Anyway, there is NO WAY we could have done this by traditional snailmail within the space of a couple of weeks.

For those in the Toronto area, it's not too late to decide to attend FilKONtario this weekend! You can find out more at the Web site. Jodi, Allison and I will be participating in a song in Playing Rapunzel's concert on Saturday afternoon as well as participating in the children's roundtable concert on Sunday (tentatively scheduled for noon).

FilKONtario attendees are starting to arrive this week from around the world! Looking forward to hanging out with Dave Clement (from Winnipeg) tonight. And Sibylle Machat arrives from Germany for a visit tomorrow, woohoo!

Link O' The Day

Breakout: Remember that old game, Breakout? This is a highly unusual and entertaining take, from Japan. :-) (Thanks to Jeff, who found the link through Daring Fireball)


Parki and me. Photo by Jeff.



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