Bryan-Kirk Reinhardt

photo credit: organic olga

Satisfying rainy and cold week locked down in orchestrating this movement with the phone off the hook.  Started out with the idea of just using strings, but now have opened up the idea of adding some support layers for harmony and contrast.   I’ll see if this actually makes sense in the next week or so.

Ran into a couple of alternative directions in the sketching, and have settled into a more compressed second half – which gives me about 10 minutes altogether.   Already, I am thinking of another movement to come before this one, but focusing only on this right now.  That one will be more modern in structure, in contrast to this which is very contrapuntal.  I’d say more on the works title, aesthetic, and historical references in an essay here, but as usual I am afraid I would jinx it.

On the technical front, have one upgrade left to do.  The biggest downer is that once it’s installed the backup kicks in, and backing up 30 gigs is a royal PITA.  Algorithmic programming tools are complete for now, but not being utilized since I am in orchestration mode and locked in more traditional work.  But, still working through the manuals of the synthesizers, media programming, and other tools on the side to come back up to speed.

A good week working every day for long extended hours.  I’ll see how far I get this one.

Cheers

B-K

photo credit: Chris J Bowley

It’s been quite a technical week heads down installing new software, upgrading old versions, learning and relearning tools, and doing a bit of musical algorithmic programming on my library.  There are still a few items left to upgrade, but overall I’m moving ahead as planned.

The rest away from the composing actually was quite good, as the distance gave me some new ideas from the sketches I already completed. This week’s plan is to realize these new variant designs into sketch material, and perhaps start experimenting with the secondary layering material – this in addition to the technical continuation of ordering and installing upgrades, and educating myself on what I already have.

The work is progressing nicely.  I can see this being two distinct works – one traditional for strings; another electro-acoustical version for an installation. Time will tell us how this evolves and how far.

photo credit: nicolas.boullosa

A good week for working.  I laid out the musical design and realized the rhythms successfully – about 9 minutes of music. I need to go back and re-voice the counterpoint registers a bit, which I will do tomorrow.  I’ve checked my work about 5 times, but I still feel I might have a few bugs in the score.  So, maybe another pass there.

It’s still a particell or working sketch – a middle product without reference to orchestration.  Also, its only one layer of the process.  After this, we may shift paths for a break and work on the technical end of things – software and coding.  Then we’ll come back to work on some of the other stratification materials.

Very slow going, but I am also very happy with the sound and getting good throughput of new ideas for this and my next one.

photo credit: kryptonic83

“I have everything I need to do my work”- Agnes Martin

photo credit: Craig Myran Photography

2012 holds a promise to be a very productive year for writing as I move out of shadow of privacy and begin to apply the results of experimentation and research over the last 10 years.  The passage without a solid public offering (or at least a worthy one in my eyes) seems a long dry time, but hiatuses like this are not unusual.  A commonality exist  in a need to branch off the main road of art and find alternative paths of expression.  At some point in our lives, many artisans choose to abandon the comfort of old techniques, disconnect to say little in the way of output, and move to redefine their language and new thoughts of expression privately.  This follows then a map of internal questioning.  If there is any comfort its in the fact we all choose to do it.  However, each road must be followed alone, and in a private unique way.  And it can sometimes be painfully slow tedium.

For me, it’s been a patient journey and I’d admit a frustrating one at times full of false starts, dead ends, and failures.  But I feel today, as I did on the first day back in 2001 when I first opened my musical research “journal” for the first time, that it’s an absolutely necessary one.  This time has not been wasted.  The output may be limited to a small number of sketches, rough technical calculations, and personal works, but the maturity gained from this journey has been tremendous and valuable. I treasure and am grateful for what I’ve experienced, what I have heard, and where I am going with it.

When I look back to 2001, and how I approached my work then vs now, on the surface it would seem like a radical change.  Yet, if I expand that time horizon through my entire life as a composer, it’s not such a radical change so much as a refined one from an earlier period.  This return isn’t a “reminiscence bump” as it is a refinement of a dormant core musical personae that has always been apart of my aesthetic as a composer.  The primary differences between that earlier experimental period and the time now is finding a personal way to integrate a refined, particular, and clearer musical technique into the exchange as a language, as well as a deeper sense of memory and cognitive-psychology.  Beyond that, the precepts of attraction to alternative space usage and experimental sound practices has really not wavered.  It’s only become more focused with the newer technologies and techniques available today, and a much more diligent understanding of older ones.   I feel strong today about that direction more than any period in my development.  It just took a long time purge the “monkey mind”  and to “accept” it.

So, as we move into 2012, I’m looking forward to not only expanding my reach with new output, but also continuing my growth into the technologies and techniques I’ve settled upon.  I have a lot on the back-log to accomplish, and we never stop learning.  I hope I can at least give value to live up to these expectations  when we look back from this point next year.

Happy New Year.

B-K

photo credit: jimflix!

Blog clean up and move day.  As we move into a new year, I elected to archive a number of my annoying posts into private boxes in the attic and start a new site more akin to work and less akin to those unfocused personal pontifications.  Quite a bit of tedious settings, but am pleased with the end state.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

- Franz Kafka