Simon's Banff diary

Epilogue - Friday 28 Mar 2003

Back home nearly a week now, and getting back into the routine.

This diary; I'm going to leave it up here kind of indefinitely, although I've already had to remove some of the linked files to save space on my website.

One last new thing here; the long-promised video of 'Not in my name'. Unfortunately, this is technically less than ideal at the moment. It's compressed to a rather low quality, and despite that it's still a pretty big file; and it won't stream. To view it, you'll need to download the whole thing first; right-click (PC) or click-hold (mac) to get download options.

Also, its in .mp4 format, and I'm not sure how standard that is. If it doesn't play, I would try downloading & installing QuickTime Player (mac or PC), which should do the trick. So, here's the video;

nimn4.mp4 (8.7 MB)

Saturday 22 Mar 2003

Last day! Got up at half past five, out birdwatching at the Cave & Basin at half past six. Great trip; glad I made it out, no less than five new species; American Crow Corvus brachyrhynchos, Canada Goose Branta canadensis, American Robin Turdus migratorius, Rusty Blackbird Euphagus carolinus, and Dark-eyed Junco Junco hyemalis. Also saw a rabbit of indeterminate species, and, the pièce de résistance, I caught a glimpse of Coyote, the Trickster, Canis latrans.

How to sum up these eleven weeks; I don't know. It feels too early to say. I've written about 35 minutes of new music, most of it either performed & recorded already, or awaiting certain performance. (The first of these will be Monday 7 April 8pm at the Tron Bar, where Paragon are going to do 'Les Rencontres Naturelles'.) Then there's about another ten minutes worth of sketches which might eventually see the light of day in some form.

I've made a bunch of new friends all over the world, some of whom I'm going to visit and/or write music for. I've had a chance to get to know another country, see new wildlife, and experience some fantastic scenery. I've worked with new software & hardware, rediscovered how much I enjoy playing the trumpet, and most of all learned some new things about myself as a person.

Well, they have a saying around here which kind of sums it up; 'It's all good!'.

Cheers,

Friday 21 Mar 2003

Last real day here today, sniff sniff, busy clearing out my studio & packing.

Fun night last night; staff party. Bizarrely, it transpired that this was actually some kind of sex education party, sponsored by National Geographic of all things. Condoms on the tables, a sexual joke competition. I told one of my best jokes, but didn't win.

The funk band was immense fun; you should have seen the costumes. I was barechested & barefoot, in a white kimono with my hair in a headband. The trombonist was on roller skates... you get the picture. In fact, worryingly, there is a video in existence of the whole thing, which I will probably get a copy of.

Later today with any luck get contacts of the photo session I did yesterday. Tried out some crazy stuff; projecting musical images from my laptop onto my face, moving during the exposure; hope it turns out.

More...

Photo of the FunkTank horn section! -->

<-- Photo of yours truly performing 'Not in my name' on the famous acoustic wateringcanophone. And here's the recording;

nimn2.mp3 (4.9 MB)

• Trent Petrunia marimba
• Devoney Dean marimba
• Dean Pomeroy marimba
• J. Simon van der Walt protagonist

Wed 19 Mar 2003

Only four days to go now, and the diary gradually dwindles away to nothing... In fact the whole residency is kind of dwindling away as more & more people leave for home.

OK, let's make an effort! Went for a splendid three hour hike today, along the Hoodoos trail. Wassat, you ask? Wierd rock formations, basically, look it up on the internet. Wonderful spring weather here, sunny and bright. Unfortunately, the whole trail had pretty much turned into a sheet of ice; at one point I wound up sliding downhill on my ass at a worrying speed, completely unable to stop myself! Had to scramble along the side of the trail a lot of the way.

Yet another new species of bird today, a Hairy Woodpecker Picoides villosus. That makes three different species of woodpecker, which is pretty nice.

Had very much hoped to have the video of last week's piece up here, but can't seem to get that to work so far.

Apart from that, am playing in a drunken funk band. What it is, there's a staff party here with a talent contest, so the band is mainly made up of sound engineers, with a good smattering of actual musicians as well. It's OK actually; doing some PFunk numbers, and 'Play that funky music white boy.' We had a very drunken rehearsal with about a crate of beer each, and the gig is going to be the same thing, I gather. This is not my idea, you understand, but the guy running the band is adamant we have to be drunk on the gig.

Looks like I don't get a performance of 'Muscle Tone' on Friday; the sax player is sick.

Friday 14 Mar 2003

Another great night; my performance of 'Not in my name' went extremely well, and very well received also. I'm so glad I had the courage to actually go out on stage in costume and perform on... a watering can!

More here tomorrow, with any luck, possibly even some clips from the video.

Thur 13 Mar 2003

I don't believe I've let almost a week go by with no diary entry! Why? Too busy; crazy busy, in fact. For some reason I decided that this week I wanted to write another piece, plus, I'm back into playing jazz again.

The new piece, which is being done tomorrow, is called 'Not in my name', and it's kind of sort of an anti-war piece. It's for three marimbas and Protagonist, and yes, the Protagonist is me. In costume. Acting, more or less, and also playing... well, I don't want to give the game away, let's just say a 'found object'. Hopefully be able to post a video of that here in due course.

And jazz; well, there's a couple of people going home tomorrow, so we had a farewell party tonight. Apart from playing trumpet, I also did one number on congas, took a solo with the drummer. Which was a blast.

'It's all good', as they say around here.

Sat 8 Mar 2003

In composing school, you're taught that a melody, or indeed an entire composition, should ideally have one main climax about two thirds of the way through. Well, it's come a little late in the piece, but last night was certainly the top note in my residency here.

For a start, it was a really special concert. The Canadian jazz pianist John Stretch has been in residence; he's a great player. The first highlight of the concert for me was a duet between him and one of the resident pianists; they played 'Stella By Starlight'. It was absolutely knockout to hear two jazz pianists just bouncing ideas off of each other and having fun. I've only once ever in my life heard two pianos together, playing Lutoslawski's Paganini Variations, and I loved that as well. I could picture myself writing for two pianos.

Anyway, I digress. Next thing which really stands out in my mind was a semi-improvised duet between a percussionist and pianist/composer. (For some reason I seem to have decided not to mention the names of any of the resident musicians here. Oh well.) They had the lid off the piano and she was playing inside on the strings, while he had the usual business end. Again, two wonderful, crazy, talented musicians having fun and bouncing ideas off of each other; great.

I was up near the start of the second half, as a composer.The sax player Jeremy Brown from Calgary was also here in residency this week; amongst other things he was slated to do some sax quartets with the other three resident sax players. The way things turned out, they didn't have a lot of rehearsal time to put together some of the more complex music he had brought with him.

There is a beautiful tune on volume two of Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares called 'Kaval Sviri', for which an arrangement exists for four altos; they were trying to get this faxed from the UK to do in the concert. Which is what prompted me to quickly repurpose two of my own tunes (see Wed 5) as a companion piece to this.

Of course the fax never came through. At half-past eight yesterday morning (the morning of the concert, note!) I sat in the bath & thought, right; why don't I try to knock up a slow piece of my own to go with the other two. I wrote about half of it right there singing in the bathtub, and then went up to my studio & finished off the score & parts. It was in the hands of the players by eleven thirty, and they rehearsed it and the other two pieces straight away. So the middle piece,'The Lonely Woodpecker' was performed twelve hours after I started it. That's the way it should be, really.

(OK, 'The Lonely Woodpecker' is a terrible title; if one of my students tried to call a piece that I would slap them! It will sound better once I get it translated into Bulgarian; these tunes tend to have tacky titles anyway, like, 'Kaval Sviri' means something like 'The Shepherd's Pipe Plays'. And there is an obvious birdwatching reference there as well.)

But that's only half the story. If you cast your eye down to Wed 19th, you can read how a couple of weeks ago I kind of decided to stop playing jazz, or at least not to be involved in the jazz scene over here.The first crack in that particular façade came last week, when trombonist Joshua Redman was in residence. Which is a story I never got around to writing up at the time, so here goes; sorry, going to be a long entry today!

One weird and sad and slightly horrible thing has happened to me during my stay here. For a lot of the time I've, I've had vague feelings of being left out; that there were things going on which I didn't know about, to which I hadn't been invited. Of course, I naturally assumed it was because people didn't like me - right? Last week some point, I overheard someone making reference to a telephone message about a rehearsal or something. A telephone message? I hadn't had any telephone messages. What telephone message?

Turns out that every single morning our wonderful coordinator Lynne Huras sends out a phone message to all the musicians, telling us everything which is going on; concerts, meetings with visiting musicians, rehearsals...

... and I hadn't got any of these messages! Worse, I didn't even know I wasn't getting the messages! So actually, it wasn't that people didn't like me, I actually didn't know what was going on.

That's water under the bridge now, but back to Joshua Redman. To make a long story short, becuase I didn't get the message I never got to meet him at the start of his residency, which meant I was out of the loop for the work he was doing, which meant I wasn't in the final piece which he did; a big semi free-form piece with all the jazzers here, which I would actually have quite liked to be involved in.

By the time John Stretch turned up I was on the phone list, so I was determined to meet him & not miss out this time. One thing lead to another, and once again I found myself in a rehearsal for a jazz gig. This time, however, they were doing an uptempo blues in F, Charlie Parker's 'Au Privave'. Now an uptempo blues in F, that I can do. And as I hadn't done any real blowing yet, they were kind enough to offer me one of the two solos going.

Back to the concert; remember the concert? I've already taken my bows for a piece which I had written only that morning? So 'Au Privave' is the last number on the gig; a barnstormer to finish with. So I barnstormed; I went out there & blew the hell out of it. It was shameless; they gave me a stop-time chorus and I went completely avant-jokey-jazz, making didgeridu half-valve noises, singing through my horn, playing just the mouthpiece, sqeaking my mute in the bell... came out of that on a final screaming blues chorus, then took the head up an octave for the last time through.

So last night I was a star on two fronts, as both a composer and a player. But it cuts deeper than that; it was a real moment of self discovery. Wed 26 I was talking about not starting any more pieces, but just winding down & relaxing for my last couple of weeks here. So I've relaxed; not that I've become some sort of drunken degenerate, but I have let myself feel OK about being in the pub till late most nights. The weird thing is, I've got just as much work done; in fact, more work & better work than all the weeks when I was making myself be really disciplined.

I'm not saying that's it now, it's OK to just party on down & everything will be great, because of course it won't; hard work has it's place too. It's just that I seem to have managed to rediscover something of that element of play & enjoyment which is what gets us all into music & creativity in the first place. Which has got to be a good thing.

Wed 5 Mar 2003

Rush job on just now; all of a sudden there seems to be a chance of getting some sax music done, if I can quickly knock up something fairly simple. Have already done first draft of an arrangement of an old Invention Ensemble piece 'Paidûshka' for four altos. (Hmm. Why isn't that piece on my website? Strange.) Next step is to arrange a movement from... omigod! 'Three Little Pieces for Flute & Bassoon' isn't on my website either! What's going on here!

Anyway, arranging both of these for four altos, as a companion piece to an transcription of the Les Voix du Bulgares tune 'Kaval Sviri', which someone in the UK has done.

Fun concert tonight; Canadian jazz singer called Lisa Lindo in a rather nice small venue they have here called simply 'The Club'. Good atmosphere, literally; a non-smoking venue.

This lunchtime finally did the performance of Greg's musical 'The Tokyo Affair', which went pretty well, although tiring for all the performers, I think.

Heavy snow today, and temperatures of -45 forecast. Brrr!

Tuesday 4 Mar 2003

Have made a couple of birdwatching trips over the last couple of days with some success. Before I came here I had already made contact with Albertabird, a mailing list for birdwatchers in Alberta. Last week I finally got around to posting some questions on the group as to what to see & where. I had several helpful responses, and as a result was able recently to bag several new species; Brown Creeper Certhia americana, Townsend's Solitaire Myadestes townsendi, Kildeer Charadrius vociferus and even a Song Sparrow Melospiza melodia. Some good things in there; Townsend's Solitaire is a bird I had spotted in the book even before I came here, and I was glad to actually see one. I didn't think the treecreeper was anything special, but apparently they are a rather shy & hard to see bird over here. And the Song Sparrow probably really shouldn't be here at all at this time of year; I would never have found & identified it without the help of the mailing list.

Saturday 1 Mar 2003

It's finished! Well, essentially, at any rate, still got the parts to do. Here's the score;

Les Rencontres Score.pdf (2.9 MB)

And just for fun, here's the one-minute electroacoustic bit which happens half way through;

Les Rencontres Audio.mp3 (1.3 MB)

Have to confess to the most stinking hangover today; I really don't remember drinking that much in the pub last night! Other news; the piano version of 'Bridge River Valley' gets its first performance on Tuesday.

Friday 28 Feb 2003

Reposting new versions of the viola and contrabass parts for 'Les Rencontres Naturelles'. A few people have been kind enough to look at these, and I have made extensive revisions on the basis of their comments.

Les Rencontres 3 Vla.pdf (file removed to save space)
Les Rencontres 3 CB.pdf (file removed to save space)

Looks like the piece is going to have some electroacoustics in it as well; a text in French, slightly distorted with the magic of the computer. Spent a fair amount of today tracking down & recording a fluent French speaker; sounds good so far.

Thursday 27 Feb 2003

Still working on 'Les Rencontres Naturelles'. Looks like the string parts I posted yesterday need considerable work; I'm missing my mandolin, which I usually use to work these things out.

Today's concert included my piece 'de straalvleugel'. It didn't go quite right, unfortunately, but they are going to do it again, so there is still a chance of me getting a better recording of it.

Wednesday 26 Feb 2003

And now I let whole weeks go by without doing my diary! I do apologise.

Several decisions have been made here. First of all, I'm not going to go skiing. Nope, no sirree bob, no skiing for me, nor snowboarding neither. Sorry! I know how I would react if I knew somebody had gone to Cuba and not heard any salsa, or gone to the Camargue and not gone birdwatching, but that's just the way it is. It really doesn't interest me that much, it would eat up more of my slightly dwindling funds, and there is the injury factor; we've got two people on crutches here already.

Next; I'm going to finish just one more piece while I'm here, then spend the rest of the time winding down and planning for my return. The final piece is called 'Les Rencontres Naturelles'; the title is taken from the painting by René Magritte. Margaret sent me a postcard of this painting from Belgium, with a rather witty caption which she came up with (see left). So that's all in the piece, which is for viola, contrabass and vibraphone. It's intended for Paragon's next 'Whatever happened to music?'concert at the Tron in April.

I'm having a bit of trouble with the string parts, actually. I showed the viola part to someone here, and it seemed to be a bit harder than I thought. I'm posting sketches of the viola and contrabass parts here, and I'm going to see if I can get anyone to have a look at them & give me an opinion. Basically, they need to be playable by good professionals, who will have a chance to study the parts beforehand, but will have only 45 minutes rehearsal on the piece;

Les Rencontres Vla.pdf (file removed to save space)
Les Rencontres CB.pdf (file removed to save space)

One last picture for fun; me doing the karaoke! ----->

Wednesday 19 Feb 2003

Had a very interesting experience the other day; had to sack myself from a jazz band.

Here's what happened. As ever when musicians congregate, the jazzers, both overt & secret, start to come out of the woodwork. Late at night they gather; secret cabals in obscure rooms, the words 'jam session' overheard at the dinner table, bebop licks cut off in mid flight as soundproof doors slam shut...

For a short while, I fell in among them; went to one jam session, then another, next thing I'm in what is actually a rehearsal for a couple of numbers to be done at an upcoming concert.

But it didn't feel right. Everything they were trying to do felt alien. They wanted to play everything softly & sweetly, I wanted to be fast & loud & raucous. They were playing difficult and chordy standards, or difficult and chordy tunes they had written. There were no charts, routines, or arrangements; just the lead sheet & chords.

So I left. Right in the middle of the rehearsal, when they were discussing what to do for the concert. It was kind of an uncomfortable moment, although we were all quite open about it; there weren't any really bad vibes.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that I had done exactly the right thing; for myself, that is, and probably for the group. On the one hand, virtually everything I know about music I learnt from jazz. It's what I listened to for years and what I learned to play on the trumpet; my harmony is jazz harmony, fundamentally, and a lot of my melodic language comes from bop and post-bop.

But... I've never actually felt totally at home playing in purely jazz groups. I'm not really comfortable with being spontaneous, musically; I like written arrangements. I also get fed up going around & around thirty two bars of chords. I much prefer things like funk, rock & salsa; give me a two chord vamp, some backing riffs, and an open-ended solo any day.

If coming away to Banff was to be about anything, this is it; finding out who I really am, musically. This is more like finding out who I'm not, but it still feels like a really worthwile step. All I need to do now is figure out what I do want to do!

Of which more in due course, possibly.

Sunday 16 Feb 2003

Last night's curry a big success; only one person had their head blown off, everyone else seemed to think it was just right.

Been for a nice long hike today; the Sundance Trail along the Bow River, maybe 10 km. Snowing moderately, for the first time since I've been here, but not enought to make me turn back. Visited one of the hot springs they have here; this one is small and not over-commercialised, they've tried to put the site pretty much back to the way it was when it was first discovered in 1885. Smelly but interesting.

A couple of new species of bird to report; a male Three-toed Woodpecker Picoides tridactylus and a pair of Black-capped Chickadees Poecile atricapillus. My experience of woodpeckers in the past has been of quite a difficult group; hard to tell the species apart, and you often only get a brief, distant glimpse. Not here! Here they sit on a tree right in front of you, practically within arm's reach, unconcernedly chipping away at the bark. I could actually count the three toes on this one!

Also saw a group of Elk Cervus elephas the other day. Actually they are a bit of a pest around here, it seems. Some groups have become aclimatised to humans, and steps have had to be taken to discourage them from wandering around town; they can be aggressive, and they are big animals.

Saturday 15 Feb 2003

Really been neglecting my diary here, but feels like there's not much news. The first draft of 'Muscle Tone' is with the players; I haven't seen them since they got it, but other people tell me they are pretty excited about it. Probably a performance late in March.

Here's the recording of the performance of 'smir' from last friday;

smirbanff.mp3

• Floor Wittink soprano saxophone
• Emma Ferrand cello
• Ziya Tabassian marimba
• William Poskitt piano

At the moment trying to stop & take a break, but don't seem to be getting out much. Actually, nursing a bit of a hangover today from last night's karaoke session downtown. Which was OK, a bit flat, not as good as the first one. I sang 'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes' again; I really need some new repertoire.

Cooked a fierce vegetable curry this morning - priniciple ingredient 16 chillis. This is for tonight's 'potluck' - which seems to be a term for a whole bunch of people cooking & eating together. Should be fun, but I hope I'm not the only one who likes spicy food!

Monday 10 Feb 2003

This piece is going to be the death of me, I tell you. It's absolutely the last time I write anything conventional; if I only I was doing something conceptual & experimental as usual, then it wouldn't matter what the notes were!

Finally, finally got back to the recap of the opening idea; not sure how much of this to do, it's probably pretty tiring to play already. Charlotte & Adam heard the demo today and liked it, so looking forward to a possible official première in Stranraer in September.

Stranraer? Oh, yes, they've got this bizarre Scottish tour, which apart from Stranraer takes in such vibrant cosmopolitan hubs as Falkirk and Banchory. I'll have to try to get them a gig in like - hello!? Glasgow? Edinburgh?

Tonight's version, then I'm off to the pub;

MuscleTone4.mid

Sunday 9 Feb 2003

If there's been no news for days, it's because life has become an unending grind of just trying to press on with this piece for saxophone & piano. Frustrating, because I've got a whole chunk which is great, while the rest of it is a bit of a mess really. I've been working on basically the same sixteen bar transition all weekend. I still don't really like what I've got, but the worst corners may slip by unnoticed. I should mention Friday, which was the day I had my first performance here, of 'smir'. It went really, really well, much better than the first performance. Lots of very supportive & positive comments. May be able to post a recording here tomorrow. A couple more snapshots here today, why not. On the right you see Anna in the EARS studio working on some music for recorder & electroacoustics - no, lets make that posing in the studio with iBook & other cool gear! On the left, the stairs up to my studio; a glimpse of the rather funky building I get to work in.

Wednesday 5 Feb 2003

muscletonesaxpiano.mid

Tuesday 4 Feb 2003

I've been busy! The piano piece which I've been calling 'road' is not only finished now, but has a title; it's called 'Bridge River Valley'. This is the area in British Columbia which inspired the play which inspired me to write this piece in the first place. It's in two movements, with an optional recap of the first movement (without repeat). Here's the sheet music, if anyone is interested;

BRV1piano.pdf
BRV2piano.pdf (warning - big file!)

The first part is very simple & easy, but badly notated, really; I've gone waay overboard in marking held notes in chords, probably because I wrote it like an organist at a keyboard with no sustain pedal. The second movement would need a bit of work to learn, I think.

But that's not all! Not only have I finished the piano version, but I've also done an arrangement of it for flute, clarinet, violin & cello. This is for Ultraviolet, of course, a group with whom I have a close connection.

Monday 3 Feb 2003

Artist's impression

Saturday 1 Feb 2003

Spending too much time cooped up in my studio, so decided to hike up Sulphur Mountain. The summit is at 2260 m (7415 feet), and it's a 5.6 km trail to the top. The trail signs said two hours, and it pretty much was. A long, switchback path through gorgeous snowy scenery. Pleasant sunny day, not particularly cold, very quiet. Tough going the last half hour; a little short of breath, legs going, wouldn't have made it without my emergency bar of chocolate!

At the top is a restaurant, where I had an excellent cinnamon bun and the sweetest cup of hot chocolate ever. Then back down on the cable car, or 'gondola' as they call it.

Took a taxi to & from; both rides somewhat eventful. During the first trip, they guy said 'Hang on, there's something going on'. Got on the radio to his dispatcher, and we heard the news about the space shuttle. Turned on the television when I got in and it's on all channels.

Second taxi ride; young driver with shades says to me 'Do you get nervous in cars? Do you want to see something cool?' OK, I said, wondering for a moment what on earth I was letting myself in for. Guy zooms out of the parking lot at about forty miles an hour backwards, then does a handbrake turn in the snow. Well, I'm still here.

Thursday 30 Jan 2003

Been working tonight with the recorder player on the electroacoustic piece. Actually spent most of the time trying to get another piece working, which she is supposed to be doing on Wednesday. It's a MAX/MSP patch; it uses a sustain pedal through a midi keyboard so that the performer can change samples during the course of the piece. The patch is also supposed to send controller data to an external delay unit, but we couldn't get that bit of it to work. Interesting challenge; we did pretty well, actually, got most of it going.

Apart from that, don't seem to have done much today. Went 'downtown' to Banff; wandered in and out of all the tourist shops looking for presents, then to Safeway to buy carrots and coffee.

This afternoon's concert was a string trio; they did a piece by Norwegian composer Ståle Kleiberg, which I really didn't care for, and a rather long sonata by Brahms, which was announced as being 'in B' but was probably in Bb.

Backing off from the idea of dismantling a whole grand piano, but have another very strong idea for a performance art piece for about five players, who take their instruments apart during the course of the piece. Trying to think of a percussion instrument which can be played en promenade, and also significantly dismantled in the space of about 45 seconds. Also looking for a motto, saying, or proverb in French to use as a text for the piece.

Wednesday 29 Jan 2003

Well, back after a break of nearly a week! Item number one on the agenda; my laptop is fixed. It turned out to be a $48CAD repair rather than a $600CAD or $900CAD repair as I had feared. The tech said he just took it apart, blew it out with an airjet and put it back together again, so possibly just some spurious dielectric in the works somewhere.

Almost too much music going on now to report. Asked to play trumpet in a couple of numbers from a musical, which one of the composers here is working on. Turns out there's a jazz number; turns out that it needs a bit of screaming trumpet in it. Wayhay! My forte, ha ha geddit? Anyway, everyone coming up to me after the gig and saying '... I didn't realise you could do that!'

Nearly finished 'Ohom zu oboye no wo?'. Turned out as a four minute piece for Alto recorder (doubling Bass recorder) and CD. Have someone lined up here very keen to do it.

Concert yesterday was the Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano by Cage. Great to see & hear live, a very committed performance by a woman from Montreal who specialises in contemporary piano; she had the whole thing basically memorised. Not totally blown away by the music itself, I have to say, which I found hard to sit through. But then I didn't invent the prepared piano, so I can hardly criticise.

I do have a rather ambitious piano idea, however; I'm wondering how hard it would be to completely dismantle a grand piano, live. Maybe lift the soundboard & strings out on a huge trolley jack and play it while suspended? This idea © JSVDW 29/1/03; you heard it here first.

More computer news (skip if boring!)

Let's hear it for pocket Firewire drives! Absolutely the best investment in gear I've made for ages, totally saved my life while my powerbook was away. What it is, you get your powerbook, pull out the old drive & put in a new larger one, which is like a five minute job. Then, you get a little 2.5" Firewire casing and put the old hard drive in that, which is perhaps a ten minute job if you stop for tea. Use the Firewire drive as a backup for your documents, leave all your apps on the main drive.

Having done all of the above, it was sooo easy to pick up and keep working when my laptop died. All I needed to do was find a reasonably up-to-date mac with a Firewire port and the apps I needed, hot plug it in, and away I went like nothing had happened. Used it in the studio to back up audio work I was doing there. The centre won't let people install anything on their machines, even if its freeware. No problem; installed thonk & SoundHack on the Firewire instead. Wanted to use a proper email client rather than webmail; no problem, install a free email client on the FW, import my mail (which was backed up) and keep going.

(All of this only possible, of course, because of the dual platform environment around here. Just about all the creatives here are on Macintosh; I've never seen so many people with iBooks before!)

Thursday 23 Jan 2003

Astute readers will have noticed that I skipped a day; in fact, I'm going to have to supsend the diary for a while. My computer is deeply, deeply dead, and while it is possible to edit this page using other facilities available onsite, it's a rather long & involved process. Might be back in a couple of days. Sorry!

... continued

Rather to my surprise, had a good couple of hours later today working in the EARS. (Presumably this stands for 'Electro Acoustic Recording Studio', or maybe 'Always Recording Simon's Electronics'.) Anyway, feel sufficiently motivated to put up an early draft of a piece I've been wanting to work on for a long time, called 'Ohom zu oboye no wo?';

ohum0.1.mp3 (file removed to save space, but finished demo available here)

Rather nice having a full recording studio to work in, with Logic 5, Digi001, a proper mixing desk, a genuine Moog... like hardware, man. Anyway, the idea now is to use this as an electroacoustic accomaniment for a flute piece; have the flute reflect on & echo some of the artificial voice sounds. Or something.

Tuesday 21 Jan 2003

Webspace problem now resolved, but it gets worse; put some new memory in my computer and now it's totally, totally dead. Fortunately had all data backed up and there's machines here I can use, but it's still kind of upsetting. Amazing how attached one gets to these things - well, if you're a bit of a sad nerd like me.

Back to pencil and paper again! Might even be a good thing.

Monday 20 Jan 2003

Webspace problem not totally resolved, so every word is precious! Had an excellent day today; very successful rehearsal of 'smir', which is going to be just fine. Apart from that, lots of networking & talking to people; for instance, it may be possible to get someone to play 'de straalvleugel' on trombone rather than flugelhorn...

Sunday 19 Jan 2003

Enfin! C'est fini! Finished the score of the piano piece - well, the second movement, that is, but the first movement should be straightforward. I was going to put it up here, but I seem to have run out of space on my website! So... need to sort that out tomorrow.

Saturday 18 Jan 2003

OK; I hate all computer notation packages equally, always, without reservation. The whole thing is a total pain, but then so would writing the thing out by hand be, so....

Which is a long way round to say that I've started working up the piano piece in Finale. Fiddly, annoying job; as is always the case with piano music, quite a lot of layer work to do. Worse; I think I may have to do a substantial passage using cross-staff beaming, possibly even using a central beam between the hands. Nightmare!

Apart from that a gently hike up Tunnel Mountain today with a couple of people (that's Floor & Lauren on the right), followed by a long relaxed lunch talking over artistic & personal challenges with like-minded people. Which is what we're here for, really. Oh, and a jam session with a couple of jazzers, tried out 'there', which went OK; and have a wee idea for a salsa groove for them.

Busy day, really.

(Forgot to mention yesterday; saw a Mountain Chickadee Poecile gambeli in a tree outside my room.)

Friday 17 Jan 2003

A bit too tired to do my diary tonight, I think! Excellent concert; barely a piece of music on the stand all night. Bach Partita for solo violin (from memory), music for santour, violin & tombak (devised/from memory), amazing, amazing percussion solo (devised/improvised), jazz trio of electric piano, electric bass & amplified cello (original music, mostly off the dots).

Never got to go skiing today, had to go to a composers meeting instead. Everyone else seems to have gone & done something exiting today. I even missed the after-show party, which may be going on as we speak, but I can't find it. Been working on 'road2' (working title), which is kind of finished in terms of the notes, but looks like it is going to be a lot of work to notate;

road2final.mid

Thursday 16 Jan 2003

Well, it's finally happened; tomorrow I'm going skiing! Cross country, apparently, somewhere near Lake Louise. At least one person in the party seems to know what he is doing, one semi novice, one other total novice like me.

Can't seem to stop the funk these days. Here's the latest sketch, which is a little idea for a pianoless jam session which apparently takes place most evenings. The hammond organ should be two horns, but I couldn't find horn sounds I liked...

there.mp3 (file removed to save space)

Wednesday 15 Jan 2003

Lunchtime concert today; La Soave Melodia played early C17th Italian music, then there was the last movement from a Strauss horn concerto, Lutoslawski Partita for violin & piano, a Schnittke string quartet (intense) and some music for saxophone & piano. Long concert but quite involving; very good playing all round.

Party tonight for birthday girl Anna, and also for Anders, who's birthday it is tomorrow.

Working all day on piano piece, trying to get it out of the way so that I can move onto something else. Damn piece doesn't want to stop; keep coming up with more development, can't seem to get to the recapitulation.

Tuesday 14 Jan 2003

High drama today; a break in, somebody in a van made off with a subsantial amount of percussion equipment. First time in eight years anything like this has happened, apparently. Not sure how much I am allowed to say, but rumour has it that it may be an inside job by a disgruntled ex-employee.

Work proceeding steadily. In a couple of weeks we are expecting a visit from Hungarian fluatist/composer Gergely Ittzés. I listened to some of his work & had a look a couple of his scores today; interesting stuff. He makes extensive use of multiphonics on the flute, mostly in his own way, but also doing things like playing Paganini with the double stops.

Had an idea to do a piece inspired by Inuit 'throat singing' (katutjatut), playing off the live flute against a computerised physical modelling flute, which I have available as a freeware VST plugin. Unfortunately latter piece of 'ware doesn't seem to fully function as one might hope, might need to look elsewhere for a flute synth.

Looking forward to a lunchtime concert tommorrow; get a chance to hear some of the other people here play.

Monday 13 Jan 2003

Working all day on this; an original composition by Mahavishnu J. McBanff, from his upcoming album 'The Moose Years';

muscle2-2.mp3 (file removed to save space)

Apart from that, gave parts for 'smir' to a couple of players to try, and finally saw the Mule Deer Odocoileus hemionus which wander round the campus; don't know how I missed them before, really.

Rumour around the dinner table is that someone was attacked & eaten by a Mountain Lion Bigcattus biteyourheadoffiosis last year. It's one way to go, I suppose.

Sunday 12 Jan 2003

Well, as it was Sunday thought I should go for a walk. Kind of dull day; cloudy, overcast, threatening to snow. Along the Bow river; a bit dull, but did see a Black-backed Woodpecker Picoides arcticus and a Red-breasted Nuthatch Sitta canadensis.

Music; seem to be addicted to working at the piano for some reason, which is something I have abjured for years. Tonight working on a variation on the Muscle Tone riff;

muscle2.mp3 (file removed to save space)

which I suppose just might end up as an Invention Ensemble piece. No promises, though.

Saturday 11 Jan 2003

Computers are great! Today I was audio/video conferencing with Mags back in Scotland, and with my brother in Brussels. This is what we were using;

iVisit

Cross platform audio/video/chat ware; not totally intuitive to use, but works well. Cool!

Apart from that, editing a version of 'smir' to try out with some players here, and working on 'road2', which is getting somewhere;

road2_2.mp3 (file removed to save space, but the demo of the finished piece is available here)

At this all day; previous impressions to the contrary, I am actually doing some work here!

Friday 10 Jan 2003

Not much diary tonight; went to a party instead. First concert tonight, bit of a get together afterwards. I did Scotland proud by being the only person there with any drink; my bottle of twelve year old Bowmore was duly tanned by various Canadians, Swedes, Danes and Norwegians, which is as it should be.

Tiny bit of piano music I've been working on today, when not watching people being set on fire;

road2.mp3

Thursday 9 Jan 2003

Just a quick entry tonight, I think. Meeting lots more people now; an early music group from Sweden, Iranian-Canadian percussionist, guy who writes musicals and teaches in Tokyo. Had a long chat about art, the universe and everything with the playwright I did yesterday's piano sketch for. Starting work on some ideas for a solo violin piece; provisionally entitled 'Paper Chase', with dozens of strange, frenetic little riffs, one to a page, distributed somehow around the space...

...maybe. (That graphic may look totally bogus, btw, depending on your computer. Sorry; can't be bothered fiddling with it now.)

Birdwatching - at last, something intersting! A Clark's Nutcracker Nucifruga columbiana which I think are probably fairly common round here; I had glimpsed this species before, I think, but hadn't been able to identify. Now have coffee machine in my studio and a bottle of Bowmore; the latter purely to remind me of home, of course.

Wednesday 8 Jan 2003

Amidst all the high art which is going down here, I spotted this on the noticeboard. Yeah! Let's do it! Other surreal stuff; there is a movie fight school going on, and you keep seeing people being beaten up in the elevators and having sword fights on the stairs. Seriously!

Went for another fine hike today, this time a trail around the east side of Tunnel Mountain, along the river. Bright weather, but no sunshine actually gets down into the valley because of the mountains round about. The river largely iced over, 6-10 inches thick, which is something I hadn't seen before. A bit disappointing so far birdwatching/wildlife-wise; one solitary Red Squirrel Tamiasciurus hudsonicus. (A different species from the British Red Squirrel, I think.)

Had a meeting today of pretty much all the fifty or so music residents; everyone introducing themselves & so on. A couple of people came up to me afterwards interested in having stuff written for them, a fluatist and a violinist, which is good. Also met at dinner a woman who is writing a play about a road (well, not really), and tonight I've sketched out a little bit of piano music for her to hear. It's hardly cutting edge stuff, pretty slushy, but here it is anyway;

road.mp3

Well, its a start anyway. And tonight I felt at home enough to go for a beer. Cheers!

Tuesday 7 Jan 2003

Well, here I am at long last! Climbed Tunnel Mountain today; on the left you can see the view from near the summit. Kind of cold, by Scottish standards, with a strong icy wind as well; but this is mild for here, apparently. Tunnel Mountain is really just a big hill behind the centre, but it is at 1690m (5544').

Here I am in my studio; not much here yet as you can see. Initially I was put in a hut in the woods with a grand piano; it was OK, but had no internet access and it was a bit... well, grotty really, and dark, with only two tiny windows. I may still use it for trumpet practice and for writing at the piano.

Only met a few people so far; a couple from Manchester who are a sax/piano duet, two Danes, a songwriter and a bassist, and three quarters of an Australian string quartet. Many people seem to have been here before, or even come back regularly; I can see why. Everyone is very friendly and polite; a nice atmosphere, although it still feels a bit lonely not knowing anyone.

(A note to all my skiing & snowboarding friends; no, I haven't taken the plunge yet, give me time, I only just got here! I suppose I'll have to try it eventually. Watch this space.)

Music? Composing? Oh, yes, that's what I'm supposed to be here for, isn't it! OK, still no idea what I'm going to write while I'm here. There's a concert by some of the resident artists on Friday, so maybe I'll get a starting point there. To tell the truth, my body clock hasn't really adjusted, and I'm not quite ready to get down to work yet.