My Studio

I just bought a box of the Blackwing 602 pencils and an 18 stave manuscript book from the Archive company.  

If you go online and run a Google query for Music Manuscript Paper, most of the top links are for sites that provide templates for your printer.  That's all fine and good, but  I've not been able to find the size and weight of paper.

I've never had a hard time finding reasons not to write, so I wouldn't put too much on having the 'correct' paper and 'proper' pencil.  But there is something tremendously gratifying about the tactile feel of a good pencil on thick paper.  The 18 stave is 12 x 16, so when I'm scrabbling down quick ideas for piano they all form  a mind-map on a page which I can savagely erase, whimsically connect,  and distractedly elaborate with marginalia.   I can stand at my studio piano to write, then sit down to play. 

I don't know yet what will be  the overall shape of Raw Moon.   I'm trying to capture a few characteristic surface textures, one of which I want to have massively glistening, shimmering clusters, ranging across the whole piano.  For this section, not sure whether I want to write using mostly  trills, tremolos, glissandi and grace notes, leaving a lot of freedom for the performance. I'll end up notating the rhythmic material, because when I really listen to how I'm playing it, there are specific phase shifts and whatnot that I think will be important.  It's just that that's a lot more work, isn't it? I'm watching how my hands are moving, the details in notation  are the result of these larger physical gestures.

Perhaps it will look something like this Messiaen score?  Messiaen is a composer who wasn't afraid of working on a score.  The Raw Moon  material  is based on computer generated tone clusters derived from the translation of the lunar image into frequency information, so the density will be heavier than in shown in this  particular sample.  But the offset tuplets in each hand create the kind of flittering effect that I'm looking for.   

I found the Archive

I forget what we used when I was a student.  Probably the archive sheets that fold out, buy a sheeth of those.  I've tried printing on loose leave moleskin paper, loose leaf linen paper is most effectiove so far, but still 8.5x11.

I bought a fcked up pen with 5 lines , but oit turns out to eb very difficult to get a consistent line. 

Don't get me wrong.  I love flkying away along the keyboard.  I rely on being able to write discoherent, unchorded statements knowing that when it comes time to order and organize, I can cut and paste without using scissors and tape.

I took a course once at College Park, we actually sliced tape.  Can you imagine?  Can you imagine how Stockhausen got those sounds?  The technology is better now, I don't claim that the sound of tape is something I can even distinguish, let alone value over anything else.