Collecting my thoughts

There are a lot of different ideas running around in my head for Time in Memoriam.  At times these thoughts and ideas become overwhelming because I am unable to write to write some of them down and sometimes I just do not know where to begin.  Instead of jumping in and composing the piece, I thought that it would be a good idea for me to step back and try to get a clear picture of the scope of the piece before zooming in and focussing on the actual music.

On Thursday I decided to approach this piece in a manner similar to that which I used in composing my Master's Thesis, Obscured Ruminations.  First off I considered form.  What type of form do I want to use?  The potential proportions of each section.  After that I thought about the structure of each section of the form.  Do I want to use specific forms within the larger form?

After the issues of form were decided I started to make notes about what types of things I wanted to include in each section of the form.  Mostly, these notes are in general terms, though there are a few specific ideas which I already had in mind.

All of this leads up to my next step, which I will work on a bit today.  I am going to make a diagrammatic sketch of the piece.  This sketch is going to be a graphic representation of the contour, density, texture and color of the piece.  This was something that I did before composing Obscured Ruminations and it really helped me to understand the overall scope of the piece before taking on the sometimes daunting task of composing a large ensemble piece.

So far the outline I have created for Time in Memoriam works for me.  I now have a good idea of the scope of the piece.  As I create the diagrammatic sketch, the piece will come into focus allowing me to be able to understand the concepts of the piece and how it will unfold over time.