Whoops, my bad!

It is funny.  Numbers have a way of obscuring themselves in my head.  I realized the other day that sections of the diagrammatic sketch I have been working on are proportionally wrong.  The opening sound walls in the low brass and percussion are twice as long as they need to be.  These walls are made of four pulses that last two measures each.  This makes eight measures.  Eight is the number I had in my head when I went to figure out the approximate duration of these sound walls.  I had reminded myself not to forget to double the number of measures as each pulse is two measures long.  So that is what I did.  I counted these walls as sixteen measures and at the tempo indicated each would be about forty-five seconds.

As I continued to work on the sketch I began to become concerned that the piece would get to be way too long.  So I looked back and began to time the sections in the opening.  The sound walls came out to twenty to twenty-five seconds each.  I was confused.  I looked back at the sketch and realized what the mistake was.  I factored each of these sections for sixteen measures instead of eight measures, which they really are.

To deal with this there are three options.  I can start the whole sketch over.  I can re-sketch the opening or the parts that are currently "correct" in proportion.  I can leave it alone and make notes on the sketch about the proportions.  I do not like this last option.  To me this will give the sketch an accordion-like feel.  This sketch is designed in part to be relatively proportional.  Variations where time is doubled would alter my intention for this type of sketch.

I need to look at the sketch as it is and decide how much work there would be to redo the whole thing.  Fortunately I was only about one-third of the way done so I do not think it would be too much of a set back to rework the whole sketch.