Prism Week!

Written by Joshua Iyer
Published: December 4, 2013 at 9:08 PM [UTC]

Prism is this week! Today is the dress rehearsal, tomorrow's the first two concerts (6pm and 8:15pm), and Saturday is the final two (same times), just like last year. I'm kind of nervous that something bad will happen to my violin, as I broke it twice last year (I explained this in entries too!). I'm sure everything will go smoothly, I hope, as we have plenty of time to get on stage. Also in class we're playing the Holberg Suite by Greig, and we just played through the beautiful fourth movement, the Air. When I first heard that movement, and played it on the piano, it inspired me to write an Air in b minor myself! And in private lessons, I'm playing Hungarian Dance No. 5, a version with lots of chords. I remember once reading about octaves in a blog entry; yes, they are hard because the higher up you go on the fingerboard, the less wide the spacing, which can cause problems in getting it in-tune. My teacher gave me practice strategies, which I will try to do when I can make time to practice (as it's Prism week, and Friday I'm going to a Christmas concert with orchestra and chorus). For example, I should break some of the chords up, playing eighth notes instead, then put them together. It will be slow progress, but it will give me something to practice every day. And at some point, we're getting our audition music for next year!

On the side from all of this fun Christmas and violin stuff, I've been continuously working on my film themes for 'The King of the Aliens', a film I hope to make next summer, 2014. Basically, like Howard Shore did for 'The Lord of the Rings' (a book I've begun to read, by the way; I'm on Book II!), I'm creating a leitmotivic score. I've broken up my ideas for themes into categories: Character themes, Location themes, and Plot event themes, and I've also written in the margins of the script where I want these themes to be placed in the score. The symphony I wrote back in September and October really helps me to develop these; I'm, of course, keeping Ebonique's Theme, and I also used the Prologue Theme. I'll save these themes in a binder, condensed, so I can orchestrate them into the score later, adding transitional material and anything I need to make sure it will fit with the film.

So yeah! Exciting stuff! Have a good rest of your day! I'm excited to work on 'A Christmas Festival' again with the full orchestra and chorus, and in between performances, work on 'The King of the Aliens' when we're demoing running the show. :)

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