Shadow Rituals has officially been in publication for two years this month and I just recently received word that Manhattan Beach is out of stock! I’m not exactly sure how many sets and scores were actually printed, but according to my 2007 statement, about 300 sets were purchased.

That’s just friggin’ amazing.

Thank you to everyone who picked up a score; to those who listened to the amazing recordings by ASU and UNT; to those who were a part of those recordings; to the schools who helped fly me out for concerts; to everyone at Midwest and TMEA who said “that’s a cool piece!”; to the students who find me on MySpace and Facebook who message me and say “that’s a cool piece!”; to Bob Margolis, Frank Ticheli, John Mackey, and the many other composers and musicians who continually encourage me to “keep on, keep on pressin’ on.”

Thank you!

The major piece I’ve been working on since about September has been Memento. Dobson gave a great premiere of the piece back in December, but there were a few sections that still weren’t clickin’ with me. So I did what many creative people do: delete and start from scratch. Mind you it was only about 6 measures that got rewritten, but a few more than that got re-evaluated and re-orchestrated.

MIDI sounds are so overly transparent that it’s very easy to be misled into over-thickening the textures. One of these days I’ll write something simpler. But I digress: I depend a lot on revision. It’s sort of a significant part of my “creative process.” Blue Ambience was reworked about three times before I finally settled with it (albeit my first stab at a work for large ensemble), joyRiDE only took about a half revision, Shadow Rituals took one (though I still think it needs a little help), I composed Turkey in the Straw about two complete times before I found a third style and a structure that I liked, and I currently just finished my first revisit of Memento.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this — that is, I’m not necessarily embarrassed by fixes — but I am getting better at learning how to get what I want the first time. For a younger composer, there are still dozens of “ah hah! I should have done that!” moments after each reading of a piece (I still find things I wish I’d done differently in Shadow Rituals). And, what I’ve learned so far — especially now that some of my pieces are being etched in stone and getting published — is to never settle for anything less than I’m happy with. Even if it means swallowing some pride and taking parts of the score to the shredder, I can usually sleep better at night when I do.

That being said, I’m officially going to post a “final draft” score of Memento for anybody who wants to peruse. I thought I’d be bold and post a new MIDI recording with the score, but on second thought, I think you’ll thank me that I didn’t. 

Thanks for looking! On to a new junior high level piece (my first)! Would the title “Screwball” offend anyone? Just wondering.

CLICK HERE FOR THE MEMENTO PDF