For the past six weeks, my aspiration to blog more frequently has collided smack-dab with my disinclination to report failure ... or rather, flailing away at things without making clear forward progress. ("Flailure"?)
On the physical-assembly front, I've discovered to my chagrin that I simply don't have the means (and/or skills) to saw fret slots sufficiently precise to mount new frets by the traditional hammering technique. So, today I removed the botched frets; in the next week, I'll fill those slots, sand the neck to a smooth surface, and procure half-round wire (without tang) to glue into place. On the bright side, the loss of some sound conduction should be more than made up by greater precision of positioning.
On the abstract-assembly front, I've been wrestling with various arpeggiation patterns for the first "fantasy-transition" of Tapestry and Otter. It's a weird balancing act, trying to find a happy medium between What I Could Conceivably Play Myself, Molto Adagio (i.e., something too simple) and What Would Sound Utterly Awesome If Human Beings Could Learn to Execute (i.e., something too complex). And in characteristically amnesiac fashion, I've found myself circling back to rediscover patterns that I tried a week (or two, or five) ago, though now enriched by a bit of quasi-Schenkerian composing-out.
I've probably made things needlessly difficult by not paying enough attention to the transitional aspect ... i.e., the first section of the piece is firmly in place, and I have a very clear sense of how the third section will proceed ... so perhaps all I'm missing in the current sketches for the second section are more details from the first and third, suitably transformed (and/or transforming).
