Imaginary Rehearsal

Today we had our first rehearsal without Lou. There was some sort of complicated mis-communication which involves his house not having electric and his cell phone not working.
So we had a rather expensive 3-piece rehearsal with Ethan, Arie, and me.

The band is very much not convinced that anything I'm suggesting is a good idea. In my experience that takes over 4 weeks. But eventually they'll come around. In the meantime we experimented with a number of notions. I think I've done a terrible job of explaining the vision of The Imaginary Opera.
Just using the word "Opera" with the two guys who do or had worked at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City is pretty loaded.

But we worked on some motifs (another couple motifs were rejected out-of-hand by the band). At one point I was playing piano and Arie was on guitar. Then there was a while where I was on piano and Arie was on keys (with Ethan playing standup). Then somehow I got back on guitar and was playing 6/8 against Ethan's 4/4 and nobody knows what happened. Luckily Ethan recorded it all on his sexy little Tascam portable recorder.
We did manage to play a couple of the little pieces of music from my dreams. And I think that those are going to work out very nicely.
I want to change the "tortoise" to something else. Something that has another word for it but that you also wouldn't flip on its back. I'm tempted to say "kitten" because none of them would know what a kitten was, now would they?
See? This is why nobody has any idea what I'm talking about. Sure, Chance Shirley would be right on board with the Blade Runner/Escape From New York/Apocalypse Now references, but he's in Birmingham (if you want to meet someone who really has no clue about these things, talk to my dad sometime.)
Ethan's engaged in a mighty struggle with GarageBand to try to get the recordings we made to us in a form we can actually listen to. We shoulda just played at my office today. ;-)

Arie asked if either of us knew The Decemberists. I said I couldn't think of their big song. As it turns out, this is it: The Decemberists "Why We Fight". It's a great tune.

A Journey of Discovery

So here's a thing I've discovered about myself. It only took 46 years:
As a composer, I've almost always composed alone. Indeed I know I've been resistant to composing with other people.
And you know what? I hate composing alone. Hate it hate it hate it.

There isn't any music there Dog. C'mon. Just improvise.

Now, composing with other people is another set of problems. You have to be on the same "wavelength" as the people you're working with. This is one reason I like Tyrannosaurus Mouse so much. Our best material has come about through someone saying "how about we do this?" and us trying it and liking it.
How does all of this apply to composing for film? Well, I think I hate composing for film. There. I said it.
Whew. I feel better.
I wonder how this makes me feel about writing the Blade Runner Musical by myself? Hmm... The guys in Tyrannosaurus Mouse have ignored the idea. But I might be able to fool them into doing the music by pretending we're doing something else. Tricking your friends, as it turns out, is the most efficient course of action.