A couple of nights ago, I had the entire practice session to teach my two song ideas. It's a LOT of work to have two new song ideas to teach for about an hour each. Most of that consisted mainly on keeping all the patterns straight and having a general plan of what to cover. Happily, everything went well!
I mean, there was some smoke coming from people's heads, but that's kind of normal with my pieces...
The hybrid song idea (okedo + naname) went very smoothly. Okedo patterns are a bit tricky given the syncopation (I apparently am not fond of downbeats, ha!), but people were playing them fine. Naname players just repeat a lot of simple patterns, but now that I've seen how it looks and hear how it sounds, I can tweak their parts a bit. For the presentation in November, I'll just have a few chunks to play, focusing on how the patterns interlock, and maybe some soloing. That's a good start. After that? I want to think about the mood and purpose of the piece, but I have some ideas already.
The pod song I'm tentatively calling "LEFT to my own devices". A little corny, but it also highlights that there's something going on with the left hand - namely, it never stops playing a straight beat. This was a harder song to teach, simply because I had a lot more material and more of the rough sequence planned out. It gets increasingly harder as the tempo increases (which is written into the piece), but no one died...except I haven't finished the ending yet and won't need to by November.
So things are good. No guarantees that either will become full-fledged songs, no guarantees that either will be played at next year's Spring Concert, but things are moving nicely and there's a solid structure for both. *phew!*
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