Parsons' Cove/Three Footprints

Parsons' Cove/Three Footprints documents a particular time place and state of being. An unbound accordian-bound tunebook is both a viewable object, a score, and a partner in performance. Embedded activities such as looking for sand dollars, writing and singing shape note songs, and building a relationship with another person find their expression as waves, sand, notes, and two people's voices.  

Three Footprints Tunebook

• Fold into pages
• Connect two halves of book
• Apply binding tape to each fold
• Record myself singing "Parsons' Cove" on the shapes
• Select excerpt from the underwater recording
• Send recordings to Anne along with new idea about writing a text for the song
• Determine the meter of the song and brainstorm text ideas 

Lawrence

Lawrence is a multi-part immersive installation depicting my relationship with my family and grandfather at the time of his death through the lens of a text written by John Leland in 1783 and two settings of that text, one by me in 2004, and the other by Stephen Jenks in 1803. The project includes a five channel sound installation paired with a stereo installation for headphones and a space for reading a twelve-volume tunebook, and a diptych of photographs upon which is silkscreened a two page score of my setting of the "Evening Shade" text alongside a four channel sound installation.

Photographs with screenprinting and sound installation

• Scan photographs
• Lay out score and superimpose digitally on photographs
• Email Seana to ask about possibility of printing acetate in grad graphics
• Print acetate and create screens
• Do test and final screenprinting on to photographs
• Hang!
• Record self singing each of the four parts of Lawrence in the recording studio
• Assemble four channel sound installation in Digital Performer
• Determine how best to run this for the open studios on the 11th 

Tunebook

• Determine page dimensions by consulting existing tunebooks such as the Colored Sacred Harp
• Create score page in Harmony Assistant, print as PDFs
• Import PDFs into InDesign and lay out text. Experiment giving the text and tune different margins, where the text goes further out so that the scores can take up more pages, and also because that might work aesthetically
• Determine how many pages of other stuff there is too
• Lay out each tunebook so that there is a good mixture of text/score pages, other pages, and, if needed, just plain text pages
• Ask Seana about the potential to use vellum
• Go to Arlene's to buy paper for the book's covers
• Figure out what the cover treatment should be
• Print and assemble the book   

Under Island 

[Copy text that Carrie and I wrote about Under Island] Basically a subliminal history of Roosevelt Island told through shape note song poems. A tunebook and participatory live singing event.

Rosendale Workshop Tunebook

• Settle on a format for the score pages
• Create all the score pages (this is a lot of work, yikes!)
• Get Carrie to send something in progress for show
• If Carrie can't send any drawings, at least display a number of the score pages and the tunebook from her thesis show singing 

Thesis Singing/Narrative  

A narrative set in 1844 Burnt-over District in upstate New York about a boy who in the wake of the Great Disappointment begins having visions and develops a Restorationist Christian folk religion that mixes Jewish and Sacred Harp Christian theology.

Assemble a project outline

• Include the little bits of narrative and setting that I have determined so far
• Edit and include the text describing my interest in doing this work
• Include also a paragraph of justification for bringing together a narrative like this and the participatory singing model that Carrie and I utilized for her thesis
• Sketch out the model of the larger thesis
• Note also the intention to create an immersive installation that is a companion piece to the participatory singing                                                                                                                                 

Contemporary Sacred Harp Composers

An ethnography documenting the techniques, concerns, and motivations of contemporary Sacred Harp composers.

• Review recordings of Neely interview, note with timestamps interesting themes and comments
• Type up Raymond's letter and annotate it with themes and points of interest
• Review again and capture sections of the interview with themes that I want to handle right now, focusing perhaps on the experience of interviewing, talking to these people. A central theme, perhaps, is the disorientation I've already experienced from doing this work 
• Write Raymond another letter!
• Type up sections of Neely's talk
• Prepare presentations for Monday/Thursday 
• Write up a paper touching on one or two issues and my experience of interviewing these people. Basically, this is about seeking out and interacting with composition mentors. I should touch on my feelings toward these people and what talking to them has made me think about my own compositional efforts and the project I am doing