Fragments (Character Piece number 3)

On Friday past myself and Kim played the final of my three character pieces for composition class. This piece used a lot of glissandi that were ment to be smeared. Since this is not technically possible on the piano or sax (sax can bend notes, and smear the sound going between two notes but not in a large run) the glissandi were meant to be messy and not rhythmic or metric. They however have to hit a top or bottom note at specific time as I had them change direction every two beats on specific notes. This creates a messy wave of sound which is exactly what I was going for. On this note, I have the pianist playing the gliss figure in the left hand in the middle of my peice, I had not considered the physical demands that this would place on the pianist, and it was determined after a consultation with Kim, that while they were possible it would require a glove or some other tool, so as not to damage the hand. Dr. Ross then suggested working in some space into the piano part to allow time to either put on the glove or pick up the tool. I agreed with this completely and am experimenting with a couple ideas to see what works best. It was also suggested that I play around with the smearing idea more and I plan to as I think it can really add a lot to my piece.
Another Idea suggested by Dr. Ross was to have the loud peddle of the piano pressed down for the beginging and ending of the piece, as this is where just the saxophone is playing (an idea that went over well with my classmates) and doing the glissandi. We acutally tried that in class and the sound is really cool, so I've already added it in.

That looks like enough for now,
NB