A Diversion; or Just Follow the Bass Line

My task for the past 2 weeks was to take the first draft of "NamePieces" and clean it up. Re-check each staff line for readability and phrasing ( should I use the term stave, and achieve more gravitas?); Edit out the "Hp." markings on each staff line; add dynamics and tempo markings; cut the photos to a vertical page; re-order some of the pages; convert the PDF Preview document to a Word document. This sounded relatively straight-forward, even though I wasn't sure how to do some of these tasks. There were seven NamePieces, so I thought I would do one a day, leaving extra time to pull things together. Adding the dynamics and tempos markings was more daunting than I expected. I knew how I wanted it to sound, knew how I liked to play it, but second -guessed how another harpist would read or feel the markings. The measures looked cramped, and there were too many composer directions. As I worked on that first NamePiece, it sounded overly repetitive with not enough contrast. I kept myself from changing it, deciding it was my first effort, and it was "good enough". Then I looked at "Matt and Alix". Why did I repeat 4 measures, repeatedly? In the first NamePiece the repetitions were different, but they weren't different enough. In "Matt and Alix", there were 4 very different variations, but, I was repeating 4 measures in each section. I had been away from the piece for 8 months, and I could hear it with new ideas. So I worked on composing, but that was not what I was supposed to be doing. After 4-5 days of work, I had 8 measures of accompaniment changes.

Two arrangement ideas for the waltz section from Matthew Behuniak and Alixandra Coursen. The first is pretty and charming. The second asks me to stray outside the expected harmony, and punctuates the melody with less of what is expected.

I wanted to leave it alone, but I thought if I am putting this out there, I should bring it to where I want it at this time.